Author: Thomas

Bits and Bobs – the reading groove edition

Thomas8 Comments

   

Not being able to think of a good illustration for this post, I did a
Google search on “bits and bobs”. Little did I know there is a British
puppet duo of that name. Seems like as good a picture as any for this post.

Although we all love to read, it is still wonderful to find oneself in a true reading groove. You know, the exact opposite of a reading funk. The kind of mood where everything you pick up is splendid and you just want to consume as much as you can.

You know what gets in the way of such a reading groove? Blogging.

Because I want to stay in the groove as long as possible, I am eschewing reviews for a bit and switching over to list mode:

After posting about my Virago haul recently, a few of you were desirous to know which 17 VMCs I managed to snag. Unfortunately I had already mixed them in with my existing VMCs and with a few exceptions I don’t remember which are new to me and which I already had. So we all miss out on that fun list and picture. I will do better next time.

I just finished Carol Shields’ novel Small Ceremonies. It was a re-read for me. I love Shields’ work and have decided to re-read all of her novels. As I did the first time I read it years and years ago, I enjoyed Small Ceremonies quite a lot. But it also reminded me that I often have quibbles with Shields’ endings. For some reason they leave me wanting something different. Not so much so, however, to make me not want to read her books. She was a wonderful writer. I wish she was still around to write more for us.

I also just finished Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton in a beautiful NYRB edition. I must say I didn’t enjoy it the way that most bloggers have. I understand why it is a good book. And I liked the beginning and the ending, but the middle had way too many trips to the pub and drunken nights to hold my interest. It got kind of tedious in that regard.

And this evening I just finished a re-read of The Debut (A Start in Life) by Anita Brookner. For those who have not been living under a rock, you will know that I am gearing up for International Anita Brookner Day on July 16th. And since I have read all of her novels already I have decided to start over and read them chronologically. I loved all of her novels the first time around, but I really got so much more out of The Debut this time around.  I look forward to reviewing it for IABD.

After I finished the Brookner tonight I wasn’t quite sure what to move on to. So I did what I often do when looking for my next read. I comb through my TBR piles and pick up a handful of books and give them a good look over to see if any of them rise to the occasion. Tonight I picked up Life and Death of Harriet Frean by May Sinclair, A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, Every Good Deed by Dorothy Whipple, Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, and Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope.

Usually when I play this game I read the openings of each of the books and decide which one speaks to me most at the moment. I started with the Trollope. Then I moved on to two of the others, but I had this irresistible urge to go back to the Trollope. So I didn’t even make it through my stack. Trollope won the day. Not a total surprise given how much I like his other work. And since a I finished the Barsetshire series a few years ago I have been wanting to begin the Palliser novels. Still I was a little surprised how quickly and thoroughly Can You Forgive Her? pulled me in.  So I need to quit blogging and get back to reading. After all, it is only midnight.

What in the world am I thinking?

Thomas15 Comments

   

You may recall I was on the fence about buying the whole set of Melville House Publishing’s Art of the Novella series. 42 volumes (not 37 like I thought).  I thought I was safely past feeling like I needed to have the complete set when Frances comes along and throws fuel on the fire. Next thing you know it my Paypal password is being entered and 42 books and tote bag are now winging their way my direction.

Crazy Frances (that is her new name) has created a reading challenge to read as many of the Art of the Novella series as possible in the month of August. She plans to read all 42! I am going to join her challenge, but I think I am only going to shoot for 9 during August–which puts me at the level of “Passionate”. I am not sure I can make it up one more notch to the 15-novella “Mesmerized” level. Because of course I plan to read other things that month as well.

And Frances notes that the good folks at Melville are sponsoring prizes for those who participate.

IABD: Winners get to choose their prize!

Thomas3 Comments

   

We are just slightly over a month away from International Anita Brookner Day on July 16th. For those of you who have yet to begin the very, very easy challenge of participating in IABD, this is meant to be a kick in the pants. Remember all you have to do is read one novel by Anita Brookner by July 16th and then post about it on your blog or send me your thoughts/reviews and I will post them on the official IABD website.

All winners will get the paperback of their choice from the huge selection at The Book Depository.

Remember, you don’t have to have a blog to participate and win.

