Library Loot—December 14-20

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

It's been a month since I've been to the library, but I'm back with a vengeance. I'm leaving to go home for Christmas tomorrow, so I need a ton of books to get me through 10 days and two 12-hour car rides. I know this is why ebooks were created, but I can't bring myself to read everything off of a soulless screen.

Anyway, here's what I've picked up:

The Last Spymaster, by Gayle Lynds. It's an espionage thriller and I'm thrilled that it's written by a woman. Disgraced CIA operative Elaine Cunningham is brought back from limbo to find Jay Tice, a Cold War spy who has broken out of prison. Shouldn't be too much trouble for a seasoned hunter like Cunningham. Oh, except that Tice was a legendary operative himself. And the situation turns out to be much more complicated than it first appeared (naturally).

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is another classic that I've somehow never read. It's a sprawling multigenerational epic and I'm eager to jump in. These types of books inspire passionate hatred in some readers and equally passionate appreciation from rest—there doesn't appear to be a middle ground. I don't expect this to be one of the books I keep on my shelf and lovingly reread on rainy days, but I hope I'll enjoy it.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez. I love the idea of this book—a quartet of sisters caught between two cultures struggle to define their identities.

The Makioka Sisters, by Junichiro Tanizaki. Four sisters struggle to define their identities amid the shifting landscape of pre-WWII Osaka. My love for sister stories started with Little Women and The Makioka Sisters is considered a modern classic.

That's it for my library loot, but I'm packing a few other books for the ride. First, Anchee Min's Empress Orchid, which tells the story of a concubine in the Forbidden City during the tumultuous mid-nineteenth century. I read one of Min's earlier books, Wild Ginger, earlier this year and wasn't overly impressed. Part of it had to do with fact that the subject matter—the Cultural Revolution—is much more powerful when it's presented in a memoir like Wild Swans. I don't know as much about imperial China, so I'm hoping that will make this book more interesting. Second, I'm also bringing Donna Napoli's Beast, a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story set in Persia.

And just to make my bag a little heavier, I'm taking Operation Mincemeat and Flyboys, which I think my parents will enjoy as much as I did, and John Adams and A Christmas Carol, which I borrowed from them last year.

Finally, an update on my last Library Loot post: I'm still reading The Invisible Bridge. It's due tomorrow (and I've already renewed it once), and I'm thisclose to finishing it. I love all of it—the characters, the story, the storytelling—everything. But. I'm fifty pages from the end and as much as I want Raoul Wallenberg to materialize with his magical Swedish papers, I don't think there's enough time for a heroic, happy ending. But I can still hope. And that's why I haven't finished the book yet.

The Woods

Synopsis
Essex County prosecutor Paul Copeland has a lot going on. He's prosecuting a rape case against a couple of privileged frat boys (think the Duke lacrosse scandal). He's a single father with a six-year-old daughter. He's also haunted by the twenty-year-old case of the disappearance and presumed murder of his sister at summer camp (in the titular woods). When another supposed victim of the summer camp murders turns up dead in the present day, Copeland starts to wonder whether his sister might still be alive and whether all of his assumptions about that case might be wrong.

My thoughts
I love these page-turner mysteries, but I have to force myself to take some time off between them; otherwise, they get too predictable and pat. I got this one for a plane ride and fell right into it.

This was my first Coben read, and there was more than enough in the plot to keep me entertained. I guessed some of the twists, but there were so many that I was pleasantly surprised more than a few times. If I have a complaint it's that maybe there's too much stuffed into one book. There are about half a dozen minor mysteries in addition to the main one (whether Copeland's sister was really murdered all those years ago). Seemingly extraneous details such as Copeland's grandfather's involvement with the KGB turn out to be completely relevant.

Bottom line
Read it when you have a few hours with nothing to interrupt you.

Fine print
The Woods, by Harlan Coben
Genre: Mystery
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

Library Loot—November 9-15

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

This sounds like such a fun idea. I'm just sorry I don't have more to share ... so I'll pad this with a confession. I just figured out how to use the holds at my library. Like, last week. In my defense, it had never been an issue before, when I lived a few blocks from my library's central branch. That branch had multiple copies of every book I ever wanted, so I just waltzed on in, got my books, and went home. But a few months ago I moved a mile away from the central library and discovered that the closest branch library never had any of the books I wanted. I'd look up a book on the library website, see that there were no copies at my branch, and trek up to the central branch to grab one of theirs. It got to the point where I started wondering whether my neighborhood branch actually had books at all.

