Sunday Salon: Literary Nemeses

Earlier this week, I posted about my unfortunate first experience reading Wuthering Heights. I didn’t like it much on first read because I was expecting a love story, but I did find it interesting. It wasn’t until I read it a second time that I could enjoy it. That got me thinking about revisiting literary nemeses.

There are lots of books that have grown on me on repeated readings. I wrote earlier this year about Persuasion, as one example of a book that I thought was only pretty good on first read and grew to love later. But most of the books that fall into this category are ones that I liked at least a little the first time. Why, after all, would I go back and read something again if I didn’t like it?

Well, there are some books that I tried when I was too young for them. Jane Eyre went over my head when I tried reading it at age 12. I think I gave up before the halfway point. But I knew at the time that the problem wasn’t the story, but the language and the length. I picked it up again in high school and loved it.

Then there are that books that, as an English major, I was required to read more than once. Wuthering Heights is one example. Another is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I read it as a senior in high school and did not like it at all. The long sentences, the plot in which not much seemed to happen, the lack of a single likable character. There was nothing about it that I appreciated or enjoyed. It was a slog, pure and simple. However, when I had to read it as a senior in college, I liked it much more, even though it’s still not a favorite. (I prefer Conrad’s The Secret Agent.)

There are other books that were simply the wrong place to start with a new-to-me author. The Nice Tailors was the first Dorothy Sayers book I tried to read, and I gave up quickly. All that technical talk about bell-ringing! Soooo not my thing. But then after reading most of Sayers’s other mysteries and falling in love with Lord Peter, I found that when Lord Peter is involved, technical talk about bell ringing is indeed my thing.

So I wonder if there are other books I disliked when I read them but that I’d enjoy now. So many people whose taste is similar to mine love Mrs. Dalloway, but in college I found it tedious and pointless. Now that I’m older, would I see the point of it? Alias Grace is a favorite for many Margaret Atwood lovers, but the last half bored and frustrated me. I hadn’t read much Atwood when I read Alias Grace. Would I like it more now that I’m more used to her writing? It’s hard to say, and I’m not making it a priority to revisit either of these books when there are so many great books out there that I’ve never attempted to read at all, but I do wonder.

How about you? Have you ever gone back to a book you didn’t like and find that you liked it? Do you have any literary nemeses that you’re considering revisiting someday?

 

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Notes from a Reading Life (October 24-November 8)

Books Completed

• Armadale by Wilkie Collins (review to come November 13)
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (audio, reread)
• Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Currently Reading

• How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson.
• Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (audio).
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (reread).
• The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. Lessons in writing poetry. I’ve reached the chapter on ballads.

On Deck

• The Regency by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

New Acquisitions

• Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe. Via Bookmooch. 
• Sea of Poppies by Amitov Ghosh. Via LT Early Reviewers. 
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. For Classics Circuit Gaskell tour in December. 
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Dubois. For Classic Circuit Harlem Renaissance tour in February.

Books to Remember

• Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott. Reviewed at Save Ophelia.
• Stoner by John Williams. Reviewed at Asylum.
• Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Reviewed at Gaskella.
• Come Closer by Sara Gran. Reviewed at Things Mean a Lot.
• The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins. Reviewed at A Work in Progress.

In the Place of Fallen Leaves

The summer of 1984 was a hot, dry summer in England. I know, because I was there. My family lived in England for a year, between June of 1984 and August of 1985, and I remember the headlines: Heat Wave Burns Britain! Drought Scorches Crops!

In the Place of Fallen Leaves, by Tim Pears, chronicles that summer in a small village in Devon. Alison, a 13-year-old girl, is the narrator. Her teachers have gone on strike, and the endless, hallucinatory, impossibly hot summer becomes even more endless because school won’t start until the strike ends. In deceptively beautiful, gentle prose, Alison describes her family: her grandmother, blind and opinionated; her hardworking mother; her father, whose memory has been erased by alcoholism so he behaves like an eight-year-old; her brother Ian, steward of the farm and heartless charmer of women; her independent sister Pamela; and her wordless brother Tom, more comfortable with the pigs than with other human beings.

The entire village is laid bare to the curiosity of a young girl. She knows her neighbors’ secrets, including those of the book-loving rector and the Portuguese woman at the other end of the village. She attends church mostly for the coolness of the marble floors and pillars, and tells the history of the village relationship with God. She swims in the quarry and the drops dry on her skin before she even finishes getting out of the water. Weather and death and love and sex: Alison has knowledge that has come down to her through generations, and also the particular knowledge that comes at the age of thirteen and never comes in quite the same way again.

This was Tim Pears’ debut novel. It’s wonderful. The prose is exquisite, and the portraits of human beings caught in a hot, syrupy summer are perfect. It reminded me of L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (though the plot is quite different) for its evocative use of heat and childhood to show off the best and worst of adult behavior: our frustration, our irritation, our need for forgiveness, our deep connections. I’ve been recommending this to everyone ever since I finished it, and now I’m recommending it to you.

