And guess what, Jane? Fairy tales aren't real.

Hey readers! I have finally got around to a book review -- well, a rant/book review, in letter form, a la the Mercy review from a while back. Enjoy~

Dear Jane Green,

How could you? How could you write a book like Jemima J?

I have to assume that you are an intelligent woman, because, in general, writing is hard, and writing a novel is even harder. You have somehow managed to come up with an okay plot, some decent characters, and even played around a little bit with narration and perspective. You're also British, which, as we all know, makes you at least sound smarter than us kooky New-Worlders.

But you have obviously missed the memo on some very important facts of life, and I find myself in the awkward position of both wanting to kill you and wanting to take you aside and have a nice, deep heart-to-heart with you. Since I obviously can't, I will instead have to settle for writing you a cyber-letter, a letter which you will never read, but will make me feel infinitely better for having gotten my incredible anger off my chest.

So, Jane (can I call you Jane?), here are just a few of the things I feel you should know:

1) Not all fat girls are funny. I see why you would like to think so, Jane, and we would all like to think that everyone has one redeeming factor that could make someone fall in love with them, and for fat girls, it's easy to say that they have excellent personalities, or are sarcastically funny. In fact, it's almost realistic, because so often people who are insecure use sarcasm or other forms of humor as defense mechanisms.

I thought you were really, really close to getting to the 'some people are just mean' idea, as well as the 'just because someone's fat doesn't mean she's a good person deep inside' theory, when you introduced Jenny the surly PA. But as it turns out, Jenny is a delightful person, who also nabs the dream guy. Too bad, Jane. Too bad.

2) Not everyone would be striking if they just lost some weight. Guess what, Jane? I know you're beautiful (nice picture on the jacket, by the way), but here's a news flash: some people are just dogs. There are no two ways about it. There are plenty of skinny, ugly girls out there, plenty of average-sized ugly girls, and plenty of people who are just kind of middling. Paul the graphics dude drawing in some cheekbones on Jemima is not enough to convince me that she would, in fact, be a babe if she lost 90 pounds.

And shame on you for telling fat girls that if they would only exert a little effort, lose a little bit of weight, they'd be turning heads in Starbucks. That is so untrue, I can't even express to you how completely false it is. It's almost as outrageous as telling women that if they just lost a stone or two, they would finally get that promotion, those designer clothes -- which you also seem to think will actually happen, judging from your novel.

3) Not every girl gets the guy. Jane, have you ever heard of a spinster? That's right, that's a woman who never marries, usually because no one wanted to marry them. Sometimes they have a terrible past, like Miss Havisham, but more often than not they are just women who were left over when everyone else paired off. Just because some chick loses weight does not mean she is going to get the guy of her dreams, and it is just so wrong of you to suggest that someone should change everything about herself on the off chance that the guy of her dreams will fall in love with her.

For every Jemima, there is an average girl somewhere, pining after some gorgeous guy who will never notice she exists. Eventually, said average girl will settle, not for the hot young TV presenter, but for some balding 40-year-old man. Or maybe for an overweight World of Warcraft aficionado with Cheez Doodle stains on his t-shirt. But Jane, she will settle, or buy thirty cats and live alone in an apartment for the rest of her sad, lonely life. Those are her choices.

4) Not all almost-virgins are good in bed. Let's be real, Jane. There's a reason virgins are virgins. It's because either no one wants to have sex with them, or they're so freaked out about the possibility that they might blow it (not in that way) that they put off sex as long as possible. Or they're religious, but let's put that option aside for the moment. Either way, the first time one of these girls has sex is going to be an awkward, messy, possibly painful experience. It is not all doing the reverse cowgirl on some mind-blowing hottie, whom they will later shag on a desk, a fur rug, and in an elevator. Life is just not that fair.

