Nothing like getting back into the swing...

It's been a while, to be honest, since i've really devoured a book the way Em usually does. There's all the writing, and of course the kids, and the responsibilities of being a daddy these days that tend to make it a bit difficult to really get involved with a story. This time, though, was a bit different. I picked up "The Orphan Master's Son" the other day (Last Wednesday, to be precise,) and tore through it with the headlong relish of a four-year-old through a plate of Mac 'n Cheese. It was honestly that good, I kid you not...

It won the Pulitzer just a few years ago, so it counts among the more accessible novels to have won the prize, telling the story of Pak Jun Do, a North Korean Jack of all trades who very eloquently introduces us to some of the fascinatingly vague lives of the North Korean people.

Very often, we are presented with a view of Communism that is at its extreme. We think of the revolutions, the bloodshed, and the crappy, barely-drivable cars. We are presented a mishmash of drama that, be honest now, doesn't really educate us much about what Communism is these days, what its failures are, and how frankly impossible it is, operating the way it was intended to, outside the framework of a sociological and economic thought experiment. We simply don't see the lives of the people we assume are entirely oppressed. Rather than screaming at us how unsustainable such a system is, scratching the technical babble into the wall that is the monument to capitalism, the Orphan Master's son presents Communism as a backdrop against which the failures of our own human character are marqueraded. Of course, that's only part of the story...

Pac Jun Do feels like what we all might be in his situation, and perhaps we are. After all, aren't we all struggling in our own way to realize that thing that someone, somewhere called "The American Dream?" His struggle, very much to lay claim to his destiny, to control the course of his own life, does mirror very acutely the American experience today, even if our labors are made in a Capitalist society, rather than a Communist one. It's a beautiful reminder that at the heart, we are very much alike, and should not think of ourselves as quite so distanced from those who live under a different ideology than our own.

Oops!

OK, so I just realized that I am the culprit, the slacker who dropped the ball on this blog, and not my loving hubby as I was assuming. (Ooops!)  A very enthusiastic fan of the blog got on our case the other day, intoning how much she loved reading about our adventures and digs against each other.  This ones for you Val!

Even though it has been 2 years (YIKES) since either one of us blogged, we have still been reading up a storm, although with 2 little ones in the house we are better versed in Kann and Carle than King and Picoult.  

I recently read the book Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, which was a book club selection.  The story follows Clay Jannon as he searches for work in tech-savvy San Fransisco, and stumbles upon Mr. Penubra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, that is looking for a clerk for the overnight shift.  He quickly gets the job, complete with strange job requirements- man the counter in a 24 hour bookstore overnight where no one visits, write down descriptions of everyone who comes into the store and how they are acting, don’t read the books in the stacks in the back; these books are only checked out (yes, lent like a library) by the strangest of customers. 

Of course one day, a friend convinces Clay to inspect one of the books in the back of the store, and it is filled with a strange language nether one of them can decipher.  The mystery deepens as he realizes that these books are checked out in a set sequence, even though they are not shelved linearly.

I don’t want to spoil any more of the story, but it continues with lots of Silicon Valley trickery, a new coded book, and some very Da Vinci Code intrigues!

Now, Sir Donald, I pass the torch back to you!

The Odyssey

So, here we are again, and not much has changed since the last time I wrote. Being the ADULT that I am, I'll refrain from taking exception to my adorable honey's admonition the other day that the dropping of the blog ball was squarely on my shoulders, rather than her own. Neither will I stoop to saying things like:

"Neener, Neener, Neeeeeener!!!"

Because that would be childish.

So I won't.

;)

As for my own reading adventures, I'm just going to come right out and say that they have been less than stellar. I haven't been able to stay interested much in the pulitzer list, so I found myself wandering around the literary cellars looking for a vintage that I could really sink my teeth into.  

I came up with The Odyssey of Homer, and really liked it. I'm glad it wasn't ever on my high school reading list to be honest, I think because now that I'm older, I can actually appreciate it. It's amazing how many stories today derive from that work. 

