Citizen Reader

A memoir for the Anglophiles.

It hasn't been all doom and gloom around here as far as nonfiction reading is concerned. In the last few weeks there have been several bright spots in my reading, and one of them was Michael Frayn's memoir My Father's Fortune: A Life.

Frayn is a British playwright and novelist, although I have never read any of his plays or novels. In fact, why I requested this book from the library on one of my regular browses through the new nonfiction releases in the catalog, I'll never know. I think I was aware he's British, and so, of course, I might be interested in his book.

Frayn recounts the life of his father, Tom Frayn, from birth to death. (Making this a blend of biography and memoir, although the majority of the book is told from Frayn's point of view as a child growing up in his father's household.) And he does a really nice job of showing how even the ordinary life of a British salesman and father, is anything but ordinary.

My favorite parts of the book actually came in the beginning, with Frayn describing his father's life as the beloved baby of the family, growing up among family members who were all either completely or almost completely deaf. The circumstances in which his father grew up certainly gave me pause:

 "My grandparents' house had four rooms, apart from the kitchen, and according to the 1901 census there were two other couples also living there. Presumably each of these couples occupied one of the rooms. So my grandparents and their four teenage children must have been living in the two remaining rooms. Two adults and four adolescents in two rooms--and all ten residents, presumably, sharing the kitchen...And now here's the new baby chucking his food under the table and screaming his lungs out, with his nappies being boiled on the copper...In the morning everyone trying to get their breakfast, and hot water for shaving, and their clothes pressed and ready for work.* All of them wanting the one lavatory, which at that time was presumably a privy in the back garden." (pp. 13-14.)

Really. Just PICTURE all that. It is a credit to Frayn's writing that he makes it easy to picture.

And the whole book is like that. It's a great picture of life in Great Britain, life in the lower middle class trying to cling to respectability, life as a child in England during World War II, and life as a family member in any number of relationships (as father, as son, as nephew, etc.). It's a great book, and I had to stop several times while I was reading it and just savor it. That, to me, is one of the marks of a very fine book indeed.

*Boiling nappies on the stove AND still having to press your clothes. Christ, I can barely make it in life even with disposable diapers and wrinkle-free shirts. People were made of sterner stuff then.

Bill Moyers is back.

Last night I was flipping through channels and remembered, when I saw PBS, that Bill Moyers is back on TV with a program called Moyers and Company.

I called my mother to let her know he was on, and she was tickled that he was back, but annoyed that he was on at the same time as 60 Minutes and Dateline. Then she called back later to let me know she'd left Moyers on, and it was a super-interesting program. So there's a tagline the new Moyers program can use--"Moyers and Company: Sufficiently interesting to tear the old folks away from Dateline!"

Why write a book when you can just copy and paste and sell someone else's?

If you've got a spare moment, you might find this article* about rampant plagiarism going on under the heading of "self-publishing" at Amazon interesting. Sad, but interesting.

This is my favorite line, personally: "Perhaps, though, Amazon doesn't care if it sells plagiarized works; it benefits from the sale whether it holds back an author's royalties or not."

Hm. Perhaps.

*Via Bookslut.

Escapism.

It's official: I am Not Myself.

It's now been weeks since I have plowed through any quantities of nonfiction. I did read Gene Weingarten's The Fiddler in the Subway, and have been reading magazines, but for me that's kind of the equivalent of not reading any nonfiction at all. I like to have at least three books going or I feel at sea.

On the other hand, I have been plowing through the Anne of Green Gables series, and have lately been considering getting more mysteries and perhaps some other fiction from the library. Of course I forget the titles now but I have been seeing some fiction titles pop up that at least seem interesting (and I'm very eager to get John Green's new book The Fault in Our Stars, but I'm a ways down the hold list for that one).

This has led me to think of what I need from reading. Over the course of the last ten years or so I have not been an escapist reader. (I've actually been a little disdainful of escapist, particularly genre, reading--just ask Mr. CR, as I pick on his genre bookshelves just for fun.) But just lately I find I have been craving reading from an escapism standpoint. Typically I love current affairs and investigative and history books, but lately every one of them I see just makes me think: Ugh. I do not know why this is. I'm not particularly stressed and actually have enjoyed good health for some time. So why do I need to escape now?

