Citizen Reader

Free at last, free at last.

I know. One should not use the words of Martin Luther King Jr. frivolously, especially during Black History Month. But I can't help it. Yesterday I finally finished listening to Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence on CD, and all I can say about it is thank God almighty, I am free at last.

Well, okay, that's not ALL I can say about it. And my apologies to those readers who like Edith Wharton, and feel she can a) really tell a story, and b) wield language well. Those things may be very true. But I can't help it: I hate her. And I think I hate her because I hate her characters.

For those of you not familiar with the story, Wharton's classic is set in the 1870s (it was published in 1921) and concerns the upper level of moneyed New York society. The two principal characters are Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska; Newland is a prosperous and proper young man who is about to become engaged to May Welland, who is the daughter of another prosperous and proper New York family. Ellen Olenska, also known throughout the narrative as Countess Olenska, has recently returned home to the bosom of her family after leaving her scoundrel of a European husband. She is also May's cousin. Of course, Archer falls in love with Ellen, who he can never have (even if she were to get a divorce, it wouldn't be proper), and Ellen falls in love with him, but he goes ahead and marries young May anyway. Lots of portentous tragedy ensues.

Now. It may be true that the writing is beautiful, and after someone commented on that, I did try to listen more carefully to the words and sentences of Wharton's tale. But all too often the narration was drowned out as I listened and muttered "Newland, you're such a dick," "You can do better, May," or "Oh, Ellen, you're leaving forever, blah blah blah" (or countless variations thereof). Mr. CR was a little afraid of me, I think; he never likes to hear muttering coming from the kitchen. But I couldn't help it.

At the end of the day, I couldn't take the problems of rich people who have their health seriously. Good lord. Another fairly simple rule of thumb should be, if you love someone, don't get married to someone else. And if you do, don't expect me to think it's high tragedy. I'm just going to think you're a dick.

Monday odds and ends.

We had a successful weekend, I think. I enjoyed the Super Bowl, although I didn't watch the whole thing, having to switch over to Emma on Masterpiece Theatre during its last hour. I did make artichoke dip, and it was spectacular (thanks Katharine--great recipe! Marmota, now that I understand canned artichoke hearts, your recipe with spinach is the next one I'm trying). I made a total hog of myself with it. And the conclusion of Emma? I really enjoyed it. Not as much as I would have enjoyed it if PBS wasn't cheap and hadn't deleted scenes that were shown in the British version, but still...Below please find a clip from the ending with a nice extra scene between Knightley and Emma.

In reading news, I started the collection The Best Creative Nonfiction vol. 3, but I really only enjoyed the opening two essays by Sean Rowe and Julianna Baggott (about prison food and the novelization of her great-grandmother's operation of a whorehouse, respectively). I also started Malcolm Gladwell's collection of journalistic pieces titled What the Dog Saw, but was not in the mood. Finally I just gave up and started reading the actual novel of Emma, which I've never read before. (I know: gasp!) I thought maybe I should wait until after the movie isn't so clear in my mind, but what the hell. I'm enjoying it immensely anyway.

Friday odds and ends.

It's Friday, and I'm ready for the week to be over. I never, ever get cabin fever, and I think I've got cabin fever. All week I wandered around grumpy, started about twenty books, and couldn't get through any of them. My need to develop some other hobby that isn't reading is becoming more apparent--but the sad fact remains that when I don't feel like reading, I don't feel like doing anything.

But that is neither here nor there. There were some high points during the week. When my New York magazine arrived (a gift from my sister--thanks Sis; I LOVE it!) I was pleased to find that they had noted on their final-page "approval matrix" that "Jonny Lee Miller as a hubba-hubba Mr. Knightley in Masterpiece Theatre's Emma" falls in the region of both highbrow and brilliant. Hubba hubba, indeed; can't wait for Sunday night's final installment.

In keeping with that theme, one of the books I didn't finish this week was the collection A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. Some of the essays were intros that people had previously written for Austen's novels (which aren't real fun to read, separated from the novels) and some were just a bit scholarly. But I did enjoy a line from Martin Amis's essay:

"The first challenge you face when writing about Pride and Prejudice is to get through your first sentence without saying, 'it is a truty universally acknowledged...' With that accomplished (with that out of the way), you can move on to more testing questions." (p. 83.)

In other news, I read a kids' book titled Olivia Kidney, by Ellen Potter, that I had read about somewhere and thought my niece might like. I started out liking it, but then it got kind of weird. Like scary weird. I don't know that I'll want to pass this on to her. So I wondered...have any of you read this book? Even though it weirded me out, would a kid like it? Reading this book just reminded me why I was always vaguely nervous in the kids' half of the library: I have no idea what kids like, or why.

And that's all she wrote. Have a good weekend, everyone. My plans? Well, they're exciting. I'm thinking about trying to make an artichoke dip to have while watching the Super Bowl. I have never made anything with artichokes, but I am hungry for artichoke dip. Wish me luck!