Invention of Everything Else

Nikola Tesla was an inventor and engineer known for his work with alternating current, magnetic fields, and radio. His accomplishments were extraordinary, but before reading The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt all I knew about him was that he was a scientist who discovered some amazing stuff (although I couldn’t have said what). Hunt makes Tesla a character in this, her second novel, and readers are treated to an exploration of both Tesla’s discoveries and his eccentricities.

Set in New York City in the 1943, the novel alternates between Tesla and Louise, a chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker, where Tesla is living out the final years of his life. Louise’s great loves are radio drama, her widowed father, and snooping in hotel guests’ possessions. Despite the snooping, I liked Louise right away. She has a sort of anti-social streak that I could relate to. She doesn’t participate in the chatter of the other chambermaids as they dress in the hotel locker room; she likes her chambermaid uniform because “it is a cloak of invisibility” that “allows her to be alone with her thoughts and her cart of cleaning supplies.”

I also liked how Hunt depicted Tesla. In the latter years of his life, Tesla showed signs of mental illness. He continued to work on his inventions, most notably on a “death ray,” but he was also devoted to the pigeons of New York. One in particular became a sort of confidante that Tesla referred to as his wife. Hunt immerses the reader in Tesla’s present state, but she also takes us into his past, both through the writings that Louise finds in his hotel room and through his own mental wanderings. The juxtaposition of his former brilliance and his later state made me think of how quickly we dismiss the eccentrics in our urban landscapes. There’s so much we don’t know about the people around us.

Another part of the book’s charm was in its sense of place and time. Hunt writes wonderful descriptions of New York life in the 1940s. At times, the writing gets a bit over the top, but it’s generally not a distraction, and it’s often quite evocative. Here’s a sample:

On her way to work Louisa heads over to Fifthieth Street where she can catch the Eighth Avenue IND. Most days she walks to work. It is not too far away, twenty-odd blocks. But the wonder of the subway lines stills thrills Louisa, so on cold or nasty days like this one she allows herself the small luxury of paying one nickel to ride the train down to the hotel. As she approaches the station she can smell the subway from above ground. It smells like rocks and dirt. She walks faster, hearing a train arrive. It forces warm air up the stairwell out onto the cold sidewalk like a tongue. As she pays her fare, the train pulls out of the station. Louisa hears another rider, one who missed this car by a narrower margin than she, moan long and low, whimpering as though he were a movie-house vampire exposed to the first piercing rays of sunlight. When Louisa arrives on the platform this man is mumbling, repeating the word damntrain, damntrain, damntrain, under his breath.

I could have done without the vampire image, but the rest put me right there with Louisa.

Where Hunt really goes over the top is with her attempt to pack too many ideas into this 250-page book. Louisa and Tesla and their eventual meeting are enough for a book of this length (or even longer), but Hunt throws in threads related to time travel, a potential love interest for Louise, an ambiguous three-way relationship between Tesla and two friends, the relationship between Louise’s parents, and the experiments of Thomas Alva Edison. Some of these threads take only one chapter; others are woven throughout the narrative. All of them have potential to further the plot or deepen the character development, but most of them aren’t necessary. I would much rather for Hunt to have chosen a couple of strands and given them her full attention instead of putting in so many different elements and not providing enough time for an adequate payoff. Was it necessary, for example, to hint at mysterious origins for Louise’s love interest, Arthur? No, not really. Had Hunt spent more time building suspense related to Arthur’s origins, it might have added significantly to the plot, but the hints never go anywhere.

In the end, the lingering effect is that the book itself is a sort of “invention of everything else,” instead of one coherent creation. Like a kitchen junk drawer, the book contains many treasures, but they don’t quite make sense together.

For additional reviews, see Gaskella, We Be Reading, Farm Lane Books, Lizzy’s Literary Life, dovegreyreader scribbles, and Savidge Reads.

Wuthering Heights (audio, reread)

This is not a love story! That’s the first thing any potential first-times reader of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë must understand, lest they be as disappointed as I was when I first read this book as part of my English class my senior year of high school. I was expecting an epic romance that would tear my heart to pieces as I worried over the fate of two great lovers. What I got was a story of people doing a lot of wicked things in the name of love, but rarely doing anything actually loving. I was horrified! I couldn’t believe this book had been called a great romance. But I was also fascinated. I didn’t like any of the characters in the book much, but I couldn’t look away from them. And the more I thought about them, the more interesting they became. However, it wasn’t until my second time reading Wuthering Heights, this time for a college class, that I came to truly enjoy the book. This third reading continued the pleasure.

Wuthering Heights focuses on two houses and the connections between the two families within them. The first house, Wuthering Heights, is home to the Earnshaws, specifically Catherine Earnshaw. Early in the book, Catherine’s father brings home a little boy named Heathcliff. His origins are never made clear, but Mr. Earnshaw wants him raised as a member of the family, and Heathcliff and Catherine form a tight bond. After Earnshaw’s death, however, Catherine’s brother Hindley banishes Heathcliff to servitude.

Heathcliff’s new status does not diminish Catherine’s affection for him. They continue to ramble together on the moors. It is on one of these wanderings that their connection with the novel’s other great house, Thrushcross Grange, begins. Thrushcross Grange is home to the more refined Linton family, and Catherine is welcomed into their home and into the heart of Edgar Linton, the son and heir. It is here that the novel takes a drastic turn. Catherine and Heathcliff’s childhood romance does not, perhaps cannot, carry them into adulthood. But the passion remains, and it haunts them for the rest of their lives and threatens to destroy the next generation of Earnshaws and Lintons.

