Books 121-130

Here are the next 10 books on the list!  Almost to the C's!

121. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe (1992)
122. By the Open Sea by August Strindberg (1890)
123. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham (1930)
124. Call it Sleep by Henry Roth (1934)
125. Camilla by Fanny Burney (1796)
126. Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1968)
127. Candide by Voltaire (1759)
128. Cane by Jean Toomer (1923)
129. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945)
130. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres (1994)

Monotony is good!

Have you ever had a period of your life that was characterized by doing the same thing day in and day out?  Monotony doesn't bother me in the least.  I find comfort in it and find very mundane tasks particularly relaxing.  (I was an AWESOME administrative temp in college for this reason.  Need to organize thousands of batteries by country of origin?  I'm your girl.)

Edith Wharton's novella Bunner Sisters (do you italicize the title of a novella?) is a story of how a pair of sisters with a small shop change up their monotonous lives with disastrous results.  I have written before about how amazed I am that I hadn't read any Edith Wharton until beginning this project, and this novella yet again made me realize what a brilliant writer she was.  The whole picture of the sisters, their sad little lives, their sad little shop, just drawn so perfectly - and then just turned on its head as their circumstances change.  I really enjoyed this one.

Sometimes you get it, and, well...

Sometimes you just don't.  The Buddha of Suburbia was not one of those crazy books that make absolutely no sense to me, stream of consciousness or with holes cut out (or pooping outside of a window).  It was a coherent story.

Unfortunately, it just didn't resonate with me.  It's narrated by a half Indian young man making his way in 1970s London.  The story was interesting, and his world was interesting, and the characters are all interesting, but I just was left feeling kind of meh.  I'm sure that for some people this was a fascinating social commentary, but I'm just not one of those people!

I'm definitely not going to like them all.

In other news, my daughter has just started reading!  I'm so happy and proud of her and we have been reading a lot of those decodable books.  She loves it so far.  The way she goes through a new library book at rapid speed enjoying every minute reminds me a lot of Marissa and me when we were little.  It's a very happy time here in my house.

Family.

We have a picture of my little 2 month old son, his dad, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather all sitting together on the couch last Christmas Eve.  It's so amazing to look at these 4 generations of men and think about everything that has happened in their lives - and to think that someday my son might pose for a picture with his son, grandson, or even great-grandson.  I look at Great-Grandpa and think about what an interesting life he has had.  And I look at my son and think about what an interesting life he may also have.

Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks has really gotten me thinking about family.  This novel was amazing.  So amazing in fact, that I read all 730 pages in less than 2 weeks.  I simply couldn't put this one down.  I obviously hope that my family doesn't turn out like the Buddenbrooks - the novel chronicles the decline of this once-illustrious German merchant family and ends with the typhoid death of little Hanno, the young son.  It was very sad.

But I liked how no matter what they were going through in the story, the family remained very close.  They had Thursday afternoons as family time when extended family members would come to eat.  They had this cool family chronicle book handed down through generations in which all the important events that took place were recorded.  And they generally had each other's backs.  Although Antonie had to deal with 2 very bad marriages, she knew she could always come back to the family home.  She could always count on her parents and oldest brother.  And she similarly could always be counted on to support her family and stand behind them no matter what they chose to do.  I liked their family closeness through good times and bad.

This is one of those books that I absolutely loved and would recommend to anyone.  I'll definitely be thinking about this one for a while.  This was among the best I have read so far for sure!

Jerry Springer has nothing on Dostoevsky.

So I stay at home with my kids. That doesn't mean, however, that I watch a lot of daytime television. We actually keep the TV off most of the time. My kids aren't too interested in it and we find other fun stuff to do.

I remember being in high school and college, though, and LOVING those trashy midday talk shows. Maury always had some baby mamas on who wanted to figure out who the father of their babies was. And Jerry Springer had so much drama. Parents and children dating the same man or woman. And it always wound up in these huge fights. It made for some entertaining television. I can tell you now that Dostoevsky would have really liked those shows, too. The Brothers Karamazov has it all.  (And about 1200 pages too!)