The entirely predictable post about J.D. Salinger.

A late post today, and a short one, as I have been even lazier than usual today.

You know, I'm a little bummed about the passing of J.D. Salinger. Not just because I loved The Catcher in the Rye (which I did; I read it in college* and still have my old copy, which I earnestly highlighted on the second or third pass through so I could easily find all my favorite Holden moments), but because the man was such a puzzle. Have you ever read his novel Franny and Zooey? No kidding, along with Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, it is one of my primary secular religious texts. His stories about the Glass family are also wonders of family dynamics; I have multiple older siblings myself, and although I love them all (as Franny does, in Franny and Zooey) sometimes they can be a little over-interested (in the most kindly meant ways, of course). If I hadn't loved Holden, my love for the Glass family would have made me a Salinger fan for life anyway.

But it did always puzzle me that the man who could write so beautifully and yes, profoundly**, could also be such a jerk. It is probably not fair of me to think he's a jerk, and I haven't even read his daughter Margaret's memoir (Dream Catcher, which evidently gives some scary evidence of his jerk nature as well), but I did read Joyce Maynard's memoir about her ten-month love affair with him titled At Home in the World, and that was quite the eye-opener. I can't even remember what he did that was so jerkish, but I do remember thinking after I read it that he may not have been the kindest man.

Anyway. That's all I've got. Rest in peace, anyway, J.D. In other news, Howard Zinn (author of A People's History of the United States) died this week as well. I don't know very much about him, but I can steer you to a fabulous and recent interview he did with Bill Moyers.

*Thinking about The Catcher in the Rye makes me miss mass culture a little bit too. Remember whenever you saw the red paperback copy with its yellow title, you knew just what book it was? In fifty years, what will be the book we all, even high school and college students, will have read? The Da Vinci Code just isn't quite the same.

**I'm pulling out all the big lit crit words today.

When blogging time gets in the way of reading time.

Just a short post today, as I am a few chapters away from finishing up Anne Tyler's new novel Noah's Compass, and if I skip doing much blog-writing today, I will have the time to do that. Welcome to my selfish nature.

I will say this, by way of review: I'm enjoying it. I think I always prefer Tyler's novels when her protagonist is a man, and in this story, sixty-one-year-old Liam Pennywell is the main character. I don't think it will end up to be one of my favorite Tylers, but I must admit that I pretty much always enjoy her books. They're such a weird mix of surreal (her characters often have strange jobs, or family relationships) and utterly everyday that I can't help but find them really interesting, and this book is no exception.

I'm describing it poorly. If you like Tyler, though, by all means check out one of her latest interviews. I got a real kick out of some of her shorter answers. I can't decide if I'm jealous of the interviewer (how great would it be to meet Anne Tyler?) or if I would have been terrified to be the interviewer. A little of both, I suppose.

Have a good weekend, all. Take some time to ignore some of your household or work duties to finish up a book; it's about as decadent a good time as can be had without breaking any laws.

P.S. In other news, I just read a short post about the Kindle over at Tripp's Books Are My Only Friends blog, and it's perfect. It sums up pretty much how I feel about the Kindle, too, but with more flair. Please read it.

Classics smackdown.

Over the past few months I have taken to listening to "classics" on tape while I wash the dishes. As we don't have a dishwasher, I actually end up listening to books quite frequently.

Last year I started with Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, which I really enjoyed and which had eerie overtones considering our current financial crisis (everyone in Trollope's book was "speculating," and there's a character who's definitely Madoffesque). Then I moved it along to E.M. Forster's A Room with a View*, which I enjoyed the hell out of. I chose that one because I saw a bit of the Masterpiece Theatre production of it on PBS, and thought, oh, I'll just get the video from the library. Then I further smartened up and realized I could actually read the book, or at least listen to it. What a novel idea!

This year, however, things have stalled a bit, as I'm making my way through Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. It's interesting, but am I correct in guessing that ol' Edith didn't have much of a sense of humor? I chuckled quite a bit through the Trollope and the Forster turned out to be way more amusing than I thought it would, but any chuckling I'm doing during this one is because her main character, Newland Archer, is such a dud (and also because I keep picturing Daniel Day-Lewis in the role, from the 1993 movie, and it makes me giggle).

Now, I am predisposed to liking British authors, and thinking they're a bit more humorous than most. Is that true, do you think? Are British classics funnier than American ones? If anyone has an American "classics" author they think is rather lighthearted, please do let me know.* I'll need a new book tape soon.

*It also has my vote for some of the best character names ever: Lucy Honeychurch and Cecil Vyse.

**I hate to rain on any parades but please don't suggest Mark Twain. I have never understood the appeal of Mark Twain's humor.

Letting it all wash over.

My apologies for the continued quiet (cue crickets) here at Citizen Reader. This is a very novel situation for me; normally I am apologizing for things I've said, not for things I HAVEN'T said.