And then last week I struck up a conversation with a woman who absolutely raved about The Invisible Bridge, which was published last year. Here's the thing. I almost never read books when they're popular. I put them on my enormous to-read list, where they languish for years before I finally get to them. The Invisible Bridge was already on my list, but this woman was so excited about the book that I decided to see if my library had it now. And that's when I noticed something I'd somehow never seen before—I could put the book on hold and select the branch I wanted to pick it up at! When I put the book on hold I was 9th in line for one of 15 copies, and less than a week later it was in my hands! I don't mind the walk to the central library, but I'm so happy I figured this out before it started snowing.

So—the lone book I checked out from the library this week was The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (photo from Goodreads). It's a novel about a Hungarian man studying architecture in Paris in the 1930s. It's headed somewhere tragic—how could it not be with a Jewish protagonist in pre-WWII Europe?—but I'm ready to be drawn into that world.

Also this week: I returned Nom de Plume and I Capture the Castle to the library and finished The Woods (review coming [edit: it's here]). On deck: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which I'll be rereading for at least the 23rd time. And I also have my eye on Redwall. I'll be reading that for the first time, but my brother loved the series when we were growing up and I found a copy in great condition at my library's used book sale.

Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseydonyms

Synopsis
A series of essays detailing the lives of various authors who used pseudonyms.


My thoughts
What can you tell from a name? Not a whole lot. From my full name, you could guess my gender and a fraction of my ethnicity, but you probably couldn't figure out my age and you definitely couldn't figure out my political persuasion, sexual orientation, or any of the other things that make me me. (Oh, um, Clio is not my real name; I just chose it because Clio was the Greek muse of history and I was a history major in college.)

I picked this book up because I've always been fascinated by people who use aliases, the reasons they use them, and the reasons they choose the names they do. The profiled authors range from the ones I'd read (the Brontes) to the ones I've been meaning to read (Sylvia Plath) to the ones I've never heard of (Henry Green), and their reasons for choosing alternate identities range from the standard (women wanting to publish in a male-dominated field) to the bizarre (Fernando Pessoa seemed to actually inhabit each of his names). As mini-biographies they're all very interesting; as profiles of pen names, some are more successful than others. In the essay on Georges Simenon, his noms de plume seem like a footnote; they disappear halfway through.

The essays that held my attention best were the ones that profiled authors who had unconventional reasons for disguising their identities. I knew O. Henry's parents hadn't actually named him O. Henry, but I didn't realize he was a convicted felon who went to great lengths to hide his criminal record from his daughter. And then there was Fernando Pessoa, who not only made up dozens of alternate names but created completely separate identities with different moods, interests, and writing styles. (This reminded me of one of the spies in Operation Mincemeat, who made up an intricate network of false contacts and kept the Nazis fooled for years.)

Nom de Plume comes full circle very neatly. It starts with the Bronte sisters, George Sand, and George Eliot, who created fictional male alter egos because the prevailing opinion of the time was that women couldn't write as well as men. It ends with Pauline Réage, who many people (falsely) suspected to be a man simply because they assumed a woman couldn't write good erotic fiction. (Interestingly, Réage wrote Histoire d'O as a love letter to her partner and didn't initially intend for it to be published.)

Bottom line
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but it seems like it would appeal to a very narrow audience. My advice? Don't miss the essays on Mark Twain, O. Henry, and Fernando Pessoa. Skim the ones on authors you've read or are interested in. Skip the rest.

Fine print
Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms, by Carmela Ciuraru
Genre: Biography
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

A Game of Thrones

Synopsis
Intrigue! Treachery! Good vs. evil! Undead enemies! Romance! Incest! Direwolves! Dragons! Winter!

This fantasy epic has everything—it's meticulously plotted, it has a diverse array of fully realized characters, and it has more than enough plot twists and omg! moments to keep me thoroughly entertained and amazed.

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for this book and the others in the series.


My thoughts
A Game of Thrones has been on my radar for years, but I only got around to reading it when HBO debuted the show based on the book. I flew through it and then devoured the rest of the series. (I even bought the ebook for the latest book on a layover because none of the airport bookstores had the hardcover and I couldn't wait six hours to start it.) I haven't gotten this excited about a series since I discovered Outlander. I wanted to talk about it with random people on the subway, and I wanted all of my friends to read so I could talk about it with them.

