books

Finding Small Treasures

ThomasLeave a comment

As any regular reader of MyPorch will know, I have a particular penchant for the past. I will be the first to admit that my fascination for the “olden days” is highly romanticized and pretty darn selective. When I imagine walking the streets of pre-war London I edit out the car exhaust and cigarette smoke. When I fantasize about living in the LP days of the superstar classical conductor and packed concert halls I filter out the pre-Stonewall reality of gay oppression. And when I write myself into an Edith Wharton or E.M. Forster novel, I rarely think of the hot, scratchy clothes I would have to wear, or the fact that my socio-economic class wouldn’t really permit me a very satisfactory role in these Edwardian dramas.

One of the the manifestations of my fascination with the past is that I love finding old pieces of paper in used books. Tram tickets, photos, letters, shopping lists, business cards, prayer cards, you name it. Not only is it fun to ponder who left the item in the book but it can also give some clues as to where the book has been. Recently when I was reading The Ice Age I came across a receipt. Big deal right? What makes this receipt special is that unlike so many others I have found in used books, it is clear that the receipt is actually the original receipt for the book when it was newly purchased in 1978. Often times the receipts I find will be for something else like lunch or maybe one from the secondhand sale of the book. In this case the price and date match the price and date on the book itself. This in itself is very interesting to me. That the receipt has stayed tucked in the book since the day it was first purchased 30 years ago. But even more interesting is the fact that the book was purchased at Kramerbooks here in Washington, DC. So not only is the receipt 30 years old, the independent bookstore that sold it is still in business and is within walking distance of where I live.

Now I just wish I could remember where I got this used copy of The Ice Age. I thought I got it on our peregrinations around New England last summer, but I don’t remember. The existence of the Kramerbooks reciept inside leads me to think I got it locally…but where I don’t know.

(And for those that might not remember, Kramerbooks is the place where Monica Lewinsky bought Nicholson Baker’s Vox, a novel about phone sex, the purchase of which was part of Ken Starr’s ridiculous investigation. )

2008 Reading Wrap Up

ThomasLeave a comment

I read 11 fewer books in 2008 than I did in 2007. I don’t like that trend. I intend to improve upon that in the coming year. With good (book reading) friends in town for the last 10 days I have managed to acquire through gift and purchase about 30 books. Add this to the stack already in my commodious night stand and I have plenty of fodder for the coming months.

But what of the books for 2008? I was surprised to learn a few months ago that my sister was using my book list on the left column of MyPorch for reading ideas. Not a bad idea, except that my list makes no distinctions about whether or not the books were any good. So I thought I would give you a few of my favorites for the year.

I read almost no non-fiction, but the last book of the year Richistan, was a fascinating, quick read about the lives of the rich in America. Written by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank, it is an amazing tale of excess, the gap between us and them, and the wannabes at all points of the economic spectrum. It also describes a world that may be involuntarily resetting itself as the economy continues to sour.

Looking back at my list for the year I see a lot of titles that I really didn’t care for especially in the first half of the year, but there were some good ones.

Favorite books of the year (in no particular order):

  • The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (wrote a post on this one previously).
  • The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Not a typical choice for me, lots of action, but a really great read.
  • Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Woman decides to make all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (over 500 of them) in 365 days.
  • The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain. A bit of a coming of age tale tied in with a mysterious disappearance set in Paris.
  • Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton. Not Wharton’s best but a great story nonetheless.
  • Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico. A 1950s London cleaning lady saves up her money for several years so she can go to Paris and buy a Dior gown. Not much meat to the book but a delightful story.
  • My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler. Raunchy, laugh out loud humor.

Reading by the Decade – The Final Update

Thomas1 Comment

Back in May I entered an online reading challenge to read 12 books from 12 consecutive decades in 12 months. I wasn’t worried about the volume of reading. I read tons. What I should have been worried about was my selections. The good news is that I enjoyed almost every book that I finished. The bad news is that I gave up on three of the twelve.

The Zola started out interestingly enough. I kind of had fun looking up descriptions of the diseases the characters suffered from. But it didn’t take long for that to get old. I set it aside in favor of something more interesting. As I have mentioned earlier, despite being 2/3 of the way through the Roth, I couldn’t be bothered to finish it. It just bored me. As for the James, I hope to pick that up again one day. Given my tastes in reading I feel like James is an author I should really like, but the only novel of his I have ever finished is Washington Square. Just think of all his great works that I could read if I can get over whatever obstacle is keeping me from enjoying him.

As I wrote in this November post, as I tried to pave the way for me not finishing this challenge, life is too short to read books one finds tedious.