I have been back to reading, but I have not felt compelled to write about any of the reading I'm doing. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about the blog, though. For instance, I am currently indexing a book titled In the Shadow of the Moon, by Francis French and Colin Burgess, about the space missions leading up to the moon landing. In one chapter, one of the astronauts muses about a spacewalk he took when his colleagues told him just to relax for a couple of minutes while they peformed experiments, and he used the time to observe the Earth and just let the entire experience wash over him. (How cool is that, by the way?) So, although I am not doing anything as cool as hanging out of a spacecraft in Earth orbit, I have been just letting a variety of readings and books wash over me.

This may not seem like a big distinction, but it is very different to read without formulating thoughts for "publication"*. I started this site in May 2008, and since then a lot of my reading has been enjoyed for itself, but has also been undertaken with an eye to what I thought about the reading, or how I would review it. That changes the reading experience, a little bit. I would like to ask some of the members of the dwindling field of book criticism if they feel writing about books for a living has significantly changed how they read.

So what's been washing over? Well, while still selfishly keeping most of my reactions to myself, I can nutshell the week in review:

I really enjoyed Chuck Klosterman's essay collection Eating the Dinosaur. I don't love him, love him, but I rarely find Klosterman dull, and I appreciate that. His concluding essay on Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) is a work of beauty, ruminating on technology, society, and how "not all crazy people are brilliant, but almost all brilliant people are crazy." See? You may not agree with it, but that's not a dull thought.

A wonderful friend sent me the gorgeous illustrated history book New York 400, which is a history of the greatest city in the world. (I think it just barely edges out, in my personal list of top cities, Montreal and London.) I have been starting each morning this week by plugging in the tree lights (yes, I am resisting taking down the tree), having my fiber cereal (still not as exciting as Pop Tarts, but what's an old lady to do?) and reading this gorgeous book and looking at the pictures. Thank you, my generous benefactress (you know who you are).

While reading for indexing is not really the same as reading for fun, I would highly recommend French and Burgess's history title In the Shadow of the Moon. If you wait for the new edition being published this year by the University of Nebraska Press, you can also use its new index, created by yours truly!

I also plowed through Louise Rennison's British YA chick lit novel Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me? It's the last title in her Georgia Nicolson series, and it was worth the wait. Not only do I want to be British, I want to be a hilarious British teen like Georgia Nicolson. (I have in fact adopted one of her phrases, which makes Mr. CR nuts: when it's cold outside, I say "Brrr! Nippy noodles."

I also had the good fortune to be assigned to review the collection The Best American Magazine Writing of 2009 for Library Journal, and not to ruin the suspense of my review, but it's fantastic. The profile of David Foster Wallace (by Sam Lipsky) made me cry, and Chris Jones's feature "The Things That Carried Him," about the preparation for burial of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2007, pissed me off. (My opinion is: it's very nice that the army treats the bodies of deceased soldiers with respect, and carefully polishes the buttons on the uniforms of even the soldiers who are being cremated. But wouldn't the soldiers be better served if the higher-ups took a little more care with their bodies BEFORE they got killed? I ask you.) Any book that can elicit both of my personalities (Mr. CR's famous assessment of me is: "you have two moods: angry and weepy.") is, I think, a book worth reading.

So there you have it. Carefully unformed thoughts from a careless but highly enjoyed reading schedule. I think 2010 is going to be even more disorganized for me than last year, and I'm looking forward to it. Happy New Year to all of you!

*This is a blog, so we can't take it as seriously as things that are actually published. But I have to justify the time I spend here somehow, as it is not time when I am being an active salary-producing American citizen, so I call it a "publication" to kid myself.

He's trying, but I'm never going to love...

...any of his other books as much as I loved his novel, I'll Take It.

I'm speaking of writer and humorist Paul Rudnick, who is actually better known as a playwright and the writer of the screenplays for the movies In & Out and Sister Act (although he declines any credit, or censure, for the latter, as that screenplay passed through many hands after his). He recently came out with the collection I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey, which is a collection of essays and a longer short story (broken up into separate chapters) called "I Shudder."

The essays are fun, as Rudnick is indeed a hilarious Jewish boy from Jersey, who dishes at length on his early scary apartments in New York, working with some rather large personalities, surviving the meat grinder that is the Los Angeles film industry, and about his mother and aunts (forceful personalities all). You have to love a man who starts an essay collection with a piece about his family, and a funny piece at that:

"My first apartment in New York was a fifth-floor Walk-up on Charles Street in the West Village. On the first Saturday after I'd moved in, I got a visit from my mother and her sisters, my Aunt Hilda and my Aunt Lil. All of these women were stylishly dressed, incling leather handbags and silk scarves, and they all wore those oversized eyeglass frames which are known as 'Tootsie' glasses, because Dustin Hoffman wore them when he was in drag. Actually, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie could have been a fourth sister, because he wore such nice wool challis skirts and exhibited a proud, feminist outlook." (p. 1.)

