Stuck in the Middlemarch with You

As I wrote last week, there are a number of people in the private Sly Wit Goodreads discussion group who would like to participate in a longer-term read of Middlemarch starting this month. The goal would be to read 5 chapters a week, which, in my lovely edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, means about 50 pages. (As a sidenote, if you are looking to pick up some classics for a relatively cheap price, Bickford-Smith’s clothbound series are really beautiful and almost all available at Amazon.)

Middlemarch is one classic that I’ve been meaning to read for awhile but just never managed to make time for, so I’m pleased that others are going to be joining me in the discussion and hopefully nudge me along. As I am currently trapped in Super Bowl hell in lovely Indianapolis, I won’t be starting until this weekend, but feel free to start posting in the discussion threads whenever you like. I only ask that you refrain from posting too far ahead of where we are as a group.

If you would like to join us, please let me know on Goodreads and I will send you an invitation.

In other book news, I got a bit crazy with my multi-reading in January and am still tying up loose ends from that so I probably won’t begin Lolita for another week or so.

Readers' Choice Challenge #1: Bonkers, Brilliant, Rubbish

To the Lighthouse was all three. (Why those terms? More on my latest obsession below.)

Beloved readers, I think you may be a bit bonkers for loving this one so much. Yes, there are moments when the language is absolutely brilliant, but getting there, oh my god, such a chore. I did love the “Time Passes” interlude where I thought the poetic language really fit the image of an abandoned summer house; however, for a whole novel, language isn’t enough for me, I really need either character or plot. Yes, I know, I’m demanding that way.

Also, isn’t Virginia Woolf supposed to be feminist? I wanted to slap all these women and tell them to get over it already. I realize I’m reading this work from a privileged twenty-first-century position, but really, I sympathized with no one here (except maybe James, who had to wait ten frakking years to get to the lighthouse already).

“It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”

Yup, that last line pretty much sums it up. Thanks, Virginia.

Honestly, I would have abandoned this one on the rubbish heap if it hadn’t been part of this year’s challenge. So, I guess I thank you for picking it since I do think I needed to try Woolf at least one more time after my disastrous encounter in high school. I guess we can definitely say that modernists and me are unmixy things. Next up, Lolita! That should go very well. (I kid. I already read the first few pages and think it will go just fine.)

Speaking of which, the Goodreads voters have spoken and there are a number of you who would like to start a longer-term read of Middlemarch in February (easily beating out War and Peace, so that will be deferred until the second half of the year). Second place in the voting went to “Are you kidding?! I’m not even attempting those.” Slackers.*

If you are a new or lapsed reader and wondering what the heck I’m talking about, you can see recent posts about this year’s challenge and our Goodreads group here.

Finally, in other reading news, I have discovered a new books podcast out of the U.K. that I absolutely love: The Readers. This weekly podcast is basically two guys with fairly divergent tastes nattering about books and book news, with various guest appearances by authors and other bloggers. It is incredibly funny and informative and I highly recommend it. I must admit, I have a bit of a podcast crush on both of them and am suddenly finding my conversation littered with various exclamations including “bonkers,” “brilliant,” and “rubbish.” Between his love of Rebecca and his hatred of the Kindle, I have a slight preference for Simon (sorry, Gav!), but I’m sure you will find things to love about both of them and the topics they discuss. There have been 17 episodes since early October and all are available on iTunes. As a completist, I naturally think you must start with episode one and listen to them all, but if you must cherry-pick, try episode seven if you like Sherlock Holmes, episode eight if you like Ann and Michael of Books on the Nightstand (which, as you may remember, I already recommended way back when), or episode 13, the Boxing Day year-in-review special. Seriously, check them out.

Note: For future reference, I can’t see who voted for what, but I’ll try to make at least general results visible to everybody for next time, I just couldn’t go back and edit the poll once it started.

2012 Readers’ Choice Challenge Update

For those who don’t obsessively read the comments here, or who missed my update to the survey results post, I thought an update on the 2012 Book Challenge was in order.

Image ganked from "How May I Shush You Today?"

I have set up a secret group on Goodreads for discussing the books as I go along. Secret means that only members of the group can see the group, who’s in it, and what they post. So, if you are concerned about privacy but want to participate, you can easily sign up under a pseudonym without having it spider all the way through your Facebook connections.

