Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

It's been a few weeks since I finished this. Actually, more like a month. After reading a handful of good things about this book I decided to give it a go. I'm generally not a fan of epistolary novels, but this one sounded different. The relationship I had with this book was a good one; I finished it in two days because it was just that pleasurable to read. This is not a book to be read in short spurts but rather consumed all at once. I don’t have anything profound to say about it, except that I enjoyed it immensely. Bernadette is certainly one of the more memorable characters I’ve read this year. She has her flaws but is completely likeable at the same time. The novel as a whole is funny, sharp-witted, and immensely readable.

More relevant was the cover sheet, which set forth the psychological profile of candidates best suited to withstand the extreme conditions at the South Pole. They are “individuals with blasé attitudes and antisocial tendencies,” and people who “feel comfortable spending lots of time alone in small rooms,” “don’t feel the need to get outside and exercise,” and the kicker, “can go long stretches without showering.

For the past twenty years I’ve been in training for overwintering at the South Pole! I knew I was up to something.

I was actually sad when this book ended because I enjoyed it so much. If you’re looking for a novel that you just might fall in love with, give Semple’s book a try. It’s a gem. And just right. 

The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer

"Writing a book can be a profoundly optimistic act; expecting someone to read, buy and publish it is always a phenomenally presumptuous one."

I didn't know much about this book before I started to read it, except that after I reviewed How I Became a Famous Novelist, Greg from The New Dork Review of Books suggested I read The Thieves of Manhattan. Well, I'm happy I listened to Greg once again, because this book was awesome. However, most of the fun that came along with reading this book was that I didn't know where it would take me, so I'm not going to give too much away.

The Thieves of Manhattan is essentially a riff on the publishing industry's literary fakes and hoaxers (James Frey, anyone?). It follows a down-and-out aspiring short story writer and the web of lies in which he becomes tangled. It's equal parts funny, thrilling and snarky. Aside from the exceedingly suspenseful story line (I read this book in one day), I especially enjoyed the plethora of literary slang Langer threw into the novel. A handy glossary in the back of the book clarified each and every one. For example:

kowalski n. A sleeveless white T-shirt of the sort favored by the character Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, in which he is depicted by the playwrite in one instance as wearing "an undershirt and grease-stained seersucker pants."
daisies n. Dollars, from Daisy Buchanan, a character in F. scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, about whom Jay Gatsby remarks, "Her voice is full of money."
salinger v. To live in seclusion, after the reclusive author J. D. Salinger

This is a book for book lovers. Although this novel explores the lives of those who lie to get ahead, it is a testament to the modern human condition and just how far we will go to achieve success. Truly a page-turner, The Thieves of Manhattan is fun, smart, and I can't recommend it enough.

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau, 2010

Thoughts on The Marriage Plot

I was pretty excited about this one. I don't think I have been this excited about a book since I was 13 and the second Harry Potter book was published and I know that many of you share my enthusiasm for this one.

In lieu of a traditional review that will be posted the week of October 11th, I wanted to share a few non-spoiler thoughts on Eugenides' latest novel, The Marriage Plot.

• This novel was everything I hoped it would be and reminded me why I love reading so much.
• Whenever I read Eudenides I have an urge to cancel all plans so I can stay at home and read all day; he has got a serious gift for sucking me into his plots.
• There are many passages throughout the novel that I underlined thinking to myself, "exactly!"
• I hope it doesn't take another 10 years for Eugenides to write another book.
• It would be interesting if Cal Stephanides met Leonard Bankhead.
• The ending of this book is probably the most satisfying ending I've read all year.

A big thanks to Melissa Rochelle from Life:Merging who sent me her ARC. You can preorder The Marriage Plot, or go buy it October 11th.

How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

"If you could write a book and act like you meant it, the reward was country estates and supple college girls."