The relationship at the core of the novel, that of Catherine and Heathcliff, is driven by passion. But passion is not the same as love. Heathcliff wants Catherine desperately, but his version of love is about possession. When Heathcliff cannot have Catherine, he reacts with violence and hatred. His actions are not those of a romantic hero; they are the actions of a sociopath. This is a man who set a trap over a bird’s nest, starving the little birds inside, who hangs his wife’s dog, who locks up a woman in a room for five days so he can force another young woman into a marriage of his design. He’s not some bad boy with a heart of gold. As Catherine herself says, “Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior. He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.”

Catherine’s character, on the other hand, is less clear. She loves Heathcliff, but she claims also to love Edgar. She tells Nelly, “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.” She feels the conflict between these two loves for the rest of her life, sometimes despairing in the pain of it, and sometimes revelling in playing the two against each other.

Adding to the lack of clarity is the fact that the story is filtered through the mind of Nelly Dean, who has been housekeeper at both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Nelly herself is part of the action. She seems to be everyone’s confidante, and she has her own shifting loyalties. The question of Nelly’s honesty lies at the back of the narrative. She doesn’t seem to sugar-coat any of the characters’ actions, but it does seem that she might shade the story in ways that reflect well on her and on her status as a trusted servant.

Wuthering Heights may not be a love story, but I am growing to love it more with each reading. It will probably never supplant Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as my favorite Brontë novel, but the complexity of the story and of the characters make the Heights a place worth returning to.

See additional reviews at Of Books and Bicycles, Savidge Reads, Vulpes Libris, and Books I Done Read. See also the recent Wuthering Expectations series on sympathetic characters.

Freshman Reading — Your Help Needed

I teach at a small liberal-arts college in the northwest USA. One of the things we have here (as more and more colleges do) is an introductory course for first-year students, intended to give them a sense of college work, give them a bond with a small group of fellow students, give them a regular meeting time with their advisor (who is also their professor for the course), and give them a common reading experience. It’s the latter that I need your help with.

I’m on the committee that is supposed to help choose a common reading for all the first-year students. They’ll read it over the summer and write a paper about it, then arrive at college for the first time and discuss it with their professor and fellow students. The book can help set the tone for the semester and even the year. What do you think they should read?

A few guidelines to help you choose, though you should on no account feel stuck with these if you have other good suggestions: the book should have broad appeal to students with a wide range of interests and possible majors. In the past, we have liked books that have had some form of international focus: recent successes have included inspiring books such as Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea and Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains. In 2005, our book happened to be Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, and we had some very productive conversations when Hurricane Katrina hit. My own suggestion to the committee (though it doesn’t have an inspiring resolution, so they probably won’t take it) is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, about the culture clash between a Hmong immigrant family and the medical community trying to help their daughter.

All suggestions welcome — you, as a group, are so much better read than I am! Please overwhelm me, and tell me exactly what you would love to have read when you first arrived on campus.

Sunday Salon: No Fear Classics

” If the classics are so damn good, why aren’t people lining up outside bookshops to buy them?” That’s the question Mark Bastable asks in this hilarious and insightful article at BiblioBuffet that I first discovered via Pages Turned. Go read it—now. It’s worth it. When you’re done, just click that handy back button, and you’ll find me waiting here.

…

Okay, so did you read it? Good. Wasn’t it fabulous? Bastable makes some great points about how not all classics are fun for everyone, but that classics can be fun, and that the more you read them, the more fun they become. But for many readers, the trick is getting over the intimidation or getting past the memories of being forced to read classics in school that weren’t a good fit. So, inspired by Bastable’s post, I’d like to offer some tips for readers who want to dip their toes into classic lit but don’t know where to start:

1. Get recommendations from real readers you trust. Don’t rely on “great books” lists and the like. They are helpful, but they often include too many different types of books and don’t necessarily take readability into account. Jenny and I have reviewed lots of classics and so do many of the bloggers in our blogroll. (Off the top of my head, I’d suggest Rebecca Reads, A Striped Armchair, Stuck in a Book, and Savidge Reads as enthusiastic and frequent readers of accessible classic literature.)  Some good classics-focused events are the Classics Challenge, in which participants read a classic of their choice; the Really Old Classics Challenge, which focuses on literature prior to 1600, and the Classics Circuit, which focuses on a specific author or type of classic each month. Check these out to get reviews from actual readers like you.
2. Consider your tastes. Not every classic is for everyone. Just because a book is “great” doesn’t mean it’s a great read for you. When trying to choose a classic to read, consider whether you’d read a contemporary book with that premise. If not, an additional cultural and language barrier of 50 years or more isn’t going to help.
3. Look for your favorite genre. If you love science fiction, try a classic science fiction writer, like Asimov or Wells. If you’re into mystery, try a “Golden Age” writer like Allingham, Sayers, or Tey. If romance is your thing, consider Austen or Heyer. Like comedy? You can’t do better than P.G. Wodehouse.
4. Start small. Many great classic novelists also wrote short stories. Pick up a good short story anthology to get a taste of several at once. Be aware that not all authors write equally well in both forms, but a short story can help you get a better sense of an author’s voice.
5. Watch the movie first. I know—sacrilege! But I do believe that good film adaptations can help if you’re having trouble understanding the language or forming a good mental picture of the setting. I don’t ever remember my mother reading classic literature when I was growing up, but she fell in love with the film versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and decided to try the books. She loved them and has gone on to read more Austen without seeing the movies first.
6. Try and try again. As Bastable says, “even people who are seriously into classic literature don’t like all of it. Nobody could. You’d have to be suffering from some kind of multiple personality disorder.” There are plenty of classics I don’t like. I hated Mrs. Dalloway and The Sound and the Fury and The Red Badge of Courage. To dismiss all literature more than 50 years old because you don’t like Dickens is like dismissing all green food because you don’t like spinach. If you try a classic, and it doesn’t suit you, that’s fine. Follow these suggestions and try another. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So, dear readers, if you don’t read classics, what’s holding you back? If you do, what tips would you provide for the reluctant classics reader?

