John Irving: you let me down, bro

Ok, I've read 8 books since my last post, so I suppose it's time to get on here and update before it gets seriously out of hand.

As of my last post, I was just starting in on In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner, which ended up being one of the better chick lit books I've read in a while (certainly much better than the monstrosity that was Mr. Maybe).  I watched the movie after, but it paled in comparison.  Perhaps if I hadn't read the book I could have enjoyed the movie, but I'm not sure... 

Next up was The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  This was a good one; a reeeeeeeally good one.  While the backdrop is the 1960's south and in turn issues involving racial tension are strewn throughout, it somehow had a different feel than other novels dealing with the same time period/issues.  I can't pinpoint what it was, exactly, but it set it apart for me and resulted in a pleasurable reading experience.  I watched the movie about a week ago, which I also enjoyed.  It felt true to the book for all the important scenes and the hollywood liberties taken did not (for me, anyway) alter it to the point of affecting my enjoyment of the film.

Now...let's just take a moment here to point out a trend you might be picking up on.  Namely, that most of the books I've been reading have hollywood counterparts.  This is largely due to the fact that my selection of most of these books (all being the books I purchased at the used book sale), was immediately preceded by me uttering "ooooh!  I heard that was a good movie!"  I figured if the movie was supposed to be good then the book must be good (if not better), right?  Not the most solid logic, I'll give you that, but it seems to be panning out quite well so far.

Ok, continuing on with the books.  My next selection was The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.  It will make you outraged at the socialite "stay-at-home" moms who actually do no staying at home or mothering, but rather leave the care up to the nannies they use and abuse; but it has a lot of funny moments, charming moments and is a nice easy summer read.  I ended up seeing the movie as well (I feel no one should be surprised by this at this point), but didn't find that as enjoyable.  I believe this may have been due to the fact that I watched it too soon after finishing the book; at any rate, I found the book to be a much more pleasurable experience.

And now, my message to John Irving: you let me down, bro.  Last Night in Twisted River was my first real endeavor into his writing.  A long while back I read a small amount of The Cider House Rules, but I don't recall finishing it; if I remember correctly, I felt it was too soon after I had seen the movie so I wanted to wait a while before trying it again, but then never got around to checking it out again.  Sadly, this first "real" experience with his writing far from left me with the desire to feast on more of it.  For starters, the beginning drags on horribly.  I was quite concerned when, almost 100 pages in, I was still utterly bored and nothing had happened that seemed to be remotely linked to what the novel was supposed to be about.  On a similar note, at least 200 pages could have easily been thrown out; it was simply far too long, and unnecessarily so.  There was so much repetition and nothing ever really happening, it was one of the slowest, most grueling reads I have endured.  Also, I found an issue with the style of the novel.  While I understand to an extent why there were large gaps between chapters/sections (the book was spanning 5 decades, sooo unless we wanted it to be over 1000 pages, there's no way they could go through every event in detail), too often what resulted was me being left feeling nothing about the events that did happen.  For example, the first HUGE moment in the book - the one that defined everything that was to come for the rest of the book - happens and then right as the main characters have to face the outcome, end section and suddenly it's 10 years later.  This happens with every section; and while the next section will provide some sense as to what the main characters felt/endured in the intervening 10 (or more) years, the reader doesn't get to experience the immediate aftermath and in turn never gets to feel along with the characters.  This results in most characters feeling flat.  Now, there were some parts that did become intense and captivated my attention more, but then there would be another 100+ pages of non-action for the characters and literary repetition (as in literally repeating sentences from earlier in the book).  Like I said...brutal.  I also noticed on Goodreads that there were numerous negative reviews from even the most devout Irving fans, involving these issues as well as other criticisms one would only pick up on having read other Irving works.  If you read this and choose to check this novel out anyway, don't say I didn't warn you.  As for me, it will be a while before I can consider checking out another John Irving novel, but I do hope to get to that point eventually as there are a couple that have been at the top of my list of books I want to read.  

After the John Irving experience, I knew the next selection needed a light, quick read, and Death by Chocolate by G.A. McKevett provided me with exactly that!  I actually enjoyed this one much more than anticipated.  I later found out it's part of a series, so I may have to check out some of the others. 

After that, I chose to dive into some Nicholas Sparks novels.  I purchased 3 of his at the book sale and was pretty excited to read some of them.  I know that at some point back in the day I had read The Notebook, but I honestly don't remember enjoying it that much (cue shock and gasps from those readers who LOVE that book).  It could be a similar situation to The Time Traveler's Wife, where I was so utterly in love with the movie version before reading the book that I couldn't enjoy the novel because of how different it felt.  Since it was so long ago, I really don't remember.  At any rate, when selecting works of his from the book sale, I chose to buy some whose film adaptations I have not yet seen.  First up was A Walk to Remember.  I didn't have high expectations but ended up finding it to be quite pleasing!  It was a short read which I plowed through in less than a day.  Mr. Sparkles, er Sparks, pulled on my heartstrings as he likes to do, but that's ok.  It was sappy romance at its finest.  I did NOT see the film version of this one, because I do draw the line somewhere...namely, at Mandy Moore's first acting gig.  I simply don't have any interest in seeing it, so I'm not going to.

