What We're Reading

I finished Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, and since then I've been descending on books Godzilla-style, but moving slowly and destructively on without finishing (eating) them. The ones I want to stick with are Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather, and Necessary Lies, by Kerry Neville Bakken. I've stopped first for an impromptu re-read of Lolita. The first time I read it, I sped through too quickly, and couldn't remember anything about it I liked. But I recently moved and unearthed from one of the book boxes my old neon-Post-It-tagged copy from college. So gross. So good.

-Ali Salerno
posted by ali at 8/29/2006 11:04:00 AM

"Playing Sick" by Marc Feldman MD, a book about Munchausen, Munchausen by Proxy, and Factitious Disorder...fascinating read.

The latest by Cesar "The Dog Whisperer" Milan. I keep whispering to my dogs but nothing has really changed. Also flipping through a book on pugs right now, because we might be adding a pug puppy to our pack. My experience in my house has been that "might" usually turns out to "will."

Leaving for Mexico on Saturday night. Re-read "Power and the Glory" not too far back to get my head straight. But bringing with me Michael Chabon's "Kavalier and Clay," which I am very much looking forward to. Although not as huge a fan of his "Mysteries of P." as everyone else seems to be, I thoroughly enjoyed "Wonder Boys" (loved it, even) as well as some of his short nonfiction I've read over the years. I have distinct memories of his Terry Gross interview for "Kavalier" so am psyched to finally read it.

-Christian Bauman
posted by Matt Borondy at 8/28/2006 03:25:00 AM

Booker Longlist reading has kept me pretty occupied over the past week or so, and it's been the source of some fantastic reads, unsurprisingly.

David Mitchell's phenomenal Black Swan Green was Booker Book # 1, and without having read the other books I'm putting my early money on this one to grab the prize. The voice of the budding adolescent main character is so authentically done and the style out of this world wonderful. The book manages to be very funny at times, quite serious at others, and genuinely literary all the way through. Though the book flirts with a stream of consciousness style it never becomes so dense you find yourself having difficulty wading through it. Some passages forced me to slow down my reading, or go back and read some things twice, but it was never obscure. A definite contender.

Booker Book # 2 was Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk, another story told from the perspective of a child but this one younger than the main character in Black Swan Green. Though I found this one poignant, and at times thigh-slappingly funny, I'm not quite as sure it's up to Booker Prize snuff. A great read, yes, but I'm thinking probably not the ultimate winner.

Mary Lawson's The Other Side of the Bridge was book # 3, and this one completely blew me away. Absolutely gorgeous stuff. Think Margaret Atwood crossed with Margaret Laurence and you'll have an idea of the sort of quality writing in this family saga set in rural Ontario, Canada. I would give this one my highest recommendation, but I'm not sure Lawson has a high enough literary profile to win the Booker. If she does I'll cheer, but I don't know if I dare dream of it.

I'm currently working on two other Booker Longlisters, Kate Grenville's magnificent The Secret River and M.J. Hyland's Carry Me Down. Carry Me Down is, no pun necessarily intended, unputdownable. I started it just to see how I'd like the style and didn't surface for another 80 breathless pages. It's yet another book told from the perspective of a child, yet possibly even more edgy and dark than Black Swan Green. We'll see how it goes.

Aside from the Booker books, Mark Haddon's (the curious incident of the dog in the night-time) publisher sent me a copy of his upcoming book, A Spot of Bother: A Novel. Again Haddon's exploring the often very dark recesses of the mind, this time with an older male character who may or may not be losing his sanity. If I had to guess I'd say this is going to be nearly as brilliant as his first offering. Can't wait to work it into the reading rotation.

- Lisa Guidarini
posted by Lisa Guidarini at 8/26/2006 11:39:00 AM

Matt Borondy: Reading about Grigory Perelman in The New Yorker and also catching up on the past couple issues of Harper's, which include a story about a Peak Oil conference that took place in my old stomping ground of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Also I hear Birnbaum's in Poets & Writers this month. And I'm reading the newest Five Points (which starts off with a story from the late Fred Busch) as well as the anthology from that Georgia-based publication, High Five. In terms of books, The Prince of Marshes by Rory Stewart (about Iraq) is on the list.

Ross Simonini: project x by jim shepard, the blue and brown books by wittgenstein, the hawkline monster by richard brautigan, echo regime by john olson

Reem Abu-Libdeh: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 18, and I just grabbed a copy of the latest Ploughshares.

Drew McNaughton: Portraits of 'the Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache by Keith Basso...and it's nerdy and it's cultural and it's full of anecdotes that somehow take jokes and functionally dissect the hilarity from them, leaving me with this weird sense that I don't 'get it', which is, of course, the main thrust of the book.

