Seen on the Subway

Thomas15 Comments

   

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Reader: Early thirties guy with a shaved head who looked like he should be on the tube in London. He had on a very nice herringbone coat, and one of those gigantic tie knots that are much more prevalent in the UK then they are here. He also was wearing a wedding ring on one hand and a thumb ring on the other. And, he wore his watch on right wrist rather than his left. Does this mean he is a lefty?

The Book: A classic novel that is on the Modern Library’s Top 100 List. From the B&N synopsis: “On a single, fateful day in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, 1938, a former British consul wrestles with his demons as his wife tries to rescue their marriage from his drinking problem.”

The Verdict: Since I am making my way through that top 100 list I will definitely get to this one sooner or later.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Reader: Twenty-something woman with a camel colored 3/4 length trench coat and a thermal mug of coffee which she drank from illegally. The Metro system here in DC is one of the cleanest in world because it is against the law to consume food or beverages anywhere in the system. Of course the law is not always obeyed but they occasionally hand out tickets for those who break the rules so people tend to abstain. You can carry the beverage or food, you just aren’t suppose to consume it until you leave the station.

The Book: What can I say about this one that doesn’t give too much away? Written by the author of The Remains of the Day.

The Verdict: I read and enjoyed this book. I look forward to seeing the film.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriquez
The Reader: When I first saw this woman she wasn’t even reading anything, but she looked like Claire from Paperback Reader. And she had the tell tale signs of a reader like a Barnes and Noble tote bag. I must admit I followed her on the platform at Gallery Place to make sure we got on the same train car. It paid off when she pulled out a book (and even had a bookmark from a public library that read “Live, Read, Love”). And after all the effort to see what she was reading I had to include it here even though it is nonfiction.

The Book: The subtitle fills in what the title leaves out and makes it pretty self-explanatory: “An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.”

The Verdict: Seems kind of fascinating but not enough to make me pick it up.

Our day has come. A Ten Best List for the cardigan mafia.

Thomas33 Comments

     
There is a giveaway somewhere in this post.

It has been wonderful finding kindred spirits in the blogosphere. We relish our collective predilection for forgotten novels of the past and once popular authors finding new life thanks to Virago, Persephone, NYRB Classics and other smaller presses. And even though most of us are fairly broad in our reading we often feel a little left out by top 10 lists, or top 100 lists, or even top 1000 lists that don’t seem to give appropriate consideration to the books we love. You know the lists, the ones where Philip Roth and Saul Bellow seem to be the only two authors on the planet.

And then, like a gift from Nancy Pearl, The Guardian runs a top 10 list of the best neglected literary classics. I clicked on the link quite skeptically, sure that it would be a lame list with all the usual authors. But much to my surprise the list was strikingly sympathetic to the likes of My Porch and my bloggy friends. No doubt this is still a list to be quibbled with. There are so many forgotten classics it would be hard to believe that any list of 10 could even scratch the surface let alone find the best 10. But at least this one is interesting (and different) with the likes of Barbara Comyns, FM Mayor, and Marghanita Laski. And I have actually read three of the novels, Olivia Manning’s School for Love; The Wife, perhaps the best of Meg Wolitzer’s enjoyable output; and one of my own personal NYRB breakout hits, Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life, Like Any Other. I think the only author on the list who has any broad recognition is probably H.G. Wells.

I decided to come up with a list of titles that I would like to nominate to a top 10 list of the best neglected literary classics. I only chose books that I have read, and that I think don’t get enough notice in the blogosphere. So even though some of these titles may be easy to find and some may not be that old, they all deserve more attention.

In no particular order:

As for Me and My House by Sinclair Ross
Such a wonderful, sad, short novel that takes place in Dust Bowl-era Saskatchewan. This is a quiet book where there isn’t much action, but it seems like so much happens. If you like this kind of book, have a blog, and are willing to read and review within three months of receipt of the book, I have an extra used copy of this hard-to-find book. Just include the following pledge in your comment: “I have a blog and am willing to read and review the prize book within three months of receiving it.”  I will ship anywhere in the world EXCEPT for Canada. I love Canadians, but I feel like you owe it to your native son to find and read your own copy of this book.