A few weeks ago I read a review for this book over at Farmlane Books. When Jackie said she recommended this novel to "anyone with an interest in the publishing industry" I knew I had to read it, and I'm so happy I did. This is the funniest novel I've read in a long time and like Jackie said, if you keep up with the publishing industry I highly recommend you read this book.

Without giving too much away, How I Became A Famous Novelist is a satire of the publishing industry and exposes its hypocrisies, lampooning the majority of today's best-selling authors. If you're well-versed in the New York Times bestselling authors, you'll be able to pick up on the fact that Hely's fictional authors have real-life counterparts (I'm looking at you Dan Brown and you too, James Patterson, and the team of 30 ghost writers you employ).

This book made me consider the publishing industry in a new light. Of course like any industry, it's goal is to make money and this book exposes the cost of that motivation in a thoughtful way. It critiques the current state of popular fiction in America and how it came to be.

Since when has anybody wanted to hear the truth? People hate the truth. It's literally their least favorite thing in the entire universe. People will believe thousands of different lies in succession rather than confront a single scintilla of truth... People don't trot down to Barnes & Noble to pay $24.95 for the truth.

I really can't reccomend this book enough. It was laugh out loud funny, and I never say that. While the overall tone of the book is cynical, it ends in a hopeful note, which in turn makes me hopeful that the industry I love so dearly isn't as dire as it may seem.

Publisher: Black Cat, 2009

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

This was my first Murakami and after Ben from Dead End Follies told me Norwegian Wood was a good place to start with this author, I jumped right in. Now I know what all the fuss is about. I enjoyed this novel more than any other book I have read this year. I was worried the novel would be extremely complex, but it's actually quite straightforward and accessible.

Norwegian Wood introduces us to Toru Watanabe, a man who recalls his freshman year of college in Tokyo when he hears The Beatles song Norwegian Wood on a plane; a year filled with complicated relationships and psychological instability, a year he experienced feelings "he would never know again".

On the surface Norwegian Wood is a love story, a very organic one at that. Put simply, Toru is caught between two women; one of his past that remains in his present, and one that can propell him into the future:

I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.

But it's really much more than just a love story. It's about memory and the memory of love, and how it stays with us even when the one we love is gone. It's about coping with death and sorrow, and understanding life while trying to find your place in this imperfect the world. It's about loneliness and isolation and the innate human desire to form unique relationships.

Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum - a huge empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself.

A high-five goes to Ben for this one - a remarkably inimitable read.

Publisher: Vintage International, 1987
Translated by Jay Rubin

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates

Wow. Joyce Carol Oates knows how to write a novella. I enjoyed every page of Black Water and didn't want it to end - partly because it was so good and partly because Oates reveals the inevitable in the first chapter - our protagonist Kelley is involved in a horrible accident and will die. After meeting a handsome senator at a 4th of July party, Kelley leaves with him to go to his hotel, only to end up at the bottom of a river. The book then teeters between her past and her present - outlining where she came from and what brought her to where she is now. The accident mirrors that of the Chappaquiddick incident - when a young girl was found dead inside of a sunken car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy. In Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates gives Mary Jo Kopechne a voice that utterly heartbreaking and impossible to forget.

Black Water is a powerful book - revealing the human truths of a 26-year-old idealistic young woman and a powerful, untrustworthy older man. The entire novella permeates with a sense of urgency - mostly because it is told in prolepsis - making it (for me) unputdownable.

How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words. Never to doubt that you will live to utter them.

Black Water was nominated for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. It highlights themes of fate, vulnerability and the mutability of life. This book is both fascinating and terrifying. I am eager to discover more titles from Joyce Carol Oates.

Black Water was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1993.

