little black journal

I’ve been in a bit of reading slump for the past couple of months – it’s been awhile since I’ve had something in my hands that I couldn’t put down.  A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee was beautifully written, but I found it hard to truly invest in any of its characters.  Little Bee by Chris Cleave was intriguing, but its ending left me feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.   And so, after years and years of somehow missing the boat, I am embarking on a new literary journey – all seven Harry Potter books, read start to finish, back-to-back.  My dear friend (and book club confidante) Nancy has lent me her well-loved set and has assured me that I will not be disappointed.  I have just started digging into book one and am already reveling in the vision of rainy Sunday afternoons spent curled up on the couch with Harry and Hermione, being whisked off to faraway lands full of wizards and witches, where reality is temporarily forgotten and my imagination runs wild and free.  Yes, I suspect this may be just what I’m looking for…

Despite frequent hopeful gazes out our living room window, I was unable to track down even a hint of blue sky today – seems that we have moved into a season (or seasons, plural, as is the case in Seattle) of gray skies and rainy afternoons.  Summer felt so fleeting this year.  I’m not sure if it’s because we’ve spent so much of the past several weeks on the go, or because this Summer was cooler than typical, but I’m having a hard time accepting that this season is really over.  Do I really have to bid farewell to Saturdays spent working in the garden, evenings spent spent drinking wine on the back porch? The forecast (rain for six of the next seven days) seems to be telling me a definitive ‘yes’.  At least this overcast weather was perfect for curling up on the couch and finishing up the book I’ve been reading, which turned out to be one of the best novels I’ve picked up in a long time.  Set in the midst of a traveling circus in the 1930’s, Water for Elephants was full of drama, action, romance, and suspense, carried out by characters you love dearly and hate passionately.  It’s was fun to be so absorbed in a book that I couldn’t put it down – especially during a weekend like this one, when I didn’t have big plans or sunny weather vying for my attention.  This will be a tough novel to top, but as I pull together the stack of books I’d like to finish before the end of the year, I will remain optimistic – here’s to hoping that Chang-rae Lee, Chris Cleave, and George Orwell do not disappoint.

Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about a book.  Fact is, I took a bit of a ‘literary detour’ and spent the first part of this summer wrapped up in the Twilight series.  And I won’t apologize for it – I was in the mood for something quick, easy, and just a little bit trashy, and that vampire saga fit the bill perfectly.  But once I got my fill of teenage romance, I was ready to flex my reading muscles and so picked up Till We Have Faces, my book club’s August pick.  This is C.S. Lewis’ interpretation of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche, set in the far-off pagan land of Glome.  I’m not going to lie – this wasn’t a ‘fun’ read, but it stretched me, and encouraged me further explore deeper themes of selfish love, self-awareness, and frustration over a seemingly distant God.  And I like when a book stumps me, keeps the wheels in my head turning after I’ve put it down, forces me flip back through it in hopes of catching something new.  After doing some Googling and reading a couple of book reviews sent to me by my fellow stumped book-clubbies, I’m just scratching the surface of what Lewis may (or may not) have been getting at.  I’ll leave you with this passage, that seems to grow more powerful each time I reread it:

” ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’  A glib saying.  When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words.  I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.  Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean?  How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

I haven’t been posting about all of my reading endeavors lately, because I felt like I ran out of ways to say, “I liked it”, or “It was too long”, but Jane Eyre consumed enough hours of my life to warrant a blog post.  I started this book two months ago, put it down for a week for a quick fling with David Sedaris, then (grudgingly) picked it back up again, determined to finish what I started.  Man, I wanted to love a classic like this, but this book really felt like a struggle.  The lengthy descriptions of the English landscape were too wordy, and the conversation felt incredibly stiff and overly formal.  I was frustrated by the fact that I had a such hard time placing myself in the middle of the story.  Then I realized that this book was published 163 years ago, and I was suddenly amazed at how much the English language has remained relatively unchanged over the past century-and-a-half.  Granted, Jane never used the word ‘dude’ or referred to Mr. Rochester as ‘smokin’ hot’, but the fact that I was able to understand 99.9% of this book’s contents seems surprising.  And I will admit, the last quarter of the book did really capture my attention, as I read on to see which fate Jane would choose.  So I’m glad I finished it; I’m glad my ‘literary horizons’ have been broadened.  Plus, it looks darn pretty sitting on my bookshelf…

There could not exist a more perfect book to read while on vacation.  Funny and light, hard to put down, full of witty little passages that I enjoyed reading aloud to Shane.  I have fond memories of the day I spent camped out on the beach with David Sedaris in one hand and a margarita in the other.  Seriously, though, this is funny stuff.  From the tales his rural upbringing in North Carolina to his days spent theater-hopping in Paris, he is able to infuse his life experiences with a humor that is one part sarcasm, one part cynicism, and two parts total light-heartedness.  I especially loved the stories that dealt with his struggle to learn the French language and could relate to several of his experiences.  This passage is classic:

“There are, I have noticed, two basic types of French spoken by Americans vacationing in Paris; the Hard Kind and the Easy Kind.  The Hard Kind involves the conjugation of wily verbs and the science of placing them alongside various other words in order to form such sentences as “I go him say good afternoon” and “No, not to him I no go it him say now.”  The second, less complicated form of French amounts to screaming English at the top of your lungs, much the same way you’d shout at a deaf person or the dog you thought you could train to say off the sofa.”

I’m looking forward to picking up more of his stuff – the true test will come when I find out whether he is just as funny on a rainy day in Seattle as he is on a sunny beach in Mexico…  I’ll let you know.