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Notes from a Reading Life (October 11–23, 2009) 

Books Completed

• The Victory by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin (audio)

Currently Reading

• Armadale by Wilkie Collins
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (audio, reread)
• The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. Lessons in writing poetry. Preparing to venture into odes.

On Deck

• Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

New Acquisitions

• Nothing! 

Books to Remember

•  Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby. A memoir about the evacuation from London in WWII recommended at Book Snob.
• Claudine in School by Collette. Collette intimidates me for some reason, but Eva’s review makes this sound like a book I’d like .
• Spell of the Tiger by Sy Montgomery. I love big cats (and little ones), and this book that Eva mentioned about man-eating tigers and the people who live near them sounds fascinating.
• Prince Rupert’s Teardrop by Lisa Glass. Kirsty’s review at Other Stories brought this book about a mentally ill woman and the disappearance of her elderly mother to my attention. Written by one of the fabulous book foxes at Vulpes Libris.
• Tree of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. A co-worker told me about this novel that plays with typography and format and still manages to be seriously creepy.
• Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick. Nicole’s post at Linus’s Blanket about this book and the related challenge mentions several of my favorites from my tween and teen years. I was so excited to see those titles mentioned that I had to add the book to my list. 

Read-a-Thon Updates!

Today is the big day!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’m not in for the whole 24 hours, but I’m going to read as much as I can today, updating on this post as I go. Unfortunately, I woke up sick last night. I remains to be seen whether it was just something I ate or if I’ve picked up a bug or a dreaded flu. However, to be on the safe side, I’m cancelling my ushering gig tonight, which may mean I’ll get more reading done. But I may find I’m too sick or too tired from the hour I spent last night….um….eliminating my problem to get much reading done. I’m not pushing myself. When the words on the page stop making sense, I’ll go to sleep or put in a movie if I can’t sleep. (Would minutes spent watching a faithful literary adaptation count?)

For every page I read I’ll be giving 10 cents to these literacy projects at Donors Choose. Although I’m doing most of my reading today, along with other Read-a-Thoners, I read a bit yesterday and plan to read a bit tomorrow. Pages read on those days will also go toward this effort.

Most, if not all, of my reading will be from Armadale by Wilkie Collins, although I have some graphic novels, chick lit, and YA in reserve if I finish or get too tired for Collins.

Friday Reading

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 13–70.
• Number of Pages: 57
• Time Spent Reading: 1 hour, 56 minutes
• Money Raised: $5.70

Saturday Reading

Hour 3 Update: 10:30

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 70–120
• Pages read since last update: 50
• Running total of pages read since you started: 50 (plus 57 yesterday, total of 107)
• Amount of time spent reading since last update: 1 hour, 55 minutes
• Running total of time spent reading since you started: 1 hour, 55 minutes (plus 1 hour, 56 minutes yesterday)
• Money Raised: $5.00 (plus $5.70 yesterday, total of $10.70)
• Mini-challenges completed: Intro Meme (See below)
• Other participants you’ve visited: Hey Lady for the mapping activity, Everyday Reads, and Pages Turned.
• Favorite quote: “A bachelor of studious habits walking about my grounds,” said Allan, “is not an interesting object; a young lady is.”
• Observation(s): I’m a bit astonished that people have finished whole books already, but then I remember that I’m reading a 600-page book written in a style that does not lend itself to fast reading (and I’m a reasonably fast reader in general). Also, I can’t believe people on Twitter are slagging on the idea of the readathon—and really on reading in general. I mean, you can think that if you like, but why bother to tweet it? Thanks to all for your comments so far. I’m feeling a bit better and hoping the problem really was just something I ate and not a harbinger of the dreaded swine flu or something. Don’t have much appetite back.