Publisher: Penguin, 1992

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

I picked this book up after I saw it named a top read of 2010 on a few different blogs. I was certainly not disappointed. Not only was a not disappointed, I absolutely adored this novel. This is one of those treasures that I'm not sure I would have come across if I weren't part of this lovely little book blogging community. Anyhow, this book follows Kitty Fane, a young women who has knowingly married the wrong man out of fear of never marrying. As a bacteriologist, she finds him boring and acts indifferent to his affection. Upon their marriage they move to Hong Kong where he takes up work. After she is caught in an affair a few years later, her husband forces her to accompany him to Mei-tan-fu, the heart of a cholera epidemic. He will go to study the disease in hopes of a cure, and she will accompany him. Of course Kitty feigns poor me, this is no place for a woman. What is she to do in Mei-tan-fu?

But here is what makes this book so great - it's really about two different women; Kitty Fane the woman who can't get enough of herself and the small world she lives in and Kitty Fane the woman who understands there is a bigger picture than what she first thought - one that offers her room to grow into a better person. Of course none of us can completely change for the better; there will always be some fragment of vanity and frivolity, no matter how fleeting, in all of us. But we can do our best to perpetuate positive, meaningful actions in our future, and I think this is what The Painted Veil is about.

Though Kitty allowed no shadow to show on her face, in her heart she laughed. Much she cared what anyone thought of her now!

Of course this theme sounds trite but I promise you, this book is anything but. Maugham's writing is truly lovely and his ability to convey ideas without hitting the reader over the head with them is refreshing. This is a book about the human ability to grow and change for the better. It reminds us that there is more to our lives than what we experience on an average day and there is more to the world than the small part in which we live. It highlights the power of beauty and freedom and the importance death places on life.

I think The Painted Veil would be a fantastic choice for a book club, as there is much to discuss. Not to mention the movie adaption that was made in 2006, which I'm off to hunt down immediately.

Publisher: Vintage, 1925

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm not quite sure how to review this book, except to say I loved it to pieces. Foer's novel is very post-modern, so it is hard to give it a traditional review. This is a book about making sense of the world around you, coping with loss and learning how to live. 

It was one of the the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

As I mentioned, it's hard to offer a traditional review of this novel, so I am going to offer a list of thoughts:

• Oskar Schell, the novel's protagonist, is one of the most interesting, hilarious and lovable characters I have read since Nichole Krauss' Leo Gursky (The History of Love). 
• This book has more passages that I underlined and circled than any book I've read to date. Foer's prose is beautiful and truthful, and speaks to the reader in a way that makes the ideas very relatable. 
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is my favorite piece of fiction I have read so far this year.
• This is one of those books that reminded me why I love books so much. 

Some of my favorite passages:

"I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

"sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."

"I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her."

"It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely and so close. I thought about "Eleanor Rigby." It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?"

"Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?"

"I regret that is takes a life to learn how to live"

All in all, I truly can't recommend this book enough.

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2005

I would measure your wrist twice

Reading now: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It was too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. If I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice.

I'm not even halfway finished, but so far I am head over heels in love with this book. I don't want it to end.

Top Ten Fictional Crushes

1. Henry DeTamble- The Time Traveler's Wife (Niffeneger): He's a librarian. What is hotter than a guy who likes to read? Not to mention his advanced survival skills he developed as a result of you know, the uncontrollable time travel. Let's face it, the guy is downright resourceful. Oh yeah, and I want him to love me like he loves Claire.

2. Edward Rochester - Jane Eyre (Bronte): Dark, brooding and rough around the edges. Sure, he may be a bigamist (some may say creep) who keeps one wife locked up while marrying another - but there is something about him that gets me every time. Don't judge.

3. Jacob Jankowski - Water for Elephants (Gruen): A hard worker, animal lover and incredibly moral, I'd let Jacob sleep in my train car anyday.

4. Lysander - A Mid Summer Night's Dream (Shakespeare): What I envision to be the sexiest of all Shakespearean characters.

5. Jay Gatsby - The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald): He is incredibly social, impossibly handsome and ridiculously wealthy. The air of mystery surrounding his past is also intriguing. Stupid Daisy...