5) The Perfect Guy isn't ever perfect. Now, Jane, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that I'm totally wrong, because you have met your knight in shining armor (sorry, armour, to you) and he is wonderful and fantastic and everything you dreamed, which is why you dedicated your book to him. That's nice. But I don't believe it for one bloody second.

You have created this character, Ben Williams, and he is certainly delightful in every way. Ben is too delightful. Ben doesn't even have the flaws requisite in a Nora Roberts character. Ben never leaves his socks on the floor. Ben collects original vintage political cartoons. Ben drinks Becks from the bottle, wearing an impeccable suit and watching the news. Ben is adorably awkward, and actually utters the phrase: "Er, yes. Quite." Ben the deputy news editor is so hot every woman in London is absolutely gagging to be with him, yet he remains blissfully unaware of his hotness and is just waiting for the right girl.

But what is most important in our darling Benjamin's life? Becoming a BBC newsreader, and hanging out with the junior reporters on staff. Oh, and being incredibly sweet to the fat girl. Whom he will later shag, but only after she's turned into the babe of his dreams.

The above are just some basic things I think you should be aware of, dear Jane. You are a good writer -- hell, I stuck with you for 300 pages while you blithered on about Jemima's weight loss regime and how amazingly sweet Mr. Deputy News Editor is. I think it's cool that you played off of the little Brad/Jennifer thing -- I am assuming Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were together when you wrote this? At any rate, even if it's just a coincidence, I enjoyed it.

And, to be fair, I enjoyed that Jemima lost the weight, I enjoyed that she got the guy, I enjoyed the makeover, and I enjoyed that she was happy with herself. What I didn't enjoy was the letdown when I closed the book -- the letdown as I realized that life wasn't actually like this, that no one loses 90 pounds in three months, that a guy like Ben Williams would never notice Jemima J, and that not every girl is a diamond in the rough.

So thanks for giving me four hours of escape to a world where anything is possible, but maybe next time you could get a tighter grip on reality and possibly write a book worth rereading.

Thanks,
Disgruntled Reader

PS: Americans get sarcasm fine, thanks. There's no need to be snarky about it.
PPS: Are you aware that your main concept is a lot like Jennifer Weiner's in Good in Bed? Just curious.

'Tis in my memory lock'd...

I’ve read a few books in the past month or so, mainly topping off half-read books that have collected dust over the past two years. While none of them seemed to really merit their own post, I sat and tried to think of some meaningful common theme or thread that would connect them and thus allow me to post about all of them at once. I’ll give you their titles and you tell me if you can come up with one: Peter the Great: A Biography, The Museum Guard and The Forest. Anything? I was stuck in a similar situation of no continuity. The best and most pathetic result of my thinking was “history.” The common thread of history. Pitiful, I know.

Or is it really so? Forgive me, but I would argue that the common thread of history connects much more than three books pretty obviously about that subject. The Forest by Edward Rutherford aptly illustrates this perhaps obvious point. It is an epic work of historic nonfiction that fascinatingly traipses through centuries of English history focused in and around the New Forest in southern England (near Salisbury, the setting of one of his other wonderful and similarly formatted books, Sarum). The book moves through the centuries briefly pausing every two hundred years or so to look in on the evolution of a given place, a few chosen families and the country’s broader history. The book is comprised of little snapshots and while each chapter is equally interesting and Rutherford undeniably excels at quickly creating fully-formed characters one can’t help but care about, the broader point the book makes is that while we all go about our lives and seem so unrelated and so different, a common history unites us all, and oftentimes even more common and closer than you think. Rutherford makes the subtle point that history is more important than just for studying; it shapes who we are and who we become as a people, as individuals and as families. Even without active knowledge of the past—a mode in which most of his characters blithely exist—history undeniably moves us.