Intro Meme

• Where are you reading from? Alexandria, Virginia
• 3 facts about me: I have a three-legged cat, I have a mad crush on David Tennant, and I love live theatre almost as much as I love to read.
• How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? I’m focusing on one book, Armadale by Wilkie Collins. It’s a tome, so it may very well take all day, but it’s exactly the kind of book I like to devote long stretches of time to. I have a good half dozen light reads around if I get tired.
• Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon? Well, I’d love to finish Armadale.
• If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time? If it stops being fun, take a break! This is not They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 

Hour 7 Update: 2:20

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 120–210
• Pages read since last update: 90
• Running total of pages read since you started: 140 (plus 57 yesterday, total of 197)
• Amount of time spent reading since last update: 2 hours 26 min
• Running total of time spent reading since you started:  4 hours, 21 min (plus 1 hour, 56 minutes yesterday)
• Money Raised: $14 (plus $5.70 yesterday, total of $19.70)
• Mini-challenges completed: Beth Fist Reads’s Eat to Read Mini Challenge (see answer below)
• Other participants you’ve visited: At Home with Books and The Book Lady’s Blog.
• Favorite quote: “I am in one of my tempers to-night. I want a husband to vex, or a child to beat, or something of that sort. Do you ever like to see the summer insects kill themselves in the candle? I do, sometimes.”
• Observation(s): I am still loving Armadale and finding it harder to put down. Kristen commented that I’ll probably get through the final pages quickly, and I can see why. I love the characters, and the plot is really starting to thicken.
• Eat to Read Mini-Challenge answer: My appetite is not entirely back after being sick overnight (and my temperature is slightly elevated now), so I’m not eating much. I’ve tested the waters with some dried mango and a ginger cookie. (Ginger seems to always settle my stomach.) If I had ginger ale and saltines, I’d be all over that, but right now even the food pictures on others’ blogs are making me queasy. (Yes, that’s a downer of an answer, but there it is.) I might make some plain pasta later.

Hour 11: 6:20 pm

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 211–314
• Pages read since last update: 103
• Running total of pages read since you started: 222 (plus 57 yesterday, total of 279)
• Amount of time spent reading since last update: 2 hours 48 min
• Running total of time spent reading since you started:  7 hours, 9 min (plus 1 hour, 56 minutes yesterday)
• Money Raised: $22.20 (plus $5.70 yesterday, total of $27.90)
• Mini-challenges completed: Nymeth’s Time for Comics Mini-Challenge (Report below)
• Other participants you’ve visited: None.
• Favorite quote: “Doubts troubled him which he could neither understand nor express. Curiosity filled him , which he half-longed and half-dreaded to satisfy.”
• Observation(s): I’m now a little over halfway through Armadale, and the villianess is AWESOME! She’s just so awful, but people don’t see it. I love to hate her! And this is absolutely a book to set aside a day for, because if you don’t you’ll be in danger of missing work and life and everything because you will not want to put this down!!! Yes, I like it. I have also managed to eat a bit more, and there have been no food related disasters. After I finish this update, I am going to make some plain pasta. If I hadn’t gotten so sick last night (and it was soooo not pretty), I would  right now be at the Studio Theatre ushering a show. I hate backing out of ushering gigs, but I’m still not sure I’d be fit for handing out programs. It’s entirely possible that I’m feeling better because I’ve hardly left the sofa today, so I’m glad I didn’t push my luck. Plus, I can keep reading Armadale!
•  Time for Comics Mini-Challenge: For Nymeth’s Challenge, I read some of the comics at Unshelved and the Unshelved Book Club (book reviews in comic form). My favorite was the review of The Tipping Point and Freakonomics, although I also got a kick out of the one about A Wizard of Earthsea.

Reading Is Fundamental Mini Challenge

Joy’s challenge is to share thoughts about RIF, reading to children or reading as a child. (There are lots of options.)

I can’t remember not being a reader. My mom read to me before I could read for myself, and I was hooked on those books and record sets. You know, the ones where the reader says “you can read along with me” in your book, and there’s a chime telling you when to turn the page. I can still hear the narrator of Black Beauty saying “I had one white foot and a white star on my forehead.” I always carefully followed along with the words, and I’m convinced that that helped me learn to read—I was already reading a little when I started school. I also had tons of Little Golden Books. Most of my books when I was really little were Little Golden Books. The first chapter book I remember reading was The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. Cleary was a favorite, although I never got into the Ramona books. (Those were just getting popular when I was getting too old.) But I’d read most anything—my mother says she had to take my books away from me and make me go outside and play. (If she’d didn’t take my book, I’d just read it outside.) Reading has been a huge part of my life ever since.

Mid Event Survey
1. What are you reading right now? Armadale by Wilkie Collins

2. How many books have you read so far? It’s just Wilkie and me today :-)

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? Seeing if I can finish Armadale.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? No. I ended up cancelling an ushering gig, but that’s because I wasn’t feeling well this morning.

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? No interruptions.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? That I haven’t fallen asleep, given that I was up quite a while last night.

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Less complex mini-challenges. I didn’t even attempt most of them because they’d take too much time from reading. (Maybe more easy mini-challenges.)

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? Not be sick :-) I’ve been a little down that my page count is so low, but I don’t think I’d necessarily switch to a quicker read for it. I would keep my updates simpler. They’re taking too long to do.

9. Are you getting tired yet? Not really. I’m about an hour from my usual bedtime, and I often stay up an hour past that.

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? I think most of my hints are ones others have already shared.