I’ve set it up so each book has its own discussion folder; that way, if/when the main discussion spins off onto side topics, we can set up different discussion threads within each folder and keep like comments together. For the moment, there is a main reading thread and an author thread for each book on the list. Therefore, you can easily track just the discussions about the books you are reading or are interested in.

You can register and find me here. It is quite easy to set up an account and you can get an idea of how the site works in general by viewing my profile. You have to friend me in order for me to invite you to the group: when you do, please indicate you want to be part of the Sly Wit Book Challenge (especially if you are using a pseudonym, as I generally don’t friend people unknown to me through at least social media).

As for reading, I’ve gotten To the Lighthouse from the library and plan to read it over the next couple of weeks. After that, I’m planning on Lolita (since I’ll also be reading Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in preparation for the ballet), followed by A Prayer for Owen Meany. However, in addition to discussion threads, Goodreads groups also let you do polls and right now I have one about reading Middlemarch and/or War and Peace starting February, so if you are interested in either of those, please join in and voice your opinion!

2012 Book Challenge: Readers’ Choices

The results are in!

Reader’s choice quickly became readers’ choices with so many of you voting and leaving comments. I apologize for any technical difficulties you may have encountered in doing so and greatly appreciate your efforts and opinions.

Lolita and A Prayer for Owen Meany were the clear winners. I’ve been meaning to read both of these for some time based on many personal recommendations over the years so that worked out well.

First up, however, owing to early love from John Marcher and others, is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. I figure I might as well tackle my nemesis when I’m fresh and enthusiastic. Hopefully, the story at least features a lighthouse somewhere. Don’t tell me and crush my hopes and dreams if it doesn’t.

To the Lighthouse was one of six books in a tie for third place. I’ve decided to put all of them on the list, even Oryx and Crake, for which Jennifer made a compelling counterargument. (I’m going to blame her anti-Canadian sentiments on hormones: Jenn stop jeopardizing your baby’s future in the Great White North by criticizing Atwood—will no one think of the children!?!)

Other books I really want to read based on comments here and on Facebook and Twitter are Crime and Punishment, The Master and Margarita, Never Let Me Go, and The Sense of an Ending. That last one is strictly in honor of Aaron, ultimate Barnes fan as well as creator, potentate, and Lord High Executioner of the original Facebook challenge that kicked off this crazy reading frenzy.

So, I ended up with a list of twelve, which, if you know me at all, is a very good thing as it would drive me crazy all year long not to be matching the number selected in previous years.

The Dirty Dozen

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)

The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Middlemarch (George Eliot)

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)

A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)

The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)

To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

These twelve books have 6000+ pages between them. Doable? Certainly (Goodreads tells me I read approximately 18,000 pages in 2011). Likely? Only time will tell.

If anyone wants to join me, I’m happy to read these in any order, depending on library availability (which probably only affects The Sense of an Ending, for which I’m currently no. 178 of 192 holds). Just let me know and we can coordinate.

UPDATED UPDATE (January 4):
I will be starting a secret group (meaning only members can see the group, who's in it, and what they post) on Goodreads for discussing these books as I go along. Selfishly, I am also hoping it will be a space for motivation and encouragement.

If you want to read along with any or all of these selections and join the discussion there, please contact me and I will invite you to the group. If you are not already on Goodreads, it is quite easy to set up an account just for these discussions. You can get an idea of how it looks and works by visiting my profile.

I am not getting To The Lighthouse from the library until this weekend, so I don't anticipate any real activity until next week.

Sly Wit 2012

Happy New Year!

As always, I welcome the New Year with open arms and lots of plans and projects.

Barring any 2012 doomsday scenarios coming to fruition, here’s what you can expect to see at Sly Wit this year.

Books:

Clearly you all have opinions on these and I will be posting what I think of your favorites throughout the year as part of the 2012 Readers’ Choice Challenge. Encouragement as I tackle some of the longer ones is always appreciated!

I will also be trying to keep the book salon alive as many members move on to bigger and better things following the near dissolution of my former office by The Man. Appropriately enough, this month’s theme is “Go West, Young Man!” for which I chose to read The Grapes of Wrath.

Performing Arts:

Ballet 101 posts will probably dominate the spring as I enjoy a subscription to the San Francisco Ballet for the first time. Sadly, I don’t foresee the ballet of the Opéra de Paris in my future this year, but you never know what the fates may bring.

