Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere by Lauren Leto

ISBN-13: 9780062070142
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: October 2012
Format: Paperback, 288 pgs
Source: Publisher

Calling out all book lovers (occasional readers and non-readers apply as well)! Have you ever came across a literary guide which not only offer you some insight of the wonder and beauty of reading but also an account of the peculiar world of book culture and how we speak condescendingly about the most revered authors and their literary works even if we haven't read them! 

Author Lauren Leto started off this guide on her introduction to books when she was a child and how she was initially overwhelmed by the words and sentences in books to becoming a well-read reader as she is today. In this guide, she shares with us her opinions and observations of the book culture and some of the titles she read in both snarky and sometimes condescending voice. Either way, she has got me hooked to this guide as she covered some topics such as:

1) The Bookshelf of the Vanities

2) That Certain Bookstore Smell (From Self: Oh yes!)

3) Ten Rules for Bookstore Hookups 

4) Rules for Public Reading and Rules of Book Club

5) Petition to Change the Term from "Bookworm" to "Bookcat" (I like this one!)

6) Fan Letters (Don't we all have the desire to write to our favourite authors at some stage?)

7) How to Write Like Any Author (Names like Stieg Larsson, Malcolm Gladwell, Henry Miller,  Cormac McCarthy... just to name a few)

8) What Your Child Will Grow Up to Be if You Read Them... (like The Giving Tree, Green Eggs and Ham, The Velveteen Rabbit, Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Wind in the Willows, etc)

9) Stereotyping People by Favourite Author

10) Strategies to Avoid Discussing the Major Plot Points of Any Novel

11) A Gift Guide by a Bad Gift-Giver

12) How to Succeed in Classifying Fiction Without Really Trying

Though written in a fun and humorous way, Lauren Leto has a deep admiration for every one of the authors whose work she discussed in this guide and she stated that "there is nothing more beautiful than a well-written book, and there is nothing more admirable than the attempt to create something beautiful", which I agree.  

Here are some of my favourite quotes in this guide (pg 267 - 9) which I think will strike a chord for bibliophiles and the like: 

- Reading is a solitary activity. You can be surrounded by a thousand people, but processing the written words in your brain is something only you are going through. ... A good novel presents you with an engaging world that is a reality only for you. 

- A story is unbiased with respect to the reader. It presupposes nothing about the audience. Books don't require that you read them in a certain place, at a certain time, or with certain equipment. Just eyes. Literature connects by transporting people to the same consciousness; a stranger who's read the same book you've read, whose eyes passed over the same words, may be a part of a completely different environment, and even time, but for a while, at least, they shared a world with you. A community is built out of that isolated experience; an author has the power to build worlds and to populate them not only with characters but also with their readers. 

- Good books command study, presenting you with the puzzle of how and why their plot is laid the way it is  laid - without examination the meaning is lost.

- The greatest argument for the oneness of humanity is the recognition that we are all emotional beings, subject to the fantasies of a story. We talk about this event we went through alone because it connects us together. You're nevermore human than when you realize a sentence has the power to push and pull the emotions of millions. 

To end it all, I enjoyed reading Judging a Book by Its Lover as it has inspired me to read some of the titles which I wanted to read but haven't (e.g. Crime and Punishment, The Catcher in the Rye, etc) but most of all, this guide made me smile as I agree with some of the stuff Lauren Leto mentioned and not to mention it also made me laugh over some of her remarks. Humour, anecdotal, reference... this guide has it all and I think this book would make a great gift to anyone who enjoys reading. 

With My Body by Nikki Gemmell

• ISBN-13: 9780062122636
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: June 2012
• Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pgs
• Source: Publisher

At first glance, the cover of With My Body may seem like an erotica romance but after reading the blurb, I realised there is something far more than just sex and lust, for behind the sensuality this is a story about family, marriage, self-discovery and love. 

Written in second person point-of-view, the nameless character is a mother of three and she has what many women want - a husband who is a GP and one who will not let his family down. She is supposed to be happy with her life, but she is not. She realised that she and her husband have reached a point of stopping in the relationship; where they both are either too busy, or too swamped by everything else. There is not much romance or sparks left, so to speak. Deep inside, the woman is craving for a release and she can't help but to think of her ex-lover, whom she has kept hidden in her mind all these years. She didn't want to ruin her marriage, for she thinks her husband is a good man and all, and she will make sure that he will never know of her past as she revisits her memory (and a notebook whereby she had noted down lessons she had learnt from her ex-lover) where the core of this story is. 

The woman had a secret affair with an older man when she was about seventeen. She had accidentally came across a secluded house where she discovered the man, who had chosen the quiet and remoteness of the place from the city so he could write his second book. Initially Tol wants nothing to do with the girl but he is piqued by her naivety and in the end, he gave in through her persistence of seeking him out. And there begins their relationship and their secret affair. Through their affair, she has learned things from Tol that would make one raise eyebrows and frown. Tol seems to learn something from her too, as he finds out more about a woman's psyche. One could say their relationship is a complex one, and there are times I wondered about Tol and if there are other agenda behind his acts. But of course I would not spoil the story and say anything more about him. 

Though With My Body mainly looks at the discovery of sexuality of a teenage girl to a woman, there is one aspect which I think drives the greatest impact and that is the father/daughter relationship and the redemptive part which is surprisingly moving once the readers understand the intention behind it. 

Bold, honest and thought-provoking, With My Body will be one of the most unforgettable books on my read list. This book also includes an interview with author Nikki Gemmell and her insights of writing this story (which allowed me to learn more about womanhood, in all its complexity). 

The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta

Have you ever been driving down the road and come upon a car with the bumper sticker that reads, "In case of rapture this car will be unmanned"?  For a while they were real popular here in southern Chicagoland, and every time I saw one I thought the same thing, How arrogant! Granted, as an atheist I don't really believe in the Rapture or heaven, but from what I know about the teachings of Jesus somehow I find it hard to believe that he would be in favor of his followers assuming that just by believing in him they get a free pass to heaven when the Apocalypse happens.  Wasn't he all about good works and loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek and all that?  What would happen if suddenly millions of people worldwide disappeared in a Rapture-like event but the supposedly devout faithful weren't necessarily among them?