Musical Mini Challenge

Jill has suggested that everyone post a video or lyrics to a favorite song. I’m sharing a video to a favorite song that happens to also be a scene from a favorite movie. The song is “Wise Up” by the amazing Aimee Mann, and the movie is Magnolia. As dippy as this may seem to see all the characters singing like this, it brings me to tears every time.

Hour 15 (10:50 pm)

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 314–399
• Pages read since last update: 85
• Running total of pages read since you started: 329 (plus 57 yesterday, total of 386)
• Amount of time spent reading since last update: 2 hours 22 min
• Running total of time spent reading since you started:  10 hours, 31 min (plus 1 hour, 56 minutes yesterday)
• Money Raised: $32.90 (plus $5.70 yesterday, total of $38.60)
• Favorite quote: “To bed, to bed!” as Lady Macbeth say. I wonder by-the-by what Lady Macbeth would have done in my position? She would have killed somebody when her difficulties first began.
• Observation(s): Still loving Armadale. Part of me wants to whip through it at breakneck speed, so I’ll know what happens, and part of me wants to take my time and savor the characters. I just finished a section of the villianess’s journal, and she is just—wow! Just a great character. I’m feeling better. I don’t know if I’ll update again tonight. I’m not quite ready for bed, but I can feel I’ll be heading that way soon. I may get another hour in before bed, but updates seem to take a while because I also like to check out mini-challenges and such. If I don’t feel like a full update, I’ll tweet my progress before I go to bed tonight.

Final Meme

1.  Which hour was most daunting for you? None in particular. I got sleepy about  hour 15, but I planned to go to sleep when I got sleepy, so it was no big deal.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? None that others haven’t mentioned. I loved that I read a single long complex book that kept me immersed, and I could have read on into the night if I had not simply needed some sleep. Other books like that, if people want to take my unusual approach, would be The Woman in White or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Not really. Maybe a Mr. Linky for updates each hour as part of the hourly post on the main page. Would make it easier to visit people who are still up and reading. And this is just a personal thing, but I wonder if there’s a way to de-emphasize number of pages/books read and focus on time read instead. That would be nice for those who are reading more complex books.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Using Twitter for updates.
5. How many books did you read? Just the one.
6. What were the names of the books you read? Armadale by Wilkie Collins
7. Which book did you enjoy most? Ummm….Armadale…
8. Which did you enjoy least? I refuse to say Armadale. Although I didn’t like how reading something like this made it seem, according to the numbers, that I didn’t read so much. I could have read way more pages if I had chosen different books, but I’m not sure that’s the point—or if it is, I’m not sure that should be the point.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? N/A
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? If I participate again, it’ll be as a reader. Whether I participate again will just depend on my schedule. I usually go on vacation in April, so it may not work so well.

Hour 24

• Book: Armadale by Wilkie Collins, pages 399–513
• Pages read since last update: 114
• Running total of pages read since you started: 443 (plus 57 yesterday, total of 500)
• Amount of time spent reading since last update: 2 hours 36 min (I think?)
• Running total of time spent reading since you started:  14 hours (plus 1 hour, 56 minutes yesterday)
• Money Raised: $44.30 (plus $5.70 yesterday, total of $50)
• Favorite quote: Is there an unutterable Something left by the horror of my past life, which clings invisibly to me still? And is he feelin the influence of it, sensibly, and yet incomrehensibly to himself? Oh me! is there no purifying power in such love as mine? Are there plague-spots of past wickedness on my heart which no after-repentence can wash out?
• Observation(s): Weird that I ended up with round numbers. Totally unintentional. I do feel good that I read for over half the time. I don’t think my feeling unwell hurt my reading much—it might have helped since I decided not to risk going to the theatre last night. What did hurt my page count was choosing to read a long, complex book with large pages and a small typeface. But it served the book well, so I’m not really sorry—okay maybe I was a little sorry when I saw people knocking out four, five, and six books—sometimes more—over the course of the day, which I could perhaps have done, too. BUT on the bright side, I haven’t created a backlog of reviews to write, so maybe this is the way to go :-) I’m going to take a shower and either read some more Armadale or visit some blogs. Then off to church and a post-church brunch, if my stomach is feeling steady (hard to say at this point). And then some Reformation review this afternoon before I take my midterm. I’d love to finish Armadale tonight, but we’ll have to see. I only have about 80 pages left, so it could happen. You ‘ll have to wait for my review, though, because Jenny and I are reviewing it together for the Classics Circuit on November 13.

Animals Make Us Human (audio)

Sometimes a poor interview can ruin a perfectly good book. I heard animal science expert Temple Grandin interviewed on NPR several years ago. The interviewer focused almost entirely on Grandin’s personal experience as an autistic person and her observations of animals. I was left with the definite impression that Grandin had come up with an oddball theory—that animals’ brains work like autistic people’s brains—and was now making a killing by selling a book (Animals in Translation)  promulgating that theory and that people were buying it because it sounded right, not because there was any research to support.  I dismissed Grandin’s ideas as pure pop science.