One prize will be given for each category:

Best Review

Best Brookner Related Musing (non-review)

Best Picture of your pet reading Anita Brookner (this can be interpreted loosely)

Participation Prize (random draw from those who didn’t win any of the other awards)

The fine print:

  • Prizes will only be considered for those who submit their writing/picture or link to their blog post to my email address: onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com. This is the only way I can ensure that everyone who wants to be included is.
  • You must notify me no later than 11:00 PM U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time in order to be eligible.
  • All entries will be posted on the official IABD website.
  • Co-host Simon of Savidge Reads and I will be the judges.

***SPECIAL REQUEST: If you are a blogger submitting, please when you submit the link to your review/music post via email, can you also copy and paste the HTML draft of your review/musing in its entirety in the body of your email. I know in Blogger when you are editing a post you can click on the “Edit HTML” tab and then copy every single bit of info there and past it into the body of your email. Hopefully other blog platforms allow you to do likewise. This will greatly help streamline getting your post up on the IABD website.***

What are you waiting for?  Get reading.

Winners Galore

Thomas4 Comments

    
1. No Name
The winner of the my extra copy of No Name by Wilkie Collins is:

 Ti at Book Chatter

2. Where in the world?
I have to say, I really enjoyed the Where in the World? picture I put up this week. It was fun to think of clues, but it was even more fun to see how smart and worldly my readers are. I think Claire is right, I did underestimate you all. I love that Stu knew the Gehry reference, Read the Book knew the Russalka reference, Margaret used the Czech name, and Simon had similar mattress issues in Prague. And I even love that Sel shared the clues with her/his brother to get the answer. I think I am going to do something like this again. But I can see I am going to have to make the clues much harder. The winner, who gets to choose the book of her/his choice of paperback from The Book Despository, and was randomly selected from 13 correct answers, is:

Mad Bibliophile

3. Book Lust
The winner of the Book Lust giveaway is:

Brenna at Literary Musings

For you non-winners, better luck next time. For you winners, please email your mailing address to onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com

This week from the CSA

Thomas8 Comments

    
Getting a share in a Community Supported Agriculture group was one of the best things I have ever done. Each wednesday we go pick up a mystery box of fresh, local, organic produce. So far this season we have had lots of greens but that appears to be transitioning into things like zucchini and beets. Can’t wait for tomato season. We also bought a fruit share, which won’t begin until this coming week.

There are some CSAs here in the DC area that are quite sophisticated, they let you go online each week and order what you want. But I chose a CSA that offers the mystery box because otherwise I end up buying the same thing every week. Plus I am finding that I enjoy the challenge of figuring out tasty ways to use everything in the box. I also seem to enjoy the challenge of not letting any of it rot. When I get produce from the grocery store I feel like I often end up throwing half of it away.

So here is this week’s box.

From back left: collard greens, curly endive, lacinato kale, dill, spring onions,
zucchini, mushrooms, portabella mushrooms

Book shopping proclivities

Thomas12 Comments

  

Recently Cornflower asked her readers if they were given unlimited resources would they go on a binge and buy everything they wanted for their library or would they take a more piecemeal approach. No sooner had I responded that I enjoyed the hunt and would not get much pleasure from buying everything I wanted at once, when I was faced with two book buying opportunities. As I mentioned in a post last week, I am really tempted to buy the complete 37-volume Melville Publishing Art of the Novella series at 30% off. If I really was the onesy-twosy book hunter that I claim to be, I don’t think I would be consider buying this whole set. I highly doubt I would be interested in all 37 volumes, but my god the completeness of the purchase would be stunning. And then in a comment on my post I have CB James egging me on, for the right reasons mind you, but egging me on nonetheless.

And then I went to a book sale at my local library (Frances: that would be the Chevy Chase Library, not the new Tenley Town branch) and came away with 17 books. Granted the total haul only cost me about $25 but I must admit I was a bit indiscriminate in my choices. Not really finding anything that I really had to have at first, I started to grab every Virago I could see. I don’t feel bad about this. While not impossible to find here, Viragos are much rarer in the US than the UK. And who knows which of these Viragos will turn out to be undiscovered gems for me? It was only after I got home that I actually read the back covers and determined that most of these seem right up my alley. So it seems like I didn’t buy anything I shouldn’t have.  And there was one that was a true find: Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns. Her novel The Skin Chairs turned me into a fan so I can’t wait to open up this one.

I guess the lesson for me is that while I wouldn’t find it interesting to buy a whole library worth of books in one fell swoop, I certainly can’t claim to be the restrained book buyer that I may have thought I was.
    