6. Severus Snape - The Harry Potter Series (Rowling): Again, don't judge.

7. Shadow - American Gods (Gaiman): Big strong man with a broken heart... I can't help it.

8. Stanley Kowalski - A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams): Passionate and always wearing a tight t-shirt, what's not to love? The uncontrollable rage, you say? Maybe it's because I fall for the bad boys or maybe it's because I watched the movie that stars Marlon Brando after I finished the book.

9. Leo Gursky - A History of Love (Krauss): This might be less of a crush than it is an extreme love for this character, he's probably my favorite out of all the books I've read this year. He's full of witty thoughts and crazy tendencies, and I love him.

10. Eric Northman - The Sookie Stackhouse Series (Harris): Confession; I have never read The Sookie Stackhouse Series. However, I couldn't pass up the chance to talk about Eric Northman, since he's based on a literary character. Simply stated, wow and wow. I'd pick Eric over Bill any day.


Thanks to The Broke and The Bookish for hosting Top Ten Tuesday!

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

This is the best book I have read so far this year.

Eggers relates the true story of the Zeitoun (Zay-Toon) family and asserts that "dates, times, locations and other facts have been confirmed by independent sources and historical record". Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian Muslim living in New Orleans with his wife, Kathy and four children, is an well-known business man who owns a painting/contractor business. He's a hard worker and a family man. When it was announced that Katrina was headed straight for New Orleans and the governor declared an evacuation, Kathy and the children headed to Baton Rouge and Zeitoun stayed home, prepared to fix anything in the house as needed.

The family didn't expect such a catastrophe - I don't think many people did. After the hurricane passed Zeitoun used an old canoe he bought and searched for those in need of help; animals and people alike. Since many people who evacuated the city thought they were only going to be gone a day or two, there were a lot of pets left behind. Little did they know they wouldn't return for weeks. "It was one of the strangest aspects of this in-between time - after the storm but before anyone had returned to the city - the presence of these thousands of left-behind animals." Zeitoun believed that he had stayed in the city for a reason and did all he could to help anyone who needed it.

He set out alone for a while and before long, at the corner of Canal and Scott, he encountered a small boat. It was a military craft, with three men aboard: a soldier, a man with a video camera, and one holding a microphone and a notebook. They waved Zeitoun down and on of the men identified himself as a reporter. "What are you doing?" the reporter asked. "Just checking on friends' houses, trying to help," Zeitoun said. "Who are you working with?" the reporter asked. "Anybody," Zeitoun said. "I work with anybody."

Not only does this book detail the horrible Katrina catastrophe, it also examines what it means to be a Muslim in America in the 21st century. For me, this book was a shocking reminder of what many of our citizens have to face simply because of their religion. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at the horrific behavior of the NOPD, FEMA, the National Guard, and the US government. With the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this week, this book really hit home. If you are interested in learning more about the disaster and the racial profiling that occurred as a result, I suggest you read this book. It's told in a very straightforward way and was all at once touching, heartbreaking and disturbing.

He was so content in this country, so impressed with and loving of its opportunities, but why then, sometimes, did Americans fall short of their best selves?

If I could recommend everyone in America read one book this year, Zeitoun would be it.

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2009

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Wow and wow. This is a fantastic book.

It's hard to summarize Oryx and Crake. So, I'm going to cheat and use the synopsis on the back of the book: "Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beutiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey - with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake - through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride." 

Oryx and Crake is much less a love story than it is a glimpse into a very realistic world that, unfortunately, doesn't seem so distant. While the world Atwood portrays is completely realistic it is, at the same time, so far beyond anything I could ever dream up. Not only is Atwood a fantastic writer, she is also a very imaginative story teller.

This book takes a little while to pick up. It is the first book in the MadAddam Trilogy, so Atwood has to lay the groundwork for the following novels (the second of which has been published and I will be purchasing immediately, The Year of the Flood). So, if you do pick this up I beg you to give it a chance. We are talking at least 200 pages. Trust me, it's very worth it. 