The Museum Guard by Howard Norman concurs with the point that history is very much an active presence. His book is more character study than novel and tells the story of DeFoe Russett, a museum guard of a small, local art museum in Halifax called the Glace Museum. DeFoe’s simple existence is utterly unraveled (seriously, our even-keeled art lover is by the end of the book to be found in prison) when a certain painting arrives at the Glace Museum. The painting depicts a woman standing outside of a hotel in Amsterdam holding a loaf of bread and it proceeds to change all the character’s life in ways big and small. The book broadly deals with the onset of World War II, jewishness and how art can affect our lives, but DeFoe is most moved by two things: the premature death of his parents in a local zeppelin crash and the strange transformation undergone by his lover inspired by the painting. Both these events are deeply rooted in history: the zeppelin crash that killed his parents becomes part of the local history, dehumanizing the event for DeFoe even as he most sorely still personally feels the aftermath, and his lover retreats from reality into the historical moment portrayed in the painting. History is another character in the book; the common local history, the feeling throughout the book clearly felt by all the characters that they are witnessing history as Hitler begins his rampage through Europe and the actual withdrawal into history by DeFoe’s lover all reiterate the point that history is no passive afterthought. History is everywhere, informing decisions, moving action and forcing retrospection.

Of these three books, perhaps no protagonist (or subject, in this case) most sorely feels the pull and judgment of history than Peter in Peter the Great: A Biography by Lindsey Hughes. Of all the people in the books, Peter is by far the most aware of history as an entity. Rutherford’s characters primarily simply exist, at best only partially informed of what has come before through folklore or rumor. Norman’s DeFoe is primarily uninformed and only speaks to the history that he himself has experienced. But, as Hughes argues, Peter the Great was extremely conscious of the importance of history and strove constantly to make sure he was remembered properly and regarded well in the annals of history that came thereafter. Not only that, Hughes makes the argument at the end of her book that while Peter himself was involved in his own making of history, the Romanovs who held the throne after him were very much aware of the political importance and usefulness of history, using Peter’s memory and image well into the twentieth century to prove to their followers (and detractors) how good they really were for Russia. History was seen and used as a legitimization of the present because it still felt so relevant and so real. History was not something mustily confined to books no one read. History was real and it was everywhere.

Call this review an attempt to proselytize by a former history major, but history is too often mistaken for something unimportant, easily forgotten and rarely studied. I believe it is far more relevant to today than most people would give it credit for. As Rutherford shows through his study of the centuries, history is undeniably everywhere, even in the commonest or simplest story. Every moment is history. Life is entirely made up of interlocking disciplines and to forget any one among them, history particularly in my opinion, or to dismiss any one as irrelevant to the present, is not simply lamentable, it is inexplicable. Anything can create a connection and history does daily.

Power to the Sisterhood -- I guess?

Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in the BBC's production of Northanger Abbey, courtesy of The New York Times

Yep, I am a failure. See what happens? You give me a co-blogger and I get lazy. Anyway, trust me, I have been doing lots of literary things, just nothing that's made it on this blog...until now.

I know this is not going to win me any friends, but I am becoming less and less a fan of feminist criticism. This is not to say that it's entirely without merit, or that feminist critics are not really intelligent, educated people. What I would like to point out, though, is that because most feminist critics are women themselves, they're more apt to project, or to see what they want to see in the books they examine.

Take The Romance of the Forest, for example. This is a great story, by one of the first popular woman writers, and clearly Ann Radcliffe must have been somewhat independent in her own right to even be a female writer. The main character in Romance is Adeline, a young lady who has been separated from her father, separated from her foster family, is being chased by an evil marquis, and who is pretty sure her ain true love is rotting in prison awaiting his death. So you can see how there is a lot of opportunity for Adeline to step up and assert her strong-willed womanhood or whatever.

Claudia Johnson, in her book Equivocal Beings (which is actually brilliant, except for this one point), argues that "Adeline behaves like a pretty good man, at least when her 'glowing charms' aren't in the way," further saying that Adeline and Theodore essentially 'trade off' being tearful and valiant at various points in the novel.