I'm usually a little leery of fantasy, but GoT works on many levels.

Setting
I adore history and fiction, and GoT gives me the best of both worlds. It's better written than most historical fiction, and it doesn't have to contort itself to fit in actual historical events. GoT's setting is loosely inspired by medieval Europe, but mostly it sprang from George R.R. Martin's imagination. The kingdom of Westeros, inhabited by Starks and Lannisters, is recognizable as England circa the Wars of the Roses, but only if Scotland were full of mysterious malevolent creatures that bring the dead back to life. Most impressive is that Martin has given his world a rich history and multiple religions.

Page-turning action
Martin knows how to keep the action coming: he opens with the undead, then beheads a deserter, unmasks an incestuous pair of siblings (and introduces an entire incestuous dynasty), paralyzes a seven-year-old, marries a thirteen-year-old off to a ferocious warlord, and scatters the Starks to distant corners of the kingdom—and that's just the first hundred pages. In the next fifty pages, the seven-year-old narrowly avoids death again, a prince nearly gets his arm ripped off by a direwolf, a would-be assassin does get his throat ripped out by another direwolf, and a third direwolf is killed. And Martin is still just getting warmed up. (And if you're not hooked by then, you might just be dead inside.)

There's a lot of heart-pounding action, but I absolutely couldn't put the book down after one chapter where the dead come alive. Martin introduced this concept in the prologue, but it was totally nerve-wracking once I'd come to know the characters.

Characters
There are a lot of them, and even the relatively minor ones have impressive backstories that often become relevant in future books.

The Starks are the heart and soul of the book, and all of them (except Rickon, who can be forgiven since he's three) have tremendous character arcs. Martin splits the narrative between eight different characters, six of them Starks (only the eldest, Robb, and youngest, Rickon, are left without their own chapters). Patriarch Ned provides the moral compass for the book. Jon Snow, Ned's illegitimate son, is interesting both for his mysterious parentage and for his perspective on the happenings in the northern part of the kingdom. Arya, the feisty younger daughter, quickly became one of my favorite fictional heroines of all time. She's nine and she's awesome. Middle son Bran is one of the most intriguing characters in the series. He's the paralyzed seven-year-old and his return from the dead hints that he has a greater purpose in the series. One thing that's been lost in the TV show is the depth of the interactions between the siblings, and I think it's partially because the characters are older in the show. But reading the vulnerability that Robb shows in Bran's chapters and the reactions of Bran and Rickon to their father's death absolutely broke my heart.

Back to the characters. The Lannisters are easy to hate. Tyrion, the only one who gets to share his point of view, is the only likable one and he's maligned by his own family because he's a dwarf. Tyrion's twin siblings are carrying on an incestuous affair with each other, which makes them instantly despicable. Also, Cersei is married to the king, so that complicates matters. And their son Joffrey is an arrogant fool who matures into an evil sadist by the end of the book.

Meanwhile, in the book's third theater of action, Viserys, the prince of the exiled Targaryen dynasty, plots return to power by marrying his younger sister, Daenerys, to a warlord and using his army to invade Westeros. On the surface, Viserys is a bullying psycho (because insanity is what happens after generations of inbreeding); the TV show does a fantastic job of uncovering his layers—the pressure he feels to restore his family's dynasty, his devastation upon realizing that he is incapable of earning the love and respect a leader needs, and the incurable arrogance that ultimately leads to his tragic downfall. However, Daenerys is the one who comes alive in the book. She starts as a helpless pawn sold into marriage, but she manages to forge a connection with her husband, Khal Drogo. In the end, she grows into a woman who can stand up for herself and she becomes a leader in her own right.


Plot twists
Martin seems to take an almost perverse delight in playing with his readers. The Lannisters get blamed for the death of Jon Arryn, which kick-starts the entire story; two books later, that turns out to be a giant red herring. They're also blamed for trying to kill Bran as he lies in a coma; two books later, that one is revealed to be true, although the conspirator turns out not to be any of the usual suspects. Martin drops hints, but they're subtle and there are so many false leads that it's difficult to pick up on the correct ones.