This event and its aftermath are the backdrop for Tom Perrotta's latest book, The Leftovers.  One October morning millions of people all over the world, of all races, cultures, and religions, simply disappeared.  Vanished without a trace.  One minute you are sitting next to your best friend on the couch, the next instant-gone.  Some people lost their whole family in the blink of an eye, other families stayed intact but lost friends and colleagues.  There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the disappearances, which led those trying to recover from the loss to find different ways to cope.  The novel follows one family and their attempts to make sense of what seems like a senseless event.  Kevin and Laurie and their children Jill and Tom  were living the American dream.  Kevin was a successful businessman, Laurie a busy stay-at-home mom.  Jill and Tom were both honors students, and Tom has just left for Syracuse University when the Sudden Departure, as the world soon called it, occurred.  Three years later, Laurie is a member of a cult called the Guilty Remnant, Jill has shaved her head and nearly failed out of school, and Tom has disappeared into the organization of a faith "healer" who gained fame by hugging away the pain of those left behind.  Kevin tries desperately to keep some semblance of normalcy going while trying to give everyone he loves time to recover from what happened to them all.

The narrative structure of this novel is of the every-chapter-from-a-different-POV variety, which I know bothers some people, but it works in this book because it allows Perotta to examine the various personal emotional reactions of the people affected by the Sudden Departure of their friends and family.  Aside from the family listed above, we also see the point of view of a woman named Nora, who lost her entire family-husband and two kids-in the time it took for her to go to the kitchen for a rag to wipe up a spill.  The depth of her grief feels boundless-to her and to the reader.  Her unsuccessful attempts to move on from the event illustrate just how difficult it can be to move forward when everything you thought you knew is taken away.

Perrotta does an admirable job imagining how different types of people would react to such an impossible-seeming occurrence.  The loss, and ultimately the not knowing, drive people to extremes.  Some turn to religious cults who claim to understand "god's" plan and to provide answers that people seek.  Some frenetically try to return to normal, diving into the same mindless consumerism that existed prior to the Departure.  Some turn to drugs or alcohol or sex as a way to dull their pain.  But the book does not dwell only on the sadness and loss-to me the book's message speaks to the human ability to survive, to the unique capacity of human beings to adapt to new circumstances, to the idea that even in a world where the old rules have been turned on their head, people can and will begin to create order from the chaos.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Good morning, fellow Monday Morning Readers!  It's been a long time since I have been able to participate in a weekly meme of any kind, so welcome to Book Addict Reviews any fellow bloggers who have not been here before!  I'm glad to be back!

This week, I finished When She Woke by Hillary Jordan.  Amazing speculative fiction a la The Handmaid's Tale about a woman's place in society and reproductive choice.

I am also reading The Latte Rebellion, by Sarah Jamila Stevenson.  This young adult novel tells the story of a group of mixed race friends who start a website to sell t-shirts to people with latte-colored skin as a way to raise money for a summer vacation.  What starts as a joke about their shared experiences as people of mixed racial backgrounds becomes a social justice movement, leading to serious consequences for the girls when their school labels them terrorists.

I'm about to start My Name is Mary Sutter, a historical fiction novel about a woman fighting to be recognized for her medical skills in the mid-18th century.  I guess I must be on a feminist fiction kick right now, since the last few things I have read are falling in that theme.  Given the current state of political discourse about women in this country, I guess maybe that makes sense...

Finally, I am listening to The Grapes of Wrath on audiobook.  I'm glad that I decided to listen rather than read it, because I really feel like the narrator is doing a wonderful job with the character's voices and emotions.  It is the tale of the Joad family-chased off their land during the Depression by the landowners and their tractors, the family takes off west in a converted jalopy, hoping to find work and prosperity in the promised land of California.  Heartbreaking, infuriating, filled with moments of quiet grace, this American classic is a must read.

Have a wonderful reading week, everyone!

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

In this rather quirky novel, Krauss tells the story of love, loneliness, and loss as experienced by two very different people.  Leo Gursky is an octogenarian living in a crowded apartment in New York.  Growing up in Poland in the 1930s, he fell deeply in love with a girl from his village.  When she emigrated to American just before World War II, Leo lost touch with her.  After the war, when he was forced to hide or be sent to the concentration camps with the other Jews, he made his way to New York.  But nothing turned out as he'd thought.  In the present day, Leo feels invisible, and when he goes out he purposely does things to attract attention in order to prove to himself that he still exists.

Alma Singer is a young girl dealing with the loss of her father.  Her mother Charlotte is fading away, spending hours in her room translating old books and remembering her beloved husband.  Convinced that her mother needs to fall in love again to survive, Alma tries to find men for her mother to date.  When a mysterious man writes to Charlotte asking her to translate her father's favorite book, Alma tries to discover his identity, hopeful that he can help her mother re-enter the world.

What connects these two characters is a book, The History of Love.  The book, the main character of which Alma was named after, becomes central to the lives of both characters.  To Leo it represents his past, his love, and the son he never knew.  To Alma it represents her father, her mother's grief, and a possible future for her family.  As their connection to each other is slowly revealed through the course of the novel, we understand the triumph of the human spirit over fear, loneliness, and doubt.

Krauss' use of language in this novel is lyrical and moving.  Her treatment of her two rather eccentric characters is warm and kind, especially Leo's character.  He is a cantankerous old man, which would make him rather unlikeable if the main target of his frequent sarcasm wasn't himself.  Alma's character is very relateable, if a little less realistic.  She often reads older than her supposed age in the story, but it works well enough.  The story goes back and forth between Leo and Alma as narrators, which I some people find challenging to keep straight, but I did not find it distracting or off-putting in this book.   The story is heartbreaking-it highlights the way that forces outside of our control can cause our life to go in directions that we never expected.  The bottom line is that life is not fair-it certainly wasn't fair to either Alma or Leo.  But despite that, there are opportunities for love, tenderness, and redemption.