After that pleasant experience, I opted for another Nicholas Sparks selection with Dear John; this one wasn't as enjoyable as A Walk to Remember, but kept me interested nevertheless.  What I did find, unfortunately, was repetition in the characters between this one and A Walk to Remember.  Some dialogue (inner and outer) matched exactly in each novel.   It wasn't too over-the-top, though, so I let it slide.  It was another nice and easy summer read, and my heartstrings were pulled yet again.  *sigh*  What's that, you say?  There's a movie version of this one?  Yes, I did watch it and it was ok.  Nothing amazing, nothing horrible.  They changed the ending big-time compared with the book, but that was fine with me because the ending of the book was far more disappointing. 

And finally, the most recent completed entry: A Lesson Before Dying; the literary masterpiece by Ernest J. Gaines.  Truly, this was a magnificent novel.  At first it seemed the main character was kind of whiny and annoying, but then as the book progressed, it became clear why he felt/acted the ways he did and that, along with the struggles faced by the other characters, created a story that is deeply moving.  I challenge anyone to get to the last few pages and not choke up.  If you do, you should check to make sure you have a heart.  I didn't even know this one was made into a movie until I looked it up a moment ago.  Apparently it was made for the small screen as opposed to a big theatrical production, but stays true to the writing and the main character is played by Don Cheadle, whom I love as an actor; so I'm sure I will be checking that out sometime in the not-too-distant future. 

Next up for me will be Everybody Loves Somebody; a collection of short stories by Joanna Scott who, as Ilya pointed out to me, is/was a U of R professor.  Goodreads has a pretty low overall rating for this one, so I'm slightly wary going in.  The entire book is only half as long as Last Night in Twisted River though, so if I survived that I'm sure I can handle this!  Plus, as I'm sure you can see I am a twee bit in the lead here, so I can handle one that takes a bit longer to get through.  However, while my opponent is certainly not faring too well at this current juncture, I still feel that he could come back at any time, so I must not get too comfortable with my lead!

Outside of reading, life has been a bit hectic the last couple of weeks.  I was working lots of overtime at work and we had a scare with our sweet little fur baby Gizmo.  He was in a lot of pain one night, and after taking him to the emergency vet and regular vet for follow-up, it turns out to be something involving his neck.  We're not entirely sure what, or how to prevent him injuring it again aside from limiting his activity.  So that is what we have been doing (and man oh man is that ever fun...).  Our living room/downstairs has been redecorated with a bunch of laundry baskets for the time being (laid all across the couch when we're not on it to prevent him from jumping on/off the couch and some turned upside down to block the stairs inside the apartment so he can't go up and down those).  He seems to be doing/feeling better, which is great!  He's on some pain meds, though, so we'll see what happens once those run out.  ;)  For now he's just enjoying the high, which is also known as sleeping lots (see photographic evidence of this phenomenon).  

That's about it for the Gandelmans.  Ilya's birthday is coming up (August 6th), so I am in the process of figuring out what I will be doing for that.  He has already submitted some requests for food, so that part is pretty much decided; I have yet to find the perfect gift though.  I'm sure something awesome will present itself in time though.  It always does!  And now I must step away from the internet/computer and finish up all the weekend household activities before having to start another work week.  Cheers!

The time has come to pull my head out of the books and write a post!

Ok, I'll start with the elephant in the room.  I am still CRUSHING my opponent, currently being 13 books ahead in the challenge.  Luckily, Ilya is a good sport and loves having such an avid reading partner so much that there's no animosity or rifts growing in our household.  Plus I still assert my current butt-kicking is not necessarily an accurate measure anyway, as Ilya continues to read mind-challenging and thought provoking books, whereas I am clearly in summer beach-reading mode (a/k/a mind-numbing chick-lit).  

As for the books I've read since my last post, there is a lot of ground to cover.  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was great!  It was something I found from a pin on pinterest that listed books "so good you can't put them down."  Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect and hoped it wouldn't be too similar to Water for Elephants.  While that remains one of my favorite books, I didn't want to read a copycat, ya know?  Well, The Night Circus did not disappoint.  Far from it, in point of fact.  It had a dark undertone and involved "real magic!", instantly setting it apart and ultimately proving that the pin was correct, because it was difficult putting it down to do other things (like, you know...work, sleep, etc.).  

Next up was My Life in France by the one and only Julia Child.  Now, I read Julie and Julia and saw the film adaptation and loved both, and of course Julia Child holds a special place in my heart for her amazing cookbook, which contains my absolute favorite chocolate cake ever (the reine de saba cake).  Truth be told, though, that recipe wasn't even hers, as the dessert section of the cookbook was admittedly entirely made up of recipes by one of the co-authors, Simone Beck.  Anyhoo, I digress... I went in expecting to love the book.  What's not to love, right?  Reading all about living in France and eating delicious French food!  I am not entirely sure why it didn't strike my fancy, but let's just say it was the polar opposite of The Night Circus for me in terms of being able to put it down.  It took longer to read because I just couldn't get into it.  It felt unnecessarily long and if I'm being honest, Julia comes off rather full of herself.  Granted, she kind of needed to be in order to achieve everything she did, but it just struck me the wrong way I guess.  I didn't hate it, didn't love it, it was just there for me.