But the thing that makes people love Martin or hate him is his utter ruthlessness. He kills off both Ned and Drogo, and both deaths seem to come out of left field. (Jason Momoa's reaction is classic.) Their deaths force the other characters to grow, but that doesn't make them any less shocking. (Then there was Viserys's death, which was shocking in a wholly different way.) Ned's death was unexpected because he had been a point-of-view character and his story seemed far from over. Drogo's death threw me because of the potential ramifications for Daenerys, who was just beginning to feel secure. Martin is a cruel genius—he started with a character who had nothing at the beginning of the book and gave her a promising future with her husband and their unborn baby (who was destined to be a great leader) and then he took it all away.

And the biggest plot twist—Jon Snow's true parentage—still hasn't been revealed, but Martin brilliantly lays all the groundwork for it in GoT. (Yeah, I'm an unapologetic R+L=J-er.)

Here's my reasoning: Over the course of the book, seemingly every character takes the time to point out that Ned has never done a dishonorable thing in his entire life—except for that one time when he cheated on his wife and fathered a bastard. The only logical conclusion is that he never cheated on his wife, which means Jon can't be his son. ("Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic in these schools?" *Ahem.* Sorry.) If you listen carefully, you can hear Martin chuckling in the background, poking his readers and going, "Do you get it yet?" (I finally did, embarrassingly late in the book, while I was driving through rural Croatia and didn't have any problems of my own to think about.)

Anyway, if Ned isn't Jon's father, then why has he always treated him as his son and how/where did he find a child who looks so much like a Stark? Ned's chapters frequently include flashbacks, which are useful both for establishing the recent history of Westeros and for slipping in references to his beloved sister, Lyanna. The party line is that Robert Baratheon was betrothed to Lyanna, who was the love of his life; Robert went to war when Lyanna was kidnapped by the Targaryen prince Rhaegar. But! Ned remembers that Lyanna was a free spirit who didn't think Robert would make a good husband. Is it possible that Lyanna was more Dinah-in-The-Red-Tent than Dinah-in-the-Bible? In his deliberately vague flashbacks to her death, Ned mentions blood (she died from complications after childbirth), crushed rose petals (from the wreath Rhaegar gave her when he named her queen of beauty at a tournament), and a promise (that Ned should raise Jon as his own son).

If you're still not convinced, maybe you'd enjoy the fascinating society Horace Miner describes in his essay on the Nacirema.

Bottom line
Thoroughly enjoyable and easily one of the best books I've read this year.

Fine print
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
Genre: fantasy
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book (twice, actually; I gave my first copy to a friend)
I read this book in April 2011

I Capture the Castle

Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain struggles with poverty and love in pre-WWII England.

My thoughs
Poverty and castles don't seem like they'd go together, but the charm of this book is that it makes everything so natural. Cassandra's family used to have money, but that was when her father's book was selling well, before her mother died. At the beginning of the book they have a 40-year lease on a crumbling castle, but they don't have enough money to pay for food or clothes.

Cassandra's family is wonderfully eccentric. Her father is a genius who can't find an outlet to express himself; he rides his bike around the countryside and wanders around with leftover fishbones for inspiration. Her stepmother occasionally communes with nature (which looks a lot like running around naked to the untrained eye). Her sister Rose is useless at pretty much everything (except gold-digging, as it turns out). Her brother Thomas sort of wanders in and out of the action, but toward the end he fully emerges as both practical and funny. Then there's Stephen, who got stranded with the family when his mother died. His mother was their maid and he sticks with them and takes care of odd jobs even though he doesn't get paid for it. The secondary characters are also delightful, especially the kindly vicar with the wicked sense of humor.

The action begins when the Mortmains meet their new landlord, Simon Cotton, after the old one dies. He happens to be American, and he brings his mother and brother into the mix. They upend the Mortmains' life. Rose sets her sights on Simon and Mortmain seems to think of Mrs. Cotton as his new patron. Meanwhile, Cassandra develops feelings for Simon and has to fend off advances from Stephen.

I was conflicted about the ending. I didn't want either Rose or Cassandra to end up with Simon, and I didn't want Cassandra to end up with Stephen, so that was satisfying. I wish Cassandra had ended up a little more self-sufficient, but I loved the way she and Thomas forced their father to get over his writer's block.

The book is narrated by Cassandra—it's basically a collection of her journals. This sort of conceit annoyed me here because it got in the way of the story. Cassandra starts some of her entries by saying that she wishes she could just skip to the exciting parts, but since she can't I had to slog through the next 15 pages before the action picked up again.

