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!

2011: The Year in Books

This year, I managed to hit my general reading goal of 60+ books. Once again, the book salon warred with the book challenge, and the salon won. I really didn’t do very well on The Great Unread challenge, although I made a valiant attempt in the final hours when a transcontinental Christmas flight with a two-hour fog delay tacked on the end allowed me to read big chunks of Giant and The Grapes of Wrath. Still many of the books were fairly short and I don’t feel the sense of accomplishment I did last year. I also haven’t been as good about immediately writing up reviews on Goodreads and that’s something I definitely want to be better about in 2012.

Top Ten of 2011

The Book of Illusions (Paul Auster)
Brat Farrar (Josephine Tey)

The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey)

The Invisible Bridge (Julie Orringer)

Possession (A.S. Byatt)

Richard III (William Shakespeare)

Suite Française (Irène Némirovsky)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John Le Carré)

Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand)

Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)

And now the awards!

Best Discovery: Josephine Tey (1896-1952), a Scottish mystery novelist. My love of royals and history would put her Daughter of Time at the top of my personal list, but I’d recommend starting with Brat Farrar. I love her language and the atmosphere she creates as well as how all of her mysteries are distinct from one another. If you like Agatha Christie or are an Anglophile in any way, you will like Tey.

The Book I Feel Everybody Should Read: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. This true story is extraordinary in its depiction of both the barbarism and heroism of war. A gripping tale of one man’s journey from the heights of Olympic glory to the depths of a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Even if you think you don’t want to read more about World War II, you do, you really do. Hillenbrand is an amazing storyteller, deftly melding one man’s story with epic historical events. If you liked how she handled Seabiscuit, try this one out.

Longest: The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (602 pages). I really enjoyed this book, despite taking forever to finish it. In fact, the story was so vivid that I could pick it up months later and continue reading where I left off without feeling like I had to go back and reread (which is extremely unusual for me). Obviously, I could totally relate to the main character's student life in Paris, but, more importantly, I also learned a tremendous amount about life in Hungary before and during the war, something I previously knew nothing about. It is a bit long, but totally worth it.

Biggest Accomplishment: Possession by A.S. Byatt. The start of this novel moves very slowly (mostly because the poetry bogs it down) and therefore it took multiple attempts over the years to get through it. However, when the mystery picks up, it becomes really thrilling and I couldn’t wait to see how it was going to be resolved. And, for once, I really liked the ending. I will definitely be keeping this one on the shelf so that I can go back and reread at some point knowing how the mystery unfolds.

Biggest Surprise: One Day by David Nicholls. When I first heard about this book while visiting friends in London, I misunderstood the premise, thinking it was about a couple who meet up on the same day every year (sort of an extended Before Sunrise, a movie that I hated). Instead, the structure of the book, glimpses into an ongoing relationship over time, really worked well. It gets a bit maudlin at the end, and the characters aren’t necessarily very sympathetic; however, that does add to the realism of it. Of course, for me, that also may have been helped by the fact that these characters graduate university about the same time I did.

The Book I Most Regret Reading: Paris, France by Gertrude Stein. Sorry, “there’s no there there.” I absolutely hated the style and attitude of this book. Completely pointless. Glad I got it off my shelves.

Favorite Young Adult Series: Matched by Ally Condie. The first volume, Matched, was a fun read with pretty good world-building, prompting an immediate re-read. As good as The Hunger Games? Not quite, but it has believably written characters and some promising loose ends to tie up as the series continues. I didn’t love the dual narrative of the second volume, Crossed, but agree that it made sense for the story told in that book. Similar to The Giver, but a more complete, realistic set-up with more relatable characters. This is tailor-made for Hollywood, so watch for it to be “coming soon” to a theater near you.

Most Useful Non-Fiction: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp. This book is fabulous. It is much more than a study about creativity because it focuses on the perspiration part of the process rather than the inspiration part. As Tharp says, “before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.” While it focuses on the arts (especially dance, musical composition, and writing), much of her discussion of discipline, organization, and habits could apply to the business world as well. There are lots of inspiring anecdotes and self-improvement exercises scattered throughout. Runner-up: Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper’s Quest to Become the Guru of the Gratuity by Steve Dublanica.