I took in some Virginia Woolf through "A Room of One's Own," and "Mrs. Dalloway," found and then promptly dispatched my inner feminist, because I'm of the opinion that I would be a better lesbian than she, and I think I might have come to some reasonable understanding as to what the hell was going on in "The Hours." I still think it sucked as contemporary literature; though not nearly as badly as "Beloved."

I finished up Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" sometime around when Robbie was born, and found out exactly why H. James is widely thought of as the master of the "Innocent Lady abroad" tale. I was less enthusiastic about "Madame Bovary," but wasn't let down one bit by Flaubert's intricate tickling of the language. One regret: I wish I could have read it in the original french, which I'm sure must be far superior in its own way.

For now, I'm on my way through Sinclair Lewis' "Arrowsmith," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926. It's a good read, but with the baby taking up my time, and work, I'm afraid the good doctor hasn't gotten the attention he deserves. I'll resolve to do better. Thank you Val! 

Candycandycandycandy....

It seems as though, like many things, reading has taken a bit of a backseat to all the other stuff going on. In the throes of an attempt to minimize the clutter in the house and at the same time strapped with overtime at work that is at once both very welcome and nearly as much dreaded, I've barely been able to pick up a book, much less actually read the damn thing. Usually, my saving grace is work, where I can read on breaks, but the last few weeks have found me trying to get caught up on some of the other writing I've been working on. Go figure, right?

So, last night, the little wife says to me, "honey, you haven't posted your book challenge blog in a while," and she then proceeds to look up at me with those big, adorable, "i'm gonna whup your ass if you don't do what I tell you to" eyes, and what do I say? Duh. I'm not THAT dumb. 

Needless to say, the conversation turned quickly from fun-loving to a whole lot of work really quick, and here I am, but it's not a Pulitzer book on my mind tonight. On our last trip back home, someone (not me) had the brilliant idea to listen to "candyfreak" by Steve Almond. Needless to say, we spent pretty much the whole trip listening to the author talk about candy, and candy bars, and a few of his personal reminiscences, and pretty much fiending for sweets. Thanks, babe. I could hardly pass a gas station without wondering if they had the chocolate I was so desperately wanting right then, but not NEEDING, of course, since her other, latest request was for me to lose some weight. (15 lbs and counting Ahthankyou!)

Well, when we got back home, we made a short trip to a local candy store (one of a dying breed, to the lament of the author) and bought some of the brands he had mentioned. Some weren't all that great, but do yourself a favor and look for the valomilk cups. They're great! I included the link here to the company website so you can check them out. 

It was a good book for the trip, fun to listen to, kept us awake most of the time, but at a few places, it did bog down and get a little gooey. It does present an interesting picture of the candy industry, though, and how cutthroat it can be. I'd say it's worth the read.

Anna Karenina- a review of movie and audio recording nightmares.

So I am finally finished with Anna Karenina.  It only took me 3 months to listen to it in the car!  Why you may ask?  Because HE found it boring, and I could only listen the 10 minutes between his work and mine most days.  It was a book that he had always wanted to read, in fact we even have a copy of it here at the house.  But when we put the first disk in, he lost interest.  I can only hope that the reason he had such a hard time listening to it was that the narrator was just so monotone that he couldn't stay focused. To be honest, this is one of several books I have listened to that were like that.  There is so little inflection or character voicing in so many of the recordings from Recorded Books that there have been a few books I have finished without really knowing what happened in the story.  There is definitely something to be said about being a good storyteller.  

Oh, and while I am on the subject of storytellers, we watched the movie with Kiera Knightly the other day. Dear Mr. Joe Wright, producer of the film, what was the purpose of the stage?  I found the entire stage and backdrops distracting from the real story. So many movie producers nowadays think that they can tell the story better than the original authors. Why?  These books have sold millions of copies because the original story was good.  *end rant.*

Anna Karenina is the story of a society wife in 19th century Russia who married for position but then later found love and took a lover.  Some say that this book is Tolstoy's spiritual manifesto, but that train of thought only really appears in the last chapters of the book, after Anna's death.  