Bottom line
I enjoyed the book, but it's not my favorite. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn doesn't have a castle, but it's a much better coming of age story.

Fine print
I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Red Tent

Synopsis
A fictionalized account of the life of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. In the Bible, Dinah is raped by Shalem, and her brothers avenge her family's honor by killing all the men of the town. In The Red Tent, Dinah falls passionately in love with Shalem and her brothers murder her beloved and the other men of the town for their own self-serving reasons.

My thoughts
I first read this book six or seven years ago, and I reveled in every word. It was beautifully written and the story was pure magic. The topic of favorite books came up at lunch last week and I started raving about The Red Tent. "Ugh, didn't the obvious bias against men bother you?" one of my friends asked. Far from it—it hadn't even made an impression on me. I remembered that the book had a strong female voice, but any memory of male-bashing escaped me completely. But where I saw potent feminine pride, he saw misandry. Obviously, I needed to reread the book.

I can see what upset him. Laban especially doesn't come out well in this retelling (not that he's an upstanding citizen in the Bible either), and the men of The Red Tent in general beat their wives, have sex with the livestock, and view women as chattel. But honestly, men in the Biblical era were, to put it diplomatically, unenlightened when it came to women, so any modern-day portrait of them is bound to be unflattering. Diamant also slips in remarks about "boys, who were forever peeing into the corners of the tents, no matter what you told them," but I took these as the ancient equivalent of good-natured complaints about men who never put the toilet seat down.

If I was surprised by anything, it was the depiction of seemingly modern men—Shalem, Benia, Jacob—who genuinely love their wives and care about their happiness. Shalem is especially intriguing. Of course, in order for this retelling to work, he has to be transformed from a rapist to a passionate lover. I'm just not sure I buy it. I want to, but I don't know if I can. 

And now I have to admit ... I didn't love The Red Tent as much as I did the first time around. It's supposed to be Dinah's story, but the real heart and soul of the book is the bond between Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah, and the heritage they pass on to Dinah, the only daughter of the next generation. The book suffers when her story diverges from theirs. It's still strong, but it pales by comparison. However, even with a relatively weaker second half, The Red Tent is in a class of its own.

There's so much that's right here, particularly the love-hate relationship between Leah and Rachel and the mother-daughter tension between Leah and Dinah. And now that I've embarked on my own infertility journey, Rachel's story took on new meaning for me. The warm tone of the book brings you into the red tent and makes you feel like you're part of the sisterhood.

A large part of the beauty of the book is Diamant's masterful grasp of storytelling. This is a book that can be experienced with all five senses, and Dinah and her mothers all come vividly to life. Diamant gives a voice not only to Dinah but to all Biblical women.

Bottom line
A masterpiece by a woman, about women, for women.

Fine print
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book

Gone with the Wind

Synopsis
The Civil War upends the privileged life of southern belle Scarlett O'Hara.

My thoughts
The movie was a sick-day staple for me throughout my tweenhood. I loved the romance, the history, the hoop skirts. It's been years since I've seen the movie, but I found the book at a library book sale ... and then I let it sit on a bookshelf collecting dust. Now that I've read it, I have to admit that I'm not as enchanted as I was when I was twelve.

First, the good: One thing the book and the movie share is their ability to keep me entertained. Neither drags, which is all the more impressive when you consider their formidable length.

Next, the less good: Scarlett can be hugely irritating. She's meant to be. She is entitled, self-centered, and helpless. She does evolve a bit by the end of the story, but she never entirely outgrows her damsel-in-distress routine. This is not a character I would normally enjoy, but Scarlett (especially Vivien Leigh as Scarlett) has an irrepressible spirit; you can't stay mad at her. It's a tribute to Mitchell and Leigh that I felt something for such an unlikable character. (Trivia tidbit: Scarlett's name was originally Pansy. Not nearly as romantic.)

Now, the bad: the racism of both the book and the movie. They're both products of the 1930s—and not just the South, the entire United States. This doesn't excuse the racism, but it does provide some perspective. (It's interesting that people say history doesn't change because it does—all the time. It swings like a pendulum. But I digress.) It's horrifying to realize that the sanitized version of slavery and the racist depictions of Mammy, Prissy, and Big Sam in Gone with the Wind represent the accepted version of American history and the prevailing attitude toward African Americans before the Civil Rights era.

