"When Dr. Bramble finally showed him to a bed, it was only because if he had not Drinkwater would have got out of earshot; as it was he had ceased to understand anything Dr. Bramble was saying."
I'm going to be picking a lot of nits, grammatically speaking, as I read this book. I'm not finding it easy going so far. In some cases, it's because of pronouns. I'm not sure if this is a personal idiosyncrasy, or a late-life idiosyncrasy, or even the result of being an editor for so many decades, but I don't do well with writing that makes me hesitate to ask "which 'he' are you referring to?" It's almost immediately apparent that the first 'he' is one character and the second 'he' another, but I don't like to hesitate when I'm reading. At least I don't like to hesitate to ask such questions. Re-reading a sentence because it's beautiful or dense is one thing. Re-reading to find out who 'he' refers to is another.
But I'll echo Ed's comments about amazing language: ewer, infundibular, marmoreal (pp 41-44)
We just got back from 2 days in Manhattan so I'm just finishing up our assignment this morning. So far, I'm glad we're reading this book, but if I had been reading on my own I would have long since given up. More later...
Pam
Update: The characters have potential, smart, quirky & all that, but so far I haven't found myself drawn to one or the other. I'm discovering through this process that I may be overly critical when I start a new book. Almost a "prove to me you're worthy of my time" attitude. So all this early negative stuff on my part may end soon.
I love this. Page 4.
"...a confetti-colored gas-station road map. ...There was a mighty double red line that went near there, round with exits and entrances; he couldn't walk along that. A thick blue line (on the model of the vascular system, Smoky imagined all the traffic flowing south to the city on the blue lines, away on the red) ran somewhat nearer, extending corpuscular access to towns and townlets along the way. The much thinner sclerotic blue line he sat beside was tributary to this...."
You may all know this but. In our bodies, oxygen-deprived blood flows into the heart in veins. It gets oxygenated by the lungs and then flows back out of the heart to the body via arteries. When these veins and arteries are illustrated in textbooks etc, the veins (coming into the heart) are almost always shown in blue and the arteries (flowing out of the heart) in red. cute...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Language
First of all, Crowley's use of semicolons is amazing.
But even more amazing is his language.
Page 14: "Her brown eyes were deliquescent in the lamplight."
I don't remember the last time I actually got up while reading to look up a word.
So far so good.
Ed
But even more amazing is his language.
Page 14: "Her brown eyes were deliquescent in the lamplight."
I don't remember the last time I actually got up while reading to look up a word.
So far so good.
Ed
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Lie Down in Darkness (Styron)
I enjoyed this re-review by J.Yardley in the W.Post. I read Lie Down a long time ago, maybe 1965? 66?, and although I recall being impressed by the book & feeling like I'd read something meaty, I've always had a slightly bad memory associated with it. I thought this was b/c the story is, you know, a touch depressing, but in retrospect maybe I had bad memories for the same reasons Yardley cites now.
Pam
William Styron's 'Darkness,' Dimmed by Age
Pam
William Styron's 'Darkness,' Dimmed by Age
By JONATHAN YARDLEY
Friday, March 21, 2008; C01
An occasional series in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
To me the biggest surprise about this series, which has run for five years and covered about 75 books, is how unsurprised I have been by what I found the second time around. A couple of books that were immensely popular in their day -- Edna Ferber's "Giant," Philip Wylie's "Generation of Vipers" -- turned out to have weathered the years poorly, but other books that I remembered fondly for literary and other merits revealed themselves, on second reading, to be as good as I remembered them, in some cases even better. I have had no significant disappointments.
Until now. Reading William Styron's "Lie Down in Darkness" 40 years ago, I was swept away. Over the ensuing years I read all of Styron's other work, reviewed much of it, and held it in high esteem, especially his celebrated novel "Sophie's Choice" and "Darkness Visible," his harrowing memoir of depression. Yet through all those years I believed that "Lie Down in Darkness," his first book, remained his best. I regarded it as a monument of American fiction, cut out of Faulknerian cloth, to be sure, but a monument all the same. Now, though, I realize that the tone of the novel is relentlessly downbeat and that it is far more derivative than I had first understood.
I first read "Lie Down in Darkness" when I was 28, only a few years older than Peyton Loftis, the beautiful, spoiled and troubled young woman whose suicide is the event at the center of the novel. I remember responding ardently to the devastating scene in which her father, Milton Loftis, wanders drunkenly through a football weekend at the University of Virginia, a "nightmare" that struck me, not so long removed from four years at Chapel Hill, as entirely, breathtakingly real. I thought that the collapse of the Loftis family was tragic, not in the glib American sense but in the profound terms of the ancient Greeks.
I was scarcely the only person to have been captivated by the novel. A few weeks ago a reader of this newspaper, noting that Styron's book was to be discussed in this series, reported that when he was younger he had been "mesmerized" by it. In the late 1970s I had dinner with a young writer who was eager to talk about the novel. From memory, he recited in full the long quotation from Sir Thomas Browne's "Urn Burial" that Styron took as his epigraph, and then went on and on about his passion for the book.
When "Lie Down in Darkness" was published in 1951, most reviewers felt the same. It was treated not merely as a serious and substantial work of literature, but as something of a phenomenon: Styron at the time was a mere 26 years old. Himself a Virginian, he had joined the Marines as World War II was ending and returned to enroll at Duke University and study under its legendary teacher of writing, William Blackburn. After college Styron worked as an editor at the New York publishing firm McGraw-Hill, a job he hated with a passion, an experience he describes with great wit in the opening pages of "Sophie's Choice." After he was fired, he spent three years writing "Lie Down in Darkness," which was awarded the Prix de Rome by the American Academy in Rome. He was off on a career that included only six other books; he was a slow writer and sometimes was derailed by depression. He won just about all the major prizes except the Nobel and had, in "Sophie's Choice" and "The Confessions of Nat Turner," two national bestsellers. He died in 2006 at the age of 81.
