Much Ado About Nothing (by William Shakespeare)

The Read Harder Challenge is put on by Book Riot, and one of their categories this year is to read a book from their podcast, Zero to Well Read.  I've read quite a lot of them so I decided to read a play that I've of course seen adapted, but never read, Much Ado About Nothing.

(I learned that Nothing is a triple? quadruple? pun - in Elizabethan times it was pronounced "noting" so there are a lot of puns about noting things and musical notes, and it's also a reference to a woman's genitals since she has... "no thing." Oh, Shakesy, what a rascal you are.) 

I feel the comedies especially work better as performed. I kept pausing to go watch some of the Branagh adaptation or to look up what the hell Dogberry is talking about so I didn't miss any jokes. And as usual, I hate Claudio in this and love Beatrice and Benedick.  I mean what is there to say about Shakespeare? It's a classic comedy and reading it is never a waste of time. 

I think this also puts me officially as halfway through this year's challenge, a bit ahead of schedule.  

BFF Birthday Trip Books

I recently took a trip to Europe for my bestie's 50th birthday. If I hadn't come down with apocalyptic food poisoning, I might have read more books and taken fewer naps! But as it is, I finished four books, and here they are: 

Limelight (by by Andrew Keenan-Bolger)

Written by a Broadway performer about a kid from an abusive household in Staten Island going to a performing arts school in Manhattan. Really impressed me with its writing, since I didn't necessarily expect a Broadway-caliber performer to also be a terrific writer. This is set in 90s New York and has so much nostalgia - down to the kids waiting in line to see Rent at the Nederlander. You also really root for our main character and also appreciate the lack of the fairytale ending whereas still being hopeful and satisfying. Far above average queer YA and highly recommend.

My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook (by Nite Yun) 

I read this for the Read Harder category of "a cookbook about a culture whose food you’ve never eaten" - which is an increasingly difficult category, since I am fortunate enough to have tried a lot of different foods! But I learned a lot about Khmer culture and history from this book, and also appreciated that the author is a local chef whose restaurant I can visit! (She had a pop-up in the East Bay but is now located in the Ferry Building.)  There was enough personal reflection between the recipes that made this a good read, although I will never enjoy reading endless lists of "1 clove garlic, peeled.... 2 shallots.... salt... blah blah blah" that you have to read in order to "read a cookbook."  It seemed really good though, in that the instructions were detailed and extremely clear. 

According to Plan (by Christen Randall) 

Read this YA for the category of "a novel with a main character who uses they/them pronouns." I am a big proponent of the singular they but it can get grammatically confusing at points, so this is a good category to have.  I thought this book was more successful in some areas (found family, shitty parents, a well-written sibling relationship) than in others (the romance) but was overall a good YA. This book did commit a major sin, which is having our main character, an editor who loves grammar, use the "for Emerson and I" grammatical overcorrection in the text. Please don't do this to me, it hurts me. 

Austerlitz (by W. G. Sebald)

The New York Times released their "100 best books of the 21st century" a couple of years ago, and Ian and I had fun comparing notes. (I think I've read 38, and have loved many of them. There are some DNF's on there though and at least one - Detransition, Baby - that I hated.)   We also each chose a book that the other had not read, that we thought they should.  He chose Austerlitz (which was #8 on the list) for me and I chose The Great Believers (#64) for him.  

I went into this knowing nothing - I saved the introductory essay for the end - and was slowly wowed as this book unfolded itself to me.  Even knowing it was published in 2001, it feels like an older classic novel in its structure (the main character telling the narrator his life story) and its vocabulary (translated from German by Anthea Bell).  Also of course its setting - Austerlitz is growing up in post-war Europe and exploring his mysterious origins. Knowing he was taken in by a Welsh couple in 1939, his mysterious origins aren't hard to guess at, but the way it all unfolds, the way Sebald describes it, the restraint in the way he tells it... well, I understand why it made it to #8 on the NYT list.  If you have any other must-reads from the NYT list, let me know about them!

Birthday Retreat Books

I spent a week taking the sea air on the Mendocino coast, and while there, finished four books!