1890s: Lourdes by Emile Zola
1900s: The Golden Bowl by Henry James
1910s: The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence – 5/23/07
1920s: Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley – 7/16/07
1930s: The Big Money by John Dos Passos (3rd in his USA trilogy) – 5/30/07
1940s: Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon – 5/20/07
1950s: Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell (3rd in his Alexandria Quartet) – 2/27/07
1960s: The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark – 7/1/07
1970s: A Word Child by Iris Murdoch – 6/4/07
1980s: In the City of Fear by Ward Just – 11/10/07
1990s: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
2000s: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe – 4/20/07

Ian McEwan’s Latest Novel is Stunning

Thomas3 Comments

As you can see from my reading list for the year (shown in the left margin of MyPorch) and posts here, here, and here, I love to read. And according to my spreadsheet of books read, I have finished five of Ian McEwan’s twelve novels. All of them have been pretty quirky. They tend to describe unusual and odd circumstances and characters. Yet McEwan has a way of making those oddities seem at least as normal, or as understandable, as they are twisted. His latest book, On Chesil Beach, is no different. Sure it is not twisted in the same way that The Cement Garden is (i.e., entombing a dead mother in cement in the cellar), but it is emotionally disturbing.

Despite their love for each other, the two main characters in On Chesil Beach (two virgins on their wedding night in 1962) lead isolated emotional lives which cause all kinds of complications on their honeymoon. Although their specific circumstances might seem foreign to those of who came of age in the 1980s or later, the challenges they face communicating with each other can feel awfully familiar. After all, emotion can interfere with even the best interpersonal skills. We have all had those moments where something is said or unsaid–often times unknowingly–that leads to confusion, hurt feelings, or anger. Those moments when language gets in the way of love.

There are other currents at work in this book far more disturbing than bad communication, but I am not going to talk about those issues here. I don’t want to ruin it for you.

The book is at times funny, beautiful, and devastating. Over the course of a year I read books that I end up either hating, tolerating, liking, or loving. And–not being a fan of self-help books–on rarer occasions I read one that grabs me emotionally and gives me something to think about. It is amazing that McEwan is able to do that in this smallish book of 200 pages. Go out and get this book.
SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read the comments left for the post if you want to discover one of the mysteries of the book…

It’s Here!

Thomas1 Comment

The new novel by the lovely and talented Ann Patchett has finally arrived in bookstores. Despite my vow to not buy anymore books for a while (I have 104 unread books in my nightstand), I couldn’t pass up Patchett’s newest novel Run.

I am not going to read it just yet, I want to savor it. But I did want to make sure I got a first edition of the book before it was too late.

A friend of mine in New York gave me a copy of Patchett’s novel Bel Canto back in 2001. I loved the opera singer angle and thouroughly enjoyed the book. I followed up Bel Canto by reading every other book by her that I could get my hands on. They are all good. One of the great things about Patchett is that she is a writer who writes about things other than becoming or being a writer. Don’t get me wrong I love reading about literary lives, struggling or otherwise, but I am quite impressed by authors who write about worlds that are not noticeably autobiographical.

And I think she is as cute as a button. She looks like the kind of person with whom I want to sit in a cozy cafe drinking hot cocoa and gossiping. I have no idea why I think so. Maybe she just reminds me of friends I have had in my life over the years.

You may remember that this is not the first time I mention Patchett and her work. You can check out posts here and here.

Now do yourself (and Ann) a favor and go out and buy one or two (or all) of her books!

Renee Fleming: The Inner Voice Over-Emotes

Thomas5 Comments

On my recent field trip to Daedalus Books, I picked up Renee Fleming’s book The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer for $4.98. Considering I almost paid the full $24.95 list price when it first came out, I considered this to be quite a bargain. Miss Fleming (or “Double Creme” if you believe Sir Georg Solti’s nickname for her) is not really my cup of tea these days, but having seriously studied voice as an undergraduate I was intrigued by the book nonetheless.
This is not your typical Diva autobiography. Encouraged by her friend, the insanely wonderful writer, Ann Patchett, Fleming wrote a book that is about all of those things that are left out of gossipy Divagraphies. She talks about the everyday life of an opera singer, from vocal technique to business management. The book was interesting for what it was, but I couldn’t help but wish for a little more gossip or at least a few more peeks at her famous diva friends and colleagues.

Despite the overly cautious, slightly boring “how to” quality that pervades The Inner Voice, reading it encouraged me to reconsider my dislike for Miss Double Creme’s singing. She is the toast of the singing world after all and has lots of fans (including the lovely Ms Patchett who fashioned the heroine of her novel Bel Canto with Fleming’s voice in mind). After finishing the book I popped in the one Fleming disk that I own (“Renee Fleming By Request”) and listened to her sing “E strano…” from La Traviata to see if maybe I had been wrong in my opinion of her singing. I actually had a hard time listening to the entire track. She puts so much color and emotion into every single note that she sounds like an overblown caricature of an opera singer. Like someone with a good voice pretending to be an opera singer.