Opera won’t be completely absent, as I have tickets to The Lamplighters’ upcoming productions of The Gondoliers and The Pirates of Penzance singalong as well as Nixon in China at the San Francisco Opera in June. I’m also hoping to see Ensemble Parallèle’s The Great Gatsby in February.

Of course, assuming La Maratonista is willing, I’m planning to renew my subscription for the San Francisco Opera’s 2012-2013 season. To combat my opera withdrawal symptoms, I’ve been listening to a number of classic recordings and, before our next subscription starts, I’m hoping to write up some more systematic Opera 101 posts that go through the history of this art form, starting with the Baroque era and continuing to the present day.

Television and Film:

I’m still debating giving up cable, but I have to wait until at least the end of January since there is no way I am missing Season Two of Downtown Abbey on PBS. And, of course, The Voice will be starting up again soon. But there’s not much else I’m excited about going forward besides Season Two of Sherlock, which can’t come soon enough.

Aside from the Oscars, I don’t often talk about film here. (That in and of itself might not seem odd, unless you know that my training is as a historian of French culture with a specialization in the film industry and my doctoral dissertation was on the reception of American films in postwar France.) I’m hoping to rectify that with a new Film 101 series looking at various genres I want to explore again without having to view them through an academic lens. Right now, I’m thinking of three of my favorites: film noir, screwball comedies, and westerns; however, inspired by David Smay’s series at HiLobrow, I may also take on horror, a genre I don’t know at all.

But before I begin that project, I will spend the month of January rewatching my favorite director of all time, a man who incorporated all those genres into his work (okay, maybe not westerns), Alfred Hitchcock. A colleague recently asked for recommendations of his films and, having lately read John Buchan’s The 39 Steps and Josephine Tey’s A Shilling for Candles (which became Young and Innocent), I decided he was due for a serious review.

I hope you join me for these and other random musings!

2012 Book Challenge: Reader’s Choice

Happy Boxing Day!

After my relative lack of success in focusing on this past year’s self-imposed book challenge (The Great Unread), I’ve decided to let you, the reader, select the books for this year’s attempt.

The following are books I've started and put down, feel I should read, or just want to read full stop:

Any Human Heart (William Boyd)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)
Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers)
Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)
The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
Middlemarch (George Eliot)
Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Regeneration (Pat Barker)
Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh)
The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)
The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
Les Trois Mousquetaires (Alexandre Dumas)
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)

If you would recommend any of these, please choose your favorite and vote in the poll in the sidebar. Then, tell me why I should read your selection in the comments below.

I will read at least the three top vote-getters as well as the three books with the most compelling comments. Results to follow in the New Year.

This is my most desperate hour. Help me, readers, you're my only hope.

The Great Unread—Summer Reading

“Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York”

— The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

Although I fell off a bit in this year’s challenge, I used much of my reading time in July to get back on track. I completed my June challenge book, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, as well as my July selection, The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, which I’d been meaning to read since the Royals and Rulers salon in April. Richard III was also the basis for one of the plays I saw this month at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, so I had extra incentive to finish it before the month was out. It is one of the longest Shakespeare plays, but it’s so good that it wasn’t difficult to get through. I also had the help of Arkangel’s audio version* for the car—It was great to combine reading with the audio, so I may be making my way through more of my Oxford Complete Shakespeare set before the year is through.

While more Shakespeare is well and good, my real accomplishment of the summer so far is finally finishing Possession, which I began back in February. Although the start was very slow, mostly because the poetry bogs it down, as the mystery picks up it became really thrilling and I couldn’t wait to see how it was going to be resolved. And, for once, I really liked the ending.

For those that have fallen away from The Great Unread (you know who you are), I have a mini summer reading challenge for you: Finish one book you feel you should read before Labor Day. That gives you a little over a month. If you are game, post your selection in the comments below.

*Arkangel has recorded fully-dramatized versions of the complete Shakespeare, unabridged, which I highly recommend (check your local library) if you don’t often get a chance to see the Bard performed.

The Great Unread—May

—People change, she said.

—Oh, no they don’t. Look at me. I’ve never changed. It’s like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you’ll still read Brighton. That’s human nature.

As I mentioned in last month’s challenge post, this month I decided to read my copy of Brighton Rock, which is part of the six-volume “Deluxe Edition” Graham Greene centennial series by Penguin that I bought at the MLA some years ago. Being set in the Brighton underworld, the novel also fit conveniently into this month’s book salon topic, Crime and Punishment.