Part of me is wondering if it's just the nature of the beast when you are a girl. Really. That sounds horribly sexist but it's definitely a theory. Perhaps women, tired of juggling thoughts of work, home care, child and other family care, and friendship management, just do not have the strength left over for nonfiction (most of the time). This would partially explain why studies show that women tend to read (and buy) more fiction than men. Which is not to say men don't have concerns--they do. But I think men might be better about not having concerns about one thing (say, home) while they're dealing with another thing (say, work). What think you? Tell me in the comments.

Uninspired.

A bit of housekeeping this morning that probably should have been done last week. Barely two weeks into 2012 and I'm already behind. Sigh.

First, many thanks to everyone who shared holiday and new year wishes over the past few weeks. I appreciated it, very much.

Secondly, I am sorry for the lack of posting. It is part of a greater, multi-part problem, which primarily consists of:

1. I have read hardly any nonfiction over the past month.

2. I have read hardly anything, a re-read of Anne of the Island (by Lucy Maud Montgomery) at bedtime notwithstanding, over the past month.

3. I am not finding anything I want to read, fiction or non, and the coming crop of 2012 books bores me to tears. More on this later.

4. When I am not reading, I am not sure what to do with the blog. This will most likely be a bit of a long-term problem, as I quite simply do not have as much time for reading (or blog writing) as I used to. I could blame CRjr for this, as it turns out it is work to care for another human being, even a blessedly healthy, happy, little one. Instead I will blame the universe for not letting me be born into an independently very wealthy family. You know, the kind of family with copious spare time and the financial wherewithal to hire nannies with backgrounds in childhood development and a second language they could teach my child.

So, what to do? Well, one immediate solution that comes to mind was suggested by a commenter (thank you--you know who you are): it is time to have a Book Menage. But I'm currently at low ebb on ideas. Does anyone have any nonfiction or fiction titles they'd like to suggest, or possible themes? Please list them in the comments, and we'll schedule a Menage discussion. Beyond that there will be some other posts this week about reading and nonfiction in general--stay tuned!

The gift that keeps on giving.

This year I have asked for--and am currently receiving--the gift of a day off.

Believe me when I say this is almost certainly the best Christmas present I have ever gotten, with the possible exception of a diecast model of the orange Dodge Charger General Lee (from the hit series The Dukes of Hazzard) when I was ten years old. My benefactor Mr. CR is in charge today--watching CRjr while I run errands, do only the work I choose to do, and generally goof off for a blessed 24-hour-period.

I spent some of my goof-off time this morning in Barnes and Noble*, where I perused the dollar book bin with nary a concern in the world. I found a book called "Love Lives of the Famous: A Physician's Reflections," which I found intriguing. So then I read the front jacket and found this: "Is there a link between human sexuality and material ambition? Do the same drives that encourage men to seek power and position also motivate their sexual behavior?" So I was pretty much already sold on the book when I flipped it open and saw this chapter heading: "Hemorrhoids, Sex and History."

Ha!! I defy you NOT to buy that book for a buck. I did, and am quite looking forward to it. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Now: off to goof off some more. I hope all of you got what you wanted from Santa as well.

*I can't believe hating Amazon and all they stand for has put me in the position of feeling that my local Barnes and Noble is a tiny mom-and-pop operation that should be patronized. Although at a buck a pop my patronage is not going to help them very much.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Which is, incidentally, also my favorite Christmas* song. I listen to my Frank Sinatra version of it until Mr. CR wants to drown himself in eggnog.

I'll be taking a brief break from posting over the holidays, mainly because reading will take a bit of a backseat to a) holiday logistics and visits and b) holiday viewing. Typically around this time of year there are certain Christmas TV shows I must re-watch: The Vicar of Dibley Christmas Lunch Incident, the Northern Exposure raven pageant, and of course, Charlie Brown. All of that takes time. If I can squeeze in my annual reading of The Dark Is Rising, I will try, but either way, there just won't be much to post about.

*I've never understood the big fight about Christmas vs. Happy Holidays, etc. I don't mind when people say "Happy Holidays" either. The point is: enjoy the time of year and whatever it is you celebrate, even if it's just a return to calmer days and less consumerism in January.

Best books overload.

I've been blogging this month over at the Reader's Advisor Online, and one of the features we're running is a list of the Best Books Lists that get published all over the place this time of year. (Holla, by the way, to Largehearted Boy, who compiles the Mother of All Best Books Lists list.)