Bottom line
I rarely say this, but watch the movie. Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable are a lot of fun to watch.

Fine print
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.
I read this book in February 2005; review from my book log

Angela's Ashes

Synopsis
Frank McCourt recounts his tragic childhood with heartbreaking humor.

My thoughts
McCourt writes long lyrical sentences where all the words run together and you can hear the story instead of merely seeing the words. The prose sings from the very first page despite the bleakness of the setting. His childhood was marred by every imaginable tragedy—death, poverty, alcoholism—yet his vivid personal memories soar. It's rare that a book makes me cry and laugh out loud, but this one did—over and over again.

I generally prefer to read books rather than listen to audiobooks, but I'll make an exception in this case. I'm keeping the book so I can read it again, but I'm also planning to get the audiobook so my husband and I can listen to it on our next road trip.

Bottom line
One of the best books I read in 2010. It fully deserved the Pulitzer and all the other prizes it won.

Fine print
Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt
Genre: Memoir
Photo by Goodreads
I bought this book.
Read September 2010; review from my book log 

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Synopsis
Charlotte Doyle sails from England to Rhode Island sans adult supervision. Adventure ensues.

My thoughts
"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity, and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon, and by moonlight."—Robertson Davies

My youth is over, so I'm working with a limited number of books here, but I've noticed remarkable differences in the books I've reread as an adult. When I first read Charlotte Doyle as an elementary schooler, I loved the historical setting and the strong character Charlotte became over the course of the book. Nearly 20 years later, that was about all I could remember. The details had completely escaped me.

As it turns out, Charlotte's growth from sheltered little miss to self-confident young woman is the most powerful part of the book, and I'm not surprised it resonated with my eleven-year-old self. This time around, I was struck by how well-researched the book is and how deftly Avi shares historical details and nautical expertise without pausing the action or being condescending. That alone would have made the book worth it, but the engrossing plot elevates it even further.

Charlotte Doyle was the Newbery Honor Book for 1991, and it richly deserved that award. I'd be curious to reread Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee, which won the top honor that year, because I remember loving that book too.

Bottom line
A truly great read in both youth and maturity. I'm willing to predict it will hold up for old age too.

Fine print
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi
Genre: Young adult historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.
First read in 1992; reread October 2011

The World According to Garp

Synopsis

The life of author T.S. Garp, all the way from his unconventional conception. Includes all the requisite Irving story staples: New England, sex, bears.

My thoughts

I’ve read four of John Irving’s books now, and every time I pick one up I have to psych myself up to start it—and then I always enjoy the hell out of it. I get fatigued just thinking about reading 700 pages of anything, but more than that I can never quite connect with his characters. They don’t seem like they should be all that different from the people I interact with on a daily basis, but they find themselves in absurd situations that are always a few notches removed from my experiences with reality. (Maybe my life isn’t exciting enough.)

Despite that, Garp has one element that was only too easy to relate to—fear for the people you love. And that's what makes this book particularly difficult to get through, even though the looming sense of tragedy is laced with laugh-out-loud comedy.

What I enjoyed the most, as always, is Irving's genius for writing vivid characters and weaving seemingly unrelated people and events into a cohesive narrative. What you think is a humorous tangent slowly and organically becomes integral to the plot. In Garp, the Ellen Jamesians mostly disappear for 200 pages after a relatively brief introduction. They do get a few one-line shout-outs, and that’s more than enough to keep them fresh in your memory so you’re not surprised when they come back with a vengeance halfway through the book. Irving ups the ante by introducing Ellen James herself, which would have felt manipulative if anyone but Irving had done it, but since it is Irving it just flows (although at that point, I was also blindingly distracted by Garp’s turquoise jumpsuit).

Side note: I know this has already been made into a movie, but am I the only person who read about Roberta Muldoon and pictured Tyler Perry as Madea? I am, aren’t I? (For what it’s worth, I also pictured Ellen Page as Ellen James and my college roommate’s dad as Garp.)

Bottom line

It’s not a beach read. But it’s the perfect to get you through the next nor’easter.


Fine print
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
Genre: Fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library.

Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life

Synopsis
Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of Europe's strongest and most fascinating medieval women. She was the wife of two kings and the mother of three, but she was also a political powerhouse in her own right.