If you like David Sedaris and David Rakoff and/or reading about New York and the theatah, this will be the book for you. But if you'd prefer to read something that is a lot like this but is instead a fabulous novel, then I would suggest sticking with I'll Take It, which is one of my favorites of all time, and is clearly autobiographical. That novel features a young Bohemian New York type named Joe, who gets roped into driving his mother and aunts through New England one autumn to watch the leaves change, and how he learns about the VERY unexpected bad habit the entire family shares. It's a good time--consider it for a fun, light read around the holidays.

I Capture the Castle fails to capture my heart.

For years people have been telling me I had to read the novel I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, immediately, if not sooner. And it's always been people I really respect, both as friends, and as readers.

So I finally did.

And I liked it. I read the whole thing, and pretty quickly, as I was interested in the story. (And you knew I'd be interested in a book set in Great Britain, ina falling-down castle.) But I've got to be honest: I didn't love it, love it. I didn't love it like I expected to love it.

The story is about seventeen-year-old Cassandra, and her rather unorthodox family life, living with her author father (who hasn't written a word in years), her beautiful sister Rose, her unconventional and artistic stepmother, her younger brother, and the hired hand (Stephen) who they don't actually pay. The story is good and is narrated by Cassandra in an appealing first-person voice; the family is on the brink of destruction from poverty, Rose is frustrated because she thinks she'll never meet a man to marry in their circumstances, Stephen is fruitlessly in love with Cassandra...and if that all weren't enough, two brothers who had been living in America suddenly show up as the heirs to a property next door. Hilarity doesn't really ensue, but Cassandra's love for and frustration with all of her family members makes for some nice comic touches.

God, that's a bloodless description, and as much as I liked the book, that's kind of how I feel about it. Just kind of average. What it HAS put me in the mood for is to re-read Dodie Smith's classic The 101 Dalmatians, which is largely set during Christmas and would therefore be a fun December read. So that's what I'm going to do.

The great blizzard of aught-nine.

Okay, so I'm a couple of days late with this post, but let's put it this way: I am just now beginning to be able to sit down in and stand up from a chair without making horrible old-lady noises. This past Wednesday we got a lot of snow in Wisconsin (from the big blizzard that cut across the country and caused lotsa problems all over), and thanks to snow shoveling, I am now wracked with pain in muscles I didn't know I had. Weak girls with poor muscle tone should not shovel, evidently. But how am I ever going to get that buff bikini bod I've been dreaming of?*

There is nothing I like better in this sort of weather than to stay home** and read. As per usual, I'll be re-reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising (as we get a little closer to late December, which is the time period over which the book is set). And I'm also gearing up for my holiday watching: I am not a huge believer in tradition, and I certainly don't believe in decorating (too much work), but there are certain shows and movies I must see or it simply doesn't feel like Christmas. So here's what I'm lining up for the next few weeks:

A Charlie Brown Christmas; The Simpsons Christmas Special (where they get the dog; it's the first one and the best); The Vicar of Dibley Christmas Lunch Incident epsisode, and A Christmas Story (based on Jean Shepherd's book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash). Mr. CR and I are also next in line to get the second season of The Tudors from the library, which is not holiday-related but about which we are very excited anyway.

So, go ahead and snow,*** but only after I've got all my DVDs collected from the library.

*Yeah, right. I don't swim and I'm not going to learn how to swim expressly because I do not want to have to purchase a swimsuit of any kind.

**I like staying home in all types of weather, actually.

***I was not this sanguine the day before the big Wednesday storm. On Tuesday night I was watching the U.S. weather radar loop online and screaming, "slide south, you bitch!" Which is not nice for the people who live south of me, I understand, but which is my typical weather chant, good for rain- and snowstorms alike.

Monday at low ebb.

For some reason I am at low ebb this morning; my apologies. So: A short post, and the fervent hope that the holiday-shortened week does good things for all of us. It is my sincere hope that none of you have to travel too far, or get up to go shopping at 4 a.m. on Black Friday. Word is that Wal-Mart has been doing some planning to try and cut down on, you know, their workers getting trampled, so at least that's good news.

It's odd that I'm not really feeling like writing about books, because I read some great books over the weekend. One of my favorites was Audrey Niffeneggers's new novel Her Fearful Symmetry, which I loved.* If this helps at all, this is the description of it that I just wrote for Nancy Pearl's and my forthcoming book, Now Read This III: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction**:

"When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves her London flat and her entire estate to her nieces, identical twins Julia and Valentina Poole, who, at twenty-one, are still living with their parents in a Chicago suburb. There is one stipulation, however; they must agree to live together in the flat for one year before selling it, and their parents (including their mother Edie, Elspeth’s identical twin sister) are not allowed to enter the flat if they visit. The more dominant of the pair, Julia, decides the flat is just the thing they have been waiting for, and the pair travels to London and moves in, discovering as their downstairs neighbor their aunt Elspeth’s boyfriend Robert, while their upstairs neighbor is a man suffering from OCD. They are not the only residents of the house; Elspeth, too, makes her residence there (as a ghost, and one who “works out” so that she can contact the living through various means) with plans of her own."

