The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, Alexander McCall Smith

Jack Vettriano, Temptress, 2008

(May 23) Alas, these books are over too fast, this one in particular.

The concept is entering its Golden Age now.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective series was my first love ...this series I read just to kill time in between... but now I find I am liking this series better.

This installment offers many lovely interweaving streams; there’s excellent tangentializing by Isabel; and Izz wasn’t disagreeable with anyone, really.

Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen

(May 16) This was mentioned on Gertie’s sewing blog... she was making a white eyelet sundress because of the references to white eyelet dresses in this book (in fact, a white eyelet sundress is mentioned only once and clothing in general maybe three other times, max... so, huh?).

But it was a New York Times Best Seller... and easy to get from the libraries.

Odd combo of Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Like Water for Chocolate, and the Bill-and-Nancy plotline in Oliver Twist (but without the death... so not as odd as it could have been).

Written cheerfully, so easy to read... the points of view lurch around a lot, though, and the plot combo **is** very odd... so I can’t say I loved it, but it was likable. I need a 2.25 rating.

This author gets “Enchanting” and “Magical” from her cover-blurbers, and that is very accurate cover-blurbing.

The Shack, Wm. Paul Young

(May 11) I got this out of the library because I thought it was sci-fi, and it was, after all, a “New York Times bestseller.” Why not give it a try?

When I realized what it was -- a modern-Christian version of a Consolation of Philosophy or Divine Comedy (man talks to God and gets things clearly explained and allegorized) -- I just kept reading it, because ...how often am I going to get that?

The Amazon reviews are strongly and extremely divided (as with Twilight reviews) but even those who give it 5 stars make a point of acknowledging the “poor writing.” It’s really cheesy, but I wouldn’t say the writing is “poor.” It’s C+ writing. I don’t think you should confuse writing and content. Yes, the content is poor.

What I found really off-putting was a rumour I read somewhere that the real spiritual crisis that sparked Young’s vision of Christianity was an extramarital affair (all the other details of the story being autobiographical). Though a rumour, it sounds true -- it would explain some of the guilt and shame “Mack” seems to need, strangely, to expiate, and it would explain why the story of the loss of the child is so unconvincing. It sickens that he tried to fake up a story of the abduction and murder of a child to drive his point home while keeping it “autobiographical.” It’s an insult to parents who have actually experienced this, and at least one Amazon reviewer said he had turned to this book looking for comfort because he had endured that tragedy in real life. The extra-marital affair would have been a much more interesting, because honest, story.

So, shame on you, Paul Young, for being so contriving with your heartfeltedness.

Writing the Revolution, Michele Landsberg

Vanessa Beecroft, VB 52, 2003

(April 30, 2013) I am so retroactively impressed with Michele Landsberg. This woman did a great job -- both originally when she wrote these columns in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was living the revolution, and again when she compiled this historical review. The book is the perfect blend of at-the-moment engagement with women’s issues and philosophical overview of suffrage afterwards.

Some of the issues are absolutely timeless -- her columns on women’s right to abortion feel like they were written yesterday. I was so riveted reading one of them once I missed my bus stop by two stops.

Actually, it was kind of unsettling to realize how necessary some of these hoary old protests were and still are.

Ai yi yi, it is so tiresome to undo the hatred and greed of 130,000 years of male-dominated human civilization, but clearly the will and the talent to complete the job is out there, and it will eventually happen.

Bejeweled: Great Designers, Celebrity Style, Marion Fasel and Penny Proddow

Joel Arthur Rosenthal, "Mogol" Flower Bracelet, 1987

(April 25) Beautiful, beautiful photos.

No organizing principle, really. The subtitle is “Great Designers, Celebrity Style,” and the book does cover those things, but with no apparent goal in mind. Research is thrown in randomly. You get the feeling there was a desire to do a scholarly inventory of 20th-century jewelry designers, but there was also a desire to gawp at celebrity jewelry -- and the two desires are not harmonized in any way.

It’s a testament to the importance of an organizing principle -- it’s hard to remember information when it’s not clear why and how it matters. I had to reread many passages again and again to understand why they were there. The research was interesting... but evanescent.

The big (beautiful) photos contributed to the disjointedness. The editors allowed the insertion of multiple pages of photo plates (with long cutlines) into the middles of sentences throughout the whole book. This made it very tricky to read.