In a nutshell, she went on the Second Crusade. She pursued an annulment for her first marriage to Louis VII of France and then turned around and married his archrival, the future Henry II of England, a scant two months later. She held her own in her tumultuous second marriage, even supporting her sons when they revolted against Henry. She outlived Henry, remained involved in the lives of her children, and finally retired to be a nun two years before her death.

My thoughts
I first encountered Eleanor of Aquitaine when I saw Lion in Winter in high school. The cast was impressive—Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, Nigel Terry—and Katharine Hepburn's Eleanor was proud, regal, and utterly captivating. (Bonus trivia tidbit: Hepburn was actually descended from Eleanor.) But it still took me 10 years to get around to reading Alison Weir's biography (I got sidetracked by those glamorous Tudors).

Weir's biography is thorough and enlightening, no small task when you consider that medieval sources and incredibly limited, and those that have survived tend not to focus on women, no matter how powerful they are. (Eleanor sometimes disappears from contemporary records for months at a time, and Weir has to resort to household accounts and educated guesses to determine where Eleanor was.) To complicate matters further, Eleanor was a controversial figure who was regarded with hostility and suspicion. Despite the limitations, Weir's portrait of Eleanor depicts a truly remarkable woman who took charge of her own destiny.

Bottom line
Well worth the read if you have any interest at all in medieval history.

Fine print
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, by Alison Weir
Genre: History
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.
Read December 2009 (review from my book log)

Judging a Book By Its Cover

I have a confession: I have a hard time getting past a bad cover. I'm drawn to books with neat, clean, modern designs, and I can be swayed by raised type and deckled edges. I think it's fair to say that I never would have bothered with this book if I'd based my decision solely on the cover:

Photo by me

I bring this up for a completely unrelated reason. I won't get into why, but I switched my dog's food. I asked for advice and here's what I ended up with:

Photo from Amazon.com

That picture looks like it belongs on the cover of a horribly cheesy '80s novel, not a bag of dog food. I was so skeptical that I spent 20 minutes pacing the floors of my tiny neighborhood pet store debating with myself before I finally took it to the checkout counter. But my dog loves it (not that he has high standards; he also loves goose poop), and it agrees with his sensitive stomach. That'll show me.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Synopsis
Naive young Tess is content to be a Derbyfield; unfortunately for her, if she got to live out her life as an innocent country bumpkin there wouldn't be a story to tell. When Tess's grasping, self-aggrandizing father finds out he's descended from the noble d'Urbervilles, he sends her on a mission to ingratiate herself with the current occupants of the d'Urberville estate. She comes back in disgrace, having been knocked up by the odious d'Urberville scion. Her life is ruined. Or is it? Maybe the dreamy Angel Clare—nope, she's ruined. But what if—nope, never mind, she's doomed. Damn close-minded Victorian society.

My thoughts
The universe did its best to warn me not to read this book. Multiple people tried to steer me toward Hardy's other works, and the library's copy of Tess was missing the first 38 pages when I went to check it out. Too bad I was too stubborn to take those omens more seriously.

Hardy's habit of writing in circles irritated me. He'd introduce a plan and I'd think the plot was moving forward ... and then 20 pages later something would happen to move the plot right back where it had been. To give one non-spoilery example, at one point Tess writes a letter confessing all her "sins." She delivers the letter and then ... nothing happens. And then nothing happens some more. And then she discovers that the letter got stuck under a rug and was never read. It might have been okay if this had happened once, but Hardy did it repeatedly and that made the book excruciating. In general, the plot is long and meandering and too full of contrivances and coincidences. 
Tess was too naive and helpless and Angel was too much of a hypocrite for me to like, but I absolutely despised Alec d'Urbeville. I know he's meant to be the villain, but I hated him for reasons I don't think Hardy intended. He started out as an irredeemable character and then when he tried to redeem himself he somehow managed to make himself into an even bigger creep. (And why the fixation on Tess? If he was such a cad in the beginning, weren't there some other ruined women from his past that he could harass stalk apologize to?)

I guess I'm grateful to Hardy for exposing the faults and hypocrisy in the Victorian attitudes toward sex. I'm certainly grateful that times have changed.

Bottom line
Read it if you're a 19th-century social reformer. Otherwise, skip it.

Fine print
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
Genre: Classic fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I downloaded this on my iPad (gotta love books that predate copyright laws)

Book Nook

Alison at The Cheap Reader does a meme called Style Saturday. This week, it's all about your dream library.