The brothers Karamazov are these 3 brothers, from 2 different mamas. The oldest one, Dmitri, decides to leave one woman, Katya, for another woman, Grushenka. Fyodor, Dmitri's dad, also wants to get with Grushenka. Katya and Grushenka get into a fight. Fyodor and Dmitri get into a fight and Fyodor winds up dead.

Grushenka has headed off to another town to be with another guy and Dmitri shows up there with all this money and they go on a huge bender. Unfortunately for him, the law catches up to him. He is arrested and tried for killing his father.

It comes out at the trial, though, that it was probably Smyerdakov, Fyodor's illegitimate son by a woman who was not quite right in the head, who probably killed Fyodor, not Dmitri at all. Too bad for Dmitri, who is sent off to Siberia.

So. Much. Drama.

In demand.

There are apparently quite a few people in my town who really want to read Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina. It was very difficult to borrow from the library, which is surprising because usually, these books are not in that much demand. Mostly people who want to read them have already read them - there isn't a huge waiting list for most of them or anything.

I can't really figure out what all the hype is about for this one. I read it very quickly, over the course of 5 days or so (thanks to a drive to Connecticut where both kids were pretty quiet), and I just couldn't get into it. The book's main character is this bridge that connects this town in Bosnia. It spans quite a bit of time, from when the bridge was built, through the development of Bosnia and the various conflicts there, and through to 1914 when the bridge is destroyed in war. The book is very, VERY bloody and violent. There was one scene in particular toward the beginning of the book that almost gave me a panic attack.

Books like this where the action centers around an object, rather than a character, are hard for me because I can't really get interested in the object the way I would a story about a person. There needs to be some continuity among the people for me to start to care about it. The book definitely helped me learn about a time in Bosnian history that I didn't know about before, but I just didn't particularly enjoy it. (I wonder if the other folks in my town also reading the book feel the same!)

Unseasonable.

So it has been 80 for the last 3 days. In DC. In mid March. I've had to put the A/C on at night and have shorts on. I'm as tired of winter as the next person, but 80 just feels like too much too soon. I like a few weeks of mild temperatures before we go straight into full on summer. Plus, if it's 80 in mid-March, I fear what August is going to be like.

Ismail Kadare's Broken April is a fantastic novel. So apparently in the mountain regions of Albania, there are these blood feuds. The Kanun, the local code, permits murder to avenge murder if certain conditions are followed. So what winds up happening is that families engaged in a blood feud take turns killing members of the other's family. The hero, Gjorg, kills a member of the rival family to avenge his own brother's murder. This takes place in mid-March. The Kanun provides for a 30 day truce before Gjorg is allowed to be murdered by the other family. The book is about this last month, where he travels around and basically gets ready for his death. I loved reading about the customs and traditions of the people, and the descriptions in this book were just so beautiful. You could feel the end of winter chill and the little warmth that was beginning spring. The book seemed unseasonable to me because usually spring is the time where new things start to grow, but Gjorg is getting ready to die. He's dreading mid April when the truce ends and the other family is allowed to ambush and kill him.

I just loved this book. I'm surprised that my local library didn't have it. I would recommend this to anyone.

Life's a beach.

When I was little, I always thought it would be pretty much the best thing ever to live in a beach town or a ski resort town. The vacation fun never stops when you live there year round, right? Right? While on the vacation, I used to imagine the house my family would live in and what our day to day existence would be like. Fortunately (though perhaps unfortunately for 11 year old me) my parents knew better and dutifully returned all of us to our non-beach, non-ski resort town at the end of every vacation.

The characters in Brighton Rock do live in a resort town. It is nothing like a daily vacation that I used to dream about when little, though. They are gang members in a mob of young thugs that is falling apart. They continually try to consolidate their power against the rival (and much better funded) Colleoni gang, only to be thwarted at every opportunity. Basically, they kill someone, then to cover their tracks, they keep having to kill other people, until there are like 2 gang members left. Plus the head of the gang figures he has to marry a local waitress who has a clue to the murder so that she cannot testify about what she saw. The book is dark and sad. I couldn't help feeling bad for Pinkie, the mob leader, and Rose, the young woman who he marries. They are just sad, sad people.

I liked this book though. I liked how it was set up with the gang members constantly trying to outwit Ida Arnold, who has seen something and is out to discover the truth about the original death.