Stoner by John Williams
I have talked about this one every chance I get and it has been getting a fair amount of notice in the blogosphere. But it is one that should definitely be more widely read.

On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Chatwin traveled widely in his life and wrote about his adventures including the rather famous Patagonia. But in this beautiful novel, no one goes anywhere. Identical twin bachelors spend their Spartan lives on a farm on the English-Welsh border.

Reunion by Fred Uhlman
Two German boys, one Jewish, become friends in the early days of the Third Reich. I really liked this novel and haven’t really seen much about it elsewhere.

The Student Conductor by Robert Ford
Takes place in Germany in the time just before the wall comes down and one of the few books that I have read that expertly weaves in classical music without sounding pedantic or name-droppy. And so far as I can tell, the only novel by Robert Ford has written.

The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
If Anthony Trollope had been an American and less verbose, he may have written The Rise of Silas Lapham. A tale of money and status in 1880s America. A bit of a rags to riches to rags story.

The Game of Opposites by Norman Lebrecht
Lebrecht has written two novels and is a rather well-known critic in England. His fiction doesn’t get the attention it deserves. His first novel Song of Names won a Whitbread First Novel award.

I would have put Elinor Lipman’s The Inn at Lake Devine, but I don’t think the title is as forgotten here in the US as they may be in the rest of the world.

What would you like to nominate? And don’t forget to enter the giveaway if you meet the criteria and are willing to take a solemn oath.

Book Review: Two Stories by Mrs. Oliphant

Thomas3 Comments

   
As it happens the only Persephone in my TBR nightstand was The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow by Mrs. Oliphant. It is coupled with another story Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund.

I enjoyed both stories, but as I am still feeling unbloggy, I am going to let others speak for me. A rare occurrence indeed. (I will say that I caught the Brown reference in the Mrs. Blencarrow almost immediately.)

Hayley at Desperate Reader

Claire at Paperback Reader

Feeling Unbloggy

Thomas20 Comments

  

The Return of Persephone [Reading Weekend]
Frederic Leighton
Just a few bits and bobs for a Friday. I am not in much of a bloggy mood right now.
Persephone Weekend
Last year I had a blast and a half participating in the Persephone Reading Week hosted by Claire and Verity. This year they have winnowed it down to a more host-friendly weekend. I will do at least one Persephone review, but I think this year I will quietly enjoy everyone else’s Persephone posts. (Is “else’s” a word?)
Spy Fiction
I think I am giving up on John Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I kind of like all of the British intelligence agency background detail, but at page 165 it doesn’t seem to be much else. Even as I write this I am tempted not to give up. Early in 2010 I read The Arena which is a crime novel, but it had some elements of intelligence agency/international intrigue that kind of piqued my interest in the a spy novel so I asked around the blogosphere for recommendations and came up with TTSS. I don’t think the recommendations were wrong, I just think my interest in this type of fiction is more limited than I thought.
A Clockwork Orange
Last night while walking Lucy, I got into a bit of a verbal altercation that probably escalated more than it needed to. I was totally in the right, but I let my OCD need to communicate exactly why the other person was wrong get the best of me. He was just so damn condescending (and wrong) that I couldn’t let it go. The net effect is that I felt a little sick to my stomach afterwards. That makes it sound more ominous than it was. It really was just a garden-variety altercation. But I have made a lot of progress in NOT being the cranky person who just gets crankier and crankier as he realizes that everyone else is an idiot. I guess the occasional slip is to be expected. It is kind of like the aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange. I have seen the crazy movie but not read the book, but in that story a violent hooligan is injected with an illness-inducing drug while being exposed to violent images. The effect is that he eschews violence lest he become ill. In a much, much more milder form, these days when I get all hot and bothered over something, I get a little queasy afterwards.