Here's mine:

I had my dream library at my last apartment. It was a tiny nook with a skylight and built-in shelves. It was about three feet high—too small for furniture but perfect for me to curl up with my dog and read to my heart's content.

I do love the idea of floor-to-ceiling shelves (cathedral ceilings! ladders!) and a fireplace, but I'd be content with a little reading nook again.

The Bookseller of Kabul

Synopsis
In the wake of the Taliban's fall, Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad moves in with the titular bookseller and his family. She believes Sultan Khan is a unique, forward-thinking man—but his vision of a progressive Afghanistan doesn't seem to extend to his own family, particularly where his female relatives are concerned.

My thoughts

Every few months the plight of women in Afghanistan will appear as a brief blip in the media, usually when yet another study names Afghanistan as one of the most dangerous places in the world for those who lack a Y chromosome. Seierstad's close relationship with the Khan family and her matter-of-fact tone make this account particularly heartbreaking.

I related most to Sultan's youngest sister Leila. We are roughly the same age, but while I was at college living with four (entirely platonic) male roommates and blithely taking my education for granted, Leila felt forced to drop out of a coed English course because of the impropriety of talking with men she wasn't related to. I graduated, found a job I loved, moved halfway across the country from my family, and chose my own husband (he chose me too, just so we're clear on that); Leila struggled as her family's de facto servant while she dreamed of a teaching job that never materialized and covertly exchanged notes with a boy she could never marry.

Parts of this book are so infuriating that it's difficult to keep an open mind. Afghanistan is a backward nation in many respects, but there is hope. Now that the Taliban is gone, the potential for real reform exists. It may happen at a glacial pace, but shifting long-standing cultural institutions isn't easy.

Khan might have been a typical Afghan in his treatment of his wives and sisters, but it was his commitment to literature that drew Seierstad to him in the first place. Even though his store was ransacked and he was thrown in jail, he persisted in defying the Soviets and then the Taliban by saving books that would otherwise have been destroyed. Unfortunately, for me at least, his misogyny and his ruthlessness as a businessman overshadowed his good deeds.

Bottom Line
A must-read. It's a hugely powerful book.

Fine Print
The Bookseller of Kabul, by Åsne Seierstad
Genre: History/Current Events
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book as a birthday present to myself. It was part of a Borders 3-for-2 promotion back when Borders was still around.

Saved By Beauty: Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran

Synopsis
Sixtysomething author Roger Housden, searching for inspiration for his next book project/midlife crisis, lands on the idea of traveling to Iran. What emerges is a unique travelogue that explores Iran's richly poetic past, its repressive present, and its cautiously hopeful future.

My thoughts
I love armchair travel. One of my friends went to Iraq this year and another went to North Korea, and their experiences have prompted me to seek out travel stories that go beyond the usual buy-a-villa-and-discover-Europe route (although those are fun to read too). That's why this book caught my eye, and I was not disappointed. It never occurred to me to think of Iran as a tourist destination, but Housden's romps among the ruins of ancient cities made me hope for a detente between Iran and the West so that I can see it with my own eyes someday.

Housden met a wide array of people during his trip, and Saved By Beauty helped me understand the passionate, liberal-leaning populace that propelled the Green Movement after the 2009 election (Housden's visit took place shortly before this). I also appreciated Housden's perspective. He pointed out that even as Americans view Iran as an extremist bully with a religious agenda, many Iranians view the U.S. (particularly under the Bush administration) as an extremist bully with a religious agenda. Valuable reality check.

A large chunk of the book deals with the pride many Iranians feel for their Persian culture. This was enlightening for me because, being American, I'm wholly unfamiliar with both Persian culture and the concept of feeling an enduring spiritual connection to my country's culture. (Around the same time Housden was soaking up Persian culture, I was in Italy, where within the span of a couple hours I cheered on the Palio and then cringed my way through an episode of some godawful Tila Tequila reality show. I've never been so profoundly ashamed of America's cultural exports.)

Bottom line
I would have enjoyed the book much more if I'd had more (read: any) exposure to Persian poets. And my mind did start to wander whenever Housden started getting introspective. But Saved By Beauty  piqued my interest in Iran, and I'm curious to read more about its history and politics.


Fine Print
Saved By Beauty: Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran, by Roger Housden
Genre: Travel
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library.