The Making of Pride & Prejudice (by Sue Birtwistle & Susie Conklin)  

This was a gift from a few years ago and part of my quest to read through some of my physical books this year. The photos are a bit blurry and I would have enjoyed clearer photos, more interviews with the cast, basically a book ten times the size of this relatively slim volume. It definitely made me appreciate a lot of nuances that went into making the miniseries (this is about the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth), from custom-printing fabrics on muslin to hiding lighting equipment with foliage in a ballroom. A must-read for 1995 devotees, but you'll definitely wish it were longer!

Headshot (by Rita Bullwinkel)  

Tournament of Books selection and I'm gonna be honest, I hated it. The repetitive style (which is I'm sure deliberate, because this is about boxing and it makes you feel like being punched with names repeated over and over and over again...) drove me mad. I enjoyed the flash forwards but they added up to nothing I was wholly uninterested in the winner, as the only characters I really enjoyed weren't in the final. I also hate boxing. I also found it implausible that none of the 8 girls were explicitly non-white, and race wasn't even mentioned. So either they were all white, or race never impacted their lives. Did not work for me. 

The Wedding People (by Alison Espach) 

Also in the ToB, but it was very "beach read" with romcom vibes and a predictable plot. That said, I immediately loved our main character Phoebe (who shows up at a hotel that has been rented out for a wedding, and gets drawn into the lives of the wedding people) and the fun cast of characters. I could see where this was going a mile off but I stayed up late to finish it anyway because it was delightful. Will make a perfect movie.  

Mansfield Park (by Jane Austen) 

I can't remember the last time I read Mansfield Park from cover to cover, so I'll include it here! It's been decades, probably. I enjoyed it so much this time around - I'm very familiar with the 1999 film and it actually takes fewer liberties than I thought it did! (The scene of Mary undressing Fanny in the rain, for one.) Jane Austen is always a joy.

Sense & Sensibility (by Jane Austen)

Pride & Prejudice is a book I read many times before ever seeing an adaptation of it. Because of that, although I've seen the miniseries a gajillion times, I still have a very strong "book version" of the characters in my head. (Particularly Jane, who I always picture as a brunette even though in adaptations, she tends to be blonde.)  

The opposite is true of Sense & Sensibility: I've seen the Ang Lee film a gajillion times but I think this is my first time reading the book cover to cover. Seems impossible but I think it's true! I've read all the others, including Lady Susan and Sanditon, but I loved the movie so much that I think I only read it in bits and pieces.  It was fun to finally read it from cover to cover and get some book versions of the characters in my head!

I bought this at the Jane Austen museum, along with Northanger Abbey. I read it as part of my resolution to read and/or donate 10 physical books this year but I definitely will be putting this one back on my shelf along with the other Austens. I mean, she's just great, Jane Austen. Every page was great.

Two Black Stallions (by Walter Farley)

One of the categories of this year's Read Harder Challenge was to re-read a childhood favorite book. The Black Stallion's Filly was the only Black Stallion book I read as a child, and I re-read it so many times; I think I still have it, all beaten up, on a shelf somewhere.  Everything I know about horse racing and the Kentucky Derby is from that book, and I loved the main character, the horse Black Minx.

I don't know how I stumbled across it, but I found a review of the book that said The Black Stallion’s Courage also features Black Minx, so I checked that one out as well. And it's almost a direct sequel! It's very strange to read about so many of the same people and horses 40 years later.  But here's my review of each:

The Black Stallion’s Filly (by Walter Farley) 

Read this through the haze of nostalgia. I know more about horse racing these days than I did in the 80s, and I can see more flaws in the writing. (In particular, Farley does that thing where the "dialogue" contains sentences nobody would actually say aloud.) Also while growing up I skimmed right past the part about Alec spending time in the "breeding shed" and certainly didn't have the internet to look up exactly what thoroughbred breeding is all about, and it turns out it's crazy.  But I remember so many moments about this book and it was just a comforting read all around.

The Black Stallion’s Courage (by Walter Farley) 

In this one, I noticed the uneven writing a bit more (there are perspective shifts mid-chapter sometimes that are a bit weird, and suddenly all the horses from the last book have nicknames?) but Black Minx falls in love with another horse, which is pretty hilarious. The main plot is the Black Stallion (who, was basically not in Filly so I have no attachment to him at all) racing in various handicap races, which entails different horses being given different weights so the race comes out even. (I never knew what a handicap race was. Again for 40 years I basically only knew what was in The Black Stallion’s Filly.) The plot is thin - they have to raise $100,000 to rebuild a barn that burned down and $20,000 to buy Black Minx her horse boyfriend. But my inner child was thrilled by the whole experience.