When Prose Imitates Opera

While opera is not one of my favorite musical styles to actually partake of (unless you are a 20th centruy rock opera-Rent, I'm looking at you!), I have an enormous amount of respect for the history of the genre and the amount of hard work and dedication that it takes to do it right.  My wife, in fact, is studying opera and has herself performed in The Mikado and The Magic Flute, to name a few.  And while the operatic voice is not necessarily as beautiful to my ear as other voices (except my wife, of course, who has the voice of an angel), the thing that I love about opera is the over-the-top, completely unbelievable story-lines.  It's as though the word melodrama was invented just to describe classic opera.  Impossible love triangles, terrible tragedies, moments of silliness completely unlike anything in reality-opera is a place where literally anything can happen in the span of a three-hour performance and the audience just soaks it all up.

It is the storytelling at the heart of opera that Anne Patchett manages to convey so beautifully in her novel, Bel Canto.  Bel Canto tells the story of a group of foreign businessmen and diplomats taken hostage during a failed attempt to kidnap the president of a small South American country.  Along with the 59 male hostages is one woman, Roxanne Coss, a world-famous opera singer who was flown in specially to sing for the birthday of a wealthy businessman from Japan.  Once the hostages and their captors have settled in for a long siege, new relationships begin to form, friendships blossom, and talent emerges from the most unlikely of places.

While the premise for the book comes from a real event-the taking of the Japanese embassy in Peru by a group of separatist guerrillas-Patchett admits that the story of what actually happened inside the embassy is known only to those that were there.  Her story is all her own.  The house where the hostages are kept becomes an island of timelessness in a sea of reality.  While those outside the walls continue to think about the future and how the drama will end, everyone inside the house eventually sees it a their only world.  The line between hostage and hostage taker gets pretty blurry, even from the beginning, when it becomes clear that the young people that the "generals" recruited for their cause had no real idea what they are getting into.  Everyone is equally trapped, and eventually the boundaries between adversaries break down.

Perhaps the most important character is Gen (pronounced with a hard G), a translator who came to the party at the side of his employer Mr. Hosakawa.  It is for Mr. Hosakawa that Ms. Coss was brought to the country-he is a great fan of opera, almost to the point of obsession.  After the initial take-over by the rebels, Gen becomes the only person who can speak the languages of all of the parties present.  Through Gen and his translating activities, we are able to access the conversations of characters who would otherwise be silent-Russian and Japanese and French and Dutch all translated in Gen's unemotional style.  But as time goes on, Gen begins to realize that while he is fluent in so many languages, he rarely uses any language, including his own, to share his own feelings and desires.  Pretty soon most of the characters have found other was to communicate, and this I think is one of the themes of the book-the universality of the human experience.

What is really remarkable about this book is the way that the narrative structure reads like an opera.  Once you have it in your mind that the story is operatic, you can pick out passages that would be arias, passages that are duets, places where the librettist felt that there needed to be a bit of "comic" relief.  Long, long paragraphs spanning more than a page, which would feel awkward and rambling in another context, take on the air of a passionate solo performed with a great depth of emotion.  Apparently, the average reader is not the only one who appreciates the operatic nature of the writing-the Lyric Opera of Chicago will be premiering the adaptation of the novel in its 2015-2016 season.

In the end the story is a tragedy, as so many operas are.  As the reader you understand that there is really only one way that this story could end-the only way that any story like this ends.  But still you hope for something to happen, some deus ex machina to come along and pluck the characters you care about from their inevitable destruction.  But just like opera, when the lights go down on this novel much of the audience is left weeping from the beauty and sadness of it all.

Asylum by Patrick McGrath

ISBN-13: 9780679781387

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publication date: March 1998

Pages: 272

Source: Personal Library

Set in Britain during the 1950s, this is a story narrated by Dr Peter Cleave, a psychiatrist over an incident which happened to the Raphaels during his work at a countryside mental institution. Stella Raphael, who is the lead character of this story, is supposed to have a happy family. After all, she and her husband has a ten-year-old son and her husband has the hope of becoming the next superintendent at the mental institution. However, she has done the unthinkable and has an affair with Edgar Stark, who is a patient of Dr Cleave.

Not only that Edgar is mentally disturbed, but he also shows no remorse after he gruesomely murdered his wife and think what he did is justifiable. The reason he murdered his wife is because he thinks his wife had a lover and even a small and mundane gesture would ignite his anger. In other words, he simply has this disillusion that his wife is betraying him.

Not deterred by his past, Stella sees him as charming and a talented artist who shows passion in his sculpture. Their relationship started when Edgar, among many parole patients, is asked to restore an old conservatory which is ruined when they moved into the house. They were living in London before then.

The story then escalates to the point where Stella decides to ditch her family and follows Edgar after he managed to make an escape from the institution. But soon that attraction slowly fades and Edgar began to show his dark side when he starts to get violent with her. What happened then, I shall leave it to you to read it yourself but I would say this is one of the best books I read since the beginning of 2012. Aside from the characterisations, the setting and the plot, what I liked is it is written in a narrative style and from an observer's point of view. Dr Cleave's POV is refreshing in a way that you may view it as a medical case study as well as reading what he had experienced throughout the ordeal.

What I felt while reading this book could be described as a roller coaster experience. There are times I felt intense after reading what Edgar had done with his ex-wife; the things he had done to her are unbelievable and gruesome. Then, there are also times when I felt angry at Stella. I was angry that she failed to recognise the danger she would be in and at some points even gave excuses when Edgar behaves irrationally. After all, how reliable Edgar can be? And what about her family, especially her young son? She did give readers the impression that she is bored with her life; after all Max barely showers her with love and attention, but still . . . to get involved with a mentally disturbed patient is simply appalling.