When I pulled this month’s challenge book down from the shelves, I had no idea what Brighton rock was. Knowing the basic outlines of the plot, I figured it was, you know, a rock, or maybe a cliff. But, no, it is actually a candy sold in seaside towns in the U.K.

[Note: The photo above was ganked from Paperback Reader, who provided me with some comfort by asserting that she had made the same assumption about this title, despite knowing of the candy. I wholeheartedly agree with her assessment that the symbolic use of this candy takes the book to a whole other level.]

Reading this at the end of a series of books related to the topic of crime really pointed up the issue of level, which we discussed at last night’s salon. While I enjoyed the other books I read (A Certain Justice, Killing Floor, To Love and Be Wise, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) and the latter two had me immediately take out The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar, and The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag from the library, they did not reach the level of the Greene, even if Brighton Rock itself straddles the line between his earlier “entertainments” and his later “Catholic” novels.

Next month’s read for me will also straddle the classic/popular line: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. Besides a translation of Paris au XXe siècle, I’ve never read Jules Verne and I’m really looking forward to it. Of course, it’s a bit of a cheat because I just purchased it on my recent trip to France and haven’t been carting it from apartment to apartment for years like most of the Great Unread, but it syncs up nicely with next month’s book salon on Best Picture Adaptations. I’ve never seen Around the World in 80 Days (1956) either, so I’ve added that to my Netflix queue.

I haven’t heard from readers in awhile. Have you given up on this challenge? Not reading these days? Enquiring minds want to know.

The Great Unread—April

Since none of the unread novels in my collection fit well with this month’s book salon topic, Royals and Rulers, I decided to take up a purchase that I had never gotten around to in my teaching days.

Shakespeare: The Tragedies, by Nicholas Marsh, is part of Macmillan’s “Analysing Texts” series on British literature, which also includes three other volumes on Shakespeare. Sadly, this volume, which examines Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, and therefore one might think would be the most popular and relevant for students, is apparently now out of print.

I bought this and two other volumes in the series at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association, one of the largest academic conferences in the country and where first-round interviews for almost all tenure-track jobs in English and other language departments are held. One of my favorite things about having to attend the MLA was going to the book sale on the last day while publishers were packing up their booths and selling their stock at steep discounts. Really, it’s amazing I don’t have more of a “book problem.”

The MLA is also where I picked up my May challenge book, Brighton Rock, part of Penguin’s six-volume “Deluxe Edition” Graham Greene centennial series, which included, as one might expect, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, and The Quiet American, but also, inexplicably, Orient Express and Travels with My Aunt. (Really, Penguin, how do you not include The Power and the Glory in that collection? Or, if you are looking to add something comic, Our Man in Havana?)

Anyway, back to Shakespeare. The Tragedies was definitely a “challenge” book, despite its short length. I’m not really sure why I kept it this long, when I have gotten rid of almost everything academic not related to either France or film, but it was probably because, like many people, I always intend to read more Shakespeare. And, after reading The Daughter of Time for my Royals and Rulers book salon, I had thought of reading Richard III for this month’s challenge, but ultimately decided against it. (Since I have the complete works of Shakespeare in a three-volume boxed set—purchased at an English bookstore near my apartment in Paris with the credit from trading in all the paperbacks I had accumulated while living there—almost any play could count as a challenge book for me.)

The Tragedies was an interesting approach to analyzing the texts, doing a close read of very specific extracts rather than discussing the plays as a whole, more in the style of the French “explication de texte” than much of the analysis I’ve read in English. Each chapter looked at one brief extract from each play, focusing on the openings, endings, heroes, heroines, society, humor, and imagery. Even though this meant that only a very small percentage of the text of each play was discussed, the author did manage to tease out larger meanings that helped me understand the works better. One benefit of the close read is that it made sense even for plays that I hadn’t read in a long time, such as King Lear. This leads me to actually want to attempt the other volume I purchased (Shakespeare: The Comedies, natch), even though I haven’t yet read most of the plays.

I hope everyone is making good progress on this challenge. I’d love to hear about what you’ve been reading. As stated above, my challenge read for May will be Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, one of my favorite authors. A new adaptation, with Helen Mirren, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and will hopefully be released soon in the U.S., although I’ve seen no sign of it.

The Great Unread—March

Due to my recent travels, this March book challenge post was a bit delayed—much like the reading of my own challenge book, Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky. Suite Française caught my eye in the window of BookShop West Portal when I first moved to San Francisco. At the time, I didn’t know the story of its publication (had I realized, it might have made it off my shelf a bit quicker).