What I Read On My Summer Vacation

Spoiler alert: it was 17 books, so buckle up. I'll include the tags in the little blurbs below so you don't have to wade through the one zillion tags I'm about to slap on this bad boy.

The Unstoppable Bridget Bloom (by Allison L. Bitz) young adult, romcom

Loved the character growth and focus more on being a better person than the romance elements. Felt organic, theater kids are the worst and the best. I loved how everyone was casually bisexual, with sexuality not even mentioned. Very Big Reveal-esque in its boarding school setting. One of my favorite of these 17 reads.

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute (by Talia Hibbert) young adult, romcom

Super great chemistry, rich characters and ADORABLE. My only two critiques: Katharine Breakspeare is a dumb/fake name, and this random dude Nick showed up as a winner at the end when it could have been any of a handful of other characters we actually knew.) But loved this read and hope Hibbert writes more YA!

Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears (by Michael Schulman) nonfiction

Juicy and detailed, got more interesting (for me) as it moved into Oscars I remember watching. I'm a faithful Oscar viewer still ,although I don't make the effort to watch all the nominees that I used to. Ends kind of abruptly but look forward to an expanded edition in five or 10 years!

The Helpline by Katherine Collette women's contemporary, litficL

Like a lighter Eleanor Olifant which is always an absolute delight. I love reading about rigid, literal characters who find happiness with a ragtag group of people who don't give up on them. Germaine is so loveable! Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed Eleanor.

Darkhearts (by James L. Sutter) young adult

I'm a sucker for "turns out I'm gay for YOU" stories but this had a couple of issues.  The best friend was clearly a girl written by a dude (she was unrealistically crude, and in general the book was fairly crude with a lot of poop humor when I would prefer zero poop humor). The character development for our MC (who needed a LOT of it) was too abrupt and the ending really didn't work. But did I keep reading until the end? You bet I did.

The Smitten Kitchen (by Deb Perlman) nonfiction, rhc 2023, cookbook if I had a cookbook tag which I don't because why would I ever do this to myself again

The only reason I read this was for the Read Harder category "read a cookbook from cover to cover" and I kind of hated this challenge. I don't really cook, reading lists of ingredients is boring, and even though her writing is very good, she uses the word "dollop" 38 times, which is probably fine if you're dipping in and out of the cookbook like a normal person but got annoying for me. Just felt very pointless. I always love her recipes though!

Evelina (by Fanny Burney) classics, rhc 2023

The category was "read one of your favorite author's favorite books" and since part of my vacation was a Jane Austen pilgrimage, I decided to read one of Austen's favorites. It was actually a page turner, with some very horrible characters that are overly mean to our poor heroine, but I was glad in the third volume when that subsided and the plot got exciting. Reading about the London season and imagining all the ways Burney influenced Austen made this really fun to read. As opposed to the cookbook thing, I was really glad this challenge was on the list.

Check, Please! (by Ngozi Ukazu) comic, graphic novel, rhc 2023

For the category "read a completed webcomic." This is a webcomic about a college hockey player, with a very sweet grumpy-sunshine romance. Kind of missing conflict and comics will never be my favorite, but quite adorable and joyful. 

Cupid Calling (by Viano Oniomoh) romance, rhc 2023, world literature

Category is: "read an independently published book by a BIPOC author." This is a self-published M/M romance about two contestants on a Bachelorette-like show who meet and fall for each other in a slow-burn romance.  It's very high-quality considering it's self-published, would not have guessed that. Loved the characters, who are both British-Nigerian and have different, complex relationships with their cultures. Definitely includes some fanfic-like sex scenes at the end that are very explicit. But they were well done and fit the characters, so it was fine. My only quibble is that it's supposed to be a reality show made by an Ava Duverney type director but it's got the same format as basically every dating reality show, so talking about how this would be "different" kind of fell flat.

The Aosawa Murders (by Riku Onda) mystery, world literature, translated

This one is all about the atmosphere! Really enjoyed the structure of multiple points of view, and the mood overall.  And the ambiguity - except that it was a shade too ambiguous! I would have liked a little more (though not perfect) resolution at the end. Still, it's eerie and gothic in a specifically Japanese way and I enjoyed it a lot.