That said, Asylum is a great literary fiction that had my attention from the first page right till the end. I understand that there is a movie (starring Natasha Richardson, Hugh Bonneville and Ian McKellen) based on this novel which was released in 2005 so I might check that out too.

Zoli, by Colum McCann

Colum McCann finds the world to be a dark, seedy place where nothing good can last.  At least, that's what I think he feels after reading or trying to read two of his books.  Last year I read Let the Great World Spin, as a part of my effort to read more male authors, and more literary fiction.  Reading that review now, I can see that my feelings on McCann's writing are very similar now, having tried unsuccessfully to read his novel Zoli.

Here is what Amazon has to say about the plot of Zoli,

 A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature. 

Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened by the world of books, which is often frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the poster girl for a brave new world. As she shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced by the Gypsy people and savored by a young English expatriate, Stephen Swann. 

But Zoli soon finds that when she falls she cannot fall halfway–neither in love nor in politics. While Zoli’s fame and poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own favor. Cast out from her family, Zoli abandons her past to journey to the West, in a novel that spans the 20th century and travels the breadth of Europe.

Sounds like a sweeping tale of love and transcendence, doesn't it?  Instead, reading it felt like being sunk into a dark, bleak  world where even the most beautiful, innocent things were tainted by something cold and dreary.  At first I was drawn into the world of the Roma in eastern Europe during the early 20th century.  I knew that they had been persecuted, but I didn't know a lot about their traditions or culture.  But eventually I began to feel weighted down with all of the misery of the place.  I suppose that was probably purposeful on McCann's part.  After all, the Roma were persecuted, and we are talking about the start of the Soviet Union and the cruel grip of communism here.  But nothing, and I mean nothing, that I read seemed to speak to the transcendence of the human spirit.  Even the love story was bleak, and felt strangely unemotional.  It is not that I am adverse to reading melancholy, haunting, tragic books.  I read and loved The Road, and found the triumph of the father's love despite the complete destruction of the world to be meaningful, even if the events of the novel themselves were bleak.   A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of my favorite books, and it is undoubtedly tragic and heart-wrenching.  But even within the horror of living as a widow or a battered wife in Taliban Afghanistan, there were moments of tenderness, or beauty, or light.  Not so with McCann's books.

Maybe I am being slightly unfair, since I didn't finish the book.  Maybe the page after I finally gave up started a trend showing something, anything positive in the human experience.  Sadly, I couldn't take the unending dreariness long enough to find out.

Reading Vonnegut for the First Time

As a science fiction fan, I have considered it a personal failing that I had never read any Kurt Vonnegut.  As a pacifist, the fact that I had never read Slaughterhouse Five made that failing sting a little more.  I wish I could say that reading this book was worth all of the years of self-recrimination.  I wish I could say that I finished it.  But the only thing I can say with any certainty is that I didn't get it.

I won't say that I don't understand why this book is considered a classic of science fiction specifically and literature generally.  Vonnegut's writing is by turns funny, poignant, frightening, or evocative.  Slaughterhouse Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an accidental soldier who is captured by the Germans in 1945 and taken to Dresden.  He is there during the Dresden bombings, when the Allies bombed the non-military city of Dresden and killed over 100,000 people.  Vonnegut himself was a German prisoner of war who lived through the Dresden bombing and its aftermath.  But this is not in fact the major event of Billy's life.  Billy becomes "unstuck in time", moving through his own lifeline from prisoner to wealthy optometrist to alien zoo exhibit...yes, I said alien exhibit.  Because the other major fact of Billy's life is that he was abducted by aliens on the night of this daughter's wedding.

OK, I only know the last part because I read the SparkNotes for the complete novel.  Because I couldn't finish the book.  Even with the excellent writing, I could not get into this story.  It wasn't the writing, or the war, or the time travel, or the alien abduction.  The only explanation I can come up with is that my brain just doesn't think the way that Vonnegut's does.  Even though I already knew the destination theme-wise, I just couldn't follow where Vonnegut was leading.  Despite my natural inclination to agree with the book's anti-war message, I wasn't sure how Billy Pilgrim traveling through time and being abducted by aliens was supposed to articulate that message.  Of course, had I finished it, maybe all would become clear.  And that's on me.  I guess I'll just have to continue living my life as a science fiction fan who hasn't read Vonnegut.  But this time I'll forgive myself.

When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka

When the Emperor was Divine is a little gem of a book.  A slim 160 pages, Otsuka's debut novel tells the story of a Japanese family forced into an internment camp in 1942.  Each of the five chapters is narrated by a different member of the family-the mother, who packs away the house and their old life after the relocation order came down; the daughter, who tells of the journey on the train to the Utah desert; the son, who describes life in the camp; and the father, who was arrested and held in a separate facility for the duration of the war and returns to his family a different man.  The characters are nameless, which I assume is a purposeful attempt to portray the family as representatives of the 127,000 Japanese Americans who were "relocated" during World War II. 

Otsuka's writing is spare, but conveys such emotion.  This family lived in an America where their neighbors turned against them, or, worse, pretended they no longer existed.  Their ties to the community where they lived and worked and went to school are suddenly severed, and it is apparent that everyone was too afraid of being seen as disloyal to stand up for anyone-themselves or their neighbors.  There were two parts of the novel that stood out for me.  The first was when the mother was packing up their house in order to evacuate.  From my place in the 21st century I knew there was a good chance that no matter what she did to safeguard her family's things, they would not be there when and if she returned.  But the most painful part was when she killed the family dog, because he was old and sick and there was no one to take care of him.  The second part that struck me was the son's description of his mother's slow slide into depression and hopelessness.  They say that children are adaptable, and in fact the boy never seemed to lose hope that they wold eventually go home.  But even his youthful innocence could not spare him from watching his mother wither and lose interest in the world and what would happen to them.