His first novel still offers much to admire. As readers of "The Confessions of Nat Turner" will recall, Styron had an extraordinary, visceral kinship with Tidewater Virginia, and wrote about its bleak yet beautiful landscape with great power. His prose had not yet achieved in 1951 the suppleness and force of "Sophie's Choice" in 1979, but at moments it achieves real beauty and in a few -- too few -- wit shines through. Here, for example, the Tidewater gentry reacts to gossip about Milton Loftis and his mistress, Dolly Bonner:
"Hell, they'd say in the country club locker room, you know how Milt's getting his. Everybody knew, bearing testimony to the fact that suburban vice, like a peeling nose, is almost impossible to conceal. It went all over town, this talk, like a swarm of bees, settling down lazily on polite afternoon sun porches to rise once more and settle down again with a busy murmur among cautious ladylike foursomes on the golf course, buzzing pleasurably there amid ladylike whacks of the golf ball and cautious pullings-down of panties which bound too tightly. Everybody knew about their affair and everybody talked about it, and because of some haunting inborn squeamishness it would not have relieved Loftis to know that nobody particularly cared."
Loftis is in his early 50s, married to Helen, with whom he has had two daughters. A lawyer, he has abandoned his youthful political ambitions in favor of the solace of drink. His elder daughter, Maudie, was a cripple who died at the university hospital in Charlottesville, after her father's terrible long weekend there, leaving Helen bereft and bitter. Peyton, who is in her late teens when Maudie dies, is stunningly beautiful and obviously intelligent, but her doting father -- on his side their relationship has strong sexual undertones, and probably on hers as well -- has spoiled her so thoroughly that she expects all of life's pleasures and rewards to come her way without any effort on her part, merely as her due; precisely what anyone sees in her beyond her beauty is never made clear.
The Loftis marriage is a wreck. Early in the novel Milton is caught up in a "surge of anger and futility [that] rose up in his chest -- and sudden shame, too, shame at the fact that their life together, which had begun, as most marriages do, with such jaunty good humor and confidence, had come to this footlessness, this confusion," but things only get worse as the story unfolds. "Sober," Milton "feared Helen; for what seemed ages he had lived with her not so much in a state of matrimony as in a state of gentle irritation, together like the negative poles of a magnet, gradually but firmly repelling each other." In time "gentle irritation" descends into something very like hatred. For a time Helen takes her troubles to a kindly, well-intentioned Episcopal minister, who tries to help but finds himself sucked into a place he'd rather not be:
"And he thought briefly about madness, and this family, which had succeeded -- almost effortlessly, it seemed -- in destroying itself, and he became so overwhelmed by melancholy that his stomach rumbled and his hands and wrists became limp and trembled on the steering wheel. He thought of the wild evening after Maudie's funeral when, with Peyton absent and Loftis, he supposed, hiding upstairs, Helen had told him that everything was finished, there was no God, no anything, behold (with a nod upstairs toward Loftis, and which included, he gathered, Peyton too) this breed of monsters. God, what words she had used! . . . Who was to blame? Mad or not, Helen had been beastly. She had granted to Loftis, in her peculiarly unremitting way, no forgiveness or understanding, and above all she had been beastly to Peyton. Yet Loftis himself had been no choice soul; and who finally, lest it be God himself, could know where the circle, composed as it was of such tragic suspicions and misunderstandings, began, and where it ended?"
Unquestionably, that passage has intensity, power and intelligence. No doubt many readers will find it, as I did four decades ago, deeply moving, haunting. Yet now it mainly strikes me as lugubrious, and so does too much of the rest of the novel. By the 1970s, when he was writing "Sophie's Choice," Styron had come to understand that catastrophe and/or tragedy must be alleviated (and thus in a way illuminated) by humor, but in his mid-20s he had yet to learn that lesson. The passage quoted above about the Tidewater gossips is the exception rather than the rule in "Lie Down in Darkness." Setting out to write the story of a family doomed by its inability to love, he became so bogged down in the agony of it all -- as Peyton ruminates, "everywhere I turn I seem to walk deeper and deeper into some terrible despair" -- that he ended up writing a 400-page dirge that ultimately is far more stifling than enriching.
The book suffers from other problems. Set as it is in Virginia during and immediately after World War II, it employs the racial language and stereotypes of its time and place, as do many other books reconsidered in this series. Today's reader will be startled and probably offended by its frequent use of the most common racial slur, not merely in conversation but as a descriptive adjective. Beyond that, the novel's closing scene, in which the jubilation of black worshipers is clearly meant to provide noble and uplifting contrast with the cynicism and desolation of the Loftis family, is sentimental and patronizing. It does not withstand comparison with the scenes in Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" in which the quiet dignity of the black servant Dilsey is juxtaposed against the self-destructiveness of the white Compson family.
Styron always insisted that he was not influenced by Faulkner in writing "Lie Down in Darkness," but in fact the influence is self-evident: in the closing account of the worshipers, in Peyton's long interior monologue (which also shows much evidence of the Molly Bloom soliloquy in James Joyce's "Ulysses"), in the rich, at times overripe prose, in the story itself, which bears more than passing resemblance to the story of the Compsons.
There's nothing wrong with influence: All writers are touched by it and many benefit from it, just as do all other creative artists. But apart from its almost funereal tone, what now strikes me most emphatically about "Lie Down in Darkness" is its sheer derivativeness. That William Styron was, as a young man, a supremely gifted writer, is beyond question, but he had yet to become his own man.
"Lie Down in Darkness" is available in a Vintage International paperback ($14.95).
Who's in the boat?
Great river picture Larry. What do you hear when you're drifting in such a place? I imagine intermittent deep low loud bird calls from far away.
And no rustling of trees.
Pam
And no rustling of trees.