Other signs of careless editing: at least three proofing errors.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Alice, Little Paper Girl, 2010

(March 26) My biggest question about this book, an issue that puzzled me right from the beginning: Why is it categorized as Young Adult fiction? (It turns out it was a deliberate decision by the international publishers, who put a lot of faith in Zusak’s established reputation... but it is completely incorrectly categorized.)

 I liked it -- it is impossible not to be drawn in by the subject matter (being persecuted by Nazis; hiding a Jewish refugee) -- but didn’t love it enough to read it quickly. It certainly makes a good case in defense of the Germans who “allowed” Nazism to survive and thrive. They were already suffering enough loss and privation -- for the vast majority, the few precious people they had left were worth sacrificing everything else for, worth putting up with any kind of idiocy.

Recommended by Andrea, who was blown away by the persona of the narrator, and by the way he “spoiled” the events that were about to occur. This set-up seemed an old chestnut to me, and I’m not sure it added anything, though it wasn’t a drawback. ::shrug::

The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon

Albert Kretschmer (1825-91), English and Scottish dress, 18th century

(January 25) I used to think of this series as "Claire and Jamie," but now I'm thinking of it as "John and Jamie."

I'm kidding.

I liked it just as much as I always like Gabaldon's books. They're rich and vivid, even if they do cause you to eye-roll a little bit every once in a while.

Letters From Egypt, Lucie Duff Gordon (edited by Gordon Waterfield)

Henry Wyndham Phillips, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, 1851

(October 23, 2012) This was just delightful -- to experience Egypt through Duff Gordon’s eyes -- to learn to share her love of Arabs... I loved the charming, charming Arabs and now want them to rule the world.

Lucie Duff Gordon herself seems to have been wonderful -- everyone about her clearly loved her (except for her stupid-seeming husband. Very odd.).

Strange disorientation arises because this was written in Victorian times and is exotically located: sometimes LDG will tell a story and make a comment and you don’t get it at all. You can’t tell whether she’s being humorous, insightful, reproving or what. It’s cultural disorientation, I guess, and the very Victorian style.

Took me a long time to read this, possibly because unconsciously I wanted to defer the conclusion... obviously, the further you went in the book, the closer to LDG’s death you were.

This made me want to read more about and by Caroline Norton, and LDG’s Amber Witch.

Sloppy Firsts, Megan McCafferty

DragoArt.com, How to Draw Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance

(November 24) I ended up liking this, but things did not start well. The close parallels to Spoiled were off-putting, (1) because it felt (retroactively) like the Fug Girls were maybe plagiarists as well as lazy and (2) because I had plot fatigue over stories of teen girls who react badly to tragedies, screw themselves up, then get redeemed (via twoo wuv).

But about five-eighths of the way through, Sloppy Firsts suddenly became quite captivating and compelling, mostly because of an interesting boy who sails in and steals our heroine’s heart out of the blue, and who is about as anti-hero as you can get. So that was original and compensatory.

But will I go on to read the rest of the (five-book) series? No, I will not. In the end, Jess, the heroine, the first-person narrator, is just not that compelling to me.

The main thing about this reading experience was that it confirmed an uneasy sense I had that I can't trust the taste of a certain someone who often recommends books. She raves about certain books, such as this series, and gets me all excited. Alas, I have tried four different recommendations from her without sharing any of her rhapsody over them. They were all “OK,” but not rave-worthy for me.

So this is good-bye, L.... on the book-recommendation front, anyway.

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

Gabriele Iuvara, "Las Fura dels Baus in Dreams In Flight"

(November 12) Liked it a lot at first... it’s very rich visually... and pretty original... you don’t know where this concept’s going to go because it plays by its own rules... would make a lovely movie if they could recreate all the visuals... fun and compelling... imagery is amazing.

But

The concept never does go anywhere... the whole thing is conducted as though it’s a lot more profound than it actually is... it was disappointing that Morgenstern didn’t know fundamentals about Victorian or Edwardian life (for example, single ladies didn’t run into gentlemen on the street and then stop to have glasses of wine with them in little establishments) even though she took the trouble to set the whole thing in the late 1890s, early 1900s....

The novel does contain writing such as “holding her empty glass of champagne” …which was painful.... and I didn’t even notice all the passages mocked (gently but hilariously) by Amazon reviewers.

So it was a strange reading experience... "wondrous" morphing into "ridiculous" before your eyes.