While it's true that Theodore has some tears throughout the novel, they are mostly when he is in prison being visited by his sick father. It's more standard for the male lead to be brave in this case, but when confronted by the prospect of death within the hour, along with a sobbing father, sister, and lover, I think pretty much any man would break (or could without being judged, at any rate). And let's remember that Theodore has valiantly rescued Adeline about twelve times before this point.

Adeline, however, is not valiant. Ever. Possibly when she finally breaks and tells La Luc she's in love with Theodore could be construed as heroic, but really, since she doesn't even know why that's important, it's not that heroic (hopefully that's not a spoiler...). She weeps and wails and moans and faints at every opportunity, including when she and Theodore are confronted in an inn by the Marquis' troops and both their lives are threatened. At some point, she actually hinders Theodore's usefulness, preventing him from defending them against the soliders by throwing a faint.

To interpret the book in a way that made any sense to me, I was forced to read Adeline not as a character, but as a plot device, or a catalyst, a passive center around which everything revolved (much like the eye of a hurricane). I should hesitate to take Claudia Johnson on regarding this point, but I think she's mistaken.

That's not to say she's the only one. Constantly, discussions in my literature class will revolve around "strong women" in novels where such women simply don't exist. One memorable discussion revolved around Isabella Thorpe, a character in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Isabella and Catherine Morland, the main character, are both in Bath for the marriage market, but while Catherine sets her sights on Henry Tilney and sticks with him for the duration, Isabella plays two or three men against each other and, I believe, ends up losing both of them.

One girl in my class argued that Isabella was a strong woman, playing the marriage market to her own advantage and going after what she wanted. She argued that Jane Austen was way ahead of her time, having a character like this who went after her goal and didn't let anyone get in her way. She said she loved Isabella as a character because she was strong-willed, said what she liked, and did what she wanted.

Note, please, that this same girl takes pride in her own strong will and straight talk.

Note, also, that while Catherine Morland manages to nab the guy she wanted in the first place, Isabella constantly attempts to sell herself to the highest bidder, who turns out to be no bidder at all and abandons her in Bath.

That's not even mentioning the slight aside that while Catherine is a flawed character, she is still human and fairly realistic, while Isabella is an exaggerated gold-digger and, some critics argue, just an ironic characiture of the kind of woman in high society who was only interested in marrying well.

So while I'm glad women out there are re-reading classic novels from a feminist point of view and attempting to shed new light on the works, I think every reader and critic out there needs to be aware of the temptation to project what one wishes a character was onto a fairly ordinary and un-liberated character.

Obviously, there are flaws in every critical theory, from biographical critics who draw lines between actual and fictional events where there is no connection, to formal critics who fail to draw connections where they clearly exist, and we cannot expect those flaws to disappear. But it's important to recognize these flaws when we meet them, and also to be able to field them with more well-founded arguments.

(I promise, more book reviews at some point! I'm swamped with two papers for various classes, parts of which I am sure will make it up here at some point, so I haven't been doing much other reading. But it's coming!)

A Less Than Magical Look at Fairies

By Arthur Rackham, Fairy Illustrator Extraordinaire
In Fairies and Fairy Stories: A History author Diane Purkiss rather apologetically set out to write a scholarly history of fairies, opening her book with "This book is an imperfect and limping creature" and then remarking that "I had always thought of fairies as dull." One wonders whatever inspired her. Fortunately, she answers that question soon enough and it certainly wasn't Disney (in fact, Ms. Purkins seems to have a particular aversion to Disney and its purported "magic," a fact I will return to later). In Fairies Ms. Purkiss was inspired by the "real" fairies as she deems them. These are not the dewey, light-hearted fairies who live in the blossoms of daisies, oh no! Ms. Purkiss' "real" fairies are primarily nasty-spirited little creatures who humans live more in fear of than in awe of. Her book is spent tracing the history of these wicked creatures from ancient Greece through to the 21st century.