Northanger Abbey (by Jane Austen) classic, reread, on paper

I hadn't read Northanger Abbey since I was a teenager, so when I found an adorable pocket copy at the Jane Austen House, I had to get it! really loved having my solo meals in England while accompanied by some chapters from this delightful Austen novel. Oh, and I had apparently forgotten like 80% of the plot because I haven't seen any adaptations either! I'm clearly falling down on the job.

It Goes Like This (by Miel Moreland) young adult

About a fictional "girl band" called Moonlight Overthrow that has broken up and gets back together for a reunion show. Very well written, liked the complexity of the ending, but I did think that everyone treated Eva extremely poorly and did not do enough penance at the end of the book to make their rapprochement satisfying. Gina in particular was underdeveloped, which is especially unfortunate since she is the one Black character. Enjoyable, not amazing. And I strongly suspect this is a gender-swapped rewrite of some former One Direction fanfic.

Plus One (by Kelsey Rodkey) young adult, romcom

Has a main character that somehow gets less and less sympathetic as the book goes along, culminating in so much awfulness that I almost couldn't really get back on her side anymore by the end.  All very well written and I love a confidently plus-size main character. The supporting cast was absolutely fabulous. But oof, once again not enough penance at the end, and that makes it especially hard when it's the character you're supposed to be rooting for. 

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl (by Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum) young adult, romcom

Love the concept and the characters (which gave me Amelia Westlake vibes, one of my favorite sapphic ya romcoms ever) but the viewpoints of the two point of view characters were both not differentiated enough in the writing style (surprisingly, since there were two authors) and not cohesive enough in the characterization (Margo's character in particular.) Disappointing execution, ultimately.

A Line to Kill (by Anthony Horowitz) mystery, series

This is the third book in the Hawthorne series, which starts with The Sentence Is Death. I saw an ad for the fourth installment in the Tube and realized I had missed #3 so checked them both out! This was really good as always, I love Horowitz's metafictional and self deprecating take on Sherlock and Watson and it was a really good mystery. 

Going Bicoastal (by Dahlia Adler) young adult, romcom

One that I saved for the plane because I knew it would be good! Sliding Doors-esque, bisexual, and absolutely charming. Loved the cleverness of the structure and shoutouts to other YAs... including It Goes Like This! Dahlia Adler is as always, really great.

A Twist of the Knife (by Anthony Horowitz) mystery, series

The aforementioned fourth book in the Hawthorne series. I finished this on the train home, half-asleep due to jetlag, so my notes just say "breezy! not as tight as #3 but enjoyable mise en scène." Not even convinced I used mise en scène correctly but there you have it. 

Phew! There you have it, the 17 books I read on my six-week vacation.

A Raisin in the Sun (by Lorraine Hansberry)

Read for the RHC category "a classic written by a POC."  I've read so many of the greats, especially by Black American authors: Beloved, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, etc. But I'd never read A Raisin in the Sun.  (Title from a poem by another of the greats, Langston Hughes.) 

I wasn't familiar with Lorraine Hansberry either, or even that this classic play was written by a young (she was 29 when she wrote it) woman.  It's marvelous, of course, and still so relevant.  It's about a family living in Chicago who comes into some money and considers using it to better their lives. Of course, this isn't without complications.  (Next paragraph will have some spoilers.)

The introduction in the edition I read talked about how easy it is to misread the play, looking at this family as a universal American family and the ending as "oh yay, they move into their new house!"  In fact, race is crucial to understanding these characters, and the ending has echoes in Hansberry's life: her house was firebombed by a white mob and her family had to leave Chicago.

I'm so glad I decided to read this play; it's wonderful.

The Killer Angels (by Michael Shaara)

I read this for the "read an award-winning book from the year you were born" category: The Killer Angels, an historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the year I was born.

Not sure how I landed on this book as I am not usually a person who reads war books or historical novels or books with only white men in them, plus this has a ton of battlefield description (and I hate descriptions of scenery) yet this was so compelling I couldn't put it down. It is written from the perspective of some of the key players at Gettysburg, both Union and Confederate, and is completely vivid and humanizing.  

I did have to look up the author's assertion that Robert E. Lee was "against slavery." He wasn't. There are some issues with how the author engages on the topic but "the South claims this war isn't about slavery but it's totally about slavery" is definitely articulated.  But Shaara is more interested in exploring the battle itself and the heroic actions of men on both sides and on those terms, it's a compelling story.