Ahhhh next, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  This had been on my list of books to read but I hadn't gotten to it yet and didn't really have any idea what it was all about either, though I knew the movie was coming out.  In my usual fashion, I planned on reading the book before seeing the movie.  However, a couple weeks ago Ilya and I had wanted to go see X-Men at the drive in.  Unlike the previous week, however, when it had been paired with Godzilla, the week we were going it was being paired with The Fault in Our Stars.  So at first we decided we would go and see a different set of films (The Edge of Tomorrow and Godzilla), which we did on Friday night.  The desire to see X-Men was strong, though, and the drive-in is such a great deal price-wise.  Plus we get to bring Gizmo!  So we decided we would go back the next night and bring our books and book lights so that if The Fault in our Stars was boring, we could read during that and then watch X-Men (which was the 2nd movie in the line-up).  Well, there was no need for the books... the movie was SO good!  For some reason I hadn't expected much acting-wise from it, but that wasn't actually based on anything and the acting turned out to be phenomenal.  And so like any girl who has seen this movie, I cried big, fat, ugly, salty tears.  After seeing the movie, I couldn't wait to read the book, so that is what I read next.  There were differences, of course, but I feel that in this instance both the film and the book were great in their own right.  Also, this is a rare occurrence where I believe it actually helped to not have read the book before seeing the film.  The movie-watching experience was much better without knowing everything that was going to happen (then again, contrastingly, does that make the book experience less since I knew everything that was going to happen?  At any rate, it didn't feel that way for me).  So basically, both book and movie were outstanding and I don't know why you're sitting here reading this instead of reading or watching one of them now! ;)

My next book was Every Day by David Levithan.  This was an interesting and fun read, kind of a mix of ideas in the movie Being John Malkovich (insofar as the body-hopping that was going on caused the soul or what have you of the body being inhabited to be pushed back and taken over, where the current resident has full control over what the body does) and the TV show Quantum Leap (the main character hopped from body to body and tried not to mess up the people's lives while being in control of the body).  There were questions raised, of course, as to the ethics of such body-hopping and ultimately the reader is introduced to the idea that there are other body-hoppers out there, and they might not all be as kindhearted as the main character (though how kindhearted is he really, with everything he has been doing in the book?).  Of course there's a cheesy, completely unrealistic romance thrown in (this is a young adult book, after all), but nevertheless I enjoyed the book immensely.  Apparently there is a "sequel" in the works, though not really a sequel, per se, but rather a story of the same set of events as Every Day, but from the point of view of the love interest.  I am skeptical... 

Next up was Looking for Alaska by John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars).  This was a fairly short read, but crammed a lot in.  It's a coming-of-age/finding yourself story told from the point of view of a boy heading off to boarding school for his junior year of high school, seeking adventure (or, as he calls it, "The Great Perhaps").  It is funny yet sad, thought-provoking while entertaining.  I'm secretly hoping this one gets turned into a movie too. Apparently there was a screenplay written at some point, but it didn't get picked up.  Hopefully this will change after the success of the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars!

The next book was 100% chick-lit, not much to be said.  Been There, Done That by Carol Snow.  Over-the-top events that would never, ever happen for any person in the real world.  It was entertaining and kept me interested, but it wasn't one I would read again or put at the top of the list of my favorite chick-lit reads.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane was amazing!!  Interesting, full of mystery and intrigue, it kept me captivated throughout the entire book despite the fact that I saw the movie.  Granted, that was almost 4 years ago now, so I didn't remember too much about it.  I did remember the main shocker from the end (Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time?!), but didn't mind because it allowed me to read the book seeing the hints along the way leading up to the big reveal.  I just wonder if, reading it without any knowledge of what's to come, I would have picked up on these hints or not.  Sadly, I will never know.  After reading the book, I definitely want to see the movie again.  We own it on the PS3 (back 4 years ago I had a phase where I would convince myself it made more sense to buy the movies on there as opposed to renting them on there, because they were so expensive to rent and chances were I'd love the movie and watch it many more times, right?  Yeah...that wasn't the case very often), so Ilya and I will probably be watching that this weekend at some point.

Lastly, another piece of chick-lit, Mr. Maybe by Jane Green.  This book was so horrible...really just awful.  The main character was the most self-centered, snotty, superficial and materialistic "woman" (in quotes because the way she acted was like she was still a child).  There just didn't seem to be any part of the book that was even remotely relatable or that could even remotely feel like "ok yeah!  Maybe that could happen!"  I suppose all chick-lit is like that to an extent, but this was just too much.  What's worse, it was trying to convince the reader that this wretched excuse of a human being could be atrocious while still landing a sweet, down-to-earth guy (who, by the way, witnesses first-hand her materialistic, wretched behavior).  This isn't like Confessions of a Shopaholic materialistic either.  I'm talking she dismisses this guy at first because he doesn't have a nice enough apartment or money to buy her things and let her live a life of luxury.  She lists off what she wants in a guy and it all relates to money - how many houses they will have, how much money they will have.  She gets engaged to a different guy she didn't even want to go out with in the first place, isn't attracted to (he has a wretched mustache), doesn't even like (he has the personality of a cement block), because he can give her the life of luxury.  The problem is, sure there are gold diggers out there in the world, but I just feel they wouldn't be having an internal struggle in the way this character supposedly was.  If anything, their struggle would be straight-forward... "I'm marrying this guy for his money...this seems wrong, but I just love all this stuff."  Her struggle was supposedly all because she was getting older and fearing she wouldn't ever meet anyone, and thinking she needed to go for this guy because he treated her so well (based solely on the fact that he showered her with expensive gifts), and trying to convince herself she could make herself love this rich dude.  Ugh... also, she's clearly got some serious mental issues from how she describes the things she does pushing guys away in relationships.  Of course none of this gets addressed, she just supposedly has a lightening bolt moment of realizing she wouldn't be happy with the rich guy (yeah...probably because she isn't happy with herself!  Not really...she apparently decides she just wouldn't like living the life of luxury anymore...yeah right!).  Anyway, this has gone on long enough.  Point is, there's a lot of chick-lit out there, a lot of which is really enjoyable and fun to read.  This was none of that.  Don't waste your time.  