Most Common Theme: World War II. I don’t know whether it was in the air or just on my radar, but a good chunk of my reading involved the war. In rough order of preference: the aforementioned Unbroken and The Invisible Bridge, Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer, Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian, Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.

Most Disappointing: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I was looking forward to reading this classic for our “Disturbing Dystopias” book salon, but was barely able to finish it—and it’s short! Given the concept, I should have liked this, but I absolutely hated the writing style and just couldn't get past the fact that half the time I wasn't sure what was going on or what Bradbury’s real message is. It didn’t help that he seems to be a bit of an ass in the epilogue. Runner-up: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly.

Hardest to Finish: Any Human Heart (William Boyd). So hard that I still haven’t. (Actually I like what I read but it’s just one of those things. I’ll get back to it eventually—right after Wolf Hall.)

Favorite Audiobook: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by B.J. Harrison of The Classic Tales podcast. Harrison reads a lot of adventure stories in his free short story podcast, so I bought a few full-length books for our “Classic Boys Adventures” book salon to support his work. He does a really good job with this one. 

Special Mention: Two friends came out with young adult books this year and they deserve special mention for 1) being generally awesome, 2) writing beautifully, and 3) getting me out of my comfort zone. I probably wouldn’t have picked up a book about the supernatural on my own, or one in verse, but I highly recommend both Cold Kiss by Amy Garvey and Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe for being incredibly relatable stories about the sacrifices and choices we have to make and live with in our teen years (and beyond).

What was your favorite book of the year? And, if you haven’t already voted, what should I read next year?

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 Bestest Birthday Present Ever

Audition pubs today!

From my favorite writer on the side, the person who got me through all-nighters at college with her crazy ballet stories, and who shamelessly got me into blogging:

Congratulations, Stasia!

Banned Books Week

This upcoming week, from September 24 to October 1, is Banned Books Week.

“Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.”

The ALA has various lists and statistics for banned and challenged books. Here are the Top 100 from the past decade. And here are the frequently banned classics.

Here are some of my favorite banned and challenged books:

Go Ask Alice

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

What are some of your favorites?

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.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

While none of these is my new job title, please accept my sincere apologies for not being particularly active here in the last few months. When not visiting missions, most of my spare time has been spent in pursuit of that elusive quarry, a new job, leaving little or no time for blogging. I’m thrilled to report that my search has ended happily and, with an ongoing reading challenge, a new subscription to the Lamplighters, and the upcoming season of the San Francisco Opera, regular posting will begin anon.

In the meantime, how awesome does the latest version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy look? I love Alec Guinness as much as the next person, but that is one fine cast.

And thanks to those loyal readers who wrote to ask where and how I was. It is always nice to be missed.

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.

How to Drink

As many of you know, I am always on the lookout for good cocktails, or, failing that, good books about making them. I posted last fall about Dale DeGroff’s The Essential Cocktail, which has served me well and should be on the shelf of everyone who is serious about their personal bar. Right alongside should be Victoria Moore’s How to Drink.

I learned about this fabulous tome on Rowley’s Whiskey Forge—a blog for anyone who loves cooking, eating, and drinking (not necessarily in that order), or even just reading about said activities. I can’t do justice to his beautifully written review of this book, so I’ll just link to it here. Suffice it to say, How to Drink is extremely readable, while also providing plenty of recipes and essential information about brewing coffee and tea, choosing wine, and stocking your bar. Moore even has a section on making your own elderflower cordial!

After covering the basics, the book is organized by season, which takes me back to the days where you could tell what time of year it was by whether I was drinking a gin & tonic or a bourbon & ginger. Of course, now I live in San Francisco where seasonal drinking has less relevance, but that just means that practically every day is potentially a Pimm’s day. Lucky me.

*In non-drinking news, I’d like to offer an apology to anyone whose comment was lost due to the issues Blogger was having earlier in the week. Please know that I did not delete your comment on purpose and feel free to repost!

Playing Favorites

This past weekend I was obliged to ponder the question “What is your favorite book?” and, I have to admit, it took me awhile to come up with an answer. How do I pick just one? I’m a Libra for goodness’ sake! Just writing this post made me want to go back in time and change my answer five times. It’s like Sophie’s Choice without the Nazis. [Disclaimer: I never finished Sophie’s Choice. I should probably stop referencing it until I do.]