Némirovsky, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, was a successful author in interwar France. When World War II broke out, she began a planned five-part epic depicting the stages of the war. Unfortunately, she had only completed two sections of the draft manuscript when she was arrested, deported, and sent to Auschwitz in 1942, where she died one month later. Thankfully, even though her husband soon suffered the same terrible fate, their two children were able to go into hiding and survived, carrying the manuscript with them. Only years later would they realize that the notebook scribblings, which they thought were a private journal, were complete enough to be published.

The work is an incredible fictional depiction of the June exodus and later German occupation of France. I can’t imagine how good this epic might have been had the author lived to finish the novel. It was one of the works that served as inspiration for Chris Bohjalian’s Skeletons at the Feast, which I read for my “War, What Is It Good For?” book salon last month, and makes a great companion piece to that novel. You can read my reviews of both at Goodreads.

I hope everyone is making good progress on this challenge. I’d love to hear about what you’ve been reading. As for April, I am still considering my selection. Either way, it is likely to be one of two books related to last year’s challenge: Shakespeare: The Tragedies (since, now that I’ve read Macbeth, I can finally appreciate this study analyzing his four major tragedies) or Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, which I began too late last year to finish before the challenge ended.

The Great Unread—February

Confession time: I have not finished this month’s challenge book, which for me was Possession by A. S. Byatt. I blame the fact that February only has 28 days. Yeah, that’s it. While it may be enough time to get sober or for a virus to spread across the globe, it was not enough time for me.

Actually, I got distracted by reading three books for my latest book salon (Books and the Bookish) and the end of the month did sneak up on me. Yes, Possession also fit into that category, but I put off starting it until too late. However, I’ve read more than a quarter of it in the last few days, so I hope to finish it soon. I’m pretty sure this one will end up staying on the shelf because, besides being a pretty hardcover, its very structure and subject lend themselves to repeated readings.

The “books” book salon was one of our most spirited discussions yet. (“Spirited” in many senses as my martini count reached the exalted heights of four, which is why I did not post about it the next day as per usual.) Books discussed included The Book Thief, The Historian, On Beauty, The Secret History, The Shadow of the Wind, The Thirteenth Tale, and Under the Net, all of which I had either already read, or now want to. It was the perfect example of the quotation that stood out to me in one of my selections, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: “None of us had any experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we’d read. At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.”

While it was great to have such an animated discussion, I think that perhaps our next topic (War, What Is It Good For?) will, and should, be more sobering. Again, in many senses of the word. It’s coming up quite quickly, so I really do need to finish Possession so that I can move on to Suite Française.

How about you? Did you make the most out of the shortest month of the year? Have you pulled down your next book from the shelves?

The Great Unread—January

Well, it’s the moment of truth.  Did you read your January selection? That book that’s been languishing on the shelf, or in your TBR pile? I finished mine, The Name of the Rose, on Sunday night, just in the nick of time. 

I’ve decided that it’s not a keeper. I loved the essential storyline, but it is very much the first novel of an esoteric academic and Eco gets way too bogged down in historical and linguistic details. Even though I liked it well enough, I can’t imagine myself picking it up again.

In a way I’m happy, because my edition, besides being a paperback, doesn’t really fit on the shelf aesthetically. (In a perfect world, the only yellow or gold on my bookshelf would be in my special boxed editions of Tolkien, but that’s a story for another day.)

At least now I get to contribute something interesting to our work bookshelf.

How about you? Are you happy or disappointed that you finally took that book down to read?

Because Atheism Has No Holidays

“But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all.”

“Can't I?”

“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”

“Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea.”

“But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea.”

“But I do. That's how I believe.”

—Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited

This month’s book salon topic was novels with religious characters or settings. Salonista selections were quite varied and ran the gamut from anti-religious to reverential: Cain (José Saramago), Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather), The End of the Affair (Graham Greene), In This House of Brede (Rumer Godden), The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco).

Martini Count: 2

Preparing the discussion questions took me back to the fabulous “Theology and Literature” class I took in college, where I first read Graham Greene, Gilgamesh, and Shusaku Endo’s Silence. This theme provides so many avenues for discussion (and there are so many novels on its list that I want to read) that I think we could totally do it again in the near future. Following the meeting, I am most intrigued by Cain, read in Spanish by La Maratonista Minimalista. Sadly, a quick search of Amazon, Goodreads, and the San Francisco Public Library leads me to believe it might not be available in English yet. If you believe otherwise, let me know.