Crazy, but fun.

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut was pretty cool. It started off kind of slow (but with a lot of amusing social commentary). As the book progressed, it got more and more frenetic. The author inserts himself into the action and actually becomes a participant in all the crazy nonsense that is going on. You know how usually the narrator is kind of invisible and describes the action? Here, the narrator pulls up beside one of his characters and explains that he created the character and is in control of him. The character is a little astonished by this. The narrator is on the outside, looking in, but also on the inside, looking out.

I liked this book- it was amusing and pretty cool. Sometimes books from this time period are a little too crazy for me. For example, the book with a hole in the middle of it. This one was nuts, but in an interesting, fun way.

A visit with Brideshead Revisited

As is usual, I'm typing this blog entry one handed as Fuzzy nurses and Peabo plays around on the floor telling a story with some playsilks and Playmobil characters. So I have a lot going on. I read Brideshead Revisited in quick bursts. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. It wasn't a great way to read this story. I think I missed a lot of the nuances.

The story follows a young man and his interaction with a Catholic family in the early 1900s, just before the war. He first befriends his classmate, Sebastian, but then pretty much abandons him once Sebastian becomes an alcoholic. Later he remeets Sebastian's sister Julia and they are planning to get divorces and marry each other. It is a good story and an interesting commentary on the time and the Catholic faith. Each family member has his or her own level of belief and observance and I was interested to see how that weaved through the story. This was also a LONG book for some reason. Only 313 pages, but type was small and it just seemed long to me.

Time to go burp the baby!

Books 111-120

Here are the next 10 books on the list:

111. The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (1945)
112. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (1938)
113. Broken April by Ismail Kadare (1980)
114. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
115. The Buddah of Suburbia by Hanif Kurieshi (1990)
116. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901)
117. Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton (1916)
118. Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer (1979)
119. Burmese Days by George Orwell (1934)
120. The Busconductor Hines by James Kelman (1984)

Boobs, boobs everywhere.

Nursing a baby can take a while. When they are little, they aren't very efficient yet, so they often hang out at the breast and nurse for sometimes 30 minutes at a time. It's a good idea to be relaxed and read a good book or watch TV or just enjoy bonding with your new, snuggly infant.

That is how I got a lot of reading done in the early days of this blog. I had a baby that loved to hang out and snuggle and nurse. Now, with baby #2, I still have toddler #1 to look after, so it isn't as easy to curl up with the baby and a good book and nurseathon. I still do have some good chances to read, though.

The Breast was a very odd book. I know I'm totally missing the point. I found my own humor in the fact that I was primarily reading it while nursing.

So basically, this guy turns into a breast. I'm not sure if it was the time in which it was written (early 1970s, I think) or what, but the breast's essential function as a food source was quite diminished. Roth spends pages upon pages dealing with the sexual nature of the breast, the guy has his girlfriend come over and stroke his new form, etc. Only at the very end was there any discussion of the fact that breasts make milk and that this guy did not produce milk, and even then it was very brief.

Anyway, weird, weird, weird book and I definitely missed the theme of this one.

9/11 fiction.

I knew that eventually there were going to be books about September 11th. The horror of it is imprinted on every American who was alive to remember it. Even 10 years out now, it seems too fresh to be fictionalized, though. Claire Messud does a nice job with The Emperor's Children of coming up with some likeable characters and an interesting story. So I did like reading the book, even though it is difficult and sad to read about such a horrible day. You can see how things are leading up to the events and you almost don't want to keep reading because you don't want these people to be affected by the terrorism. But you know the fictional characters will be affected, just like we all were.

The cultural references in the book are great - very 2001. It's amusing to look back at them now just 10 years later. The author really captured what 2001 was like in a very clever way. I'm glad I read this Best Book of 2006 for sure.

It's a catchy song.

So this is embarrassing. I knew the Deep Blue Something song, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" before I knew that there was a book! And whenever I so much as catch a glimpse of the book on my table, I get that silly song in my head. I think that is called an earworm.

Despite the associated earworm, this was a really good story. One aspect of it that was especially cool is how Holly's story is presented through her neighbor - who starts out disinterested but winds up being intrigued and caring about her, enough where he helps her leave at the end.