Finally, after more than three years of imprisonment, the internment camp inmates were given $25, put on buses, and taken back to their hometowns.  Many had no actual homes to return to, and no family or friends to help them.  The opportunistic lawyers and businessmen who promised to collect rents from the people living in their houses or running their businesses had disappeared, along with the money they had promised to keep safe.  No on apologized, or offered any compensation for their losses-but really, how can you compensate someone for their quality of life, for the loss of feeling safe and secure in your own home?  And their neighbors, out of shame or anger, shunned them, which must have felt like a different kind of imprisonment.  Otsuka does a wonderful job bringing her readers into this shameful era of American history.

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

Any long time readers of this blog know my deep respect for Octavia Butler.  She takes the genre of science fiction and turns it into literature that not even the most pernicious lit snob can say is anything other than high quality.  Kindred, Butler's best known work, is perhaps the clearest example I've yet read of the way that she combines issues of race, gender, and class into her work.

Kindred is the story of Dana, a black woman living in California in the 1970s.  Through some process never fully explained, Dana is transported back to the early 1800s whenever Rufus, her white great-great-great-great (you get the idea) grandfather is on the verge of getting himself killed.  Unfortunately for Dana, this unknown ancestor is also the son of a slave-owner in Maryland.  This means that once she is back in time with him, she must adjust her life to the customs of the time, acting the part of a slave.  As Dana travels back and forth between the past and the present, she learns more about what it meant to be black and powerless in the United States than she ever wanted to.  What was abstract to her and her white husband in 1976 becomes terrifyingly concrete in the world of 1830s Maryland.

Kindred is a bit of a cross-over novel, as the science fiction aspect of it is not nearly as important as the story itself.   Perhaps that's why it is her most popular novel, because you don't have to be a science fiction fan to enjoy it.  But I suspect it has more to do with the examination of race and slavery than with a genre preference.  Through Dana's experiences, Butler shows the brutality and cruelty of slavery.  Dana, with her 20th century moral superiority, begins by "acting" as a slave, but after being whipped, beaten, forced into the fields, and nearly raped, she comes to realize how easily people can be made slaves.  Take away a person's humanity, and they will believe they are less than human.  Value a person only because of the work that they can do or the price that they will fetch, and they will start to define themselves that way, even contribute to their own captivity.

It is this idea that is perhaps the most striking in Butler's work, especially given the 1979 release date.  That close to the heyday of the civil rights movement, it must have been a risk for Butler to create the characters of Rufus, who while not likeable does at least become understandable as the slave owner's son, and eventual slave owner himself.  Even though Dana hates what he does, she can't quite bring herself to hate him, though he certainly gives her ample reasons to do so.  But Dana's relationship with Rufus, and the various attitudes of other slaves on the plantation, demonstrate that slavery and people's attitudes towards it were not as clear-cut as history books would make them out to be.  To be sure, the institution of slavery is abhorrent, but those living within it sometimes had to do things that should not necessarily be judged by 20th (or 21st) century standards.  Butler clearly shows how insidious the effects of living under such a brutal system can be, from the need to run away again and again, even after the most horrific beatings, to the need to try and secure your place by serving up another slave's transgressions to your masters, even though you know what the consequences for them will be.  In the end, Dana is able to retain enough of her 20th century self to free herself from the bondage imposed on her by the involuntary time travel, but not without scars, both physical and emotional, that will leave a permanent impression on her, and on the reader.

Sister, by Rosamund Lupton

Sister is a good example of why I refuse to put up my nose at genre fiction.  Billed as a mystery novel with a plot that sounds like something ripped from today's headlines, Sister is actually a novel about love and family and grieving and acceptance.

Sister follows the story of Beatrice, a British ex-living in New York, as she tries to solve the murder of her younger sister, Tess.  Free-spirited Tess, an artist living in London, is discovered in a men's toilet in Hyde Park, an apparent suicide.  Beatrice refuses to believe that her sister would have taken her own life, and begins to dig into the events surrounding the last weeks of Tess's life, looking for a key to her murderer.  Despite the fact that nearly everyone believes that her sister killed herself, and despite the fact that her quest pushes away some of the people closest to her, Beatrice eventually discovers the sinister secret at the heart of her sister's murder.

Let me say first that this is, in fact, a first rate mystery.  The plot is thoughtful and well laid out, and the story is not as formulaic as some mystery/thrillers.  But this book is so much more than just a mystery novel.  It is a love story about sisters, and a story about grief.  Every part of Beatrice's story-told as a letter to her dead sister-drips with raw, honest, sometimes painful emotion.  Every turn of phrase draws you in more deeply to Beatrice's state of mind, her regrets, her guilt, her anger, and her sorrow.  But you also begin to see Beatrice change, from the stodgy women she was quickly becoming, to someone stronger and more alive.  Her sister's death frees her from convention, allows her to become this person who makes waves, who questions authority, who is not afraid to say the hard or uncomfortable things.  Lupton's writing is almost poetic at times, giving the whole story an easy flow that draws you in and engages not just your logical, figure-out-the-mystery brain, but the part of your brain that appreciates beauty, even in sadness.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I was born in 1970.  So while my life overlaps briefly with the Viet Nam War, I have no real memory of it.  What I do remember is going to downtown Chicago with my granny, and later with my parents, and seeing the faces of the homeless vets that were begging on the streets.  Wild-eyed, or blank-stared, the memories of their faces color everything that I have heard, read, or seen about the war since.  And I have heard, read, and seen a lot.  Stories from the fathers of friends who fought in the war, lessons from school, movies like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon-from these sources I have cobbled together a picture of that hot, wet, chaotic, horrific place and time.