Unfortunately, before our meeting, I had only read about 300 pages of my selection, The Name of the Rose; however, I don’t feel too guilty, because one conclusion I came to while reading it is that it is probably a better fit for next month’s topic, Books and the Bookish. For, although the novel takes place in a fourteenth-century monastery, it is really more about language, learning, and books, than about religion. But I do need to finish it by the end of the month since it’s my challenge book for January. And, even though the book salon concept means that it’s not really crucial to finish a text before meeting, I much prefer it, and therefore I need to get started on Possession soon, which, from what I recall, should be an interesting follow-up to the Eco.

Speaking of challenges, how is everyone doing on The Great Unread? Please post below, whether you’ve only just picked your January book, read a fair amount, or finished your selection. Depending on your outlook, you have only have half a month left, or you have half a month left.

2011: The Great Unread

After the relative success of my self-imposed book challenge in 2010, I’ve set myself a new goal for 2011.

Each month, I’m going to do something radical and read a novel or play from my own shelves. Despite moving every few years, and shedding books along the way, I still have a number of works that I insist on keeping for my (limited) fiction shelves, but that I haven’t actually read. Some, such as A.S. Byatt’s Possession, I’ve started and liked, but never finished, others, such as Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions, are gifts I always intended to read, but never made time for, and some are recent additions, like my fancy clothbound editions of Dickens (designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith). Luckily, many of these coordinate with upcoming book salon topics.

First up will be The Name of the Rose, which I will read for our holiday season book salon in mid-January. The theme is “Because Atheism Has No Holidays” and features books with religious characters or settings. I’d also love to read either Gilead by Marilynne Robinson or A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving for this salon, but I don’t want to get overly ambitious as I tended to do last year.

If you’d like to join me in this challenge, please post a comment, and check in monthly to report your progress. I’d love to have others involved in this effort!

2010: The Year in Books, Part II

One of the biggest challenges of getting through the books on my 2010 challenge list was that, as I focused more on reading, I discovered just how much was out there that I wanted to read. At times, this made my “should-read” books feel like more of a chore than they otherwise would have, which was often compounded by the additional pressure of library due dates. The following are some of my favorite reads of the year.

Top Ten of 2010

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is one of the biggest page-turners I’ve read in the last ten years. Not only did I stay up late to get through the whole thing, but I put the second volume on hold at the library the very next morning. It’s a shame the rest of the trilogy didn’t live up to this first volume.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

This teen novel is suspenseful and intriguing, despite the grim subject matter of teen suicide (don’t do it!). It makes you think about destiny and all the little things that seem meaningless but may have profound consequences.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This beautiful novel of the love between a father and son was one of the shortest I read all year, but it certainly packs a wallop emotionally.

 Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

This novel is well written, suspenseful, and simply one of the best multi-narrative books I’ve read in a long time. Be prepared to want to read it again from the beginning when you finish.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

A modern take on vampires and what a post-apocalyptic U.S. might look like. My only complaint is its length—it is not particularly slow-moving, but it is unnecessarily long.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This first novel of what has been dubbed The Millennium Trilogy is exciting and smart, although quite dark. It’s a bit slow in the beginning, but once it picks up you can’t put it down.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

This book was even better than the first one. The story was much more intricate and developed, while still moving along at brisk pace. Lisbeth really comes into her own here and it’s nice to see such a strong female character, even if her talents seem a little bit unbelievable at times.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson

I really liked the conclusion to this trilogy. It is certainly a different book than the others, more of a legal thriller mixed with caper elements than a mystery, but I always love a good caper.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

A thrilling story that takes place over the course of one week during the siege of Leningrad. It is both unbelievable, yet very real.

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
This novel retells the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from the viewpoint of a maid in the household. I really enjoyed this fresh perspective on the story and the glimpses it provides of the life of a servant in Victorian London.

Naturally, there were a few disappointments as well, notably Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City, which I was looking forward to, but ended up being a bit of a slog. I also tried a number of graphic novels this year (Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli, and A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld), but merely ending up reinforcing the fact that I don’t love them as a format.

You can read my reviews of these and other books on Goodreads.