This is like, the opposite of a book I thought I would read and enjoy. And yet, I loved reading it.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (by Mark Twain)

So this was my choice for the Read Harder Challenge category "An assigned book you hated (or never finished)." This isn't one I hated, but I took over teaching a course in the Great American Novel while the students were midway through this book, and I graded their essays without actually reading the book. (Frankly it made no difference in my ability to assess their arguments and use of textual evidence to make those arguments.) 

I haven't read anything about this novel since then (it was over a decade ago), and I know if I do I'll fully understand why this 19th century work is the Great American Novel and all that. But I've read too many slave narratives to find the whole "ha ha, Tom and Huck do crazy things to set Jim free!" plot amusing in the slightest. The n-word aside, and Jim's humanity aside, and the happy ending aside, this massively downplays the horrors of slavery and here, in 2018, I can't deal with it.

I can work hard to get the historical context and appreciation of this novel -- and I probably should, since this is really the last book in the American canon that I haven't read or studied.  But I'm starting to think the American canon is bullshit anyway, and I have better things to do with my time. So, yeah. Fine. I read it. It's a classic. Whatevs.

A Study in Scarlet (by Arthur Conan Doyle)

When I was growing up, I had an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories that I read obsessively. ("The Red-Headed League" was always my favorite.) But I'd never read A Study in Scarlet, so I picked it up for the "classic of genre fiction" category of the Read Harder Challenge.

Having seen the first episode of Sherlock many times, and having read a lot of Sherlock-related fanfiction, it was fun to see the origin of so many of the elements of the pilot. It reminded me of finally seeing Star Wars after having seen Spaceballs over and over again. I was surprised by the random "Mormons are evil" interlude, which has a compelling plot but feels to me like padding on a short story. 

I think ultimately I prefer Holmes more concentrated, in the short-story format. But that said, I always enjoy Holmes stories and overall enjoyed finally getting to experience this essential part of the Holmes canon.

A Wrinkle in Time (by Madeleine L’Engle)

Read this for the first time at the urging of a colleague, in preparation for the upcoming movie. Also it filled a RHC category: "Children’s classic published before 1980. "

This probably would have worked better for me when I was a child. As it is, everything seemed to happen and be over really fast, and the whole "conquer evil with love" thing... I mean... sure. But again, it was resolved super quickly and with a lot of hand-waving. Like, Calvin is one of them after about five minutes and suddenly he and Meg are like, soulmates? Nothing is actually developed organically.

I gather that this is a part of a larger series, but I wanted this story itself to just be fleshed out more. I can imagine this will make a great movie, though!

Even More Business Trip Reads

100 Years of Solitude (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 

I read this for the Read Harder Challenge (category: Set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author) and it was definitely a challenge. This is one classic that I've picked up many times over the years and have somehow never made it past the first few pages. It took real effort for me to finish it. So very much in keeping with the spirit of the RHC.  I also read it on paper because there doesn't seem to be an electronic version --which was another blocker, as most of my reading these days is on my Kindle app.

I enjoyed 100 Years of Solitude once I'd finished it, more academically or abstractly than anything else. It's like that feeling after going to the gym -- you enjoy the feeling of having done something more than the actual doing.  I enjoyed reading criticism about it, about the metaphors of Latin American colonialism and the ties to Garcia Marquez's own experiences in chidhood.  But it didn't quite touch me emotionally -- it was too symbolic, I suppose, to feel truly real to me. But intellectually, I appreciated it.

And I'm very glad I read it, as it was a major gap in my list of "must-read" classics. Frankly I'm not sure what's left after this.   (Oh, I do know! I don't think I've actually read Huck Finn all the way through. But after that I will be stumped. Ian will tell me to read The Magic Mountain, which I want to read, but I don't think of that as a "must-read" cultural touchstone in the same way that, say, War and Peace or Ulysses or Don Quixote is.)

Truly, Madly, Guilty (by Liane Moriarty)

And now for something completely different: Liane Moriarty! This was a great airplane read.  Like Big Little Lies, it's "women's contemporary fiction" with depth that tackles complex, well-rounded characters and packs many emotional punches. My eyes welled up with tears a few times when reading this.  I'm on the waiting list for several more of her novels, and I'm excited to read them.