But I am not sure that I have truly felt that I had even the faintest understanding of what it might actually have been like.  Not, that is, until I read Tim O'Brien's stunning book The Things They Carried.  Neither entirely fact nor entirely fiction, O'Brien uses a series of short stories and vignettes to tell the tale of Alpha Company, a group of soldiers based, in part, on the real men that O'Brien served with during the war.  The stories meander from stateside to the jungles of Viet Nam, from childhood to middle age, detailing how each experience prepares or informs or explains the person that Tim was or is or may yet become.

I will admit to having some difficulty at first with the non-linear narrative, and with the fact that I was never sure what was true and what was made-up.  But the genius of this work is that you soon realize that it doesn't matter.  In fact, the way that the book is put together and the inability to tell fact from fiction ends up doing a better job describing what living through that experience was like than any straight forward telling could.  O'Brien and his fellow soldiers lived a reality that most of us will never experience, and can never truly comprehend, where time was skewed, day and night traded places, where extraordinary circumstances became ordinary, and where the ordinary world as most of us know it became a dream that you couldn't let yourself believe in.

My favorite section of the book (if favorite is even the right word) is the story of how O'Brien almost ran away to Canada rather than go to war.  Part of O'Brien's extreme talent is an ability to use words to paint not just a visual but an emotional picture for the reader, and I was able to feel how deeply terrified he was at the prospect of war.  I felt his ambivalence about running away, about choosing the possibility of death over the certainty of shame and embarrassment.  But the thing I found most stunning, and the line I would consider the most "controversial" of the whole piece, is this, "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Viet Nam, where I was a soldier, and then home again.  I survived, but it's not a happy ending.  I was a coward. I went to war."
Given the hyper-patriotism of the US since 9-11, and our unquestioning assumption that every soldier is brave and heroic,  this simple statement stopped me dead in my tracks.  It felt almost sacrilegious.  Are we allowed to say that not going to war is more courageous than going?  What does that say about us as a society, that we are find ourselves so often in armed conflicts?  Is it bravery and strength, or is it because we don't want to be judged as wanting by the rest of the world?  What would happen if our young men and women, en masse, simply refused to go the next time we try to send them into harm's way?  Would it be courageous or cowardly?  Regardless of where any one of us comes down on that particular idea, what O'Brien's work has done is illustrate for those of us that weren't there that nothing is as simple and straightforward in war as those of us sitting at home watching it on our televisions thinks it is.

Monsters of Templeton

I admit it, I read this book because Stephen King wrote a blurb for the cover.  I don't usually read the cover blurbs, but when I see and author I love as much as SK has read the book I am considering, I pay attention.  That blurb was pretty much all I knew about The Monsters of Templeton before I started reading.  As a result, I was expecting a horror story...and why wouldn't I?  Stephen Freakin' King wrote a blurb.  What I actually got was something far more complex and indefinable.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff tells the story of Willie Upton, the down and out descendent of the founder of Templeton, Marmaduke Temple.  She has fled back to her childhood home after a disastrous affair with her dissertation adviser.  Pregnant, depressed, sure she is losing her career and her life, she stumbles into town in the middle of the night.  The next morning, much to everyone's surprise, the body of a huge animal floats to the surface of Glimmerglass Lake-the fabled monster Glimmey, supposed-myth turned real.  Into the public chaos that ensues, Willie gets a little surprise of her own.  After years of believing that her father was one of three men her mother lived in a commune with in the year before her birth, she is told by her mother that her father is right there in Templeton, and has been all along.  When her mother refuses to tell her who the lucky man is, she goes on a quest to discover his identity-a quest that takes her back through her family's (and the town's) long and sordid history.

Despite the monster in the lake, and the ghost that lives in Willie's house, there is nothing scary about this book.  The true monsters of Templeton were the people who lived, loved, fought, and died there throughout the years.  In many ways, this book tells the story of a woman who is finally growing up.  Willie, who lived a fairly privileged and idyllic childhood in many ways, just was not able to get herself together out in the "real" world.  Despite the prestigious college she went to, despite her competence in her chosen field (archaeology, the symbolism of which is only now hitting me), Willie can't seem to take that last step into being responsible for herself.  Her pregnancy, her return to her hometown, her realizations about her mother, and most of all her research into her family, finally bring her to a place where she can find herself in the mess of high expectations, failed relationships, and career suicide that she left in her wake.

The story alternates between present-day Willie and characters from the past, and it is this narrative structure that shows how talented Groff really is.  She wrote sections of the novel as the journal of a 19th century woman, as letters between two 18th century women, as the son of the founder of Templeton, as a nameless Indian girl, and as the monster itself.  Each voice felt authentic, and each one revealed a little bit more about the sprawling family of which Willie was a product.  The story is intricate and multi-layered, and I think that the revelations about the various Temples, Upton, Averells, and others were well-paced.  While there is some magical realism, this novel is not really that.  While there are some historical fiction elements, it's not really that, either.  In the end, I think that this book defies any clear-cut description, which to me makes it even more intriguing and enjoyable to read.

Literary Blog Hop-Reading in a Bubble

This week's topic for the Literary Blog Hop, hosted by The Blue Bookcase, is this:

What outside influences affect your reading experience? Do you think these influences enhance or detract from the experience?

 I have to admit that at first I wasn't entirely sure what this meant.  Are we talking physical surroundings?  Environmental noise?  People who are clearly not readers interrupting you to ask you what you are reading (because if they were readers they would never interrupt you!)?

But reading Meghan's answer, I see now that the question pertains to something more subtle and less concrete than that. Meghan's story about seeing a Hallmark adaptation of a book that colored her future reading of the book illustrates that our life experiences with one book in particular or a subject in general can change the way that we perceive a text.  In reading theory, we call that the transactional theory of reading.  The idea that each of us brings different experiences, behaviors, and feelings to a piece of writing, and therefore we each go away from the text with something different.  There may be many places where people's perceptions or feelings about the books overlap-after all, any freshman English teacher can tell you the major themes of Lord of the Flies or To Kill a Mockingbird-but no two people will read and understand a book in exactly the same way.  This is especially true for literary works, where authors' use of symbolism, metaphor, and allegory can lead readers down many paths of understanding based on their own knowledge and experiences.  Non-Christians not living in the US may read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and have no clue that a lot of it is Christian symbolism.  Reading can never be context independent.