2010: The Year in Books, Part I

As 2010 began, I was just getting back into reading again after years of research focused on French history and culture. As I mentioned back in my first blog post, I decided that it might be a good idea to challenge myself to read one book a month from those many lists out there devoted to what one should have read. I combed through a number of lists, and finally settled on twelve books of varied length. All in all, I’m quite pleased with my selections and happy to have read most of them. War and Peace has proved to be my white whale as there is no way I will finish it this year when I’m still working on Catch-22 and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo.

And now the awards!

Biggest Surprise:  This is a tie between My Ántonia and Catch-22. I really wasn’t looking forward to either of these, but I was pleasantly surprised by both. My Ántonia reminded me of an adult, literary Little House on the Prairie while Catch-22 is just really funny and entertaining.

Longest:  Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. Although Don Quixote and War and Peace both run over 1000 pages, this unabridged French novel is two large paperback volumes of about 700 pages each. I had read the abridged English version last year, but nothing compares to the original. I haven’t finished it yet, but it is proving to be an easy, enjoyable read.

Most Disappointing:  Macbeth. I recently wrote on the redemption of this play in my eyes, but, as a text, it still remains the one that I was most looking forward to but did not enjoy as I read it.

Biggest Accomplishment:  Don Quixote. This is both because it inspired this challenge and because I wanted to hurl it across the room after a few hundred pages. The First Part is extremely repetitive and annoying; the fact that I continued on to the incredible Second Part is an achievement in itself.

Hardest to Finish: Two Years Before the Mast. I really liked this book, but it was far longer than it needed to be. Of course, the same could be said for the book it inspired, Moby-Dick. However, I don’t regret switching out The Education of Henry Adams for it.

The Book I Most Regret Putting on the List:  Wide Sargasso Sea. This book showed such promise. I loved the concept of a prequel to Jane Eyre that explores the background of Rochester’s first wife; however, I really hated the writing style and felt the author could have done much more with the concept.

The Book I Feel Everybody Should Read:  The Handmaid’s Tale. The dystopian world presented in this story is both disturbing and chilling. Sadly, it is probably also more believable now than when the book appeared in the 1980s.

You can read my reviews of these and the other challenge books (The Awakening, Lord of the Flies, La Princesse de Clèves) on Goodreads.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

As many of you know, I spent Thanksgiving in Pasadena with friends, one of whom introduced me to the joy that is Slings and Arrows (appropriately, her own blog is called Little But Fierce). I had heard about this Canadian comedy for years, but had conflated it in my mind with Due South (both star Paul Gross), a show I had sampled but wasn’t much interested in.

Slings and Arrows revolves around the fictitious New Burbage Festival, a stand-in for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival just outside of Toronto—and believe me, I’m now kicking myself for not checking this festival out when I was in nearby Kitchener-Waterloo. Each season (there are three, with six episodes each) the local company takes on a different play, first Hamlet, then Macbeth, and finally King Lear, with the arc of the season somewhat mimicking the play itself. If you have any interest in theatre, particularly Shakespeare, hie thee to Netflix to add this remarkable show to your queue.

Shakespeare has been much on my mind of late. For starters, Macbeth was one of my book challenge should-reads for the year (being the only one of the major tragedies that I hadn’t read). I hadn’t liked it when I read it back in March, as the misogyny really struck me forcibly at the time. However, that may have been due to the type of books I had been reading in February, which had a distinctly feminist slant.

However, I recently revisited the story with the BBC film that aired on PBS this fall and was forced to reconsider my opinion. The film stars Patrick Stewart and updates the setting to a 1930s(ish) Scotland. Unsurprisingly, Stewart gives an incredible performance (I will never forget being blown away by his one-man show of A Christmas Carol years ago), but the real revelation for me was Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth—she really brought the character alive. Also, transforming the witches into hospital nurses was a truly inspired touch; they brought just the right amount of modern creepiness. If you didn’t get a chance to catch this on PBS, try to watch it when it comes out on DVD this January. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve got a little list…*

“Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.”—Russell Banks

I’ve spent a good deal of time recently coming up with new themes and lists of suggested books for my book salon. Since the salon is grounded in the classics, I figured that a good way to get ideas would be to peruse some “top” lists. After all, everyone seems to have one. Newsweek even came up with a meta-list compiled from the selections on other major lists, notably those of the New York Public Library and The Modern Library.