But I am fascinated by animals and love reading about what makes them tick, so I decided to give Grandin a chance with Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. Instead of dwelling on the parallels between the autistic brain and the animal brain, this book focuses on animal emotions and how people can ensure that animals have the best emotional lives possible. Central to her premise are what she calls the four “blue ribbon emotions”: seeking, fear, panic, and rage. She encourages readers to do what they can to promote the first emotion and limit the other three. She discusses how these emotions manifest themselves in dogs, cats, livestock, and wild animals, and she offers advice for people who live and work with these animals.

Whatever skepticism I had about Grandin’s science was quickly silenced as I heard her cite brain research and behavior studies verifying her ideas. I’m sure some of her thoughts are open to debate—what ideas in science aren’t?—but she’s not pulling thoughts out of the air either. She knows her stuff, both because she’s read the studies and because she’s spent time in close contact with animals and tried out many different techniques for keeping them stimulated or calming them. In fact, she devotes a whole section of the book to the importance of doing research both in the field and in the lab. And she makes some excellent points about the need for scientists and engineers to work more closely and share information with the animal handlers who might actually be able to apply their findings and use their designs. Her publications list shows she’s been working that way since the 1970s.

Much of what Grandin has to say will be troubling to some readers. She tells some terrible stories of poor animal handling, particularly in the chicken industry (confirming once again my decision not to purchase grocery store eggs). Grandin has worked extensively in the meat slaughter industry, ensuring that animals are given as stress-free a life and as pain-free as death as possible. Because Grandin is a known spokesperson for animal welfare, but also one who works for the meat industry, I found her insights about animal activism to be especially interesting. As much as I would like for every farm animal to be raised under conditions like those at Polyface Farm, where I’m lucky enough to get most of my meat, I do wonder if such a system could be scaled up to feed everyone. If it can’t, I’m glad people like Grandin are working to make the industry we do have better.

This video will give you a sense of Grandin’s thinking and how she applies science and her observations to animal handling:
I’m glad I put my doubts aside enough to listen to this book. This was definitely a case where the slim pickings in my library’s audio section worked to my advantage!

Read-a-Thon Time!

A day of nothing but reading. What could be better? How about reading with blogging friends around the world and for a cause? This Saturday, more than 300 book bloggers and others around the globe will be devoting the day to reading as part of Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-Thon. I participated last October (but missed the April event because I was on my annual English holiday). The event is great fun, and if you haven’t signed up, there’s still time. Even if you can’t commit to the whole 24 hours, read when you can—or sign up to cheer on other readers.

My Plan

The Cause: One of the things I find particularly cool about the read-a-thon is that people read for a cause, usually one related to literacy. Last year, I raised almost $50 for a classroom library through Donors Choose. I worked very briefly as a high school English teacher, and I now work for an education association, so this was right up my alley and I wanted to continue the tradition. The project that caught my eye today was this teacher’s effort to get a classroom set of Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale for her 12th grade AP English students in a high-poverty school. As an editor, I have to get behind an effort to help students with grammar and syntax. I’ll be donating 10 cents for every page I read to this project.

Just in case their project gets funded between now and this weekend–or I read over 2,000 pages (not likely)–I’ve added a few more projects involving high school students in high-poverty schools and reading to my giving page. If you’re looking for a read-a-thon cause or just want to give, check those out.

The Time: I know already that I won’t be able to commit to the full 24 hours because I’m ushering a play on Saturday night, and sleep is pretty much mandatory for me, although I’m going to stay up as late as I can. However, I’m going to make up for the time missed by also doing some reading on Friday and perhaps Sunday. Starting on Friday, any pages I read that aren’t for school will count toward the Donors Choose project.

The wrinkle in my grand plan is that I have a Reformation Theology take-home midterm. I originally planned to take the test on Friday and then reward myself with the Read-a-Thon, but I just learned that our professor won’t be e-mailing the test to us until Sunday. This means I will have to be sure I get enough rest and study time so that I can take the test Sunday evening because my schedule is packed all next week. I am, however, hoping that my classmates and I can convince our professor to give us the test after class this Thursday, so we’ll see. I was hoping to not have the test hanging over me on Read-a-Thon day, but it seems it was not meant to be. (I’m tempted to insert a predestination joke, but we haven’t covered Calvinism in my class yet.)

 The Books: Lots of folks are gathering big piles of books and posting photos online, and these posts have been great fun to look at, but I am, alas, too lazy to dig out my camera, so I’m just offering a list of possibilities:

• Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Jenny and I are reading this for the Classics Circuit. Collins is just the kind of writer I could easily spend all day with, so I’m glad to have a whole day just for Collins. It’s a chunkster, so there’s a chance that’s all I’ll be reading.
• Fables: The Dark Ages by Bill Willingham. I learned last year that graphic novels can be great for tired eyes. I’ve loved this series so far, and I’ve been holding back on reading this volume because I knew I might want it for read-a-thon day.
• The Imposter’s Daughter by Laurie Sendall. A graphic memoir.
• How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson. Looks like a nice, light read, and it’s near the top of my TBR pile.
• Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner. Chick lit seems like it would be just right when I’m tired and my brain is full, and Weiner is a reliable chick lit author.
• Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton. More chick lit. Lots of people whose taste I trust like Thornton’s books, so I’m eager to give this a try.
• Winter’s End by Jean-Claude Mourlevat. YA seems like another good option for a tired mind. I got this one a couple of months ago from Library Thing’s Early Reviewers program.
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Children’s fiction seems right, too, and this has been on my shelf for ages. I missed out on it entirely as a child.
• The Last Single Woman in America by Cindy Guidry. A collection of essays that I bought on impulse when my sister told me she was getting married. The title fit my sentiments at the time, but then I never read it. But short essays might be just the thing this weekend.