Mara Naselli: Another one from the backlist. I just finished J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, which absolutely rocked my world. If I were a blurber, that would be a shit blurb--it's imprecise and glib--but it's either that or a long consideration of all the ideas intertwined in a rather slight but sturdy plot. I was surprised to find myself unable to put the novel down. For much of it, the author places me in uncomfortable auditorium seats or conference chairs as I squint and try to interpret the speaker's views as she inadvertently reveals her limits. And aren't those the most difficult? The ones we can't see? But it's not the public delivery of speeches that turns the pages. It's how the ideas are embedded in Elizabeth. And every once in a while there is a moment of sheer tenderness. Elizabeth's middle-aged son, who remembers his mother feeling suffocated by her children when they were young, escorts her through the trifles of a weekend of her acceptance of an award (these duties of stardom are truly exhausting drills in her frail state). He is her squire, and she is his knight; "he will help her into her armour, lift her on to her steed, set her buckler on her arm, hand her lance, and step back."

And a long list from Robert Birnbaum:

All Governments Lie, a biography of IF Stone by Myra MacPherson. Where is Izzy Stone when we really need him?

The Mission Song by John LeCarre — to his credit, Le Carre has not deserted Africa as have the rest of the world's white people (those who are not stealing the region blind, that is).

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch, sophomore effort by Oprahist, LA writer

The Creationists by E L Doctorow, a wonderful array of lyrical essays on various literary figures from the madman Poe to Albert Einstein

The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich - It will be interesting to see if or how this book makes it in to mainstream public conversation. It is a brilliant, brilliant indictment of the pack of liars that occupy the nation's highest offices. It's readable and funny and has what Rich cites in some other context: Steve Colbert's "truthiness".

Miss Kansas City by Joan Frank - I found this in my car while I was waiting for AAA and I was entranced from the first paragraph - tart and accurate prose and an unlikely coupling that make a terrific story.

Fall 2006 Ploughshares guest edited by Ron Carlson with a fine story by Amy Bloom, "The Old Impossible"

Alexis De Tocqueville by Joseph Epstein - part of the James Atlas's Eminent Lives series

Last but not least, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties by Robert Stone - Stone is our 21st century Melville - he is the most profound and ambitious living and the least appreciated great American writer. Hopefully someone will follow with his collected journalism.
posted by Matt Borondy at 8/26/2006 12:12:00 AM

This is a bit of a departure from the normal content of this blog, but it seems worth mentioning that IDT Featured Author Charles J. Shields's Mockingbird was nominated for the Quills Award, in a biography/memoir category filled with great nominees like Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking:

The Quills, an initiative launched with the support of Reed Business Information and NBC, is an industry-qualified consumers choice awards program for books. The Quills celebrates the best adult and children's books of the year in 20 popular categories, including Book of the Year, plus an committee-selected award for best Book to Film.

Vote now for your favorite nominees. Voting will continue through Sept. 30. Winners will be announced at the Quills awards ceremony Oct. 10 in New York City.

The finalists in biography/memoir, nominated by booksellers and librarians all over the country are:

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
Anderson Cooper
HarperCollins
0061132381

Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog
John Grogan
William Morrow
0060817089

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Charles J. Shields
Henry Holt & Company
080507919X

Tender Bar: A Memoir
J. R. Moehringer
Hyperion
1401300642

Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated
140004314X

The winner will be chosen by popular vote cast by readers at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13594096.
posted by Matt Borondy at 8/22/2006 01:50:00 PM

Now that the Booker longlist has been announced I'm eager to clear off my reading plate and sink my teeth into a few of the most likely candidates to eventually win the prize. In the blogging circuit two books seem to be getting the most buzz, David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and Kate Grenville's The Secret River. Can't discount the idea of a dark horse cutting ahead of the pack, of course, but these are the two I'm seeing as frontrunners so far at least as far as gossip goes.

One Mississippi by Mark Childress has been getting most of my reading attention this week. Being native to that state I can testify this is the genuine deal. Childress has captured the "southern thing" perfectly, and in a hilarious way. Very entertaining, though probably one I won't retain very long once I've finished it.

Switching gears, late last week I finished Dede Crane's deeply sympathetic novel about a character who retreats into a catatonic state after having survived the horrific crash that killed both her husband and son. Sympathy is a novel I wouldn't have ever found if I weren't a compulsive review reader, but I'm very glad my library system had the book or it would have likely slipped off the radar completely, lost to the ages.

Rounding out my recent reading, I also completed Amy Ephron's A Cup of Tea, Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide and Adele Geras's The Tower Room, the first book in her Egerton Series aimed at the young adult market.

Ephron's book is what I'd term Wharton Lite. Set at the turn of the century, it reminds me somewhat of Wharton's novels set in New York, mostly because the characters are embroiled in a torturous love triangle you can see is doomed from miles away. Entertaining reading fairly quickly forgotten. Lynch's The Highest Tide, however, is a more sophisticated and far more hauntingly enduring sort of book. The theme deals with the mysteries of life, and the beauty and wonder of sea life, and even if you aren't a marine biologist this is a lovely sort of read. As far as the Geras book, in The Tower Room she puts a modern twist on the Rapunzel fairy tale. What's perhaps a bit disconcerting is underage sex plays a role in this book geared toward the 12 and up crowd. Hard to imagine a 12 year old being quite ready for that concept, so I'd issue a caveat on that.