While I would not count this book as one of my favorites, I did find it to be a good story, although a bit long and drawn out. Maybe next time I will go for the abridged (gasp) version.

A Second Helping of Updike...

When I got started on this reading list, I can honestly say that there were more than a few that I thought, "gee, that one's gonna suck!" As I've whittled down the ones I've done with, though, I'm finding more and more that I'm compiling not just a list of Pulitzer prize novels that I've read, but a list of my own personal favorites, books that I can say seriously that I'd like to read again.

That being said, anyone who knows me knows that a book has to be pretty bad in my estimation before I'll consider getting rid of it. Boring, dry, dumb. Yep. Off to Goodwill with them. There are a few that I'm finding are not just keepers, but perhaps books that I'll someday look for in nice hardcover editions for my "Library."

John Updike has become one of those authors. I never had time to think anything about him until Em got me started on this list, but he's rapidly become one of my favorites. True, it can be argued that when you start out reading what is considered the author's "masterpiece," chances are you're going to be a bit biased. The second of Updike's books that I'm in the process of right now is "Rabbit at Rest," a story that really seems to personify the end of the 1980s, waking up to the 1990s. I really can't say enough about the entire series, but I won't, because you'd be bored.

Truth is, what I really think about as I read through this list, and come across books like this, is the sort of literature that our kids are reading in school. Did you look forward to the reading lists that your English teachers tossed at you the first week of September? I never did. You see, I ended up stuck in a wide variety of basic English classes through high school. I had one teacher in 10th grade who asked me why the Hell I was in her class, and not the CP or AP course, and all I could do was shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know. This is where they stuck me."

Something to do with poor grades in earlier grade levels, I'm sure, as though that were of the slightest importance...

But it has got me thinking - Maybe kids are being introduced to the wrong kinds of books these days. Perhaps high school reading lists are a bit too mundane. What if we actually let the kids read the work of John Updike, Junot Diaz, or Annie Proulx, where yes, there is sex, and drugs, and violence, but also along with those things are real consequences of those choices. AIDS, addiction and death, as well. As I recall high school, it was anything but innocent, so why do we, as parents (or they, as school boards) insist on prescribing the same stuff that was really only avant garde in 1969? Who knows.

The thing about "kiddie lit," is that though I make fun, its important that these kids read something for fun, but for crying out loud, once we're done assigning them homework on discussing the merits of Mark Twain's work in today's society, let's at least point them toward writers like Updike, Hell, even Willa Cather, or Pearl S. Buck when they graduate, so that once they're done reading what the state says is literature, they can see for themselves what REAL literature is all about.

Circus Days

The other day I was browsing the shelves at my Grandfather's house and came across The Circus Fire.  The title caught my attention after reading Water for Elephants a few years back. 

The Circus Fire is a compelling true story of the great Ringling Brothers fire in 1944, where 167 people were killed when the big top caught on fire.  As gory as the tragedy was, Stewart O'Nan wouldn't let me put the book down.  I found myself cheering on the crowd, hoping against hope that they would all get out, even though I knew they wouldn't.  I would encourage anyone who is interested in history to think about reading this book.  

But, to talk about one of my favorite books (and no, this one is not kiddie lit...)

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob Jankowski, a nonagenarian in a nursing home who is looking forward to an outing to the circus that has set up down the street.  The story is told as events in the home trigger flashbacks of his youth in the circus.  The juxtaposition of joy in youth and longing for the past in old age was poignant; even more so in the audiobook where two distinctive voices traded with the scenes. I found myself sympathizing with 90 year old Jacob in a way that I would have never thought about before, and mourned with him as he reminisced about the life that he had lost.  

I have passed this book on to many people already, and encourage all of you to read it as well, this blog post can hardly do it justice.  Will you read it if I guarantee that it's not kiddie lit?