Now I am reading In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner.  So far it is vastly superior to the aforementioned atrocity.  I forgot to mention too that the last 4 of these entries have been books I purchased at the used book sale a few weeks ago!  Ilya mentioned the book sale in one of his posts, I believe.  I ended up buying 25 books there so I am stocked up!  A couple of them aren't new to me, and actually were read already for this challenge (Water for Elephants and The Reader), but they're ones I want to own, so what better time to buy them than when they're only $1, right?  I was able to find all of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, so whenever the time comes where I want to dive into those, at least they're all here in my possession.  Ilya says the best book sale is in September at the library closest to us.  Apparently they only have one a year, so there's always a TON of books.  I can't wait!!  I better keep plugging away at the ones I bought from the last sale so I can justify coming home with another 25 (or more)!

As for our lives aside from reading, we've just been enjoying all the nice weather we've been having here, cooking out, going to the drive-in, playing with Gizmo outside and sitting out on our balcony.  It looks like maybe next weekend is going to break the streak and be rainy, so we're soaking it all in this weekend while it's still here!  It's nice and scenic out on the balcony now that the trees in the woods have fully bloomed and I have completed the hanging garden.  We love having reading time out there!

 
For Father's Day, I put together a couple collages of photos of Ilya with Gizmo, since he is such a great "dad" to our fur child.  This is a true transformation story, I tell you!  When we started dating, Ilya had never had a pet, was pretty terrified of Gizmo and very reluctant to interact with him.  In fact, the first time he was over, Gizmo of course wanted to go over to him on the couch and snuggle, lick his face, etc., but Ilya was definitely not on board.  I tried holding Gizmo back as long as I could, but his desire to snuggle with humans is really intense, so finally I had to lock him in the crate for the rest of the time Ilya was there.  :(  That was 4 years ago and look at them now!  He cares so much about Gizmo and takes such good care of him.  It melts my heart, I tell ya.  I love these guys!!  So now I'm going to go spend some quality time with them.  I hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend!

Where have you gone, Aristotle? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

The three short Le Guin novels in Worlds of Exile and Illusion were all well-crafted adventure stories. Rocannon's World and City of Illusions were both organized around a quest, and Planet of Exile was about a group of people mounting a defense against a siege by an enemy far superior in numbers. As stories, they're what we might call centripetal: they seek chiefly to be as true as they can to the setting and the characters, to tell what happened; any "larger" meaning, any commentary on contemporary society, any attempt to underline that this sort of thing is what generally happens, is secondary, at best.

The Word for World Is Forest started as a novella, written half a decade later (1972) than the trio in Worlds, for the second of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthologies. The novella was nominated for a Nebula Award and gathered much general praise; in 1976 Le Guin expanded the novella into a novel, which is what I read. I've heard the title of the novel in connection with the profuse accusations of "rip-off" directed against James Cameron's Avatar. I think that allegedly pejorative term is nonsensical (generally, not just in this specific application); nevertheless, there are marked and definite similarities in the premise: Forest, like Avatar, is about humans who come to an alien world and try to exploit it to the point where the aliens, previously peaceful and harmonious, strike back. (The aliens, this being the same 'verse as that of the Worlds novels, aren't actually aliens in the strictest sense, but humans evolved to suit a new niche.)

To bring this around: unlike the novels in Worlds, there is a much stronger emphasis in Forest on the notion that what happens in the novel is just what happens; it's centrifugal, seeking to depict and comment on something in life, outside the story. The story is clearly suggested by the roughly contemporaneous conflict in Vietnam, and there's even an explicit reference to that war in the dialogue. The Worlds novels end with the protagonists achieving some more or less satisfactory (to them) state of affairs, whereas Forest is tragic: the aliens have learned to resolve conflicts through violence, and can never again regain their original peacefulness and innocence; and I would be remiss as a voracious reader of Northrop Frye if I didn't point out that tragedy is generally far more intent than comedy on making the "this is what happens" point. The temptation when reading these four novels in order of composition is to read them as describing an arc, a development in Le Guin's philosophies and narratorial skillz. So then: does this new emphasis represent an advance in Le Guin's skills, or a retreat?

It certainly seems as though the advance opinion is quite popular. Well, look: writing tragedies has been for quite some time now a much more respectable profession than writing comedies. I've heard it said that that's (perhaps) because only the portion of Aristotle's Poetics that deals with tragedy has survived, and so comedy is basically evaluated, by most critics, using tragedy's standards. Who's surprised when it fail to pass the exam? Don't get me wrong: I'm an ardent devotee of the tragedy genre myself, but still there's got to be a way of looking at the opposing genre other than "tragedy with a copout ending." Perhaps I myself have been a devotee of tragedy too long to find this new method (or to understand and embrace it when it's flat-out presented to me by someone like Northrop Frye), because I must admit that Forest was a swift, exciting read. Now, the Worlds novels were swift reads too, but in a way that felt lightweight, maybe even underdeveloped, like the stories weren't going to stick with me for very long. It can be so difficult to escape even such a small piece of cultural programming.