Seen on the Subway

Thomas5 Comments

  
The Visible World by Mark Slouka

The Reader: A rather petite twenty-something blond woman wearing a very tasteful and fashionable combination of white blouse, black skirt, shiney gold flats, and a bright purple leather purse. She was close enough to me on the crowded train, and I am probably a foot taller than her so I could see that she had beige pumps in her Sephora carrier bag.

The Book: “…an evocative, powerfully romantic novel about a son’s attempt to understand his mother’s past, a search that leads him to a tragic love affair and the heroic story of the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi by the Czech resistance.”

The Verdict: This book sounds good to me. But unless someone tells me it is good and I should read it, I don’t think I will make the effort to get my hands on a copy of it. I mean The Glass Room was such a great Nazi-occupation novel, this one would have to be pretty amazing to not be disappointing.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Reader: Slightly pudgy thirty-something guy wearing Dockers and what appeared to be fancy brown bowling shoes. (You know, the goofy looking American kind.) Funny thing about him is that I caught him trying to see the title of my book. I rather nonchalantly made it easy for him to see the cover of my Heart of Darkness.

The Book: An autobiographical novel about an 18-year old student who falls in love with a 32-year old divorcee while working at a radio station that produces a half dozen soap operas a day and buys scripts by weight from writers in Cuba. Set in 1950s Peru.

The Verdict: I am on the fence on this one. Reading a book set in Peru and one about a young scriptwriter kind of pique my interest, but the satirical look at soap operas, not so much.

The Help by Kathryn Sprockett ( x 2!)

The Readers: At the bus stop this morning there was a woman reading a hardcover edition of this novel. Since it is a bestseller, and now a movie, I wasn’t going to write about it. But then after we both got on the bus, another reader got on with a paperback edition. One woman was white, the other African-American. Given the plot I thought that was kind of interesting. I would like to get them together and hear what they have to say about it.

The Book: I don’t really need to explain this one do I?

The Verdict: I tend to not like reading novels that have considerable amounts of any kind of dialect. Not a hard and fast rule, but when I picked this one up last year I wasn’t in the mood for it. I don’t think I will read it.
 

Where in the world?

Thomas16 Comments

    
A prize for the person who can figure out in which city this lovely hotel room is located.

Hints:

  • I stayed there in 2002 as part of a month-long trip around Europe to hear opera.
  • The bed was too short for me. And because there was footboard similar to the headboard, I had to put the mattress on the floor in order to be able to sleep.
  • A Communist may have been responsible for the phone.
  • Mozart and Frank Gehry have both made their mark on the city.
  • Although Russalka would feel at home here, I heard Cosi Fan Tutte and Aida.
  • If the city makes you think of Vin Diesel I wouldn’t hold it against you.

Put your guess in the comment section. In the event there is more than one right answer, I will draw randomly. Winner can be anywhere in the world and will receive the paperback of their choosing from The Book Depository. Deadline for entries will be Sunday night (June 12th).

Book Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Thomas17 Comments

   

One of the so-called greats of the western canon and one of the Modern Library’s Top 100, The Heart of Darkness, for whatever its merits, was such a slog for me. Its 96 pages might as well have been 996. This is the kind of book that sours students on literature for a lifetime. I can’t exactly put my finger on the reason why I found this book so difficult to get through. Whether it was sentence structure, or word choice, or transitions from scene to scene, I often found myself confused and needing to re-read whole paragraphs.  It was as if Conrad wanted to convey the disorientation one feels in the heat of the jungle. If that was his intent, then well done.

There were moments when I was actually engaged in the story but they were brief moments. I worry that my aversion to this book is an indication of what I might feel when I attempt Lord Jim, Nostromo, or The Secret Agent. All of these are on the Modern Library Top 100 list, and I am attempting to read that whole list. I have made pretty good headway, I am at 62 at this point, but I have already decided I am not reading the multiple Joyce and Faulkner titles on the list. Am I going to have to add Conrad to that “no chance in hell am I going to read them again” file? (Not to mention that Philip Roth might not be too far behind in joining that company.)  I get it, they are all authors with important things to say and they do so in brilliant ways, but I guess my mind isn’t up to the task. The good news is I am not going to lose sleep over my inability to understand these important authors.
I have Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa (from the beautiful Penguin Great Ideas series) which is a critique of Heart of Darkness. While I think Conrad successfully challenged the imperial orthodoxy of his day, I am interested to see what an African thinks of the book.