Next up: some of the Booker nominees. Best to start from the top, I always say, so I'm thinking the Grenville and the Mitchell may be the way to go. Some of the titles are only published in the U.K. as of now, with U.S. publication dates set for, in some cases, 2007. I've tracked down advance reading copies of some, but a few will have to be allowed to slip right through the reading net, unfortunately. Such is the unfortunate nature of the reading life.

- Lisa Guidarini
posted by Lisa Guidarini at 8/16/2006 07:11:00 AM

I just finished Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Part of the year of reading an impossibly high number of books to somehow feel more learn-ed; however, this book should be given time to absorb. It is a little capsule dunked in brain-water that you should leave alone for some minutes. When you come back, the capsule's outer covering has dissolved and the previously tiny, spongy innards have turned into a fully fleshed sponge-being. None of that makes sense. The book (not the poorly conceived metaphor) is about Lydia, a Barnard-educated pianist, and her friends, her life, their lives, and I guess, life. There is quite a bit of philosophy in the book, moslty puzzled out cross-legged on dorm-room floors. College starts in the late 50s, then there is marriage, career misplacement, infidelity, general confusion, death. You know, all the good ones. Life continues, in Manhattan, until the early 80s. Lydia's friend Gaby, a tall ex-dancer, opines on life and narratives after she has just given birth:

"...A novel, the sort of novel one could imagine one's life to be, at any rate, appears to meander, with a ragbag of concerns. Also...a novel has commentary; no matter how absent an author tries to be, it contains its own interpretation. A novel is an attempt at interpretation. Your life can't be. That's why the tendency is dangerous. You try to direct your life along the route of beginning, middle, and end, but actually life has a sprinkling of beginnings and middles and ends all the way through, not in the right order....You try to see a cluster of major themes moving along, developing and elaborating, but actually in many lives the original themes die out or become sublimated...new ones arise out of nowhere....Plus we never escape time, and real time is so dull and even, like a fox-trot. A novelist can treat it whimsically, make it fly back and forth or stand still. We never escape flukes, politics, weather. A novelist makes her own flukes when she needs them, and her own weather. It's a matter of control," she says wistfully.

And Schwartz does control, from the first page, when Lydia's old friend and ex-lover, George, explains "Field theory" to Lydia's delight--the idea that happenstance will always prevent the meeting of needs between people, families. Throughout, love and life are subject to these "disturbances," the telephone ringing before a mother can comfort a crying child, or a bus careening off the road only to turn its precious cargo into so many cinders. Why do we choose who we choose, or what we choose? This novel is the exception to Gaby's rule about novelists; Schwartz succeeds in making the story as much like life as one can--with attendent tragedy and charm; the result is not a beach read. Unless you don't mind sunbathers staring as you cry into the pages.

-Ali Salerno
posted by ali at 8/13/2006 12:46:00 PM

From a random spam(?) email:

"Nobody reads novels, except women, said Soames.
There are no circles so definite as that.
He bent on her his bright, shrewd glance. The circle you move in isnot exactly the plaintiffs, perhaps? Well, I suppose one neednt be shocked by what onewouldnt do oneself.
So he shook his head at her, and waved towards the back.
Its not easy in Society to tell whos a friend and who isnt. I shouldnt say that was CURRENT morality at all.
Stuffy, my lord; its an expression a good deal used in modernSociety.
Marjorie Ferrar grasped the Box till the blood tingled in herpalms.
I suggest that only a very small portion of the world is inyour circles. Thatfellow Riggs was always bumping something! Yet it seems, Miss Ferrar, that you object to others saying nastythings about you in return. Had talkedit over with a good many people."

And a sentence from Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres which has stuck in my mind for some reason:

"Together, we have survived racism and religion."

That line pretty much sums up Jesus Land, a memoir you should definitely read (though it's not the most cheerful book).

There's a nicely done review of Jesus Land over at Bookslut.

I've now read two memoirs this year by women who have gone through expensive "behavior modification programs." Mia Fontaine's Come Back reflected upon the programs at Morava and Spring Creek Lodge positively (making the important disclaimer that her experience was very specific to a time and place), while Julia's book made her BMP (Escuela Caribe in the D.R.) look like a concentration camp run by insane, bloodthirsty fundamentalist Christians.

Both of the memoirs are exceptionally powerful in their own ways, and in addition to dealing with the subject of BMPs, they also both center on a relationship with one particular family member who helped them recover from abuse suffered at the hands of another family member.

Somehow, even though I never attended such a program, I've strongly identified with the narrators of both memoirs. Maybe there is something metaphorical about hardcore behavior modification programs that resonates with me in some way, possibly something to do with this part of the epilogue of Jesus Land:

The staff considered me an outstanding alumna--I'd gone on to get an M.A. in Journalism and had worked for the Los Angeles Times--and introduced me around.

"What's the most important lesson you learned at Escuela Caribe?" one of them asked with a proud smile.

"To not trust people," I answered without hesitation.

They changed the subject before I could tell them the other important lessons The Program had taught me, but perhaps they'll read them here:

--To believe in people over dogmas.
--To not turn the other cheek, but to master and subvert the rules of the game.
--To strive to find small joys even in the bleakest of circumstances.

posted by Matt Borondy at 8/09/2006 07:04:00 PM