That said, the next two books I read certainly illustrate, in my opinion, the potential lightweightness and insignificance of tragedy. Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident is an indictment of mob justice, framed as a Western, and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, a play, tells the story of the conflict between Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII over the latter's split from the Catholic Church over the issue of his divorce. Both are books I picked up at the library booksale. They're both terribly serious (see above for Ox-Bow, and as for Seasons, it ends [OMG TEH SPOILERS] with Sir Thomas More being executed for daring to take a principled stand), and neither is much good at all. Let me offer an example in support of that thesis statement. Bolt prefaces his play with a Dramatis Personae explaining who everyone is and what they're like. One major character, who in the body of the play will be persecuting Sir Thomas More, is summed up as "an intellectual bully." I wish this were Bolt insightfully cutting through the complexities of the character, but unfortunately the character as presented in the play really has no complexities to cut through. He rests on the level of the summing up: a bully, and that's it. The whole play is rather like that: simplistic; nor is Ox-Bow much better. Really they're more lugubrious than tragic. Yet apparently that's close enough: they both got a lot of love, back in their day: critical praise, awards, fame, Hollywood adaptations into Oscar-bait "films." Suffering is clearly just very prestigious.

Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft was my fourth booksale read. It's heavy on the memoir and fairly light on the writing advice, but I picked up a couple of things that interested the aspiring author part of myself. The first item is a corroboration of something I've been thinking for a while now. As a successful author, King's been asked a prodigious number of times, I'm sure, the ubiquitous question of where his ideas come from (as though it's the idea, and not the skill with which the idea is executed, that is responsible for the success of the resulting work). His answer is not devoid of the usual mystery, nor can I disagree that a certain amount of mystery belongs there, but he also points out (and this is what I have observed and believe) that an inextricable part of the process of formation is that a new idea is an amalgamation of two or more older ideas. Thank you, Stephen! I expect that's why ideas aren't property, legally (at least at present); and why they shouldn't be property, morally; as well as why they can't be property, practically. If ideas weren't in the public domain, regardless of their originator, how could imaginative writers, or for that matter anyone who participates in any form of public discourse, continue that participation? Earlier in the entry I wrote the following: "I've heard it said that that's (perhaps) because only the portion of Aristotle's Poetics that deals with tragedy has survived, and so comedy is basically evaluated, by most critics, using tragedy's standards." Just imagine if I had to pay someone to be able to write that sentence?

The other idea is an illustration of a mindset that I might do well to aspire to. King writes that he thinks of a story as something like a fossil: existing before he commits it to paper, before he works out all the details, really before he's thought up the initial idea. The writer's job is to get as much of the fossil out of the ground of the imaginative subsconscious as possible (never all of it) while doing as little damage as possible. I like that. I don't know if it's something I can use.

Next I returned to the library books. Not long ago, the Library of America published two volumes of sci-fi novels from the fifties. I read the first two novels in the first volume late last year but then had to return the book (it was recalled). But then whoever recalled it returned it in their turn, and I borrowed it again. Now I have completed the first volume. The novels I read last year were The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth and More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon; I was intrigued but not astonished. The back half of the volume were Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow and Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I was astonished per se, nevertheless they're two very solid offerings.

People, people, people: let me tell you whom we're dealing with here. Leigh Brackett's name is on the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, and she also worked with the director Howard Hawks on the scripts for Rio Bravo and The Big Sleep, the latter alongside the great William Faulkner; while Richard Matheson (only recently deceased) wrote a bunch of novels that Hollywood has historically been extremely eager to adapt (The Shrinking Man itself as an example, but another is I Am Legend [adapted so far thrice!]), a buttload of classic Twilight Zone episodes (up to and including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," that one where William Shatner tries to convince a planeload of people that there's a gremlin on the wing), and also a little TV-movie called Duel that attracted enough attention to launch its director, this one young guy named Steve Spielberg, into theatrical films.

Brackett's The Long Tomorrow is set in a post-nuclear war America. The radioactive consequences of such a war are elided with a curious silence, but otherwise it's very good. The war having wrecked the entirety of the infrastructure of American society, most of the population has joined the segment of that society most suited to survival without the modern conveniences: the Amish and Mennonite commmunities. Almost a hundred years after the war, Americans live in such small, relatively isolated communities, and the establishment of a city, which is to say any community above a certain, very limited size, is forbidden by a Constitutional Amendment. Two young scions of such a community, however, yearn for something more: for forbidden knowledge. Following rumors of a hidden town that still possesses all the conveniences and scientific knowledge of the past, the two eventually make it to the hidden town, where they can live happily ever after, watching TV while sitting on their modern plumbing implement. The End... or is it? No, it's not. Yes, another writer might have ended the story at the point where the knowledge-hungry protagonist and his like-minded (more or less) cousin achieve, or appear to achieve, their objective, but Brackett isn't out of ideas yet: she keeps writing, examining whether the protagonist is actually happy with the objective, once achieved, whether it fulfills and satisfies his desires and expectations. Brackett explores how the cause of knowledge-seeking can breed, as does the life in Mennonite hamlets and villages, its own fanaticism on the one hand, and instill its own disillusion and dissatisfaction on the other.

Matheson's The Shrinking Man depicts the plight of a man who starts shrinking 1/7th of an inch every day, alternating between flashback recountings of his procession from full-size to midget to posable action figure, and harrowing present-time depictions of his struggle for survival, less than an inch in size and still shrinking, in the cellar of his house: securing food and water and doing battle with a monstrous black-widow spider. After all, what's the point, really, of telling the story of a miniaturized man unless you devote substantial attention to his miniaturized adventures? Supposedly, the cellar the Shrinking Man is trapped in, is Richard Matheson's cellar as far as layout; he sat in his cellar every day while composing the novel, looked at his surroundings, and wrote the day's text on whatever his eyes fell upon. The novel reminded me of nothing so much as a swashbuckling version of The Death of Ivan Ilych (I suspect I may be referencing that story for a while). The Shrinking Man feels separated, increasingly, from his old life, his family, all his former concerns.