Fewer Lesses and More Fewers
Literacy is a never-ending journey. It wasn’t until I was getting my second Master’s degree that I began to understand that the words “less” and “fewer” were not interchangeable. Simply put, the word “less” applies to things that are uncountable and “fewer” applies to things that can be counted. So something may have “less fat” by virtue of having “fewer grams of fat”. Once I fully took this concept on, I couldn’t keep myself from correcting people (in my head) every time they used “less” when they should have used “fewer”. But now I have gotten myself to the point where anytime anyone uses the word “less”, even when it is being used correctly, I change it to “fewer” in my head. It is like it has become an OCD (ah, mentioned twice now in this post) Mad Lib game for me. The other day on TV I heard someone say “I am less concerned about that” and in my head I changed it to “I am fewer concerned about that”. I’ve gone mental.

Seen on the Subway

Thomas13 Comments

   
Earlier this month I wrote a post called Seen on the Bus about books that I had seen in the course of my commute. It was based on a feature that Karen, of the now shuttered blog Bookish NYC, used to do on a weekly basis. Based on all the encouraging comments I got on that post, I thought I would give it a whirl.

Here are my ground rules:

  1. I probably will not post weekly. I am too busy reading on my commute to get a glimpse of what everyone is reading. As soon as I have at least three sightings worthy of a noting, I will post them.
  2. In general I won’t comment on anything to do with vampires, girl with the Steig Larsson books, or on blockbuster authors like Patterson or Koontz or other books too ubiquitous to be interesting.
  3. Even though I am calling this Seen on the Subway, I will post about books I see anywhere on my commute whether it is bus stop, bus, subway platform, or subway.

Since my Seen on the Bus post, I haven’t really seen anything that trips my trigger in the same way that the previous post did. In fact it was hard work coming up with three books over the past 12 days. Just hard to catch titles sometimes. I was probably trying too hard.

So here goes the first installment.


Cutting for Stone by Abraham Veghese
The Reader: Twenty-something blond woman with briefcase and Lulu Lemon bag travelling on the Red Line. I must admit I actually had to follow this reader for a while before I could catch a glimpse of the title. I finally managed to catch it on the escalator. (We were both making the same transfer to the Green Line, so it isn’t like I went out of my way. I am trying hard not to be a book reader-stalker here.)

The Book: Publishers Weekly summarizes: “Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations.”

The Verdict: It sounds interesting especially since I am feeling a bit more international these days. But I don’t think I will go out of my way to find this one.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn
The Reader: Rather nattily dressed man with round spectacles, tweed jacket, sweater, and a rep tie waiting for the Yellow Line at Gallery Place.

The Book: A novel about the U.S. Civil War from a Jewish perspective.

The Verdict: A fascinating topic (and one I had never before considered) but not one I am likely to want to read. I would however watch a documentary on the topic or see the film adaptation.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton
The Reader: Stocky guy with a Federal Highways Administration lanyard waiting for the Green Line.

The Book: This one appears to be a novel about how wrong the scientific community is about global warming.

The Verdict: I liked Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, and long before the disappointing films I liked Jurassic Park, but this one seems to be an attempt to discredit the notion of global warming. Certainly helps explain why he was a “science” confidante of George W. Bush. I have no interest whatsoever in reading this one.

Book Review: Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink

Thomas9 Comments

    
In my reading, Bernhard Schlink is now 2 for 2. I thought The Reader was amazing, and while I don’t think the plot of Homecoming is as tight as The Reader, it is still a compelling, well-written novel that encouraged all the appropriate emotional reactions. And like The Reader, Homecoming deals with the Nazi legacy in Germany. Regular folks trying to deal with (or forget about) their individual or collective culpability in genocide. Unlike The Reader, however, Homecoming takes a more philosophical look at good and evil and never really broaches the details of Nazi barbarism explicitly.