It's a definite contrast to 100 Years of Solitude -- obviously it's not a literary masterpiece and didn't make me go seeking out literary criticism to help understand and appreciate it, but it did make me feel and kept me entertained.  And sometimes that's exactly what you want.

Vacation Reads

We spent last week traveling to and around Boston for a family vacation. I read seven books on the trip (gotta love airplane reads) and it was a nice mix of stuff. Here are my reviews:

Punch Escrow (by Tal M. Klein)

Fun, hard sci-fi. It doesn't quite stick the landing, but I will definitely read the sequel that Klein sets up in the epilogue. I'm picky about sci-fi but all three of my vacation reads in this genre were good! This one was found via Scalzi.

Half a Life (by Darin Strauss)

Memoir that I read for a new book group I'm in at work. This is the story of a guy who, "half-a-life ago" when he was eighteen, hit a classmate with his car and killed her.  Great hook, but this memoir  feels half-baked. (He doesn't address how the accident impacted his passengers, for example.) He's also way too defensive about his own past emotions and apologizes for them a lot, even though there's no need for him to. I got the feeling he might actually not have enough distance yet. Some really excellent writing, and I thought the ending was powerful, but overall this didn't move me the way it should.

Sugar (by Kimberly Stuart)

Super cute rom-com about a pastry chef who takes a new job and ends up on a restaurant reality show with her ex-boyfriend.  Has a couple of "people don't talk like that" dialogue moments (my pet peeve) but only a couple. Sprinkled throughout are some unfortunate anti-fat moments also. But mostly very charming and light, good vacation read, with a fun plot and a good main character.

Texts from Jane Eyre (by Mallory Ortberg)

I wanted an excuse to buy this, and vacation became my excuse. Mallory Ortberg is hilarious and this little book is a gem.

The Custom of the Country (by Edith Wharton)

I needed a book for the "published between 1900 and 1950" category of the Read Harder Challenge, and somehow I had never read this before. How can that even be considering how much I love The Age of Innocence? This was amazing. I love Wharton's anti-heroine, Undine Spragg. I love the classic Whartonian social machinations. I love the subtle, rich writing. This is spectacular in every way. 

The Three-Body Problem (by Liu Cixin, trans. Ken Liu)

I'm going to swap this out as my "set at least 5000 miles away from your house" pick, because this is set in China and translated from the Chinese, and I think meets the spirit of the challenge better.  I love both the storyline and the style of the translation. Great, Hugo-award-winning sci-fi novel, and the beginning of a trilogy.  Also delves into the Cultural Revolution and that part is interesting as well -- although the virtual reality parts may have been my favorite. Thumbs up!

11/22/63 (by Stephen King)

An excellent pick for the airplane ride home, I have to say, as it is a classic Stephen King doorstoppy page-turner. I was a huge IT fangirl when I was younger, and I loved the Derry side-plot here.  The time travel into the 60s allows King to indulge all his most folksy folksiness (the "Land of Ago" for example) but overall this is a gripping and detailed time-traveling love story. King at the top of his form.

Kindred (by Octavia Butler)

My "classic by a person of color" pick for the Read Harder Challenge.  The premise is that Dana, a black woman living in modern-day 1978, is somehow pulled back into the past of her ancestors by Rufus, a boy whose life is in danger.  (Whenever he is near death, Dana is "summoned" from the future to save him.) Rufus is the son of a slaveowner, and lives on a plantation, and as he grows up, Dana returns to him over and over again, trying to navigate life as a slave and among slaves, adjust to her changing relationship with Rufus, and not lose her modern sense of self or her relationship with her (white) husband.

Having read a lot of painful narratives of slavery lately, what surprised me most is what a fast read this was and how little Butler deals with the modern-day narrative. I expected much more about Kevin's and Dana's contrasting experiences in the past, and how it might pull them apart in various ways.  It definitely feels like a book written decades ago, in that sense -- it does not grapple with issues of race the way I feel like we are in 2017 grappling with those issues. Instead, it focuses on telling Dana's story of her experience in a complex and painful past.

Overall, it's a riveting story, well-told. Dana is a great character and the pace is unrelenting (she spends hours or days at home while in Rufus's world, years pass.) I couldn't put this one down, and really enjoyed it.

