What I Read in April 2013

Robert Graves, I Claudius. Graves’ historical novel takes us into the world of the early Caesars — Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula — as interpreted by the next emperor, Claudius. He tells the tale in his old age. This distillation of fancy from fact was the basis for the public television series starring Derek Jacoby as Claudius. Hail Caesar!

Graham Greene, The Comedians. This novel, set in the 1960s Haiti of Papa Doc Duvalier, brings us Smith, Jones and Brown. They are three “comedians” who do not always amuse, even as they continue to play their various parts.

P.D. James, Innocent Blood. This novel by the creator of Inspector Adam Dalgliesh contains neither Dalgliesh nor his female counterpart. It is tangled web of family and revenge with a couple of neat plot twists. Unfortunately the principal character, the self confident adopted daughter of an academic star, never became believable to me.

W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants. Immigrants come in; emigrants go out. These four emigrants all went out from Germany during the 20th century. Sebald’s account may be a novel or it may be a memoir; the uncertainty of his intention is part of the story. Illustrated.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society. Much of what Galbraith wrote in 1958 and updated in 1998 is still applicable. We are affluent in things, but not in services or the requirements for good community living. How did this happen and why do we continue to misinterpret? He explains.

Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot. Flaubert had a parrot — not a live one, but a stuffed bird who became a character in one of his novels. Geoffrey Braithwaite, the narrator here, wants to be sure about the residual museum parrots. Which one was the original and authentic inspirational bird?

David Lodge, Deaf Sentence. We have another satisfying novel by David Lodge which starts out light and funny, mostly, and ends on a more serious note. Deaf/death is the implied pun in the title and it seems a bit overdone at time, except that I have the same problems myself — currently deaf and subject to death.

Michael Connelly, Angels Flight. In this sixth book in the Harry Bosch series, the L.A. Detective unpicks a complex knot of murder, murder, more murder, and riot. Los Angeles and its discontents is part of the story.

Eva La Plante, editor, My Heart is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa’s Mother. This collection of letters and journal entries by Louisa May Alcott’s beloved “Marmee” gives us a compelling woman who survived great difficulties in her life.

Let Me Count the Ways

To be read – Top Shelf

  One of my readers asked me recently how I choose the books I read. I choose in many different ways and sometimes the books choose me.

I love book sales. The Friends of our local libraries hold semi-annual book sales and I attend as many as I can, doing well while doing good. Usually for $20 I can fill a bag and I love finding the unknown or unexpected, especially when it’s cheap. These sales keep my to-be-read bookcase full. After I read (or reconsider), I recycle the acquisitions, dropping them off in the collection bins for the next sale.

The Internet tempts me greatly. I have a Bookmooch account, so I also recycle that way. When it occurs to me that I may want to read an author, I usually check Bookmooch first. I also get books via eBay and Amazon and, best of all, Project Gutenberg. If you don’t have a Kindle or other reading device, be aware that Project Gutenberg usually offers books in multiple formats, so you can read them on your computer – or print them out if you really have to have paper.

I pay attention to blogs. I follow a couple of dozen blogs, book blogs mostly, and often follow up on books that sound interesting. Or a blogger reminds me of an author I read long ago and should visit again. So then it’s off to Bookmooch, etc.

I wander in libraries. I favor one particular local library because of its easy parking and good computer access. I look up the authors I could not find on Bookmooch and make impulse selections from their shelves and shelves of book-group books.

I read with a book group. At one time I was involved with three book groups, but it made me crazy so now I have only one. We are active and go for the hard-core stuff. Recent group reads have included I Claudius and Crime and Punishment. Coming up: Buddenbrooks and Little Dorrit.

I still believe in the classics. In a past life I was an English major, a moderately successful one. After I escaped from the dead-white-male canon I found out how much I was missing. They had us read Mathew Arnold, but not Anthony Trollope or George Eliot. The only Dickens we considered was Hard Times. Women? You’re not serious, are you! But I forgive them, grudgingly, and I still enjoy the classics, broadly defined.

To be read – Middle and Bottom Shelves

I also enjoy genre fiction. In a good Tony Hillerman or Sarah Paretzky, a tale will be told, a puzzle will be unpuzzled, and right will prevail. It’s the same with the best of science fiction. I skip gratuitous violence, high- toned romance, and anything involving vampires.

I read for courses. I both take courses and give courses, so my most purposeful reading is for them. The problem is that there is no end to it. I started out to give a course on fiction based on the British Raj – like Kim and A Passage to India – and ended with three courses on India plus one on Indian film. Now I am similarly involved with the Greeks. See my Slide Shows.