Pam
Sunday, March 23, 2008
While we are waiting to start
I enjoy reading books about books, reading and publishing. I am reading "The Solitary Vice: Against Reading" (Counterpoint, 2008) by Mikita Brottman. She is a literature professor at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore and is a practicing psychotherapist. In the book's title, "the solitary vice" is a Victorian euphemism for masturbation. In this book, it refers to reading. She uses the comparison between the two to make her primary point.
"Like the other well-known solitary vice, reading is ultimately not an act of pleasure but a tool for self-exploration."
The reading she discusses here is the addictive kind of reading some of us share.
Here are 11 questions she posed to 56 readers for one of her chapters. My answers to the questions led me to realized some interesting facts about my own reading.
1. What book are you reading now?
2. How do you decide what book to read next?
3. Do you always finish books, or do you give up on them? If you give up, how many pages does it usually take?
4. Do you generally separate your reading into "work" and "fun"?
5. Do you ever reread books you love? Please give examples.
6. Can you read books in noisy places?
7. Can you remember if a book has ever made you laugh out loud, or shed tears? Give some examples.
8. Where do you buy most of your books? How much do you spend each year on books? Or do you use the library primarily? Bookstore or online?
9. Do you use bookmarks, or dog-ear the pages of your books? Do you make marginal notes? If so, do you use pencil or pen?
10. How quickly do you read? Do you skim through pages at top speed, or do you stop to savor the sentences along the way?
11. Where, and when, do you do your best reading?
I'm not taking a survey or looking for your answers here in the blog. The questions raised some interesting observations about my own habit.
I bought this book ($14.95 paperback) at Vertigo bookstore in College Park. Vertigo is one of the last, great independent bookstores in the Washington area. The book was face-out in the front of the store.
Fox
"Like the other well-known solitary vice, reading is ultimately not an act of pleasure but a tool for self-exploration."
The reading she discusses here is the addictive kind of reading some of us share.
Here are 11 questions she posed to 56 readers for one of her chapters. My answers to the questions led me to realized some interesting facts about my own reading.
1. What book are you reading now?
2. How do you decide what book to read next?
3. Do you always finish books, or do you give up on them? If you give up, how many pages does it usually take?
4. Do you generally separate your reading into "work" and "fun"?
5. Do you ever reread books you love? Please give examples.
6. Can you read books in noisy places?
7. Can you remember if a book has ever made you laugh out loud, or shed tears? Give some examples.
8. Where do you buy most of your books? How much do you spend each year on books? Or do you use the library primarily? Bookstore or online?
9. Do you use bookmarks, or dog-ear the pages of your books? Do you make marginal notes? If so, do you use pencil or pen?
10. How quickly do you read? Do you skim through pages at top speed, or do you stop to savor the sentences along the way?
11. Where, and when, do you do your best reading?
I'm not taking a survey or looking for your answers here in the blog. The questions raised some interesting observations about my own habit.
I bought this book ($14.95 paperback) at Vertigo bookstore in College Park. Vertigo is one of the last, great independent bookstores in the Washington area. The book was face-out in the front of the store.
Fox
Monday, March 17, 2008
Ok, so all of the above sounds great to me except that I can't find a copy of the book. I've checked with Costco, Barnes & Noble, and Borders and no one has a copy in stock. I will order one but I probably won't have it until later in the week (I hope!) "So, I'll catch up when I catch up," she said with relish as she mustered up all of her courage to be different from the rest. Paula
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sunday night
Larry said/asks:
"Can we read along and post comments as we have them?"
Ed said:
"No reason we all have to read at the same rate. As long as we're not reading a mystery it shouldn't really matter if we're not all reading at the same pace."
Pam says: OK with me.
Larry said/asks: "I don't think a 20-page-a week commitment is burdensome. I think we are all voracious readers and 20 pages would not cause a sweat."
Ed said:
"As for the weekly budget, I'm willing to try 50-100 pp."
Pam says: I like 50 pages a week. In the case of Little, Big we could start with the first 3 chapters, which in my edition ends on page 58.
Paula/Camy/Natalie: Do you want to weigh in on any of this?
Natalie: Have you been able to get into the system yet? If not, feel free to call me (301 622 6511) and we can try to puzzle it out on the phone. Since we haven't heard from Larry yet should we assume he wants to skip this round?
Pam
"Can we read along and post comments as we have them?"
Ed said:
"No reason we all have to read at the same rate. As long as we're not reading a mystery it shouldn't really matter if we're not all reading at the same pace."
Pam says: OK with me.
Larry said/asks: "I don't think a 20-page-a week commitment is burdensome. I think we are all voracious readers and 20 pages would not cause a sweat."
Ed said:
"As for the weekly budget, I'm willing to try 50-100 pp."
Pam says: I like 50 pages a week. In the case of Little, Big we could start with the first 3 chapters, which in my edition ends on page 58.
Paula/Camy/Natalie: Do you want to weigh in on any of this?
Natalie: Have you been able to get into the system yet? If not, feel free to call me (301 622 6511) and we can try to puzzle it out on the phone. Since we haven't heard from Larry yet should we assume he wants to skip this round?
Pam
I haven't checked in on the blog in several days because we've been incredibly busy and Maya spent two days with us. Unbelievable how much time and space a 10-month old, 16 lb. baby can take up. Anyway, sorry I didn't vote but I am happy to read Little Big. Whatever everyone else wants to do about a discussion timetable is also fine. Greg will not be joining us on this one. The sheep photo is cool! Paula
A suggestion
As always, I agree with Ed (right!) Vote is over, Little, Big is the book. To me, it looks like Pam, Ed, Paula, Natalie, Camy and I are the participants for this round. Can we hear directly from Doug as to what he is going to do? It's not clear to me.
I've started Little, Big but put it down when the book club came into existence and it was nominated.