I'm surprised that I never read this before!

You Can't. Always. Get. What You. Want. (and you wouldn't like it much if you did)

Having a 3 year old can be tough. She is amazing, funny and sweet. And can be demanding and difficult. Sometimes the things she wants are, well, just not a good idea. She LOVES to stay up late, doesn't enjoy taking a bath very frequently, and if it were up to her, she'd have all 9 billion of her toys out at once.

I see part of my role as her parent to help guide her to do those things that she may not want to do initially, but are good for her in the long term. Sure, it is not fun to take a bath in the winter when it is freezing cold. But you feel better after, you don't smell, and you are clean. It is fun to stay up late, but then you feel terrible the next day. If you go to bed at a normal-person time, you sleep well and wake up happy and have more energy to do fun stuff the next day.

How does this relate to Brave New World, you ask? Because in Brave New World the society has abandoned the idea of long term good entirely. Immediate pleasure is maximized. The whole society functions around immediate wish gratification. Any sort of pull to do otherwise has been conditioned out of people, whether in their test tube gestational bottles, or in the whispered messages to them while they sleep as they grow up. It's basically like living in a society of unparented 3 year olds. Horrifying.

As I read this book I kept waiting for the Savage to figure out a way to save the society, or at least contribute to its downfall. But now I realize that is part of what is scary about the book - the society keeps going. It gets the best of everyone.

I really, really liked this book. Much more than when I read it in high school.

Adventures as a gay adolescent.

Merry Christmas! My first Christmas as a mama of 2 was wonderful. I even had a little time to get some reading done. A Boy's Own Story is a pretty sensitive account of growing up gay in mid 20th century America. A lot of topics I never thought about or considered in there. It wasn't light holiday reading by any means, but certainly gave me some things to think about. For example, how a gay young man looks at marriage, not as an inevitability but more of a far fetched aspirational thing. He wanted to get married, but he wanted to marry a man. Not possible then.

Now we are in the process of unpacking from our trip, finding homes for all of this stuff (including a big jar of 108 miniature plastic frogs for Peanut, which she adores and are currently all over the living room carpet), and I will start Brave New World. I read it in high school but remember next to nothing about it.

From the depths of under my bed...

I found my paperback copy of Adam Bede. I thought it was gone forever, so I got it for free from the iBookstore since it's in the public domain. And I'm still not done. It's a great story, but I get so tempted by all the books around the library. Maybe I commit to finishing it before the year is out? Marissa

It has been a busy busy month. To say the least. I noticed this same fuzzy headedness and utter lack of attention when I had just had Peanut too. But it seems even more pronounced this time around with Fuzzy.

Bouvard and Pecuchet was not a great book to read when fuzzy brained. It was a long, difficult slog. These two guys get together and basically amble through knowledge as it existed in 1840. Not much of a plot here. They have no attention span either, and it's not because they just had babies! I'm glad to be through this one and hope to be back reading a little more regularly once the fuzzy headed fog lifts!

A real story...

So I started reading Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan at the end of October. Then I had a baby! So it took a while for me to finish this one. I do enjoy reading while I nurse but the first couple of weeks are so chaotic and I just couldn't focus on anything.

I really liked this book, though. It is a story of a young IRA soldier caught in Great Britain and sentenced to juvenile prison, and the adventures he has there. It was not, as I anticipated, depressing or violent, just an interesting story. It is an autobiography so that aspect of it is cool too...I could really get interested in the characters because they were really real.

Anyway, good story. Time to take the little guy on his first outing to the library to return it!

Mildly interesting...

So it has been a while. Because I was reading a very long, slow book.

I didn't dislike Born in Exile. Really, I didn't. At times I found it to be very dated. And at other times I found the commentary woven through about church vs. science and evolution to be a little tiresome. But I thought it was a really nice commentary on society in the mid to late 19th century. I particularly liked how well some of the ironies were crafted. The characters all were rather believable and I liked them. I liked Peak for all his faults. I could see why Buckland and Sidwell each acted as they did. It was definitely fairly interesting.

So I guess I feel mildly about this one. I'm not exceedingly disappointed that it's done, but it was OK!