In Homecoming Schlink weaves the tale of Peter Debauer who attempts to track down the ending of a novel. He has an incomplete proof copy of a novel that his Swiss grandparent’s edited that is missing not only the ending but also any indication of author or title. Peter’s search for the ending and the identity of the author lead him not only to find love but also to discover more than a few secrets about his past. (As Peter tries to track down people and publications all I could think about was how much easier it would have been if Google had been around. It was to the point where I found myself having a hard time imagining how he could even attempt his searches without the Internet. Amazing how the “old” ways can disappear so quickly.)

I am tempted to say that Schlink writes historical and legal fiction, but I am not sure if his work would really fit into those genre. It seems too readable for that. His writing is never pedantic nor pedagogical. The points of history or law introduced into his novels are expertly woven into the emotional, relationship-oriented drama. His characters and their motivations, while sometimes alien to the reader, are wholly believable. And you find yourself caring quite a bit about the characters. As I mentioned earlier, the plot in Homecoming wasn’t as tight as it could have been. There are a few twists and turns that are too pat. And there are others that seemed rather clumsy. Like Schlink had too much he wanted to say. Still, there is nothing in this criticism that should keep you from reading Homecoming. There is much here that makes you think, and perhaps more importantly for a novel, makes you feel.

[It is hard to mention The Reader without mentioning the amazing film adaptation. I really thought that was a fantastic film. And Kate Winslet is easily one of the best actors of our time.]

My love/hate relationship with big box booksellers

Thomas19 Comments
Not Borders.
Borders, the bane of so many small, independent bookstores has gone into full meltdown. Filing for bankruptcy this week, Borders plans to shutter most of its stores. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were just the prelude to end of the chain’s final demise.
Like many of you, my relationship with big box booksellers has been confusing to say the least. Having grown up in the far suburbs of Minneapolis the nearest bookstore (that I knew of) was a pitiful B. Dalton at Northtown Mall about 30 minutes from my home. I didn’t know it was pitiful at the time. I loved the place. But in contrast to the big boxes that would emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that little B. Dalton was indeed pitiful. (Of course in retrospect the mall itself was, and probably still is, pitiful as well, but it was like Shangri-La to a kid from the sticks.)
Then in college I was exposed to independent bookstores in Minneapolis like Odegard Books and Baxter Books. And of course there was the wonderful (and new to me) world of used bookstores. The Book House in Dinkytown was a particular favorite. But then sometime around 1989 or so I went to my first Barnes and Noble in Roseville. Fifty thousand square feet of books. I couldn’t quite believe how much fun it was.
Not long after this I began to understand the socio-economic-geo-politico-david-goliath implications of big box retailers in general and booksellers in particular. The two arguments most often heard from the independents were that the independents offered much better customer service and that the big boys would have a homogenizing effect on book publishing.  No doubt the big guys have had an impact on publishing but I have a hard time believing too much in the homogenizing horrors that were predicted. My access to small presses and esoteric books has never been better. (Of course that is thanks to the Internet, which has its own set of issues.)
And as for the smaller guys having better customer service, that hasn’t necessarily been true in my experience. In fact, in late 1999 I took an evening job at the very same Barnes and Noble that I first walked into a decade earlier. It turned out to be an amazing experience. Not only did I love working in a bookstore, but I was really impressed with the book knowledge of my co-workers. We really knew our books. Workers had specialities for sure and weren’t necessarily experts at everything, but it was truly wonderful how well our in-store network of knowledge worked for the customer.
This still doesn’t mean that I am a total fan of big box booksellers, but they have been really helpful over the years. When I moved to Honolulu (sight unseen) in 1995, I was definitely missing the familiarity of my life back on the mainland. The one spot in town that made me feel at home was the Borders. It was a giant book oasis in a town that had pretty awful small bookstores. The fact that it was within spitting distance of the beach and gorgeous Pacific Ocean didn’t hurt it much either.
Over the years I gradually moved away from the big boxes favoring either small bookshops, or more often second hand bookshops. And when I do favor the big boxes these days I much prefer Barnes and Noble. I also prefer Barnes and Noble online over Amazon. I like the fact the B and N is primarily about books as opposed to Amazon’s we sell everything approach.
And let’s face it, for those of us who can remember the lifestyle shopping center boom of the 1990s the demise of Borders can’t be too much of a surprise. For those that don’t know what I am talking about, retailing in the 1980s was all about the regional and sub-regional mall. Enclosed shopping centers with a few department store anchors linked together by chain stores. In the 1990s we started to see glorified and yuppified strip malls pop up. But instead of the mattress stores and beauty shops they had things like Borders, REI, Old Navy, Petco, Staples/Office Depot and even Tower Records. And the stores were big. And the Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Tower Records seemed to be less about buying and more about browsing, meeting friends, having coffee, and experiencing the product in the store.
The fun and abundance of these wonderfully big mega book stores seemed to go perfectly, and ironically, hand in hand with the tech boom of the ’90s. Everything looked rosy, people were making money hand over fist, the tech companies taught us that life and work were supposed to be fun, fun, fun. And the stores were everywhere. Every suburb seem to have its own giant Borders or Barnes and Noble or both. I could never go into to one without thinking “who reads all these books?” I did, but I knew I wasn’t in the majority. So how were these stores staying open?