A Suggestion
Can we read along and post comments as we have them? I realize that the problem with this approach is we won't always be on the same page (so what's new?) But if we do read that way (a little at a time) the blog stays dynamic and alive. As opposed to discussing a large section at once on an assigned day or week every 3 or 4 months.
I know this can't work unless we commit to a certain number of pages a week. I would go for that. To read 200 or so pages (perhaps in a couple of sittings) and then discuss it 3 or 4 months later seems static and uninteresting. If we are reading a 400 page book and read 20 pages a week, we'd be done with that in 20 weeks and we could move on to the next title. That works out to about two 400 page books a year with some slack built in. We could also read more books with smaller page counts. We could have a summary discussion when we are done with each book. This way the discussion stays alive and kicking. I don't think a 20-page-a week commitment is burdensome. I think we are all voracious readers and 20 pages would not cause a sweat.
For me the pleasure draws equally from the book and the ongoing dialogue with all of you. The book is a structure on which we hang our contact with one another.
So I am offering this up as an alternative. But I will certainly participate in whichever way the group desires.
lrf
I've started Little, Big but put it down when the book club came into existence and it was nominated.
A Suggestion
Can we read along and post comments as we have them? I realize that the problem with this approach is we won't always be on the same page (so what's new?) But if we do read that way (a little at a time) the blog stays dynamic and alive. As opposed to discussing a large section at once on an assigned day or week every 3 or 4 months.
I know this can't work unless we commit to a certain number of pages a week. I would go for that. To read 200 or so pages (perhaps in a couple of sittings) and then discuss it 3 or 4 months later seems static and uninteresting. If we are reading a 400 page book and read 20 pages a week, we'd be done with that in 20 weeks and we could move on to the next title. That works out to about two 400 page books a year with some slack built in. We could also read more books with smaller page counts. We could have a summary discussion when we are done with each book. This way the discussion stays alive and kicking. I don't think a 20-page-a week commitment is burdensome. I think we are all voracious readers and 20 pages would not cause a sweat.
For me the pleasure draws equally from the book and the ongoing dialogue with all of you. The book is a structure on which we hang our contact with one another.
So I am offering this up as an alternative. But I will certainly participate in whichever way the group desires.
lrf
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Third, how do we do this?
I guess the first big question, after we pick the book, is are we going to discuss it in person or online?
If the former, we obviously will get through only 2 books a year, which might be just fine. (Both Doug and I are always prone to getting sidetracked into other books or magazines, and I don't finish about half of what I start.)
Is anyone thinking we can discuss the book, or sections of the book, online? I think the jury is still out on whether people want to communicate this way. An online discussion might be Ed, Fox, Pam, Paula, Doug (probably), and (maybe?) Camy. Natalie might not be able to join in b/c of those technical problems.
So I leave you with those questions. Meanwhile I'm going to go knit another scarf. (I heard that Camy got bit by the scarf-knitting jones in the fall, and that she picked it up from Kate. Is that true? And Paula are you still knitting those great sweaters?) I got this great book from the library and I'm trying out one of the patterns:
Knitting New Scarves: 27 Distinctly Modern Designs (Paperback)
by Lynne Barr
Pam
If the former, we obviously will get through only 2 books a year, which might be just fine. (Both Doug and I are always prone to getting sidetracked into other books or magazines, and I don't finish about half of what I start.)
Is anyone thinking we can discuss the book, or sections of the book, online? I think the jury is still out on whether people want to communicate this way. An online discussion might be Ed, Fox, Pam, Paula, Doug (probably), and (maybe?) Camy. Natalie might not be able to join in b/c of those technical problems.
So I leave you with those questions. Meanwhile I'm going to go knit another scarf. (I heard that Camy got bit by the scarf-knitting jones in the fall, and that she picked it up from Kate. Is that true? And Paula are you still knitting those great sweaters?) I got this great book from the library and I'm trying out one of the patterns:
Knitting New Scarves: 27 Distinctly Modern Designs (Paperback)
by Lynne Barr
Pam
Second, choosing the book
Here's how I see it: There are nine of us in this round (is that a good noun for this purpose?). (BTW Ed, I'm happy to hear that we might have a book in both H. and E. so Shula can join us in a future round.) Doug voted for "Song Yet Sung." I voted for "Little, Big" as did Ed and someone else (blog doesn't let me see who but it was probably Fox). Paula and Camy haven't voted yet, and Natalie probably would have voted but she's had trouble logging in and decided to just go w/ the consensus. Larry and Greg might want to vote.
So. Here's what I propose. Those who want to vote can either post a comment tonight or tell me via email (dougpamjones@comcast.net) and I'll post it.
I'm not going to send everyone an email about this...seems a little pushy, and I know not everyone will want to participate each time around. Which reminds me...Doug said he's not entirely sure he'll finish on schedule, but I'll get to that in post No. 3.
Ed, Love the sheep! Perfect.
Hope others will add to the photo collection. We can have as many as we want. I promise not to post my worms again.
Pam
So. Here's what I propose. Those who want to vote can either post a comment tonight or tell me via email (dougpamjones@comcast.net) and I'll post it.
I'm not going to send everyone an email about this...seems a little pushy, and I know not everyone will want to participate each time around. Which reminds me...Doug said he's not entirely sure he'll finish on schedule, but I'll get to that in post No. 3.
Ed, Love the sheep! Perfect.
Hope others will add to the photo collection. We can have as many as we want. I promise not to post my worms again.
Pam
First, a word from our leader
I can't resist posting this.
March 15, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
George Speaks, Badly
By GAIL COLLINS
Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. ...
The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.
We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. ...
The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.
This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. ...
O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”
Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.
...
...
And then, finally, the nub of the housing crisis: “Problem we have is, a lot of folks aren’t responding to over a million letters sent out to offer them assistance and mortgage counseling,” the president of the United States told the world.