The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood)

Another way-too-plausible present-day dystopia; in fact, I was surprised by a reference to cassette tapes as current technology. Like, oh yeah, this was written in the 80s!  The characters are also compelling, particularly Offred herself, whose voice and story are so compelling. I loved the richness of the world of Gilead as well as Offred's understated but tragic backstory. The ambiguity of the ending was powerful.

I wanted to watch this before seeing the miniseries (which I hear resolves some of the ambiguity, which is a bit disappointing), but it also qualifies for the Read Harder Challenge as a banned book. Though soon it will be the GOP's how-to manual.

Reread: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (by Carson McCullers)

I read this book over a decade ago and hated it. I thought the Jesus metaphor was ham-handed and I hated everyone in the book. But in the years since, I'd basically forgotten almost everything about it, and kept being reminded how much people loved and admired it. I figured it was at least worth a revisit. And so it was that it became the latest selection of my virtual book group, the League of Unreliable Narrators.

I'm happy to report I appreciated it much more the second time around! The Jesus metaphor stuff was fun to rediscover -- I realized it is not ham-handed, because of the way McCullers twists it. It's more of a critique of how humans project their own needs onto God and religion. (My reading this time: Singer is still Jesus, Antonapoulos is God, and faith is illusory but possibly valuable anyway.) Probably the best part is what McCullers dows with the resurrection/redemption coda -- in that there is no clear redemption or resurrection at all, for any of the characters. Neither is it hopeless. It just... is.

I cared far more about Mick and Dr. Copeland (and Portia) than any of the other characters. I really didn't care about Blount at all, for example. (And I kind of wish there had been three "disciples" instead of four -- I needed a Trinity to really hammer home my interpretation. You are the worst, Blount.) (Yes, that was a Hamilton reference. I can't help it.) 

An interesting side note about McCullers: she was a raging alcoholic who drank from morning until night. Puts a little spin on the fact that all her characters seem to find solace in alcohol, doesn't it?

(As for the book group discussion, which was delightful as always -- Chris made a great comparison to The Old Man and the Sea, which I also hated. Now there is a ham-handed Jesus metaphor.)

A Confederacy of Dunces (by John Kennedy Toole)

This is a book I'd been meaning to read for a long time, but I'm so glad I read it right when I did, for two reasons. One, I started reading this while on my very first trip to New Orleans, and so my new familiarity with the wonderful details of that city -- from the accents to the landmarks to the geography -- made the novel really pop.* Second, Ignatius J. Reilly is compared in many places, including this edition's preface, to Don Quixote. So having just finished Don Quixote and having just visited New Orleans made it come together for me perfectly.

(*I didn't realize it was set in New Orleans until Ian came back from a beignet run with a picture of J. Ignatius Reilly on his cell phone. There's a statue of Reilly standing in the spot where the novel begins, holding his shopping bag and wearing his green cap. Wonderful. I took one look at the picture and downloaded the book immediately.)

I also know this novel is polarizing, and I can see why. It's an over-the-top satirical farce, with ridiculous characters and situations. I can definitely trace a line from the more absurdist aspects of Don Quixote to Confederacy. However, while Don Quixote eventually morphs into tragedy, Confederacy of Dunces remains a comedy, and one that may not appeal to everyone. Reilly is far from sympathetic, after all.*

(*But if you don't love Jones, I don't know what to say to you.)

This book made me laugh out loud, shake my head, and smile in recognition. Pass the Dr. Nut, this one gets a thumbs up!

Don Quijote (by Miguel de Cervantes), Volume 2

I can't find where I originally read the quote, but apparently there's a maxim that you should read Don Quixote three times in your life -- once in youth to see how funny it is, once in middle age to see how sad it is, and once in old age to see how true it is. I love that.

Part two continues the meta-ness of part one -- and in fact ramps it up.  It was written a decade after part one, but in the interim, there was a false Don Quixote part two published. In the real part two, Cervantes's characters have heard of the false part two and explicitly complain about it. Also the ostensible "real" writer of part two, who is not Cervantes, takes a bigger role and is mentioned often. The book concludes with "his" words, in fact, rather than Cervantes's. 

There are a couple of other shifts in part two. One is that the side stories are now integrated into the main plot, so Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are involved in some way in almost all the action. Another is that Quixote's madness seems to ebb somewhat, and he starts to seem more rational, while Sancho says and does some wise things, becoming slightly less foolish.  (Also, Don Quixote calling himself a world-renowned knight errant is now kind of true, after the publication of part one, which means many of the characters in the novel have in fact heard of him and his exploits. Meta, meta, meta.)