For me, this was one of those rare books that both challenges and changes the way I look at society and the inner workings of the world. Atwood exaggerates our post-modern society, removing standard ideals and values, and shows us what the human race is capable of at it's very worst. My description makes the book sound utterly depressing but I promise you it's not. While Atwood destroys the human race, she creates the Children of Crake; creatures so innocent and endearing in their own way, creatures made without the destructive forces of humanity, the reader can't help but become intrigued. There are also glimpses of hope and kindness, passages that made me smile:

"They understood about dreaming. He knew that: they dreamed themselves. Crake hadn't been able to eliminate dreams. We're hard-wired for dreams, he'd said. He couldn't get rid of the singing either. We're hard-wired for singing. Singing and dreams were intertwined.

Like The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood creates a world that is so detailed and unique, completely bizarre yet completely realistic. It's a complex novel that left me thinking long after I put it down. Ultimately, this book makes you think in a way that you may not have before and for me, those are the best kind of books. I can't wait to start The Year of the Flood.

Publisher: Anchor Books, a division of Random House, 2003

LitGeek

A few days ago I was driving, happily listening to LCD Soundsystem, going a steady 75 mph when a SUV passed me with the coolest license plate I have ever seen. It read: LITGEEK.

Of course I was in the car alone and couldn't share my enthusiasm with anyone so I tried to snap a quick picture. Needless to say LitGeek had a lead foot and I didn't feel comfortable when I saw the speedometer approaching 95 so I backed off. This is what I was left with:

I did my best, however I figured I would for sure get a ticket if I told the cop "I was speeding because I needed to get a picture of that guys license plate for my blog!" 

So, LitGeek, if you're reading this, are you free next weekend?  

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

This is a fantastic book. Read it immediately.

As I mentioned yesterday, Sagan wrote this book when she was 18, which I think contributed to the success of this story. We meet our protagonist, 17-year old Cecile, on summer vacation with her father just outside of Paris. Egotistical, endearing and very spoiled, Cecile fears "boredom and tranquility more than anything else". Jealous of her father's relationships with mature and rational women, Cecile plans to destroy them in an effort to keep her father all to herself. Sagan opens her novella with the lines:

"A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of it's complete egotism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow."

Of course the title, Bonjour Tristesse, is French for "Hello Sadness," so we know where the story is headed.

Sagan handles Cecile's transformation from a self-absorbed, disillusioned youth to a more mature and effected young girl realistically. We are introduced to a typical 17-year-old girl, one who admits, "I dare say I owed most of my pleasures of that period to money; the pleasure of driving fast in a high-powered car, of buying new records, books, flowers. Even now I am not ashamed of indulgent in these pleasures. In fact, I just take them for granted." We leave her after she has said "hello" to sadness. However, I'm not sure we are meant to understand Cecile has truly grown up. I think she is effected, but still enjoys her frivolous relationships and material things. Yes she has said Bonjour to sadness, but I don't believe she has gotten to know it very well. As Cecile puts it, "Unaccustomed to introspection, I was completely lost". All in all, the story moves along with ease and nothing really seems contrived.

I also loved the setting of the novel. Not only the beaches outside of Paris but the period charm of the 1950's. A time when it didn't matter that everyone smoked and drank too much whiskey. When socializing and tanning were summer activities of the utmost importance.

"I was nailed to the sand by all the strength of summer heat - my arms were like lead, my mouth dry."

Like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this book is undeniably French. I recommend this to anyone who loves French literature or hated The Catcher and The Rye because it seemed contrived. If you have ever acted selfishly against your better judgement you will be able to relate to this novel. A true memento mori.

I'm looking forward to reading more Sagan and I think I'll start with her second novel, A Certain Smile.

Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Year of First Edition: 1954

Françoise Sagan, My New Favorite

I started Bonjour Tristesse yesterday and love it. I've always been a sucker for stories that feature the spoiled, self-absorbed, manipulative young women and this story is no different. But besides that, the author Françoise Sagan is quite intriguing. Bonjour Tristesse was published in 1954 when she was 18 and it was immediately well received.

It sounds like Sagan herself was quite similar to her female protagonist in Bonjour Tristesse, Cecile. Sagan was born near Bordeaux to an upper-middle class family and was the youngest of three. She was described as "headstrong and fearless". She was spoiled as a child and didn't do well in school, and was eventually rejected by the Sorbonne. So at the age of 18 she began to write. In an interview with The Paris Review in August 1956 she said, "I simply started it (Bonjour Tristesse). I had a strong desire to write and some free time. I said to myself, This is the sort of enterprise very, very few girls my age devote themselves to; I'll never be able to finish it. I wasn't thinking about 'literature' and literary problems, but about myself and whether I had the necessary will power."

After the novel's success, Sagan then had money of her own - and a lot of it. In September 2004, upon Sagan's passing, The London Times wrote "Sagan was not shy in presenting to her public a version of the responsibility-free lifestyle endorsed in her work. She would leave her sports cars haphazardly in the road outside the doors of nightclubs, breakfast on Gauloises and coffee, and play to lurid rumours of her sex life. Her entourage came to be known as the pinnacle of youthful sophistication."

Labeled the enfant terrible, Sagan was a long-time smoker who was fined for using cocaine later in life. All in all, I find her fascinating.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

This book introduced me to a world that I had never encountered: that of the traveling circus. We meet Jacob Jankowski when he is 90 years old - or 93 - he isn't exactly sure. From there Jacob narrates two plot lines; that of his struggles with aging in a nursing home and his experience working for a traveling circus during the Great Depression at the age of 23. The majority of the story focuses on the younger Jacob. After studying at Cornell's veterinary school, Jacob learns his parents were involved in a fatal accident and he is left with no money. He leaves his final exams without filling in one answer and decides to run away. After jumping onto a train in the middle of the night, a train which turns out to be that of the Benzini Brother's Most Spectacular Show on Earth, his fate his sealed. He begins to work for the circus - a society in and of itself, filled with it's own politics and class struggles.

I was completely swept away by the enchanted world Gruen introduced me to. It reads easily and I was completely sucked in, yet it also informs like a history lesson. Gruen explains that she spent four and half months researching and "acquiring the knowledge necessary to do justice to this subject" of the traveling circuses in America in the 1920's and '30s.

While the overall story was heart-warming, there were aspects of it that really disturbed me. I can handle a lot of raw fiction but when Gruen detailed some of the animal cruelty that was involved in these circuses, it was truly heartwrenching. However, these instances are few and far between and looking back, they add a lot to the plot and understanding of the story. Didactically, Gruen's story emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding, toward both people and animals. Rosie, an elephant who joins the circus is probably my favorite characters that is an animal out of any book. She is so fascinating because of her personality and spunk - and eventual heroism. Some of her actions in the book are taken directly from other elephants in circus history during the depression - Topsy and Old Mom - which makes it all the most fascinating.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great story or reads for escapism. Gruen's imagery makes this world come alive in a way that is so real you won't want to put it down. Also, as I mentioned before, they began filming for the movie Water for Elephants in May of 2010, with it's release scheduled for 2011. I'm really looking forward to the movie.

Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Year of First Edition: 2006

With 335 pages, this book puts me at 1,681 pages for the 2010 Summer Reading Challenge .

Fun is a Relative Concept

A few weeks ago I discovered Stuff No One Told Me and immediately became a follower. Alex Noriega is an artist from Barcelona who illustrates things no one has told him but he has learned himself along the way. I wanted to share my favorite illustration so far (which, of course, is book related):

How fabulous, right?