But wait — more positive news! The secretary of Housing and Urban Development is proposing that lenders supply an easy-to-read summary with mortgage agreements. “You know, these mortgages can be pretty frightening to people. I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print,” the president said.
Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech.
March 15, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
George Speaks, Badly
By GAIL COLLINS
Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. ...
The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.
We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. ...
The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.
This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. ...
O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”
Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.
...
...
And then, finally, the nub of the housing crisis: “Problem we have is, a lot of folks aren’t responding to over a million letters sent out to offer them assistance and mortgage counseling,” the president of the United States told the world.
But wait — more positive news! The secretary of Housing and Urban Development is proposing that lenders supply an easy-to-read summary with mortgage agreements. “You know, these mortgages can be pretty frightening to people. I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print,” the president said.
Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech.
Doug votes for the McBride book
So it's now:
3 for Little, Big
1 for Song Yet Sung
1 (Natalie) for whatever we decide
3 for Little, Big
1 for Song Yet Sung
1 (Natalie) for whatever we decide
Friday, March 14, 2008
Summaries of the 7 nominees
1. Little, Big by John Crowley
Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end.
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.
3. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system-and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole-and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams.
4. The Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
Battle is the dramatic centerpiece of Civil War history; this penetrating study looks instead at the somber aftermath. Historian Faust (Mothers of Invention) notes that the Civil War introduced America to death on an unprecedented scale and of an unnatural kind—grisly, random and often ending in an unmarked grave far from home. She surveys the many ways the Civil War generation coped with the trauma: the concept of the Good Death—conscious, composed and at peace with God; the rise of the embalming industry; the sad attempts of the bereaved to get confirmation of a soldier's death, sometimes years after war's end; the swelling national movement to recover soldiers' remains and give them decent burials; the intellectual quest to find meaning—or its absence—in the war's carnage. In the process, she contends, the nation invented the modern culture of reverence for military death and used the fallen to elaborate its new concern for individual rights. Faust exhumes a wealth of material—condolence letters, funeral sermons, ads for mourning dresses, poems and stories from Civil War–era writers—to flesh out her lucid account. The result is an insightful, often moving portrait of a people torn by grief.
5. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.
6. Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and adventure in bestselling memoirist (The Color of Water) McBride's intricately constructed and impressive second novel, set in pre–Civil War Maryland. Liz Spocott, a beautiful young runaway slave, suffers a nasty head wound just before being nabbed by a posse of slave catchers. She falls into a coma, and, when she awakes, she can see the future—from the near-future to Martin Luther King to hip-hop—in her dreams. Liz's visions help her and her fellow slaves escape, but soon there are new dangers on her trail: Patty Cannon and her brutal gang of slave catchers, and a competing slave catcher, nicknamed The Gimp, who has a surprising streak of morality. Liz has some friends, including an older woman who teaches her The Code that guides runaways; a handsome young slave; and a wild inhabitant of the woods and swamps. Kidnappings, gunfights and chases ensue as Liz drifts in and out of her visions, which serve as a thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom and offer sharp social commentary on contemporary America. McBride hasn't lost his touch: he nails the horrors of slavery as well as he does the power of hope and redemption.
7. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
Best known for the provocative and powerful novel, Midwives (an Oprah Book Club® Selection), Chris Bohjalian writes beautiful and riveting fiction featuring what the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity." In his new novel, The Double Bind, a literary thriller with references to (and including characters from) The Great Gatsby, Bohjalian takes readers on a haunting journey through one woman's obsession with uncovering a dark secret.
Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end.
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.
3. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system-and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole-and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams.
4. The Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
Battle is the dramatic centerpiece of Civil War history; this penetrating study looks instead at the somber aftermath. Historian Faust (Mothers of Invention) notes that the Civil War introduced America to death on an unprecedented scale and of an unnatural kind—grisly, random and often ending in an unmarked grave far from home. She surveys the many ways the Civil War generation coped with the trauma: the concept of the Good Death—conscious, composed and at peace with God; the rise of the embalming industry; the sad attempts of the bereaved to get confirmation of a soldier's death, sometimes years after war's end; the swelling national movement to recover soldiers' remains and give them decent burials; the intellectual quest to find meaning—or its absence—in the war's carnage. In the process, she contends, the nation invented the modern culture of reverence for military death and used the fallen to elaborate its new concern for individual rights. Faust exhumes a wealth of material—condolence letters, funeral sermons, ads for mourning dresses, poems and stories from Civil War–era writers—to flesh out her lucid account. The result is an insightful, often moving portrait of a people torn by grief.
5. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.
6. Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and adventure in bestselling memoirist (The Color of Water) McBride's intricately constructed and impressive second novel, set in pre–Civil War Maryland. Liz Spocott, a beautiful young runaway slave, suffers a nasty head wound just before being nabbed by a posse of slave catchers. She falls into a coma, and, when she awakes, she can see the future—from the near-future to Martin Luther King to hip-hop—in her dreams. Liz's visions help her and her fellow slaves escape, but soon there are new dangers on her trail: Patty Cannon and her brutal gang of slave catchers, and a competing slave catcher, nicknamed The Gimp, who has a surprising streak of morality. Liz has some friends, including an older woman who teaches her The Code that guides runaways; a handsome young slave; and a wild inhabitant of the woods and swamps. Kidnappings, gunfights and chases ensue as Liz drifts in and out of her visions, which serve as a thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom and offer sharp social commentary on contemporary America. McBride hasn't lost his touch: he nails the horrors of slavery as well as he does the power of hope and redemption.
7. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
Best known for the provocative and powerful novel, Midwives (an Oprah Book Club® Selection), Chris Bohjalian writes beautiful and riveting fiction featuring what the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity." In his new novel, The Double Bind, a literary thriller with references to (and including characters from) The Great Gatsby, Bohjalian takes readers on a haunting journey through one woman's obsession with uncovering a dark secret.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The count so far
1. We've got 3 votes for Little, Big (Ed voted in his most recent post, not in the poll).
2. Natalie says she'll read whatever we choose.
3. Doug will vote before the deadline on Saturday.
Pam
2. Natalie says she'll read whatever we choose.
3. Doug will vote before the deadline on Saturday.
Pam
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Time to vote
Hi Group:
Forgive my abruptness but I think the time has come to make a decision.
I am voting in this format because I want to vote for two books: Little, Big (which I have) and Fortress of Solitude (which I can get). Actually I would also like to vote for Song Yet Sung -- for next time. It doesn't seem to be available here yet. Did anyone check out The Book Thief? Pls do. I think it would be a decent choice as well.
BTW, there's a novel by Gilad Elbom, an Israeli living in the US (Fargo, ND), that is being translated into Hebrew. Yes, that's what I meant. He wrote it in English. It's on Amazon: Scream Queens of the Dead Sea. Doubt that this book is appropriate for our august group but it's interesting that an Israeli is writing in English -- and then has his work translated into Hebrew.
But I digress. Time to vote!
Forgive my abruptness but I think the time has come to make a decision.
I am voting in this format because I want to vote for two books: Little, Big (which I have) and Fortress of Solitude (which I can get). Actually I would also like to vote for Song Yet Sung -- for next time. It doesn't seem to be available here yet. Did anyone check out The Book Thief? Pls do. I think it would be a decent choice as well.
BTW, there's a novel by Gilad Elbom, an Israeli living in the US (Fargo, ND), that is being translated into Hebrew. Yes, that's what I meant. He wrote it in English. It's on Amazon: Scream Queens of the Dead Sea. Doubt that this book is appropriate for our august group but it's interesting that an Israeli is writing in English -- and then has his work translated into Hebrew.
But I digress. Time to vote!
Ed
PS: Is anyone else having difficulty reading the blog in living color?
Monday, March 10, 2008
Yes, Pam, I pore over every diagram. Sometimes, I try to figure out the sentence from the diagram; sometimes, I try to diagram the sentence. Some of those sentences are quite daunting to figure out either way! I did finish the book, enjoyed every word of it.
I am now reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March). It is intriguing so far. It's a fictionalized account (what's that called Larry? I'm 60; I can't remember) of the history of one of the earliest illuminated Jewish texts, the Sarajevo Hagaddah. A rare-book expert is summoned to restore the book and she finds clues to its history. I am enjoying the investigation as well as the discussion of the book itself.
I'm not sure how I feel about discussing the book piecemeal because we may all be reading on different timetables and it's easier to have one deadline rather than several. On the other hand, it may be more interesting to talk as we go and easier for us to remember details. I guess if someone isn't up to an interim deadline, he or she can opt out of the discussion or just make something up!
As for the apostrophe issue et al: As an editor, I say, "Hurrah for E.B.White and AP!"
Paula
I am now reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March). It is intriguing so far. It's a fictionalized account (what's that called Larry? I'm 60; I can't remember) of the history of one of the earliest illuminated Jewish texts, the Sarajevo Hagaddah. A rare-book expert is summoned to restore the book and she finds clues to its history. I am enjoying the investigation as well as the discussion of the book itself.
I'm not sure how I feel about discussing the book piecemeal because we may all be reading on different timetables and it's easier to have one deadline rather than several. On the other hand, it may be more interesting to talk as we go and easier for us to remember details. I guess if someone isn't up to an interim deadline, he or she can opt out of the discussion or just make something up!
As for the apostrophe issue et al: As an editor, I say, "Hurrah for E.B.White and AP!"
Paula
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Russell Banks
In the next couple of months I hope to read The Reserve, the new novel by Russell Banks, so I guess I'll nominate it for the next round. I've loved his novels for years. (Hey Eddie: I started to write "...Russell Banks' new novel..." but decided to avoid the entire AP/S&White dilemma.)
Assuming we actually (a) get around to picking a first book and (b) agree on some general plan for discussing it, Ed suggested that instead of reading the entire book before a discussion we could:
"...agree to read each part by a certain date. That way we could discuss one part of a book while reading the next part." I like that idea. Others?
Paula, you mentioned reading something with a "little lighter subject matter." I like that idea too. I might post a short note about the diagramming book when I finish it. I'm only reading a few pages a day. I love seeing selected sentences diagrammed (Kerouac, Faulkner) and I actually study them. do you? Fox, do you?
I saw the movie Notes on a Scandal the other day and decided to buy the book (which is called "What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal). I can't resist those 1 cent Amazon sales. The book jacket says "A complex psychological portrait framed as a wicked satire, it is by turns funny, poignant, and sinister." That's a tall order.
Pam
Assuming we actually (a) get around to picking a first book and (b) agree on some general plan for discussing it, Ed suggested that instead of reading the entire book before a discussion we could:
"...agree to read each part by a certain date. That way we could discuss one part of a book while reading the next part." I like that idea. Others?
Paula, you mentioned reading something with a "little lighter subject matter." I like that idea too. I might post a short note about the diagramming book when I finish it. I'm only reading a few pages a day. I love seeing selected sentences diagrammed (Kerouac, Faulkner) and I actually study them. do you? Fox, do you?
I saw the movie Notes on a Scandal the other day and decided to buy the book (which is called "What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal). I can't resist those 1 cent Amazon sales. The book jacket says "A complex psychological portrait framed as a wicked satire, it is by turns funny, poignant, and sinister." That's a tall order.
Pam
Monday, March 3, 2008
Day and Night
Hi:
I'm beginning to realize that I'm going to have to cope with the time difference. When it's daytime for me most of you are asleep. When my day is winding down you're just hitting your stride. As a Grumpy Old Man (did you see that BBC TV series in the US?) I made two comments the other day that seemed different the next morning.