So, understanding reading as a transactional process, then my answer to the question of which outside influences affect the reading experience is ALL OF THEM.   Like Meghan could not divorce her mind from the different ending of the movie version of the book she was reading, none of us can put our own knowledge, experiences, and feelings aside when reading.  What to me was a very sexist book about the relationships of husbands and wives (I'm looking at you, On Strike for Christmas) was to my friend a charming story about wifely assertiveness.  A story about an Africa refugee from Nigeria might read very differently to someone of African descent than someone of Asian or European descent.     Our common understanding of theme and mood come from discussion, from sharing each person's own take on the book, from analyzing it from academic as well as personal perspectives.   As a reader, I can often see why an author chose a certain style, and appreciate it for it's artistic merit, but in the end how I respond to a book has more to do with me than with the author.

Top Ten Tuesday: Jerkface!

Thanks to The Broke and the Bookish for hosting this weekly excuse for list-making!  This week's topic is Top Ten Literary Jerks.  Well, I guess the hero/villain dichotomy doesn't really work without Jerky Jerkerson, the jerky mayor of Jerkytown, Jerksylvania, so here are a few I found distasteful.

1.  Anne Coulter-I don't care if she's a real person (and that she isn't literary)!  She's still a bookish jerk!  She is everything that is wrong with the way politics is discussed in this country.  While we disagree about, oh, every single topic in American political and cultural life, I could live with that if she could express her disagreement without calling people names like the playground bully.


2.  Curly, Of Mice and Men-Curly was the boss's son, the little guy who liked to pick fights to try and prove what a man he was.  There should really be a sub-category of jerkiness just for boss's sons.  And to continue a theme...

3.  Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter-While not exactly the boss's son, he was a child of privilege who felt a need to hold it over everyone's head and generally make their lives miserable.

4.  Bill Sikes, Oliver Twist-He takes jerkiness to a whole new level.  I mean, is there any major crime he leaves undone?  Robbery, child abuse, domestic violence, animal cruelty, and murder-he's a one stop criminal shop.  Plus, he's a got a really foul attitude!

5.  Prior Godwyn, World Without End-I've been listening to the second installment of Ken Follett's epic tale of medieval cathedral/bridge building, and while most of the men in the novel make me want to run my car into the embankment with their sexism and superstition, Prior Godwyn takes the cake.  While you have to excuse most of the characters their ignorance due to, you know, the fact that they are living in 14th century England, he is purposefully and willfully deceptive, manipulative, greedy, and dishonest.

6. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, Matilda-While the Trunchbull has made my list of favorite villains and bitc..I mean, mean girls, this category seems prefectly made for Matilda's neglectful, conniving, hateful parents.  Thank goodness for Miss Honey!

7.  Big Jim Rennie, Under the Dome-Stephen King always has some jerky characters in his books, but very few rise to the level of Big Jim.  When the dome descends on his small Maine town, Big Jim, car salesman and city councilman, could have gone into action to help his fellow townspeople.  Instead, he steals their propane, gets anyone who disagrees with him thrown in jail and/or beaten, and tries to protect a meth lab that ends up destroying the whole town when it explodes.  That, and he doesn't even notice his own son has gone off the deep end.

8.  Daniel Cleaver, Bridget Jones Diary-I have to admit that I never read this book, only saw the movie version.  Chick lit isn't really my thing, but the movie had Hugh Grant in it, so there you go.  What I didn't realize going in was that he was the jerkface of that story.  Oh, but what a cute jerkface it is!

9.  Commander Fred, The Handmaid's Tale-Let's see, he and the other powerful men that killed the president and created a theocratic military regime keep fertile women as slaves, refusing to even allow them their own name, all for the glory of God and country.  And the description of the martial bed...ewwwww does not begin to cover it.

10.  Jack Randall, Outlander-When Claire finds herself transported back to 18th century Scotland, the first person she meets is this cruel, sneering man.  He later proves to be sadistic and single-minded in his desire to hurt her and have her husband Jamie as his own.  When Jamie is later captured by Randall, he is tortured and sexually assaulted by him.  Charming.

Literary Blog Hop: How Mushy is Too Mushy?

The Literary Blog Hop is hosted by The Blue Bookcase every other week.  This week's topic for discussion is:

Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature. When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous? Use examples. 


Well, other than it feels slightly like a test question from some literature class I may have taken in college, this is an interesting question.  First, I feel a need to question a basic premise inherent in the questions-namely, that emotion and sentimentality are synonymous.  

The Free Dictionary defines sentimentality as "The quality or condition of being excessively or affectedly sentimental.".  Apparently it is now OK to define a word using the word...at any rate, they go on to define sentimental as "Affectedly or extravagantly emotional.".  Therefore, while emotion is a component of sentimentality, all emotion is not sentimental.  My understanding of the word is as something rather sappy, perhaps manipulative.

Now, I can't think of any readers of fiction that I know personally who want to read books that do not elicit some emotion in the reader.  Most of us want to be swept away in a the lives of the characters, want to learn something about what it means to be human through experiencing the made-up world the author has created.  It follows then that emotion in literature is not only a good thing, but an expected, integral thing.  If literature is meant to mirror and examine the human experience, then it would be impossible to divorce it from emotion.