What I didn't mention much there is that the book is set in London, so every time Niffenegger had one of her characters do anything London-y, it made me heartsick for London. "Oh, they're going on the Tube!" "They're eating at a Pret!" (Pret a Manger are these great chain coffee/deli restaurants they have all over in London; nearly every morning when we were there we went to one--I know, we're creatures of habit, even on vacation--and had chocolate-filled croissants and bananas and coffee. Yum.)

All of the above doesn't really begin to do this book justice. It's weird and haunted and I love the way it ends, and I'm not going to say anymore about it, because if you do decide to read it, you should really go into it fresh. Suffice it to say, I really enjoy Audrey Niffenegger. I like that her books are kind of magical and sort of romantic but they're definitely not sweet. What I don't like is that one of the blurbs on the back of her book is from Jodi Picoult, which I don't understand at all. But I have to remember that Jodi Picoult's name doesn't activate most people's gag reflexes the way it sets off mine.

*If you'll remember, I was very fond of her novel The Time Traveler's Wife, as well.

**You like how I just slip my advertising in there? Dreadfully unsubtle but that's the way advertising is sometimes.

A good graphic novel, but not one that I'm in love with.

I am a huge, huge Brian Fies fan.

His graphic novel Mom's Cancer is not only one of my favorite graphic novels, it is one of my favorite memoirs, and favorite books, full-stop. It was his take on his mother's battle with both lung and brain cancer, and a family story of how he and his siblings dealt with her illness. It was, of course, horribly sad, but it was also fantastic. The rare graphic novel that I loved without reservations, and in which the art and the text were easy to integrate, and which complemented each other.

So I was very, very excited to see that he had a new graphic novel out, titled Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? This one starts at the New York World's Fair of 1939, and charts the course of scientific and future discoveries and aspirations in different decades, including 1945, 1955, 1965, and 1975.

I did read the whole thing, but it turned out to be not for me.

This is no reflection on the quality of the work, which is once again very, very high. I love Fies's clean drawings, simple text, and how easy it is to integrate the two while reading. However, I have never been enthralled with science and progress* OR comics, which are two things that clearly had a big effect on Fies; in fact, this book is like an extended love letter to both. In fact, in between the chapters, Fies has inserted what appear to be classic comic books, titled "Space Age Adventures" and printed on what appears to be pulpy comic/newsprint pages. Unfortunately, the beauty of much of his work is lost on me, as I am not and never was a comic reader. (I am such a person of inaction that most action/adventure stories, which is what a lot of comics are, completely bore me.)

I was also a bit confused by the characters in the story, as Fies uses the same father/son pair in each decade, without the kid growing up for several of the first decades, which I found disconcerting. (He explains this in a foreword, commenting on the wonder of "comics time" which allows characters never to age or change.) Anyone else have this problem?

Still and all, though, Brian Fies is a super-talent. Immediately upon finishing this book I went and re-read my copy of Mom's Cancer, and appreciated him all over again. Give this one a try if you're interested in science or comics; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

*I am in fact usually quite cranky about both science and progress, although I am a fan of indoor plumbing.

Surprise of the year.

Just when I think I'm never going to like another bestselling novel again, along comes something like Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife.

I really, really, really liked The Time Traveler's Wife. I totally didn't expect to; it was a bestseller and a very popular book at the suburban library where I worked.* I'm not entirely sure why I did. But there you have it. I started it at the beginning of the weekend, and it felt like a mere blink of time when I finished it at the end of the weekend.** I even liked its cover, which for once, seemed made for the book, rather than a bit of phoned-in stock art.

Maybe I liked it because it was weird? The story is this: Henry is a time traveler, but he can't really control when or where he goes; as a consequence, he sometimes visits Clare, the woman he marries, when she is still a child; he often also visits earlier versions of himself, which are the really mind-bendy parts of the narrative. And that's it, really. (Well, there's more, but I don't want to give away any secrets.) I think what I loved is that, although this is a love story, is not really a sentimentalized love story. Henry can actually be quite the jerk sometimes, and Clare both accepts their decidedly strange life together and rails against it. Even when tragedy strikes (and it does, and you knew it was going to), Niffenegger, to her credit, doesn't try to spin it into any larger kind of life lesson (a la Mitch Albom), unless that lesson is "well, not much we can do about all this."*** Now that is a life lesson I can get behind.

I also knew there was some element of an older man (in his 30s) hanging out with a young girl who was going to become his wife, and I thought that might be weird, but it really wasn't. When I thought about it, I realized, yes, I wish I could go see Mr. CR in grade school, just out of curiosity, so that made that aspect of the book a little less weird. I know, I'm really selling it, aren't I? It's not as creepy as you think it might be!

So come on, read it. I'm dying to talk it over with someone.

*Yes, I'm one of those awful snobby people who don't often enjoy the books and authors everyone else loves.