Both The Long Tomorrow and The Shrinking Man (and for that matter The Space Merchants and More than Human) find happy, or at least promising, endings for their protagonists, of varying quality. I would have trouble, however, defining either novel as a comedy. Definitely not in the laughter sense; but even in the happy-ending sense, the novels both seem not so much classically comic as tragic with an eleventh-hour distribution of compensations. SPOILERS FO' REALS. The Shrinking Man is convinced that he will cease to exist the day after he reaches the size of one-seventh of an inch, but when that day comes he is granted a sort of reprieve: though continuing to shrink, he continues to exist, and sets out boldly in search of new domains of knowledge and experience. This ending seemed a touch on the naive side to me: the Shrinking Man wonders what his future will bring, but his wondering is optimistic; he never seems to wonder if it'll bring more spiders or deadly amoebae or hostile protons or what have you. The Long Tomorrow seems more balanced: having passed through a stage of doubting the secret town's aims, to the extent even of escaping from said town, the protagonist figures out his spiritual-intellectual crisis and makes a decision, this time with a far cannier and wiser mind, to return to the town and participate in its mission.

The next book I plan to read is that classic happy-ending tale, The Odyssey of Homer. I read The Iliad last November in the George Chapman translation, which is the translation that got John Keats hot and bothered enough to write a really famous poem of praise about. Now it's time to move on to Chapman's version of Homer's cash-in sequel.

Shapes of the Mind

And so it is June. I am ten entries behind in The Contest. Le sigh.

Even though I worked a full and comparatively difficult day on Saturday, the rest of the weekend was just wonderful:

First, while I was working my beautiful and ingenious wife came across an opportunity for the two of us to attend a performance that very same evening -- for free! -- of our local and quite prestigious classical orchestra, and seized it with the appropriate zeal. The performance was of two pieces: first, a suite of themes from William Walton's score to the marvelous 1944 film Henry V, directed by (and starring) the great Laurence Olivier. I saw the movie on Turner Classic Movies some few years back and really enjoyed it: it's a very lively, colorful, storybook version of Shakespeare's history play. Though of course opinions may vary: I recall that I persuaded my grandmother to watch it also and she found it overly artificial. But I remember enjoying it quite: what she called artificiality I interpreted as what I've already called that storybook quality. It was made in the darkest days of World War II as propaganda for the British war effort (or, if one wishes to be treat the motives behind the movie more gently, we can say it was made to "boost British morale." I think it was Henry James who said somewhere that "true art should uplift the heart"). I distinctly remember the TCM host at the time (Robert Osborne, I expect) telling me the viewer that, due to the shortages of wartime, Olivier had to marshal his scant resources very wisely (the chain mail seen on the soldiers was actually, I believe, all wool) and ended up using some ridiculously high percentage (80? 90?) of shot footage. (IMDb trivia confirms the wool story but says nothing about the percentage of footage, alas.) The movie is available nowadays in a DVD published as part of the Criterion Collection; it is not, however, at present in the part of that collection available on HuluPlus. Boo.

But I didn't especially recall the music. It turned out to be excellent, by turns boisterous and movingly melancholy, presented alongside "narration," which is to say an actor read passages from the film/play, along with a piece of another play that was pulled into the film: the film shows the death of Falstaff, who doesn't appear in Henry V the play but only in its prequel plays, the two parts of Henry IV. (As Falstaff dies, we hear Henry's rejection of Falstaff ["...but being awake, I do despise my dream"] from Henry IV, Part 2. Then there's a piece used in the film that isn't even from Shakespeare but from his contemporary, Christopher Marlowe, his play Tamburlaine the Great [also in two parts]. That was also read, and confused me a little because I didn't recall the borrowing, not having yet read Tamburlaine when I originally saw the movie.) The actor performed the passages with impressive and entertaining gusto. I was in heaven.

Speaking of heaven: after the Walton suite, and an intermission during which Mer had to chug some boiling-hot coffee for lack of time to properly savor it, we moved on to a piece about the heavens, Holst's The Planets, which, for those of you that don't know, purports to describe the astrological characteristics associated with seven planets of the solar system. The most famous part of the suite is the first movement, "Mars, the Bringer of War," a rhythmic, driving piece of music that's influenced much film music. (Example: many of the battle scenes in Hans Zimmer's score for Gladiator.) The other six movements ("Venus, the Bringer of Peace," "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age", etc.; that sort of thing is what's meant by "astrological characteristics") haven't been quite as thoroughly mined for inspiration, but they have their famous passages as well. I enjoyed the evening thoroughly, though Mer stated she would have preferred if Holst had perhaps thought to end The Planets with "Mars" for a bigger finish than the suite presently contains. (It actually kind of fades away. They do say it's better to burn out; but that may just be a rock and roll frame of mind.)

(A quick digression here: though when Mer informed me that she had obtained, or could obtain, these tickets, which by the way [a digression within a digression?] turned out to admit us to an extremely expensive and desirable piece of orchestra-watching real estate, I immediately made with the happy noises, I was also prompt afterwards in scoping out the evening's program. And may I just say how glad I was that said program consisted of such melodic offerings and nothing atonal! My tolerance is not high.)