The controversial Modern Library list (of the top 100 English-language novels of the century) gained much notoriety over ten years ago for being too white, too male, and too middlebrow. There was such an uproar over the list, that they introduced a companion “Reader’s List,” but, with four books by Ayn Rand and three by L. Ron Hubbard in the top ten, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not worth bothering with. I find the Modern Library list a tad boring, filled with books that one reads only because one is forced to in high school or college. My biggest quibble with it is that James Joyce hogs both the #1 and #3 spot. Seriously? But maybe I’m just bitter that I’ve only read 20 novels on the list. Ouch. (I do a bit better on the rival Radcliffe List, where I’ve read 34, but still.)

If you are looking for something a bit more current, try TIME’s 100 List, which further narrows the pool to English-language books published in or after 1923, the year of the magazine’s founding. And, let’s all pause for a moment and thank our lucky stars that that restriction means no Ulysses (published in 1922). Of course, I don’t do much better on this list, with about 25 under my belt. Some other lists include the 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians (40!) and The Guardian’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time (34!). One of my favorite lists is The Daily Telegraph’s “110 Best Books: The Perfect Library,” if only for the fact they couldn’t limit themselves to 100. Even then, they cheat quite a bit since a number of their entries are actually multi-volume series (Trollope’s Barchester chronicles, Updike’s Rabbit, Run books, etc.). Finally, if you’re really ambitious, you can try to tackle the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, for which there are intricate spreadsheets you can download to track your progress.

People who know me know that I love nothing better than organizing and making lists. However, the problem with looking at all these lists and coming up with these themes is that they inevitably bring back the refrain that haunted me in graduate school: so many books, so little time. I want to read many of the books on these lists, but is it really important that I do so? After all, it’s lists like these that led me to read Wide Sargasso Sea this year, and that’s time I can never get back.

Do these lists make you feel guilty? energized? indifferent? Do you have books you feel you should read? Do you actually plan to read them? I'd love to hear from people on this.

*What can I say? When I’m not making lists, I’m rewatching the entire Gilbert & Sullivan oeuvre via Netflix.

The Hundred Years War (and Peace)

As October winds down, I’m beginning to seriously worry about getting through this year’s book challenge. Russian Roulette came and went as a book salon topic and I still couldn’t get through War and Peace. Before getting distracted by The Passage (another damn trilogy!), I had read over 400 pages, but, even though I liked it, it wasn’t grabbing me.

Maybe I should have used email?

I think at this point I need to admit (at least temporary) defeat and try to get through the remaining four titles: Catch-22, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, The Education of Henry Adams, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, given that my book salon has chosen “Water, Water, Everywhere” as our next topic, I’m already thinking of changing out The Education of Henry Adams for Two Years Before the Mast, which had been on my original should-read short list (along with One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is about what I need to get through all these).

"Madame Bovary, C’est Moi!" Or, a Book Salon for the Twenty-First Century

As I mentioned in my inaugural post, one of my projects for the year was reading twelve classics that I had never gotten around to before. While the year started out strong, my newfound interest in reading led me to discover so many great contemporary books (such as Await Your Reply, City of Thieves, and 13 Reasons Why) that I had a bit of trouble keeping up with my should-reads. As you might guess, I soon found myself with half the year gone and Don Quixote and War and Peace still unread.

What to do? In an effort to conquer the remaining books on my list, I started a book salon with a few like-minded work colleagues. The concept is simple: instead of reading and dissecting one book, as in a book club, everyone selects whatever book they want that fits the theme of that month. The initial topics that I proposed revolved around my remaining should-reads: classic boys adventure, dystopian novels, quests, and Russian authors.

After a fabulous first discussion on quests (Moby-Dick, Don Quixote, The Road), this month’s salon was “Cherchez la femme!” and everyone chose books with eponymous heroines. Selections included Jane Eyre, Lolita, and Madame Bovary. I read two short works, both twists on classic tales: Mary Reilly is a retelling of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from the viewpoint of a maid in Jekyll’s household and The Penelopiad tells the story of Homer’s Odyssey through the eyes of Penelope and the twelve hanged maids. Both provide an interesting take on narrative viewpoint and the female perspective. You can see my reviews of both of these works at http://www.goodreads.com/sylview.

So far, both these themes have proved to be excellent jumping-off points for literary discussions and I eagerly await our next salon: Russian Roulette.

Please feel free to post your thoughts and questions on the book salon concept. What do you think would make a good theme for a book salon session?