**It's a surprisingly fast read, for not really having all that much of a driving plot, and for being a pretty thick book.

***"This" being life, generally, and Henry's time-traveling predicament, specifically.

October 24.*

Well, you know that every October I have to re-read and talk about Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. My reading it this year was even better than usual because I had my very own copy, given to me by Mr. CR last Christmas with a card that said, "Now you have your very own copy!"

Why do I have to read it every fall? Well, because:

"So it was on this night that blew warm, then cool, as they let the wind take them downtown at eight o'clock. They felt the wings on their fingers and elbows flying, then, suddenly plunged in new sweeps of air, the clear autumn river flung them headlong where they must go.

Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door.

Jim and Will grinned at each other. It was all so good, these blowing quiet October nights and the library waiting inside now with its green-shaded lamps and papyrus dust." (p. 13.)

I love autumn, and Bradbury's book is like experiencing an especially intense prototypical autumn. Every year I re-read it, and every year I find something new in it, and every year something in it soothes me like you can only be soothed when you know what it is to be up at three a.m. with worry or sickness (and most adults know what that is) and need something both completely removed from your surroundings and something which gives you the strength to accept your surroundings.

This year what particularly struck me was remembering that this book stands as one of my greatest readers' advisory triumphs and one of my biggest failures. I gave it to my sister and now it is one of our literary touchstones ("it reminds me of that part in Something Wicked this Way Comes..."); we both thought our Dad, who always liked Arthurian legends and myths and fiction, would really take to it, and so passed it along. He hated it. Hated it from the very start. He just brought it up to me the other day as the weirdest book he's ever started, and what was I thinking giving it to him? So that just makes me laugh. Now, I know my Dad about as well as one reader can know another, and I still am capable of misfiring on what he'll love or hate (he recently read and loved the religious allegory The Shack, which I had no time for). So, all you readers' advisors out there? Give yourself a break if you can't always find readers books they love. Books are bigger than we can always define, and know, and really, so are readers. So don't be so hard on yourself.

*"One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight."

The Great British Adventure: Vacation Reading

I did not do a lot of reading on this vacation.

Which only makes sense, really. I read for a living, and reading is my only hobby, so to take a true vacation, it only follows that I set reading aside just a little bit. But not completely. Although I am a terrible airport/airplane reader (I'm usually busy begging God for a safe trip, and no missed connections, which takes up more time than you'd think, or I'm looking out airport windows, because I find airports nearly as fascinating as subways), I did read an Agatha Christie on the eight-hour flight to London (it was Hallowe'en Party, which I thought was season-appropriate), and Agatha did not fail to take my mind off more mundane matters like my mother's concerns that our luggage would be lost, we would be mugged in London, and we would come home with a strange uncurable European type of H1N1.*

While in London and Edinburgh, I read hardly anything at all aside from my guidebooks and newspapers. After a full day of flying to London, we took the subway to King's Cross Station and hopped on a 5-hour train to Edinburgh, at which point we'd been up for many consecutive hours. We took turns passing out on the train, or looking at the scenery, so reading didn't really occur to me. We also tried to buy a different newspaper each day, and I enjoyed reading them all, although I can't say that the page 3 girl in The Sun did a whole lot for me. (Mr. CR pleaded innocence of the page 3 girls when he bought The Sun, and we'll let him think I believe him.)

Other than that I was kept fairly busy reading tourist signs and the informative plaques in museums (we went to tons of them: the National Gallery in Edinburgh, and the British Museum, National Gallery, and National Portrait Gallery in London--all awesome). Although, at a certain point in museums I give up reading and just look at the pictures, and that point came fairly early for me each time as our trip was also an exhausting one and just keeping on my feet was keeping me quite occupied much of the time. At one point I noticed that Mr. CR, god love him, was taking pictures of signs (like the one at Calton Hill, in Edinburgh) so he could read them later. That rather settled any doubts about him being the one for me. His interest in the written word is a glory to behold (although that doesn't stop me from teasing him about his need to read every sign he comes across).

Our way home was largely uneventful, although we were delayed on the last leg of our journey out of O'Hare, and a downsized plane meant there was some tension about who would get bumped from the flight, but luckily it wasn't us. To distract myself there I read George R. R. Martin's fantasy novel A Game of Thrones (the first in a series I've been wanting to read for a while) and Mr. CR plowed through Glen Cook's fantasy novels The Books of the South.

Tomorrow: Maybe a picture, if I can figure out how to transfer them from our new camera to my computer. Should be an adventure.

*My mother could have had a truly brilliant career in worst case scenario planning.

Ooh, bait and switch, tricky.

The other day I read Steve Hely's new novel How I Became a Famous Novelist. The title of this one interested me, of course, and it had been recommended to me by someone I trust,* so I thought, I'll give it a try. And then I experienced a rather specialized situation: I loved it, absolutely loved it, for the first 310 pages. And then...I read the ending. And was completely underwhelmed. Downright disappointed might be a more accurate description, actually.