To me the most important word in the definition of sentimental is "affectedly".  That one word rather sums up my feelings on sentimentality versus emotion in literature.  By nature an affectation is not entirely sincere, and that is how most sentimentality in literature, or anything else, feels to me-insincere and unauthentic.  Strangely enough I can't think of a literary example for the moment, but I can think of some pop culture examples-Lifetime movies and Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

Now, I should say up front that I am a crier.  I love to cry at books or movies.  It doesn't have to be sad or tragic either-I'm an equal opportunity sobber.  I cry happy tears or sad tears or angry tears just as easily for fictional characters as I do for myself.  So the term tearjerker does not hold any negative connotations for me.  But I want that emotion to come from the strength of the story-not from artificial conditions created by a producer (I'm looking at you Ty Pennington!), or director, or author.  I want the emotion to come from someone speaking their truth, whether real or fictional.  I can just imagine the conversations around the table when a new Lifetime movie is being planned-especially if it happens to be around Christmas time.  It's like they have developed a formula for maximum tear potential.  Take one spunky woman down on her luck, give he a few kids to support, add hunky yet gentle guy who helps her love again, stir, and cry.  There are variations on this theme, but generally none of them feel authentic to me.  Then there is Extreme Makeover, Poor-Down-on-Their-Luck Family Edition.  I believe that everyone on that show probably does feel like they are saving the world one sad, miserable family at a time, but I'd rather they took their fake sentimentality and all of the money that show makes and donated it to Habitat for Humanity.

Maybe the reason that I can't think of a literary example is that I tend to shy away from books that appear to have that Lifetime movie quality.  I can think of plenty of examples of books that I love and admire that have strong emotion-The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, to name a few.  But other than On Strike for Christmas, a book I was forced to read by may book club which led to one of my most sarcastic posts ever, I can't think of any real counter-examples.  And that's the way I like it.

The Literary Blog Hop: To Like or Dislike the Hype

The Literary Blog Hop is hosted by the brilliant bloggers at The Blue Bookcase.  This week's question is:

Do you find yourself predisposed to like (or dislike) books that are generally accepted as great books and have been incorporated into the literary canon? Discuss the affect you believe a book’s “status” has on your opinion of it. 

 I think that my feelings on this topic have changed over time.  When I was in high school and college I was much more likely to assume that whatever classic literature they were asking us to read must be of great value, because otherwise why would we be asked to read it.  So I searched for nuggets even in things I hated, like The Scarlet Letter or The Old Man and the Sea.  But as I've gotten older, and I've learned more about the history of teaching reading and literature in our schools, I've come to realize the many, many, many voices that were never heard.  Women, people of color, gays and lesbians-all, with the notable exceptions of the Brontes and Jane Austen, were either left out of the literary conversation all together or had their stories told by others (most often not very authentically).  So, as the years have gone on, I've been less likely to read something that is strictly from the cannon and choose other, more diverse voices instead.  I suppose if I'm not careful I'll swing too far the other way, but for now I'm content to stay away from some of the capital A authors in favor of looking at life through the eyes of a more diverse group of small a authors.

Capital A Authors:

 Small a authors:

 

Life in the Rooster Coop

I have openly admitted my Goodreads bookswap addicition.  While they say admitting you have a problem is the first step in recovery, I can't seem to take step number two.  At any rate, I was browsing one day when I came upon The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga.  I've recently grown more interested in south Asian literature, and this one sounded interesting.  I made my request and eagerly awaited its arrival.  Well it arrived alright-in CD form.  Apparently in my mindless bookswapping high I had requested an audiobook.  Arrggghhh...I am not a fan.  I realize that many people love the audiobook, but to me it feels like cheating.  Like if someone asked me, "Have you read The White Tiger?", I would be lying if I said yes.  But, with a couple of long drives coming up, I decided to get over myself and listen to it in the car.  Lucky for me I did, because The White Tiger is one of those rare titles that shows life exactly how it is, with all of its warts and ugliness exposed, and still manages to make it into something beautiful.

The White Tiger is the story of  Balram Halway, a rickshaw driver's son from "the darkness"-the small, poor, rural villages in the north of India.  He manages to escape his own small village by becoming a driver for a wealthy family in Delhi.  Balram is constantly aware of the wide gulf separating him from his wealthy employers, despite the mere inches of space that separates them in the car.  Through letters to the Premier of China, who is slated to come to India for a visit, Balram shares his life story, as well as his thoughts in class, caste, Eastern vs. Western values, and entrepreneurship.  Balram believes that the poor in India are caged in a rooster coop, and that every time one of the roosters tries to break free, he is pushed back in by the masters, even as the other roosters try to peck him to death.

Balram is the perfect narrator for this tale.  Smart, though uneducated, he brings to life the inequities that continue to exist in modern Indian society.  We watch as he becomes more and more dissatisfied with his lot in life.  As a child he seemed to believe the lie that the poor are told-that they are not as smart/talented/good as the rich, and that they should not seek to rise above their predetermined station.  But as he spends time with his wealthy employers, he begins to see the petty, ruthless way in which they treat the poor as something ugly and unfair.  While he starts out admiring his master, Ashok, he comes to despise him for having the same weaknesses and flaws that plague all humans.  As his rage grows, he is led to dramatic action-an action that will change not just his life, but the lives of his entire family. 

Adiga's portrayal of Balram, his employers, and the dual nature of Indian culture could be a metaphor for just about any family or society.  One the one hand, India at the beginning of the 21st century is a place of corporate offices, call centers, luxury apartments, and glittering shopping malls.  But leave the walled compounds of the rich and successful behind, and you enter the India of the slums.  Dirty, full of people scraping whatever living they can out of the underbelly of the city-a place where dreams and hope go to die.  Beggars living on the streets, entire families living in tents beside rivers of sewage.  At times Adiga's descriptions of the living conditions literally make you hold your breath to hold off the stench that you can imagine must exist in these poor neighborhoods.  What Balram calls "entrepreneurship" seems to me to describe not a knack for business, but a knack for survival, a knack for finding a way to be a "man" in a society that wants you to remain an animal.  As Balram says, for 10,000 years the rich and the poor have been at war, each trying to bring down the other.  If only all poor Indians had the "entrepreneurial" spirit, they could smash the rooster coop.  But Balram doesn't really believe that this is possible.  Only once in a generation will someone (a white tiger) be born that has the ability and strength to break free.