Lucie Duff Gordon: A Passage to Egypt, Katherine Frank

Jean André Rixens, The Death of Cleopatra, 1874

(October 19) I want to give this high marks because of my great interest in the subject matter (The Mistress of Nothing was meh as fiction, but I could tell the source was fascinating). This biography was fine but I kept waiting and hoping for "the good stuff" and suddenly Lucie's life was over. And she wasn't re-animated at all -- she was still viewed from a distance by a third party. I wanted her to be more reverse-engineered than she was. I suppose (I hope!) I will meet the living Lucie Duff Gordon in the things she actually wrote.

Katherine Frank's search for Lucie Duff Gordon's story produced all kinds of huge mystical parallels with Lucie's life and with the Egyptian-god myths, which is all very cool and everything but really has nothing to do with a biography of someone else (in my opinion). She intrudes a bit with her own life and you have to wonder if her fascination with the numinousness of her research experience played a hand in how she shaped the biography.

But I can nonetheless tell that Lucie's was an interesting life.

Note on the plot choices in The Mistress of Nothing: it's so obvious to me why "Lucie" was harsh with "Sally" -- why didn't Pullinger see this? Or was it too obvious and boring? Or is there no way to work such a thing into a first-person narrative???

Spoiled, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Pepstar, Dominique: Tonner Daphne Dimples Repaint, 2009-11

(September 14) I wanted to read this because I enjoy Cocks and Morgan's blog -- the Fug Girls have a talent for hilarious one-liners.

But I felt like this was really a draft for a screenplay -- a screenplay that would have led to a funny, semi-believable movie -- but, in the interests of time or money or whatever, the Girls decided to go with a Young Adult novel because that is I'm guessing the easiest thing to publish... and it just makes all the weird plot constraints all the weirder and more constraining, and more artificial.

Or -- maybe in an effort to do something “different” with the genre they felt they had to have all these weird strained plot points.

Basically, there is no true and deep and genuine love for the Young Adult genre here.

But there were lots of hilarious one-liners, which is what I really wanted, after all.

I agree totally with this reviewer on the technical fail of this novel.

The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss

Rosanne Kaloustian, Illustration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1990s (?)

(August 28) I liked reading this -- it made the idea of living like a trust-fund baby on four hours’ work a week seem totally doable, which is kind of exciting. It would be absolutely doable for someone like my brother... probably less so for someone in my situation... I really couldn’t reduce my office hours in my current job, but I suppose I could set up a “muse” (low-maintenance business that generates significant income).

Ferriss’s book is devoted equally to two topics, both how to reduce your work week and how to fill the resulting time. This seems strange to me. Why would people bother to free up their leisure time if they don’t have plans to do anything with it? I don’t need that half of the book, for sure. Did Ferriss have to pad in order to have a proper-length book?

Or maybe a "muse" is possible only if you’re the type of person who doesn’t have a busy off-hours life?

But it was fun to read anyhow.

Steve Pavlina recommended this.

The Mistress of Nothing: A Novel, Kate Pullinger

David Roberts, Luxor, Decr 1st, 1840

(August 17) I read this because it won the 2009 Governor General's Award for Fiction and I got several "live" recommendations for it... but I found it banal.

Pullinger uses a familiar device: taking up the point of view of a minor member of a cast (e.g., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Thomas Cromwell) of a well-known story (Hamlet, the execution of Anne Boleyn) and telling the more famous story from that point of view. I don't find Pullinger so clever with it. The book is not convincing from any standpoint -- class, time period, whatever. Sarah Waters has spoiled me forever for fictitious Victorian narrators, I guess. Sally's voice is too educated and nuanced for a girl brought up in service.

The actual historical details that spawned this "novel," the bare-bones source, are interesting, but I don't think Pullinger did much with them, and, furthermore, I don't get the feeling of having "seen something" of Victorian Egypt despite this being the time and place of the story.

However, I am now mildly enthusiastic about reading Duff Gordon's letters from Egypt, and Katherine Frank's biography of her.

Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

Paul Murray, Cutshin Creek, 2008

(July 19) Really gripping. At first, I thought, “Oh, no, a raw, earthy conflict... somebody’s gonna get raped or brutally killed, or I am gonna be horrified in some unknown way.” Yet such is the talent of the writer that I couldn’t stop reading anyway. And things were a bit brutal. It’s modern hillbillies, running meth and other drugs instead of moonshine, and with all their crazy codes of honour and toughness. But again, it’s love that drives them onward and to do good and evil, and it’s their love that makes me want to keep reading about them. Also, the whole thing was like a trip to an exotic world.