The original tech boom quickly went bust because the thousands of Internet start-ups knew how to have fun but didn’t know how to make money. Now that Internet commerce has come of age, the bricks and mortar stores that thought that abundance and fun, fun, fun would help save them are feeling the death blow from the Internet and perhaps the advent of the e-book.

So am I happy or sad that Borders is going belly up? I don’t know. I would be greatly depressed if brick and mortar book stores, whether big or small, become too hard to find. But then there is a part of me that thinks that secondhand shops will never disappear. But who am I to try and predict the future? I do grieve the loss of Tower Records a few years back. Far worse than small bookstores, small record stores, especially those who carry classical music, have become harder to find than dinosaurs. Tower was the only game in town if you wanted to see rows and rows of classical CDs. Sigh. I really miss them. Buying classical music on iTunes is a bit of a joke and going to CD retailers on line makes it much harder to discover new and unique classical music.
Which puts me in mind of the human cost. Back when Tower was open here in DC there was a manager there, probably in his later 40s at the time who used to be fairly knowledgeable about classical music. After Tower disappeared, he reappeared at the big Borders here in town. I just saw him in there the other day and wondered how long his job would last. And where a fifty-something man, who had obviously made his life in retail would find his next job. Starbucks?

Book Review: The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

Thomas9 Comments

  

Huh. I am not sure where to begin on this one. Many people I respect really like this McEwan novel, but I don’t. There were parts of the story line that I found interesting, but taking it all as a whole I thought it was a little contrived and some passages were downright tedious. I can only handle so many dream sequences, day dreams, imagined situations, and narrative ambiguity. I feel like McEwan tried too hard to weave together too many narrative strands to illustrate and generally reinforce the meta-theme of the book–which appeared to have something to do with childhood. The kidnapping of his child (that’s not a spoiler), the breakdown of his marriage, his parents’ relationship, his friend’s career/mental health, a government subcommittee all employed to say something about childhood and apparently something about Thatcher’s Britain.

And there were three scenes that I found stretched my willingness to suspend disbelief to the breaking point. Not surprisingly for my OCD mind, they weren’t the quasi-ghost stories sprinkled here and there. It had more to do with details that I just didn’t find plausible. The scene where Stephen thinks he has found his daughter would never have played out the way that it did. Even in the relatively innocent days of 1987 a strange adult would never have been allowed access to a nine-year old student even if in the presence of the headmaster. The scene where the Prime Minister comes to visit read like a bad Hollywood movie. And the scene where he hops a ride in the engine of a train. Yeah right.

I forgive anyone who finds me a bit thick for not getting this book. I am sure there is something important here. McEwan is a great writer and I have enjoyed many of his books, and indeed I found some parts of this book very compelling and enjoyable. But overall it was just a little tedious and precious. I am not prepared to say that I absolutely did not like it, but I came close.