This book was one of those ‘should-reads’ I’ve had sitting on my shelf for a few years – a significant, widely-known piece of literature that I somehow missed in the course of all my high school and college English classes.  And so I set aside Anne of Green Gables (yes, I picked these old classics up during a nostalgic impulse), assumed my most literary attitude, and gave 1984 a go.  The fact that I was reading out of some kind of self-imposed obligation, rather than desire, made me fear that I might not enjoy the book all that much.  But it was actually quite fascinating.  A little slow at times, and certainly darker than what I usually read, but I found the characters and the underlying commentary on socialism/communism/totalitarianism and the role of government really, really interesting.  The book, which was published in 1949, takes place in the then-future year of 1984, a time when the government (the ‘Party’) knows all and rules all, via constant surveillance of all its members, incessant broadcasting of Party propaganda, and relentless fear mongering used to justify never-ending wars.  People are constantly warned that ‘Big Brother is Watching You.’  Creepy.  But – wait…  Fast-forward to 2010, and do we not now live in a nation where a large percentage of the population carries GPS-linked phones and laptops?  Add to that the constant onslaught of advertising and filtered news that we face every day in the form of radio, TV, the Internet, and poster-plastered buses, and the premise of 1984 is not so unimaginable.  I’m certainly not leading a revolution, and I’m thankful for the freedoms that I often take for granted, but the parallels here between the fiction and reality are certainly interesting.  Food for thought…

I have a new-found love of historical fiction.  This book, set in mid 19th-century China, so brilliantly wove together elements of fictional relationships with real Chinese traditions and attitudes.  Through the lens of Lily, the book’s narrator and main character, we get a glimpse of what life was like for women living in China 150 years ago:  the pain and risk associated with footbinding, the rituals and duties of betrothal and marriage, and the never-ending list of  restrictions and expectations.  Totally fascinating, though completely tragic as you realize how heavily women were disrespected, devalued, and oppressed.

I loved getting together with my book club this morning and hearing everyone’s impressions of the book.  As we all sat around the table and enjoyed Congee (courtesy of Emily), I was incredibly grateful for the diversity of thoughts, cultures, and experiences present in that room.  We shared about how our familial and cultural roots have impacted our ability to express ourselves, how we still see women enduring pain and discomfort in the eternal pursuit of ‘true beauty’, and how difficult it would be to have to inflict pain on your child in the name of tradition.  Deep stuff.  Yet these moments of thoughtful reflection were intertwined with personal stories and loud bouts of laughter.  Two and a half hours has never flown by so quickly.  I have been so blessed by this group of ladies – I like to think of them as my own version of the Chinese ‘sworn sisterhood’…

My parents gave this book to me for Christmas when I was just a kid – I believe it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for over 15 years, neglected and unread.  I’ve seen the movie over twenty times and count it as one of my favorites, but somehow just never got around to picking up the book.  After reading the first Twilight novel, I was in the mood for something more… ‘wholesome’ and challenging, and December seemed like the right month to take on Little Women, in all its classic, family-centered goodness.  And I’m so glad that I did.  I just finished this book by the light of our Christmas tree, and wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  It’s not a page-turner, and there were a few overly verbacious (is that a word?) chapters that were difficult to get through, but all in all, I really enjoyed this book and felt like the holiday season was the perfect time to read it.  I loved being transported into the March family’s living room, sensing the warmth of sisterly love and motherly care.  And while Marmee’s infinite wisdom and the girls’ fixation on morality may have seemed a bit much at times, I think that’s ok – sometimes the family unit needs to ‘idealized’ a little bit, considering the sad examples of crumbling families that we’re currently bombarded with in the modern media.  And so this book gets two thumbs up, with a bonus point for the fact that Louisa May Alcott seemed like quite an exceptional woman.

This book may be one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.  The style of writing, the point of view, and the vivid details put me right in the room with the author as he was living out his childhood in his dilapidated little home in Limerick, Ireland.  Loved it.  His story is definitely a sad one – extreme poverty, an alcoholic and absent father, the death of three siblings – but he doesn’t seem to feel the least bit sorry for himself.  He accepts the life he’s been given and when he’s old enough to change it, he takes a tremendous step to do so.

Even more enjoyable than reading this book was getting together with my girlfriends to discuss it at our monthly book club meeting yesterday.  I love these ladies – though we only spend minutes actually discussing the book, we spend hours at our special table at the bakery, chatting and laughing and catching up with one another.  This little gathering has become something that I look forward to all month long, whether I like what we’re reading or not.  Next on the list?  Well…according to our rotation of easy page-turners, memoirs, and classics, we should be reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin this month.  But it seems most of us just weren’t up to the challenge right now, so it’s ‘choose your own adventure’ month.  And it turns out that I was the only one at the table yesterday who hasn’t read Twilight yet, so for the sake of inclusiveness, I’m putting aside my presuppositions and giving into the hype.  Bring on the vampires…

I didn’t quite know what I was getting into when I picked up this book, and I raised my eyebrows when I discovered it was all about vampires and the legend of Dracula, but I’m glad I stuck through it.  Turned out to be a totally enthralling mystery/suspense/thriller, laced with romance and lots of lovely imagery of Eastern Europe.  The descriptions of Budapest have placed Hungary near the top of my ‘places to see’ list, with a quick pop over to Istanbul to check out the Hagia Sophia and wander the street markets.  This novel was rich with historical lessons, too, about the Ottoman Empire, the fall of Constantinople and the major figures of power that ruled in Eastern Europe in the 1400’s.  I had no idea that Stoker’s Dracula was inspired by a real person, and was surprised to find that the horrific crimes committed by Vlad Tepes, as listed in this book, seem to be true.  Dark, interesting stuff.  My book club rates our reads on a 5-star scale, and I’m giving this one a solid 4.  Well worth all 675 pages.