Other possibilities include rereads of some old favorites: The Phantom Tollbooth, Coraline, a Lemony Snicket book or two, maybe some short stories by Flannery O’Connor or Dorothy Sayers or something from one of my many anthologies.

The Updates: Last year, I wrote reviews and updates and posted them throughout the day, but this year, I’m going to do one big running post, logging my progress every few hours, starting at 8 a.m. on Saturday. So those of you who aren’t participating—or aren’t interested—won’t be seeing tons of posts. Those of you who are interested can just visit the one post. I’ll also tweet updates throughout the day.

So that’s the plan! I’m hoping for a great day.

The House of the Spirits

One of the best books I’ve read this year is Love in the Time of Cholera. It swept me away in the most wonderful way. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende reminded me of that marvelous book, but it never quite stirred my soul.

This book, Allende’s first novel, follows the fictional Trueba family through four generations. Astute readers who know something of Chilean history will no doubt recognize that the family history echoes the 20th-century history of Chile, which Allende’s own family was part of. Her father’s cousin was Salvador Allende, the president of Chile who was overthrown by a coup d’état in 1973. In her novel about this period, Isabel Allende fictionalizes these events, using different names, which allows her to take some liberties with the story. A smart move, I think. Historical fiction writers who want to use real history as a jumping-off point without hewing to the known facts would do well to follow her example.

Allende’s fictional story tale is infused with magic, as the women of the family have visions and call on spirits. In the tradition of magical realism, these talents are a natural part of the characters’ lives. Not all the characters are interested in these spiritual activities, but the existence of spirits and the like aren’t generally treated as something open to question. The spirits are there. Some can hear and see them. Others can’t—or don’t care to. That is that.

Although the spiritual is ever present, it is the political that drives much of the narrative. Characters are bound by class and conviction to behave in certain ways. The wealthy take advantage of the poor, discarding them blithely when they’re done. People who love outside their class bring trouble upon themselves. Rebels attempt to overthrow the system, only to find themselves targeted by the ones they were rebelling against. There are no huge surprises in the plot; it follows the pattern of history.

Allende writes in long paragraphs of gorgeous prose that reminded me of Márquez’s lush writing style. Here, for example, is a description of two childhood friends growing up together:

They spent that summer oscillating between childhood, which still held them in its clasp, and their awakening as man and woman. There were times when they ran like little children, stirring up the chickens and exciting the cows, drinking their fill of fresh milk and winding up with foam mustaches, stealing fresh-baked bread straight from the oven and clambering up trees to build secret houses. At other times they hid in the forest’s thickest, most secret recesses, making beds of leaves and pretending they were married, caressing each other until they fell asleep exhausted. They were still innocent enough to remove their clothes and swim naked in the river, as they always had, diving into the cold water and letting the current pull them down against the shiny stones. But there were certain things they could no longer share.  They learned to feel shame in each other’s presence. They no longer competed to see who could make the biggest puddle when they urinated, and Blanca did not tell him of the dark matter that stained her underwear once a month. Without anyone telling them, they realized that they could not act so freely in front of others.

Allende’s prose is beautiful, but it lacks some of the humor that I enjoyed so much in the Márquez. Also, the story jumps from third person to first person, with the sometimes despicable patriarch Esteban Trueba acting as the first-person narrator. There’s a reason for this technique that is explained in the last chapter, but it was jarring, and I’m not convinced that it worked—especially without the information in the final chapter. This might be a case where a minor spoiler early on would make for a better reading experience.

Another barrier, common to many multigenerational narratives, is the fact that not every generation is equally interesting. Personally, I found each generation more interesting than the last, and my favorite parts were toward the end of the book, but that won’t be the case with every reader. I suspect that many people will be turned off when the political struggles, which include some stomach-churning violence, start to take precedence over the stories of the lord of the manor and the star-crossed lovers from the earlier chapters.

I had mixed feelings about the characters. Few were entirely likable, and most that I liked did not appear until late in the book. Some, particularly Esteban, engaged in shockingly horrible behavior, usually against women, that is treated almost matter-of-factly. I wondered for a time if this wasn’t yet another book that doesn’t take violence against women seriously enough. As it turns out, that is not the case, but it doesn’t become evident until the final pages of the book. The other characters sometimes felt like representations of the particular types—the fiery woman, the passionate rebel, the vengeful sadist, and so on. But Allende does make a point of exploring why they are as they are, and in a story about the reoccurring patterns of history, the presence of archetypal characters might not be a bad thing.

This was not, for me, as absorbing a read as Love in the Time of Cholera or as the other Allende books that I’ve read (Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, and Zorro), but I’m glad I read it. If you’re interested in Latin American literature or history, this is worth a look.