But this blog is about books and the reading of them which we do in this our life. So: where did we leave off? Oh yes: Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, "something of a departure." Earlier in the year I read Pushkin's story "Kirdjali" in the collection titled The Captain's Daughter, and though I see I didn't write anything about that book at all, "Kirdjali" is, I think, an exemplar of the tradition of bandit tales that Tolstoy was both joining and reacting to. It's about a bandit (the title of the story is his name) who has all sorts of crazy exploits, and Pushkin's narration of each is capped with the refrain, "Such is Kirdjali!" At this point I only remember the refrain; the story itself evaporated like unto the morning dew. Tolstoy's treatment of the subject in Hadji Murad seemed a little weightier. My understanding of the historical situation is entirely absent, but what I gathered from the story is that the Russian Empire is expanding into the Caucasus region, and some of the indigenous inhabitants are less than altogether thrilled. The bandit/rebel at the heart of the story, the title of which is once again his name, betrays his rebel buddies and goes over to collaborate with the Russians. Around this switcheroo in loyalties, Tolstoy builds up a picture of society on the Russian frontier (and elsewhere: there is an episode, for example, describing the Czar in St Petersburg, and how his moods and whims affect the orders he gives regarding how to deal with Hadji Murad's defection to his side). It didn't bowl me over like The Death of Ivan Ilych but I think it would repay revisiting.

While I was reading Tolstoy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez died. I've read my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude a couple of times, but to mark the sad occasion I opted instead, once I was done with Tolstoy, for the famous Garcia Marquez work that I hadn't read, Love in the Time of Cholera. The ambition of the latter novel seems just a touch more modest: it covers the passage of only fifty years instead of a century. Easy peasy. The fifty years are a half-century of unrequited love on the part of the main character, Florentino Ariza, for his first love and the love of his life, Fermina Daza, who spurned him to marry another man. While Florentino waits, with a preternatural assurance, for the other man to die off so he can get another chance to proclaim his love to Fermina, he whiles away the time with a prodigious number of love affairs, passions great and small. Unlike Solitude, nothing overtly magical happens in the book, yet it's suffused with a magical, miraculous outlook on life itself. I really enjoyed Solitude both times I read it, and after it Love was in no way a disappointment; which seems like pretty high praise to me.

Then I read Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, the book he went to Walden Pond to write, a reminiscence of his journey over the titular waters with his brother. There's more digression than reminiscence, and while I enjoyed the digressions the book didn't really build to anything much. Also, I found this odd: Thoreau carried the idea for the book around for several years, years during which his brother died, but I certainly have no idea why the Week was so important to him, what it meant, and there's no sense whatsoever of the relationship between the brothers or of the brother's character and personality. Apparently Thoreau's purpose in writing the book was something altogether different from that sort of memorial. I don't want to knock Thoreau's book though, given that I clearly didn't grok the purpose behind it very much at all.

I turned to Thoreau out of a desire to whittle down my supply of library books. Being that they are almost endlessly renewable, I haven't been making much progress through them at all; but Thoreau got me started. I turned next to an omnibus volume of Ursula K. Le Guin's first three novels, set in the same universe as her more famous scifi novels The Left Hand of Darkness (which I've read) and The Dispossessed (which I haven't). The novels are Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions. The universe, made clearer in these early novels than I recall it being in Left Hand, is one in which humans have settled various worlds and evolution has worked its way with them so that the inhabitants of one planet have become a different species than the inhabitants of another. ("Different species" is meant in a strictly scientific sense: unable to interbreed so as to produce fertile offspring.) Now, preparing against the coming of an intergalactic alien foe, some worlds among this diaspora are attempting to form a League of Worlds. Their task is made difficult by the fact that they have no faster-than-light travel, at least not travel that living flesh can survive. They do, however, have instantaneous communication. (As I understand it, the novel The Dispossessed is in part about the development of this device, called the ansible.)

Le Guin is what hard SF fans have classified as a writer of "soft" SF: she deals more with matters of characterization than, say, Arthur C. Clarke would, and the basis of her futuristic extrapolations are frequently the social sciences like anthropology and sociology. (I believe it's "the done thing" to mention at this point that her father was a famous anthropologist.) It was amusing therefore to find the following passage a few pages past the prologue of Rocannon's World, which in light of the above I couldn't help but see as something of a mission statement for Le Guin as much as for the protagonist of the novel:

But what if lightspeed and even FTL bombers were very much like bronze swords, compared to the weapons of the Enemy? What if the weapons of the Enemy were things of the mind? Would it not be well to learn a little of the different shapes minds come in, and their powers?

Yes, let us learn of the mind!

Also while I was at work on Saturday, Mer discovered that one of the branches of the county library was having a book sale. I hope, Gentle Reader, that you have the pleasure of knowing the kind: 50 cents for a paperback, one dollar for a hardcover: cheap bliss. She bought 25 books! Today, in turn, as the book sale waned, was half-price day: even cheaper, even blissier, and so it was my turn to go. I hit the artsy-fartsy classics section hard and then browsed around for serendipitous finds, coming away with 13 books for under four dollars. So I guess the library books will have to get renewed a few more times. One of the books I bought was also by Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest, so I figured to start in on that as soon as I finished with the omnibus.

Which I've now done; but this entry is already sufficiently lengthy. Until next time, Gentle Reader --

The Post of Shame

Pile on excuses in 3...2...1...

1) Beautiful weather has hit and we don't want to sit in front of the computer writing posts. 
2) There have been lots of gatherings with friends/family and other outings taking up our time.
3) It just doesn't feel like there's anyone out there actually reading what we throw out!  Therefore, it's easy to say eh... it doesn't matter when we post, we'll just do it later.