Has this ever happened to you? It doesn't happen to me very often, I'll admit; typically, if I dislike a book for the first 50 pages or chapter or so, I'm going to keep on disliking it, and often if I'm loving a book at page 100, I'll still be loving it on its last page. (Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It had me at the very first line, and never gave me up; ditto with Salinger's Franny and Zooey, not to mention Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.)

Hely's novel has a great premise. Pete Tarslaw, a hollow shell of his former self since being dumped by his college girlfriend Polly, hears that she is getting married, and decides that he wants to become a rich and famous novelist by the time he has to attend her wedding (and can therefore rub her face in it, but you know, subtly so). So what does any logical young man do? He scours the bestseller lists, makes a list of characteristics that define successful novels, and then throws all those characteristics together in a book of his own. And the listing of the bestsellers and their titles is really the funniest thing in this book. I don't know who this Hely is but he's got the bestseller stereotypes down. These are a few of the novels he's going to try and emulate:

"Mindstretch, by Pamela McLaughlin. Trang Martinez suspects her Pilates instructor may also be a vicious serial killer.

The Balthazar Tablet, by Tim Drew. The murder of a cardinal leads a Yale professor and an underwear model to the Middle East, where they uncover clues to a conspiracy kept hidden by the Shriners.

A Whiff of Gingham and Pecorino, by Jennifer Austin-Meyers. On a hilltop villa in Sicily, an American divorcee finds new love with a local cheesemaker involved in a blood feud.

Cumin: The Spice that Saved the World, by Arthur Grunberg. How a rarely used seasoning occupies a central place in Western history."

Now, those are pretty clever parodies of today's bestselling fiction titles. And this novel, overall, is quite clever. I'm not going to tell you how it ends, because I think I'm still recommending it. In fact, I demand that you read this book so we can talk about the ending. I think it fell prey to a little--gasp--sentimentality, and I am not a fan of sentimentality. But if anyone else has read it or is going to read it, let me know what you thought.

*Hi, Katharine! (I still liked this one overall, and am very glad I read it, so thank you!)

Interesting, Oprah, very interesting.

I never thought I'd say this, but Oprah's latest book club choice, Uwem Akpan's short story collection Say You're One of Them, is actually an interesting one.

For some weird reason I was on the waiting list for this book before Oprah named it her choice (I used to like short stories, so maybe that's why?), so I was able to get it much more quickly than readers who just requested it. Akpan is an African author, and the stories are set in various African countries. I read the first story, "An Ex-Mas Feast," and parts of the other stories, and it was really very interesting.* Although I am usually distracted by settings that are so far from my experience, or stories written with traces of dialogue, I must say that neither of those things bothered me here:

"We heard two drunks stumbling toward our home. Mama hid the bottle. They stood outside announcing that they had come to wish us a merry Ex-mas. 'My husband is not here!' Mama lied. I recognized the voices. It was Bwana Marcos Wako and his wife, Cecilia. Baba had owed them money for four years. They came whenever they smelled money, then Baba had to take off for a few days. When Baby was born, we pawned three-quarters of his clothing to defray the debts. A week before Ex-mas, the couple had raided us, confiscating Baba's work clothes in the name of debt servicing." (p. 13.)

That's about as cheerful as the stories get. If I'm not able to read the whole thing (and I'm not), it's because I'm not going to be able to handle a whole book of short stories that make me so sad. But at least it's an interesting choice for Oprah, and something a bit different. I haven't liked an Oprah book since James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, and we all know how that turned out, so I'm hoping this book isn't discredited some time down the way.

*It's roughly a million times better than Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, my last disastrous fiction pick.

The death knell for fiction.

And who sounded it for me? Lorrie Moore, that's who.

For various reasons I got on the hold list pretty early for her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs. And none of them were bad reasons. For one, if I can remember correctly, I actually kind of enjoyed her novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? For another, she works in the city where I live. Also? I write for a reader's advisory database (the fabulous Reader's Advisor Online--and yes, I'm completely unbiased*) and I thought this would be a big fiction title that I should know something about. The consequences of all of those reasons were that my Friday night reading was given over to this book, and what a waste of a night it was. Folks,** this novel is one hot mess.

Now, I'm actually getting weary of enumerating ways in which modern novels suck. (I'm not going to touch the new Dan Brown with a ten-foot pole, sorry, I actually read the Da Vinci Code all the way through and so have completed that homework.) But I think I can tackle this one in a short paragraph: there isn't any subject that Moore doesn't throw in to this novel for maximum effect. We have, just to name a few: 1. a young woman, Tassie Keltjin's, coming of age, in a college city and away from her rural Wisconsin farm upbringing; 2. her mother is a Jewish woman stuck on the farm who seems vaguely unhappy with her lot; 3. Tassie goes to work for an older woman in her college town as a nanny; 4. The child she's nannying is a biracial girl that the older woman has adopted; 5. She falls in love and has a tempestuous physical love affair with a man named Reynaldo; 6. Oh yeah, the events of 9/11; 7. She deals with racism on the street when people yell at her and the biracial child; 8. The marriage of the couple for whom she nannies is falling apart; 9. her younger brother signs up for the military and gets shipped out--guess what happens; and 10. the woman for whom she nannies has a secret past that means she can't handle life with her new adopted daughter.