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Wow. I loved this book. I'm not sure I can even call it a book because it's five chapters and 115 pages but it is considered a book... and I loved it. I love it in that weird way that I love Lolita. But actually, I don't love it the same way I love Lolita. I suppose I am ashamed to love it in the way I am ashamed to love Lolita. Because it's great, but has a disturbing premise.

Ok - enough of my cryptic elusiveness. This novel is about an old man who has never been in love and on his 90th birthday decides the one thing he would like to gift himself is an underage virgin. Said virgin turns out to be 14 and said 90-year-old falls in love with her before he ever makes love to her. Creepy preface, I know (hello comparison to Lolita!) but this mans love for the young girl, who he begins to call Delgadina, prompts him to reconsider and evaluate the conflict of growing old but feeling young, death, love and beauty. Ultimately the old man is forever changed by his love for Delgadina.

But then, I'm not sure if he even loved her at all. I'm not sure if we're meant to believe he did. Maybe he did, or maybe it was just the idea of her. After all, the title of the book is Memories of My Meloncholy Whores and I think thats what this man feel in love with; his memories of this girl. The fact that in his own mind she was whatever he wanted her to be. He romanticized the idea of her and didn't really get to know her at all. Upon the girl's 15th birthday the old man comments, "It troubled me that she was real enough to have birthdays". And later:

"From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my changes of mood... Today I know it was not a hallucination but one more miracle of the first love of my life at the age of ninety.

Which of course, lends itself to the idea that the very thought of someone and how you make them out to be in your head can actually become an ideal version of that perons. That maybe you have fallen in love with the idea of someone, or the person that you create them to be, rather than the actual soul behind the pretty face. Again, while the premise itself is a bit disturbing, the ideas and feelings behind this novel are very real and very relatable. In a strange way that I can't describe Marquez invited me into this sick and twisted love story and left me thinking "oh my God... this is soooo fantasic". We are never meant to understand the old man as unbalanced or dangerous - he is simply a man who has never been in love and has found it in this girl.So, I recommend this book to anyone who can get passed the 90-year-old obessed with a 14 year-old girl.

Published by: Vintage

Year of First Edition: 2004

Letters With Character

A couple of days ago I discovered Letters With Character; a collection of letters written by actual people to fictional characters. It's a really creative idea for a blog and they cover a wide range of accomplished authors:

This site was suggested by the highly anticipated What He's Poised To Do (Harper Perennial, June 2010), a collection of short stories by Ben Greenman, an editor at the New Yorkerand the author of several acclaimed books of fiction. The stories in the collection use letters and letter-writing to investigate human connection and disconnection. This blog has a related mission, which is to allow readers to interact directly with literary characters. Letters should be addressed to your favorite characters and sent to LettersWithCharacter@gmail.com.

Letters can be funny, sad, digressive, trenchant, or trivial. We receive too many submissions to publish every one; we strive for a balance of genres and periods. Letters must be written by a real person and must also address an unreal one. There are no other requirements.

So, I was inspired to write hate mail to Catherine Linton (which I posted yesterday) and today it was chosen for Letters With Character! Is it super dorky that this kind of stuff excites me?

My favorite letter I have come across so far, written for Edna from The Awakening - one of my favorite books:

Dear Edna,
Swim. Swim like there is no ending. Is there an ending? Are you still swimming? I don't know because there aren't any more pages left. What are you doing now? Did you make it there? Did you come back? Did you drown? Drown. Don't drown. Keep going until you see the next page, please. And I'll meet you there.
Sincerely,
Shome Dasgupta

Bookshelf Porn

I'm kind of obsessed with really cool bookshelves. I love to display the books I own and I love walking into someone's house to find they have an elaborate built-in bookshelf or a room dedicated to books. 

I've been in the market for a new bookshelf for a couple months now (because I can't stop acquiring books and they are scattered everywhere.. some still in boxes from the last time I moved) and while I was shopping I stumbled upon Bookshelf Porn, a collection of amazing bookshelves for people who appreciate bookshelves. 

This is almost as good as hot guys reading books.