I know, I know... bad bloggers!  I did summon Ilya to write an update, as he has still been reading fairly consistently since our last post, but he hasn't had the time (as we all know, his posts are a bit more in depth and insightful than mine, and so they take a pretty significant chunk of time).

Unlike my better half, I have been on a bit of a hiatus, engaging in some of my other favorite fun activities instead of reading.  I have now joined back in the game, though, setting aside The Cuckoo's Calling for now (it didn't seem to grab my attention before) and opting instead to check out The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  I'm really enjoying it thus far, and am currently about halfway through.

In an attempt to hold Ilya to his duty of providing an update on here, I will keep this brief so he doesn't have an excuse (me having already provided a thorough update) to keep putting it off! 

We're coming back to you, books, I swear!

Ever notice how life gets busier when the weather gets nicer?  Probably because it's finally nice enough outside to want to GO outside!  Plus, we've had birthdays, Easter and our anniversary to celebrate, car issues to take care of and I have been busy with making dog treat and/or baskets for the charity fundraising at work.  Fortunately, all of that is done now and we're hoping for some more reading time again!  So don't abandon us, fellow readers (do we even have fellow readers?  I feel like all we do is throw this information out into a deep void).  The weather is supposed to be rainy and colder here all week and I have no after-work responsibilities, so it's the perfect conditions for a productive reading week! 

Spring has sprung! Well...until Tuesday, I guess

Pages read today: 34 for Meredith, 107 for Ilya

The weather here was beeeeeeautiful today.  The sun was shining all day and I believe it almost hit 80!  This was the first time it has actually felt like spring here.  So after clearing out all the leaves and debris that have accumulated on the balcony since winter began, Gizmo and I relaxed out there most of the morning, soaking up the sun and nature-watching (our balcony faces out to a wooded area).  Gizmo LOVES being outside, as you can see (the air smells SO good!).

I had wanted to get my balcony garden going too, but since this is Rochester, NY, the weather can change at the drop of a hat and, apparently, will be doing just that on Tuesday when it is expected to dip back down into the 40s with SNOW!  Uncool, I tell ya.  So sadly, the balcony garden will have to wait a bit.  The rest of this weekend was spent with the usual cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc.  I have been making an effort to try out new recipes for the most part each week from my Pinterest boards, because I currently have about 800 trazillion recipes pinned and continue pinning more on a daily basis.  At least if I'm trying them out then I feel somewhat justified in my continued pinning.  This weekend's recipes were all new and all came out soooooo good!! There was a huge trend in the recipes, namely cheese, and also beef (every recipe except for 1 used beef, and they ALL used cheese!).  So no wonder we loved all of them, since we are huge cheese lovers (and are quite cheesy ourselves)!

This weekend also consisted of baking of dog treats and assembly of a dog gift basket.  The company I work for is involved in several charities and conducts fundraising activities/events throughout the year.  Right now we are engaging in the United Way campaign and this week there will be a week-long auction of various gift baskets.  As I was already making a couple similar dog baskets for a raffle at a cancer benefit for a friend last weekend and had a lot of extra stuff, it would be silly for me not to make one for this too!  

Gizmo LOVES helping in the treat-making and is a very eager volunteer for quality control (if you look hard you'll see him, lurking in the back off to the right, behind the couch...he shot up immediately after smelling the treats come out of the oven).  I tried out some new recipes because I will also be baking the dog treats for the bake sale that my work will be doing the last week of the month (also for the United Way campaign).  Gizmo seemed to approve of them all!

As for reading, it seems it's been quite a while since I've updated on here regarding my completed entries.  Labor Day was a good one.  It was a captivating story and had me hooked from beginning to end.  While reading it, I noticed that I kept envisioning the characters as the actors portraying them in the film version (though I have not seen the film yet...having a preference of reading the books first), and thinking what a superb choice Kate Winslet must be for this role.  She masters her depressed/troubled/borderline crazy roles (The Reader, Revolutionary Road, Carnage, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).  Surprisingly, the only thing that bothered me a little about the book was the ending felt drawn out, trying to wrap everything up neatly in all areas.  I know, I know, I'm always complaining about endings that felt rushed, however this was the other extreme and almost felt a bit contrived.  Overall, though, I really enjoyed the book.  So much so, in fact, that I was eager to read another Joyce Maynard book, and so chose to read After Her... though my experience with this one was nothing like that with Labor Day (except for the ending!  Same kind of drawn out, tidy everything up in a nice package to try and make the reader happy).  It did not have the same flow and felt like the book had been written all over the place out of order, as there were certain things explained several times (when it had already been explained, in almost the exact same words, several chapters ago).  At times it just felt like a checklist for the number of victims being tallied up and felt really overly drawn out, like a good chunk of the book was just space-filler.  It just felt like a mess and was not something I would recommend or ever read again.
Lastly, The Graveyard Book.  Also somewhat disappointing for me, after having come off The Ocean at the End of the Lane, another of Gaiman's which I absolutely loved.  It's not that I didn't enjoy this one... I mean it's still the same beautiful and elegant Gaiman writing.  The issue may have been as simple as the fact that this one is one of Gaiman's children's books.  It was eloquent and masterfully written, but it just wasn't the same experience as others of his.  Had I read this one as a child, however, it probably would have been one of my favorites.  It just seems like one of those books that would be so much better if reading it when you were younger. 
And that leaves us in the present, in which I am reading The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling, writing under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  It's a crime novel, and so far that's all I really know.  We'll see how it goes.  I would say keep the pages turning, but have been told that is Ilya's sign-off (and so is basically copyrighted).  Sadly, I'm not clever enough to come up with anything brilliant so....