Specificially the apostrophe and the name of our literary benefactor. I can live with both. Thing is, when I think of reading I think of Mr. Vincent and Comp Lit. Most of my memories of Mrs. Biggs have to do with her temperament.
Pam: We could discuss the use of the AP style book for professional work. But since you're not doing that anymore I guess we can pass. After all these years it actually looks funny to me to see "Biggs'" without the "apostrophe s" at the end. No big deal.
Ed
I'm beginning to realize that I'm going to have to cope with the time difference. When it's daytime for me most of you are asleep. When my day is winding down you're just hitting your stride. As a Grumpy Old Man (did you see that BBC TV series in the US?) I made two comments the other day that seemed different the next morning.
Specificially the apostrophe and the name of our literary benefactor. I can live with both. Thing is, when I think of reading I think of Mr. Vincent and Comp Lit. Most of my memories of Mrs. Biggs have to do with her temperament.
Pam: We could discuss the use of the AP style book for professional work. But since you're not doing that anymore I guess we can pass. After all these years it actually looks funny to me to see "Biggs'" without the "apostrophe s" at the end. No big deal.
Ed
Boyle nomination withdrawn because...
...Blogger.com (wisely) won't let you add items to the poll after someone has voted. So I guess we'll leave the first round of voting at 7 nominations. Boyle can be moved to round 2. (See how optimistic I am, assuming there will be a round 2?) I could always re-set the poll and add more books but I won't do that unless there is a groundswell of support for that move. ("Groundswell" used advisedly since it looks like only 5 people are participating so far---although I'll force Doug to vote on a book before the deadline.)
Pam
Pam
East is East by T.C. Boyle
This book is not exactly "lighter," as suggested by Paula, but it's close. It also didn't get uniformly good reviews but as Fox notes good reviews don't necessarily mean a good book (so therefore bad reviews don't necessarily mean a bad book, right?). And I hear via rumor that Natalie likes T.C. Boyle. (I actually think he's hot, hot, hot too...) Finally, you can get a used copy on Amazon for 1 penny plus shipping.
Pam
Pam
Voting Deadline: 11:59 AM (DC time), Sat March 15
Someone, Ed?, suggested a deadline for picking a book and someone else, Fox?, suggested March 15 as that deadline. So until someone else changes it, that will be our working deadline. I'm not yet sure if the poll at the right will work but we'll find out. I'm not sure b/c the program may be set up to take only one vote per Google account. And since we're all logging in using the same account name ...well, you get it. If that happens we'll deal with it then.
Pam
Pam
Suggestions
Hmm, Song Yet Sung does sound interesting to me -- and I enjoyed his first book, The Color of Water. Does anyone know anything about The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian? I've never read his books but I've heard good things about this one. Also, Then It Came to the End has been recommended to me and it's on the NY Times 10 Best Books of 2007 list. Okay, it's now 2am and I am getting very tired -- go to sleep Larry D!
Paula
Paula
Oops,
Okay, so I'm not smarter than a fifth grader -- last post was from Paula. I forgot to sign it. Maybe 1am isn't the best time to be doing this. I'll try to stop using space for fluff...
Paula
Paula
From the Little Engine Who Could
Yay, I am smarter than a fifth grader! Okay, now that I'm here, I really don't have anything to say except to request that you ignore my vote that I posted in error and don't know how to delete. Is anyone interested in a book with a little lighter subject matter? Guess I've been overloaded lately with bad news and could use a laugh or two...
Miscellaneous
First of all, try to remember to sign posts and comments. Since we're all signing in with the same name, if you don't sign we won't always know who wrote what.
Second, the idea of trying to make a decision by mid-March seems reasonable.
As for Camy's suggestions (pls don't take this personally): I really don't want to read a book about the high price of war. I read it in the papers daily.
As for Water for Elephants. I read it last fall, liked it but am not particularly interested in reading it again.
Your suggestion about the Eastern Shore sounds interesting to me. I'll check it out on Amazon later.
That's about it for now. Must start my day.
Ed
Second, the idea of trying to make a decision by mid-March seems reasonable.
As for Camy's suggestions (pls don't take this personally): I really don't want to read a book about the high price of war. I read it in the papers daily.
As for Water for Elephants. I read it last fall, liked it but am not particularly interested in reading it again.
Your suggestion about the Eastern Shore sounds interesting to me. I'll check it out on Amazon later.
That's about it for now. Must start my day.
Ed
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Camy's suggestions
The Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust (hc). The impact of the Civil War's enormous death toll, by the new president of Harvard.
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (pb). A young man -- and an elephant -- save a Depression era circus. Many friends have recommended this book to me.
Song Yet Sung by James McBride (hc). Set in Maryland's Eastern Shore, slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. Strong review in 3/2 NYT Book Review. -- Camy
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (pb). A young man -- and an elephant -- save a Depression era circus. Many friends have recommended this book to me.
Song Yet Sung by James McBride (hc). Set in Maryland's Eastern Shore, slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. Strong review in 3/2 NYT Book Review. -- Camy
Comments on recommended books: The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem was the speaker at Kate's graduation. He is a Bennington dropout. He impressed me so much with his humor and humanity I read this when we returned from Vermont. Wonderful book.