A few books came to mind immediately, notably Jane Eyre and Rebecca. But, having recently revisited Jane Eyre for the new movie version, I don’t think I could say it’s my absolute favorite, even though I loved it growing up (and it’s still a great book). For one, it’s amazing how my impression of Rochester has changed over time—much like revisiting Star Wars and wondering how I could ever have been attracted to Luke Skywalker; Han Solo is clearly where it’s at. Rebecca was another favorite of my teen years and would definitely vie for a top position on any favorites list. But how much of that is Du Maurier and how much is Hitchcock? Hard to say.

How much do I want this bag? A lot.

I finally settled on A Widow for One Year by John Irving when I realized that for me it was a great combination of literary style, narrative, and personal connection. It certainly wouldn’t be the Irving of choice for many—I suspect that would be A Prayer for Owen Meany—but I remember that when I read A Widow for One Year, I felt that I finally got Irving. He was an author I had enjoyed for years (is it the bears?), but it wasn’t until this book that I truly connected with his writing.

I wonder, if I re-read it now, would I feel the same way? Should one re-read favorites? Can one have a favorite that one doesn’t ever read again? I know that I should probably never re-read The Joy Luck Club (which I read soon after my mother’s death), but can I pick up Watership Down again?

How about you? Do you re-read? Do you have a ready answer to the question “What is your favorite book?”

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.

Royals and Rulers

“Money and titles may be hereditary,” she would say, “but brains are not…”

—The Scarlet Pimpernel

This month’s book salon topic was novels dealing with royalty. Attendance was sparse. Royal wedding fatigue? If so, C. would probably recommend Mark Helprin’s Freddy and Fredericka, a parody of the British royal family.

Otherwise, the Wars of the Roses seemed to guide much of the reading, with The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel as selections. Much was made of the two Thomases (More and Cromwell), their portrayal through time, and how history is written by the winners.

“Beneath every history, another history.”—Wolf Hall

On the lighter side, yet still somehow involving people being beheaded, I also listened to the Classic Tales Podcast audio of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. Part spy novel, part romance, it’s a fun, quick read for all ages.

The complete list of suggested books can be found here.

Martini Count: 0 (Instead I tried the horribly named but absolutely delicious Strawberry D’Amour—Grey Goose vodka, strawberry purée, simple syrup, lime juice, with muddled fresh basil and a black pepper rim.)

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.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you...

Unless that bookstore was Borders. Then I guess you're out of luck. But you can, and should, find it online come October. Think of it as a birthday present for both of us.

From my favorite writer on the side, the person who got me through all-nighters at college with her crazy ballet stories, and who shamelessly got me into blogging:

Congratulations, Stasia!

Jane Eyre

Growing up, Jane Eyre was one of my favorite books. Even though I read it a couple of times back then, I haven’t picked it up again since I was a teenager. However, I do always try to catch the latest film version. The most recent is by Cary Fukunaga, with Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right, Alice in Wonderland) as Jane and Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Inglourious Basterds) as Rochester. The film goes into wide release later this month and I think it is one of the best I've seen at capturing both the gothic and romantic elements of the story, with a great atmosphere and just the right amount of gloom and drama.

In preparation for seeing this advanced screening, I downloaded a LibriVox recording by Elizabeth Klett to reacquaint myself with the story. If you don’t know LibriVox, they offer free audio recordings of books in the public domain. Since the books are all read by volunteers, the quality of the readers varies widely; however, the site often has multiple versions, so you can sample and pick which one you like. For example, the first reader I downloaded had mispronounced Hebrides and Caligula in just the first chapter, so I quickly abandoned her and switched to Klett’s reading, which I was quite happy with.

With the novel fresh in my mind, I must say that the choices of where to compress and/or change the novel for the screen were right on the money. I also loved how this version framed the story: The film starts with Jane fleeing Thornfield over the moors and ending up at the Rivers’ house (which actually takes place about two-thirds of the way through the novel). Her arrival and collapse on the doorstep sets in motion the series of flashbacks to her childhood and life at Thornfield. Eventually, the opening shots are matched later in the story as Jane’s tale plays out.

I had a few quibbles with some choices near the end, and Rochester was far too good-looking, but, all in all, they did a really good job with it. The two leads were very believable and Dame Judi Dench was characteristically fabulous as Mrs. Fairfax.

If you are at all a fan of the book, don’t miss this one.

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?