The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling

Henri Rousseau, Surprised, 1891

(July 13) I love him (more for Kim than for this, but this was good, too). I don’t know why I never read any Kipling before; I certainly heard enough about him. I guess I thought he might be a bit clichéd, a bit jingoistic, a bit hokey. He is all these things (plus racist and imperialist), but the guy can tell a story! And every page or two he is so surprising in his style, his insight, or his plot that he takes your breath away. Like, he is a true creative. Not for nothing is he so popular and enduring.

Bossypants, Tina Fey

Jason Mecier, Tina Fey, 2010

(June 29) I heh'd at least once per paragraph and laughed out loud numerous times reading this. Very entertaining observations. I felt that I might be missing out on even more jokes because, though of course I know who she is, I never watched her on SNL or 30 Rock. Still was very entertained.

Not absolutely sure why she called it "Bossypants" since it's kind of an autobiography.

Some funny quotes:

I should have known he and I weren't going to make it when for my seventeenth birthday he gave me a box of microwave popcorn and a used battery tester. You know, to test batteries before I put them in my Walkman. Like you give someone when you're in love.

There are a lot of different opinions as to how long one should breast-feed. The World Health Organization says six months. The American Association of Pediatrics says one year is ideal. Mothering magazine suggests you nurse the child until just before his rehearsal dinner.

I have one top-notch baby with whom I am in love. It's a head-over-heels "first love" kind of thing, because I pay for everything and all we do is hold hands.

[W]henever someone says to me, "Jerry Lewis says women aren’t funny," or "Christopher Hitchens says women aren’t funny," or "Rick Fenderman says women aren’t funny... ", [I say m]y hat goes off to them. It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove it doesn't exist.

The Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht

Milena Dragicevic, Supplicant 31, 2008

(June 17) I really, really liked this novel -- I liked the magic realism of it, a style I always associated with South America but which is nonetheless perfectly suited to this ancient part of Europe. Some very lovely myths are entwined into the narrative. I was inspired to learn a lot about the Bosnian war. Also inspired to read The Jungle Book.

How many books with “wife” in the title have I read lately?

The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks

Will Davies, Harlequin Romance cover

(May 21) OMG.

I wanted to read this because I’d heard so many mildly disparaging comparisons -- “oh, this is sentimental, like The Notebook,” or “this has same kind of blind devotion from fans as The Notebook.” I wanted to know exactly what kind of sentimental this was, or what kind of oxycontin it was. It seemed like a cultural touchstone.

But OMG it was so bad. The opening acknowledgements sounded like they were written by one of my former C students, which was very alarming.

However, the story itself was written more competently than the acknowledgements -- the expression of the ideas is quite competent, in fact. It’s just that the ideas aren’t very powerful or even interesting.

I kept waiting for something “big” to happen, but suddenly the book was over and nothing “big” had happened at all. Everything was just perfect in a Redbook magazine kind of way.

At the end we find out that Sparks based this story on his grandparents’ actual lives, and that makes you wince and think, oh that’s cute, and maybe it explains why Sparks kept everything so generic … he just didn’t want to go there about his grandparents.

But then he did go there -- or somewhere -- with several hot sex scenes. So.

And that’s all the characters do -- eat, have sex, wear nice outfits. There is nothing else going on. The “events” are like snapshots described to us -- which might be an interesting idea in the right hands, but here is just really only about the clothing, the food and the mild porn. Nothing deeper.

Maybe it made for a great movie -- I haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to now. Maybe the movie injected some life into the story... because it is a cute concept and could be really powerful... and I think the movie must be better and that that is what everybody thinks of when they think of The Notebook, because the criticisms are really mild. People have ragged on Twilight so harshly, and I think it’s superior, creatively, to The Notebook.

So either the movie is acceptable and that’s what people identify as The Notebook, or people feel bad that it’s about real-life old people and therefore let it off the hook. Maybe people see it as a blank canvas and inject their own powerful imaginations into it. I cannot otherwise account for its huge, huge popularity.

About a third of the way in, I started to think, “This is just like The Bridges of Madison County,” which is a real insult, ay. But by the end, The Notebook made The Bridges of Madison County look good. O_o

Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster

John Singer Sargent Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905

(May 20) All these terrible things happen; and yet it is very funny. O_o