More book sales later this month. Then I will restock and rearrange.

That’s about it for now, but if you give me a book for my birthday, I’ll probably read that too.

What I Read in January 2013

A New Year! May we all have many more, to read, and then to read some more.

Victoria Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen: A Biography. Novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Bowen was the subject of my senior paper in college. I wish I had had this biography available then. It is valuable both for the account of Bowen’s life and the insightful reviews of her writing.

P. G. Wodehouse, Love among the Chickens: A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm. The subtitle says it all. The hero of this little tale is just one step up from Bertie Wooster, Wodehouse’s usual hero. He joins a friend in the disorganized cultivation of chickens, meets the love of her life, and overcomes the perfectly reasonable objections of her father.

Julia Child (with Alex Prud’homme), My Life in France. She tells how she came to be The French Chef. Julia’s great gifts seem to have been for cooking and for friendship — and for remembering it all. Do not read this book when you are hungry.

Evelyn Waugh, The End of the Battle. The is the third novel in Waugh’s Men at Arms trilogy. It continues the adventures of Guy Crouchback, officer and gentleman, during World War II.

Euripides, The Trojan Women. This is a modern translation from the Greek. I also read a somewhat more traditional version, translated by Richmond Lattimore. War is hell, especially for women. I have commented on two of the characters in the play: Helen of Troy and Cassandra.

Dorothy Gilman, Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist. Mrs. Pollifax lives in respectable Connecticut, raises prize-winning geraniums, and performs under cover tasks for the CIA. This is one of a series about Mrs. Pollifax. She is a charming, if improbable, heroine.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. What were economic conditions in mid 19th centuryEngland, and what, if anything, did the reformed miser Ebenezer Scrooge propose to do to improve them?

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim. Is this book an adventure story in the South Seas, a character study of a failed romantic, or amoral parable for all times? It is all of the above, somewhat confusingly narrated.

Anthony Trollope, Harry Heathcote of Gangoil. This novella is set in the Australian Bush, where a young sheep farmer battles wild fires and dangerous neighbors.

Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde. I am still pursuing the life and times of Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch in this third of the series. I am getting to know him, and he still holds my interest.

Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma. The subtitle “The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman” describes the content of this joint biography of an infamous anarchist terrorist and “Red Emma” Goldman.

Emile Zola, Money [L'Argent]. Money, gambling on the stock exchange, greed — in the Paris of Napoleon III. Zola shows us who the people are and how they work their schemes. He also shows how those outside the scheme — all the little people — become involved in the bubble.

Book Sale Happiness

Even though I gave away bags and bags of books last year when we moved, I can’t resist a good library book sale, especially on half-price day. For a grand total of $8.75 I acquired:

Books I always intended to read some day
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles – I’ve read other Hardy, but not this one
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier – I’ve never tried Ford and I’m interested in World War I literature
W. G. Sebald – I’m curious about this writer
John Cheever, The Wapshot Scandal – the sequel to The Wapshot Chronicle, which I have read

Books by authors I know and trust
Alison Lurie, Love and Friendship – reliable social comedy
Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations – one of the series with the Russian detective
Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet – weird, but I read a Murdoch when one turns up
Richard Russo, The Risk Pool – he understands families and small towns

Books for family members
Anne Perry, The Cater Street Hangman – the first book in the series, for my husband to try
Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 – the entire family enjoys Keillor
The Appalachian Trail – beautiful picture book for a member of the family who hikes
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake – for a family member who lost his copy

Impulse purchases
Geraldine Brooks, March – I have read it and have a copy, but I’ll pass it on to a friend
Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – the connection with Balzac is because his books were western classics read in China

These will be read — or not read — and most will be returned to the library for the next sale.

Tea and Books Challenge

I am joining The Book Garden’s Tea and Books challenge in 2012. As you can see in the quote, no cup of tea is large enough or book is long enough. For more information and to join the challenge, click here.

My local Ex Libris book group is taking on some very long ones during the coming year. My contributions to the challenge will be The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek and Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Both are new and unfamiliar authors for me — should be fun. Expect to find comments here as I read, with links to others in the challenge.

What I Read in October 2011

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnim. Timofey Pnim is a Russian emigre instructor at an American college. He is very, very funny, but also somewhat sad. I did not want this book to end.

Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. Yes, that’s the struggle with India, not for India. Lelyveld’s careful analysis of key incidents in Gandhi’s life shows how often he failed to achieve his goals for his people.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. He has talent, that Charles Dickens. This novel is a sentimental, dramatic, improbable tale that marches right into your brain.

Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here. Novel by the sister of the recently-deceased Steve Jobs. Four women tell the stories of their relationships: a grandmother, two sisters, a granddaughter.

I am still reading less while we adjust to the move. The move part of “the move” is the easy part. Some strong men come with a truck and pick everything up and move it. It’s the preparation — what to take? — and the afterwards — where to put it? — which eat up your time and emotional energy. Now that I have found my kitchen knives and my alarm clock, life resumes a normal flow. I even went to a book sale and brought home some promising reads.

What I Read in September 2011

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. I was moved and impressed by these graphic novels about growing up during the Iranian revolution.

Anna Maclean, Louisa and the Missing Heiress. A rather lightweight mystery story set in 1850s Boston in which Louisa May Alcott is the detective.

Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life. A woman is not a man. Sounds obvious, but when a woman achieves something a man might have achieved — written a novel, for example — it must be because she is less than a “woman”.

Homer, The Iliad. We experience War, with its heroism and cruelty, and the interference of the gods. I have posted on The Iliad: How They Die and The Iliad: Fate.

Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone. This is an excellent medical novel with wonderful characters, but not for the squeamish. I finished it the night before the moving cataclysm and could not find it for several days. Here is a scan of its somewhat battered cover.

September has been an unusually lean reading month, although any month in which one completes The Iliad is memorable for that. We have been engaged in moving out of our house, in which we have lived happily but somewhat messily for 32 years. As a non materialistic person, how did I accumulate so much stuff! After days of packing and unpacking boxes we are not through yet.

What I Read in May 2011

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. Woolf’s well-known 1929 essay about women and fiction. This is the May book for discussion at Feminist Classics. You are invited to join the discussion there.

Pat Barker, The Ghost Road. This is the third of the trilogy of novels set during World War I. The other two are Regeneration and The Eye in the Door.

P. J. O’Rourke, On the Wealth of Nations. P.J.’s take on Adam Smith’s great work. You receive a good summary of the basics of Smith’s book and of classic economy if you don’t let O’Rourke’s snide comments get in the way. I read this book, along with the Karl Marx book listed below for a course, Smith Vs. Marx, where we looked at what these two giants of economic analysis actually said, versus what people think they said.

Albert Camus, The Stranger. Translation by Matthew Ward. Meursault is a murderer; he also tells the truth.

Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life. A well-written biography of the author of Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.

Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth. Short stories by the Canadian writer.

Jane Gardam, The Flight of the Maidens. An earlier novel by the author of Old Filth. Three provincial English girls win scholarships to prestigious universities. Their flight is both a flight from — leaving a life that could not

be sufficient for them — and a flight up — a reaching for something higher, and perhaps better, but certainly different.

What I Read in April 2011

Arthur Schnitzler, The Road into the Open. A novel of life in pre-World War I Vienna. In this capital of an uneasy empire, indecision and antisemitism are the themes.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland. This feminist utopian novel is being read as part of the year-long project to read Feminist Classics.

Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury.  Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthrone, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door. This is the second novel of the trilogy set during World War I which began with Regeneration. We learn of the continued activities of Billy Prior, Siegfried Sassoon, and Dr. Rivers.

Cathleen Schine, Rameau’s Niece.

Apparently influenced by translating a mildly-pornographic philosophical work, a writer with lots of words but little memory gives her perfectly satisfactory husband a hard time.

Cathleen Schine, The Three Weissmanns of Westport. This one is more like it. A mother and two daughters try to figure out the changes in their lives while inhabiting a cottage at Compo Beach in Westport, CT, just up the road from where I live now.An interesting set of people despite some improbabilities, but a good read.

What I Read in March 2011

Started in February, finished in March:

Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris

Claire Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

New this month:

Jane Gardam, Old Filth
Filth, as in Old Filth, means Failed In London Try Hong Kong. Try Filth.

Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief. The age of grief is the end of youth and the progress into early middle age, when you realize that you cannot escape the grief that life imposes on us. This early novella by Jane Smiley is accompanied by in the book by several short stories. I enjoy Smiley’s characters, especially their normality in an uncertain world.

Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. A memoir of public school life in England before World War I, followed by four years as an officer in the trenches in France.

Pat Barker, Regeneration. The first of three historical novels set during and after World War I.

Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs. The original Bridge of Sighs is in Venice, but they are also sighing in upstate New York, the setting for this novel in which people experience and consider complex relationships within apparently simple lives.

Katharine Greider, The Archaeology of Home; An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side. My niece had a new book out: the story of a particular house on a particular street on the Lower East Side.

Kelly O’Connor McNees, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. This historical novel imagines the love affair the author of Little Women might have had one summer long ago, before she was famous.