As a result, I am burnt out on Best Books list. I always preferred a Worst List, myself, but there's not as many of those (although I enjoyed this one and this one). I know we've covered this a bit in our Citizen Reader Survey of 2011, but let it all out? What, in your opinion, were the worst books of 2011?

I've got a couple of suggestions: Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, of course. Also, Alan Jacobs's The Pleasure of Reading in an Age of Distraction. I wasn't overfond of Caitlin Kelly's Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail.

Now it's your turn!

My dislike for doctors extends into literature, evidently.

I hated Ann Patchett's novel State of Wonder so much it was actually enjoyable.

It's been a long time since I felt strongly enough about a book to hate it. So why, you ask, did I finish it? Well, I don't think I realized how much I disliked it until I was pretty far along in it, and then I needed closure.

The novel is about a pharmacological researcher, Marina Singh, who is sent into the Brazilian rainforest to try and find a renegade doctor-researcher (Annick Swenson) who is funded by the company Singh works for. She also just happens to be the woman under whom Dr. Singh first trained when she planned on working in gynecology and obstetrics, until she got a surgical procedure wrong and changed her career. She doesn't really want to go and see about the status of the fertility drug that Dr. Swenson is supposedly working on, but she can't really say no in light of the fact that her co-worker, another doctor employed by the company, has been reported dead by Dr. Swenson. (He had been the first one to be sent to check on her progress with the drug research.)

So Dr. Singh trots off to the jungle and for seemingly a hundred pages or so not much happens, as it is hard to find the Dr. in her secluded locale, and she's got a couple of gatekeepers working for her and working deliberately to make her even harder to find.

God. I'm bored even typing the description. And I don't want to give too much away in case you still want to read it (since most critics have hailed it as a masterpiece). Suffice it to say Malina finds the doctor, discovers how the fertility drug research is really going, and then, in the space of about 5 pages at the end, most of the major actual action of the novel occurs. Why Patchett thought a pace of 300 slow boring pages to 5 hurried ones that felt tacked on to finish the book would be the right pace, I don't know. (Although, again, most of the critics didn't seem to mind.)

So what was there to hate in this book? Well, not one of the characters was even remotely likable. Marina was completely dullsville, the doctor who'd been reported dead just doesn't make that many appearances, the gatekeepers are a completely narcissistic and pointless young couple, and Dr. Annick Swenson was a composite of every obnoxious, supposedly knowledge-driven and yet completely incurious doctor I've ever visited in my life.* At one point a big reveal is made of the realization that women beyond middle age may not want to become pregnant (even if fertility drugs could make it a possibility) because hey, get this, being pregnant is hard work. Well, cripes, doctors, you don't need to go to Brazil to find that out. ASK ANY PREGNANT WOMAN if she thinks somebody in their sixties or seventies could handle it. I think you'll get your answer pretty quickly, without having to run any experiments.

So: unlikable characters: And: glacial pace, followed by unsatisfactory resolution. Third: the realization that this is probably some sort of play on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but I've never read that classic and probably wouldn't get the parallels even if I had.

Huh. It felt good to say all that. It's a book I loved to hate, I'll give it that.

*I am aware I bring some "doctor issues" to my reading of this book. I recognize I need them but I have not personally liked very many of the doctors I've ever seen.

I'm too lazy to even be a lazy couponer.

Pretty much the best way I've found to save money is to never go shopping. But, sometimes, in the course of life, there's things you need, particularly in the way of food. So every now and then I think I should learn how to be a good bargain shopper. When I'm in that mood, I invariably find myself reading books like Jamie Chase's The Lazy Couponer: How to Save $25,000 Per Year in Just 45 Minutes Per Week with No Stockpiling, No Item Tracking, and No Sales Chasing!.

It's an interesting book, and it's got a lot going for it. Chase does not advocate chasing sales or stockpiling supplies, or other super-couponer strategies like that, which is a relief. But it turns out that what she does advocate--doubling up store and manufacturers' coupons (they're called Qs, by the way; Chase's entire first chapter lays out all the couponing jargo for you), printing off coupons right before you go shopping, and stacking coupons with purchases designed to earn you store rewards like CVS's "Extra Care Bucks"--well, it's still too much work for me.

I'm going to stick with just never shopping, but if you'd like a good low-key guide to using coupons at grocery stores, drugstores, and online, do consider this one.