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.