And somehow? With all that? I was so bored I kept falling asleep, and I never could remember if the main character's name was Tessie or Tassie. Those don't seem like good signs.

Thank you, Lorrie Moore.*** I am officially off fiction until further notice.

*I went to journalism school, people, and if there's one thing you learn, it's that you must at all costs act like you are objective, even when we all know that's impossible.

**The second thing you learn in journalism school is to put a human face on your stories and never, never to sound too elite; hence, "folks." Don't knock it. It got George W. Bush elected twice, and he didn't even have to go to j-school to learn it.

***Moore also didn't have the balls just to set the book in Madison, Wisconsin, although there's some pretty clear references to the city. (Other reviewers have pointed out her "isn't it so cute?" attitude toward Madison in interviews like this one, as well.) Okay. The next time you have your characters visiting a sex supply store in a fictional city, Ms. Moore, at least don't give it the same name as the most well-known erotica shop in the city you're NOT setting your novel in.

This just in: It hurts me to disagree with Bookslut, but I don't think I can agree with Amy Hanridge's review of this book. At one point she even compares Moore to Carol Shields, which also hurts me. It's like comparing Jodi Picoult favorably with Anne Tyler. Yikes. Do yourself a favor; skip this book and read anything by Carol Shields instead.

Sometimes you just have to re-read a book.

While I wait for all my new library holds (placed after reading yesterday's great suggestions; THANKS ALL!) to come in, I have decided to give up on new materials for the time being and re-read a book that I loved last year: Martin Millar's Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me.* I actually brought it back home for Mr. CR to read, but until he gets around to it, I'm loving it all over again on the second pass. There is a very certain pleasure to be had in re-reading a book, that is entirely distinct from loving a book on an initial read. Sure, you still love the prose of it, and the story, and even though the surprise is gone, there's something about re-recognizing your favorite bits, a settled feeling it gives you in your tummy to think "Yes, this is it, exactly, I love this." I liken it a little bit to the best parts of being married, without all those troublesome marriage bits of having to fight over whose family you're going to visit at holidays.

In nonfiction news, I came across this title in Booklist magazine the other day (I wasn't reading Booklist for fun; as they only run "positive reviews," I think they're the most boring review source on the planet, but it is good for keeping up with new titles): Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Undermines America. Now that is a title I can get behind, even if its author is Barbara Ehrenreich, of whom I am not really a fan. In other new nonfiction book news: Michael Lewis is publishing a title called The Big Short: Inside the Doomday Machine in November (hm, Amazon says Feb 2010), and William Langewiesche has Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson (about the plane crash in the Hudson River earlier this year).

In other book news, Brandon will be hosting a book club discussion of Dante's Inferno this autumn. Now, if that doesn't get me out of my reading funk, nothing will! (Although I will probably go right back in my reading funk when all the Dan Brown and Oprah book hysteria hits next week. Yeah, yeah, I'm just supposed to be glad people are reading. Whatever.) Have a good weekend, all.

*After reading a bit this morning, I wandered over to this computer to get to work, and write this blog post. Decided to listen to a little Zeppelin on YouTube while doing so, and then check out how Martin Millar is these days. And lo and behold, his post today is about listening to a little Zeppelin, and how it cheered him. You're awesome, Martin. I feel cheered too. Thank you.

Evidently I can be charmed.

Over the course of a couple of nights last week, I read Daniel Wallace's novel Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I'm not quite sure why I got the book from the library, except that I recognized Wallace's name (he is the author of the novel Big Fish, which was made into a movie starring Ewan McGregor. I never read that book, but I rather enjoyed the movie, although how much of that is attributable to Ewan and how much to Wallace's story, I couldn't tell you). I also thought the title was kind of interesting, and might even be one that might appeal to Mr. CR.

The question that opens the book is, where is Henry Walker, the Negro Magician (the book is set in the 1950s, hence the corresponding vocabulary)? And the rest of the book is the stories of different friends (although not all of them are friendly) who each try to tell what they know of Henry Walker, who had been working with Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus before he disappeared. Their stories are, of course, true in that they are faithfully repeating what they were told by Henry and what they thought they knew. But taken all together? How true are the stories? What do they mean?

I really enjoyed this book. I was actually charmed, and that doesn't happen often (although it has a better chance of happening when the book is around 250 pages long, which this one is). In the end it hammers home rather elegantly this question: How well do we really ever know other people? I love that question. On the first page of the novel, which is a letter (and which you should re-read after finishing the book), one of the characters says: "I think it's better to know what we can about people, to see beneath their skin, especially when it's about our own family--sometimes the most mysterious people we know."

I love that. I love being reminded that people are mysteries. I love books that remind me of it.