See his entirely plagarized article on cultural borrowing
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387
Fox
See his entirely plagarized article on cultural borrowing
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387
Fox
A favorite passage from Fox
And then I left Strasbourg and went to Avignon, to the church of Our Mother of Noon, in the parish of Fr. Fabrice, whose falcon, called Ta Gueule, was known throughout the surrounding area for his voracity and ferocity, and my afternoons with Fr. Fabrice were unforgettable, Ta Gueule in full flight, scattering not just flocks of pigeons but also flocks of starlings, which in those long-gone, happy days, were common in the countryside of Provence, where Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello? wandered once, and Ta Gueule flew off and disappeared among the low clouds, the clouds descending from the desecrated yet somehow still pure hills of Avignon, and while Fr Fabrice and I conversed, Ta Gueule appeared again like a lightning bolt, or the abstract idea of a lightning bolt, and stooped on the huge flocks of starlings coming out of the west like swarms of flies, darkening the sky with their erratic fluttering, and after a few minutes the fluttering of the starlings was bloodied, scattered and bloodied, and afternoon on the outskirts of Avignon took on a deep red hue, like the colour of sunsets seen from an aeroplane, or the colour of dawns, when the passenger is woken gently by the engines whistling in his ears and lifts up the little blind and sees the horizon marked with a red line, like the planet's femoral artery, or the planet's aorta, gradually swelling, and I saw that swelling blood vessel in the sky over Avignon, the blood-stained flight of the starlings, Ta Gueule splashing colour like an abstract expressionist painter, ah, the peace, the harmony of nature, nowhere as evident or as unequivocal as in Avignon, and then Fr Fabrice whistled and we waited for an indefinable time, measured only by the beating of our hearts, until our quivering warrior came to rest upon his arm.
Roberto Bolano
By Night in Chile
Roberto Bolano
By Night in Chile
Making a decision
Hi all:
One last thing before I close for the night:
How/how soon are we going to decide what we're going to read? Also, how long do book clubs usually have to read a given book?
Perhaps one of the advantages of doing this as a blog is that we could divide long books into more than one part. I think Doug's concern about length is legit. We could agree to read each part by a certain date. That way we could discuss one part of a book while reading the next part. It might also add some interesting spontaneity if we change our opinions as we proceed.
However, now we need to choose our first book and get started.
Just a thought. That's all for me today (it's almost 10:30 p.m. here).
Ed
One last thing before I close for the night:
How/how soon are we going to decide what we're going to read? Also, how long do book clubs usually have to read a given book?
Perhaps one of the advantages of doing this as a blog is that we could divide long books into more than one part. I think Doug's concern about length is legit. We could agree to read each part by a certain date. That way we could discuss one part of a book while reading the next part. It might also add some interesting spontaneity if we change our opinions as we proceed.
However, now we need to choose our first book and get started.
Just a thought. That's all for me today (it's almost 10:30 p.m. here).
Ed
Greetings from the Middle East
Hi Group:
Here's an email I sent this a.m. It seems to have bounced back in several cases so I'm posting here.
First of all a link to an article from The Wall Street Journal analyzing what is happening in Israel and Gaza:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120398961080492299.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Now then down to business.
Shula and I have discussed the group. Actually Hagit also joined in the discussion. As much as Shula would like to participate, it's just not practical. I must have mentioned to most of you that when learning a new language the order is speaking, reading and then writing. IOW, after all these years in Israel, I don't feel comfortable writing. Anything. When the kids were in school I rarely wrote even the most perfunctory note to the school unless someone checked it. This despite the fact that I have no particular problem speaking and I read Hebrew newspapers without too much difficulty. It may take some effort but it's not particularly difficult.
The day or two after we returned last week there were several emails about the group. When Shula and I finally got around to discussing them she said that it takes her forever to read these emails. A point that I intuitively knew but forgot about because of the enthusiasm surrounding the idea of the book club. Going back to my explanation of learning a second language: reading comes second and writing third. IOW, finding a book translated into Hebrew is just the beginning. The real crux of the matter is that while it would be difficult for Shula to read the blog, she could -- with some effort. But adding to it would be too much effort to be enjoyable.
So, I think Shula will only participate in the group when we know that she's coming to the US. We usually plan our trips ahead of time, so we can (collectively) make the effort to read something that has been translated so that she can join the group in person rather than online.
Yes, I know this changes things. But that's the reality.
You'll indulge me for responding for Shula because an email explanation would just take her too long.
Now that I've said all this, I have two additional suggestions (other than Little, Big which I bought):
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Two different friends in two different book clubs are reading these.
Don't really have time to describe what I've heard about both but you can check them out on Amazon. Is that a rude thing to say on a blog? Don't mean to be rude. Just running out of time.
Regards,
Ed
Here's an email I sent this a.m. It seems to have bounced back in several cases so I'm posting here.
First of all a link to an article from The Wall Street Journal analyzing what is happening in Israel and Gaza:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120398961080492299.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Now then down to business.
Shula and I have discussed the group. Actually Hagit also joined in the discussion. As much as Shula would like to participate, it's just not practical. I must have mentioned to most of you that when learning a new language the order is speaking, reading and then writing. IOW, after all these years in Israel, I don't feel comfortable writing. Anything. When the kids were in school I rarely wrote even the most perfunctory note to the school unless someone checked it. This despite the fact that I have no particular problem speaking and I read Hebrew newspapers without too much difficulty. It may take some effort but it's not particularly difficult.
The day or two after we returned last week there were several emails about the group. When Shula and I finally got around to discussing them she said that it takes her forever to read these emails. A point that I intuitively knew but forgot about because of the enthusiasm surrounding the idea of the book club. Going back to my explanation of learning a second language: reading comes second and writing third. IOW, finding a book translated into Hebrew is just the beginning. The real crux of the matter is that while it would be difficult for Shula to read the blog, she could -- with some effort. But adding to it would be too much effort to be enjoyable.
So, I think Shula will only participate in the group when we know that she's coming to the US. We usually plan our trips ahead of time, so we can (collectively) make the effort to read something that has been translated so that she can join the group in person rather than online.
Yes, I know this changes things. But that's the reality.
You'll indulge me for responding for Shula because an email explanation would just take her too long.
Now that I've said all this, I have two additional suggestions (other than Little, Big which I bought):
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Two different friends in two different book clubs are reading these.
Don't really have time to describe what I've heard about both but you can check them out on Amazon. Is that a rude thing to say on a blog? Don't mean to be rude. Just running out of time.
Regards,
Ed
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