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.