A couple of years ago, before I had developed a dislike for Fleming, I heard her in a recital of french songs with the mezzo soprano Susan Graham at the Kennedy Center. All I could think that night was how much better Graham was. At the time I felt like there must be something wrong with me, after all Fleming was a much bigger star. But with every set they sang I couldn’t help but conclude that Graham was by far the better voice and the better artist. Still, it wasn’t until I saw a Fleming Christmas special taped in some church in Germany that I really began to dislike La Fleming. My main beef was not with the quality of her voice, but rather with her seemingly uncontrollable need to emote and emote and emote so that every note is so dripping with bathos it makes your teeth hurt. I don’t think “O Holy Night” is supposed to sound like a love song–divine love perhaps–but not a “hey baby I will literally die if you don’t come over here and make love to me” kind of love. It’s not Wagner’s Liebestod after all. In fact I don’t even want to hear the Liebestod with that much schmaltz.

What is the point of all this? Fleming will continue to make a good living and I will no longer feel like there is something wrong with me for not wanting to listen to her sing.

Booking Through Thursday: Great American Novel

Thomas8 Comments

In honor of Independence Day, Melanie over at Tea Reads posted the Booking Through Thursday Meme for this week: What is the Great American Novel? My first thought was something by Theodore Dreiser, but then I quickly settled on Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. In fact, I think almost anything by Lewis could fall into this category, but his tale of small town America in Main Street is a classic. A little cynical perhaps but still a valid depiction of one slice of life in America. The first American recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, Lewis was also prescient enough in 1935 to write: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

40 by 40

Thomas4 Comments

Some of you may have seen on the blogosphere people posting lists of 101 things they would accomplish in the next 1001 days. As my 38th birthday approaches, I am putting my own twist on that challenge by making a list of 40 things to do by the time I am 40. I need to finish the following things by August 17, 2009.

(Updated 5/30/07–had too many travel related tasks, sadly not enough vacation time…)

1. Quit my job (completed 10/12/07 and again on 12/01/08)
2. Get another job (completed 10/13/07 and again on 2/5/09)
3. Go to my 20 year high school reunion (completed 7/28/07)
4. Pass the TAP Exam (completed 8/10/07)
5. Make four new friends (1 down, 3 to go)
6. Write a blog tribute to the Womenfolk (completed 6/9/07)
7. Finish my first novel
8. Submit novel for publication
9. Outline my second novel
10. Finish my business plan
11. Take a cruise (completed 1/18/09)
12. Become a homeowner
13. Reduce my cholesterol below 200
14. Make a timpano (see the movie Big Night)
15. Volunteer during the next Presidential election cycle (completed Oct and Nov 2008)
16. Get a letter published in the New York Times (completed 7/18/07)
17. Spend a long weekend in Vienna, Berlin or Barcelona
18. Start and finish the “Write Now” better handwriting program
19. Release 25 books into the wild through BookCrossing (abondoned 7/29/07)
20. Make pudding from scratch (completed 7/7/7)
21. Hear Mahler’s 8th Symphony again
22. Read at least the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
23. Finish the rest of the Modern Library’s list of 100 top novels of the 20th Century (except for Faulkner and Joyce-I just can’t do it)
24. Go back to the house in Italy for 2 weeks
25. Get the maximum Roth IRA for ’08 and ’09 (I got one for 2007 thinking it was part of the challenge, oh well, now I will be able to retire a week earlier than expected.)
26. Go a month without TV
27. See every best picture Oscar nominee
28. Go to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles (completed 3/08)
29. Go back to Ithaca, NY for a long weekend (completed 8/08)
30. Finish organizing my recipe files
31. Don’t curse for two weeks
32. Go to the Museum of Television and Radio (completed 12/08)
33. Streamline my wardrobe (completed 10/01/07)
34. Have a vegetable garden
35. Go to a BSO concert at Strathmore
36. Go to a concert at the Library of Congress
37. Find an opera/orchestra/concert buddy
38. Go to a concert at the Peabody Institute
39. Sing in a choir
40. Give 10 dollars to charity for every item not finished by August 17, 2009

By the Decade: Reading 12 decades in 12 months

Thomas6 Comments

Blogger 3M has issued a challenge to the book-reading blogosphere to read books from as many consecutive decades as possible by the end of the year. She is going to do 15 books/15 decades between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2007. You can check out her By the Decade Reading Challenge and sign up by June 30, 2007 if you want to participate officially.

Even if you don’t, you might want to think about going beyond the bestseller list and choosing some things from other decades.

I have decided to do 12 books from 12 consecutive decades, working back from our present 2000s (otherwise named by my partner as the “ought naughts” as in “these Bush years ought naught to have happened”) to the 1890s.

So, here is my list (bold titles have been finished):

1890s: Lourdes by Emile Zola
1900s: The Golden Bowl by Henry James
1910s: The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence – 5/23/07
1920s: Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley – 7/16/07
1930s: The Big Money by John Dos Passos (3rd in his USA trilogy) – 5/30/07
1940s: Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon – 5/20/07
1950s: Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell (3rd in his Alexandria Quartet) – 2/27/07
1960s: The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark – 7/1/07
1970s: A Word Child by Iris Murdoch – 6/4/07
1980s: In the City of Fear by Ward Just – 11/10/07
1990s: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
2000s: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe – 4/20/07