Our loyalties shift even more because of the main antagonists of part two, the duke and duchess, who play a series of rather cruel tricks and pranks on the two protagonists -- we start to feel that if we see Quixote and Sancho purely as objects of humor, we are complicit in the way they are being treated by the duke and duchess.  At least this is my middle-aged reading of it! Maybe if I'd read it in youth I would just enjoy the humor of it.

The ending is also extremely powerful -- Don Quixote's friends attempt to trick him out of his madness, and it backfires. At the end we realize we were rooting for Quixote all along -- we wanted Sancho to disenchant Dulcinea, even if "the matchless Dulcinea del Toboso" has always been a figment of Don Quixote's imagination. We want Quixote to continue to be a knight errant, not to have to go home in mental, physical, and spiritual defeat.

My friend Chris asked me if this classic work is a must-read. I don't know. I think part two is much stronger than part one -- more unified -- and absolutely worth reading. However, first you have to get through part one, and I confess if this hadn't been a reading goal of mine, I might not have managed it. The downside is that it's a bit repetitive. Some girl who is the most beautiful girl who has ever been seen in all the world is in love with a low-class shepherd or something, and stuff happens, and they live happily ever after. Don Quixote does something crazy, Sancho spouts out a bunch of crazy (and amusing) proverbs. Over and over. I contrast it with something like War and Peace, which is equally an investment but never feels like a slog, and is wonderful from start to finish.

I am very glad I did read it though. It gave me so much more context for a major cultural touchstone, and the experience of reading it surprised me. I was absolutely moved by the ending, and by Quixote himself. The metatextualness of it seems far ahead of its time. Raffels's translation is excellent. And it was certainly the most major work of literature I can think of that I hadn't yet read, so it makes me happy to add this one to my mental trophy case.

Don Quijote (by Miguel de Cervantes), Volume 1

I've been reading Don Quijote (or Quixote, the more enjoyable spelling because it has an x) for months, and just reached the end of volume one. Did you know it was published in two volumes, published 10 years apart? Did you know Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare's? Did you know this novel -- at least part one -- is a satire? Did you know it has a bunch of metatextual layers that address fiction qua fiction? I knew none of these things!

I knew about Scott Bakula singing songs from the musical on the Quantum Leap soundtrack. I knew about the concept of tilting at windmills. Based on that, I thought it was a noble tale -- did not get that Quixote himself is actually an insane old man, and that Sancho is a fool. So it's much funnier than I was expecting.


There are a lot of stories-within-stories in Quixote, and a lot of discussion about the implausibility of this or that story, and reassurance of the truthfulness of that story and the other story. The structure reminds me of Canterbury Tales -- Quixote runs into people who tell their stories, and we often leave the main storyline to follow the side plots. It means the plot itself doesn't have a lot of forward momentum, but it is interesting nonetheless.

I'm reading the Burton Raffel translation in the Norton Critical Edition, and look forward to delving into the end matter once I'm done. Thanks to Chris, I've also been enjoying the Yale lectures on Quixote. Recommended!

Reread: Appointment in Samarra (John O’Hara)

Memory Reaction:

I remember this as something of a companion piece to The Great Gatsby, covering similar themes. I also of course remember the parable that the title is taken from. I did not remember anything about the plot.

Reread Reaction:

How on earth did I forget about all the sex? This book contains a lot of sex. The plot is simple: it recounts the downward spiral of a rich alcoholic named Julian English. But that belies its complexity, in what it's saying about the world in which its set--this is the kind of book that makes you (okay, me) want to go read some juicy literary criticism about it. I feel like the writing is incredibly inventive too, as it shifts perspectives and uses stream-of-consciousness incredibly effectively. It feels incredibly modern for something published in 1934, and I can imagine it would have felt revolutionary at the time. 

A friend of mine recently mentioned that she enjoys the genre of "rich people behaving badly," and as soon as I started rereading this I was like, yep, this book fits in that genre alright. Honestly, this book should be more widely read than it is; I continue to think it's an absolute classic.

Previous Review:

It's here, and I think my first paragraph is a good summary! I'd probably also throw in Under the Volcano and Revolutionary Road as comparisons.