The narrative is undeniably interesting even as it winds through various points in quick and sometimes not quite fully fleshed out succession. The very scholarliness with which the Fae are treated is quite fascinating. Having never encountered an actual scholarly work on fairies, I was endlessly finding new ideas in this book. In fact, new ideas are primarily what this book brings the table. Most often, Ms. Purkiss brings up some fascinating way of looking at something, makes a brief mention of a primary source that backs up her argument and then speedily moves on to her next, probably equally interesting, idea. The book is so chronologically broad so as to not allow her more time to dandy with any one idea and she speeds through centuries and ideas at a sprint. One feels that she might have been better served limiting her time frame or lengthening her text so she could spent plenty of loving time with each new idea. (So perhaps the publisher is to blame in this instance, although her research at places seems a little spotty, so maybe it is Ms. Purkiss after all.)

For me, I (rather unsurprisingly, I'm sure, for loyal readers of the blog) found her brief comments on the imperialism of fairies (and, on a related note, the British nationalism and the use of fairies to that end) to be captivating. Ms. Purkiss, as always briefly, argues that fairies were a sort of home-grown British thing that really resonated with both country folk and urbanites through to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was then, as the countryside became increasingly known and the world outside of England was ever-expanding, that fairyland up and left England. Rather than being "o'er hill and under dale," fairies were now living "somewhere in Persia," because it was unknownable and people felt that distance from London to the exotic East was just as untraversable as the distance from Yorkshire to the seat of the Fairy Queen. There are snippets of thoughts of this caliber and of unfortunate brevity all through Fairies and one hopes that Ms. Purkiss goes back and perhaps expands on even one or two of the arguments put forth in the book.

The other short-coming of Fairies is Ms. Purkiss herself. She undermines her own argument with her firm distaste and disdain for what she deems to be "fake" fairies, those which have accompanied many a twentieth-century childhood. Her constant and fairly plain abhorrence of those fairies which she does not consider "real" does not make her argument stronger. Rather, it only makes the book seem particularly slanted and thoroughly biased against the fairies that anyone off the street would recognize as such. Rather than even discussing these "flimsy" fairies, Ms. Purkiss chooses instead to scoff at them and berate the reader about his or her own misconceptions as she attempts to prove that her fairies are in fact the "real" ones. As another reviewer put it, this argument in and of itself is fatally flawed as there is no one true belief in terms of fairies. That problem aside, Ms. Purkiss' personal convictions prevent her from truly presenting a full history of fairies.

One can't help but get the impression of a rather embittered, disgruntled, sci-fan fan and fairy-hater as the author interjects her own (often pretentious, bitter and generally disbelieving) opinions into the text. The final chapter, which deals with fairies in the "new millennium" was a particularly tough pill to swallow as Ms. Purkiss leads the reader through, first, a disparaging attack on what the latter-half of the twentieth century did to fairies in popular culture. (It is at this point that the disdain for Disney that has been quite apparent throughout her book truly hits its zenith. She damningly writes that they have "such strenuous banality that it almost leads the viewer to pick up a sturdy chainsaw at once" before continuing that every Disney fairy "is dull and powerless and unmemorable." Having been raised on those very fairies, forgive me if I beg to differ that they are any of those three adjectives. Personally, I find them to be quite lovely most of the time, have great powers of suggestion over the imaginations of children and adults alike and to be, as evidenced here, highly memorable.)

After this little jaunt into offending anyone who grew up in the late 1980s and all of the 90s, she then makes some particularly broad statements about how all middle class parents want little girls so much more than little boys (a sentiment I fully support, but the absoluteness of her statement which I do not) and how every good, sensible, intelligent mother feels a cringe of shame when her daughter wants to dress up like a fairy. I could go on about how she then discuses X-Files fan fiction and then Buffy the Vampire Slayer and vampires and then (believe it, people) Elvis, of all people. However, suffice it to say that all the little opinions that seemed out of place and distracting throughout the book bloom in her final chapter. These opinions leave a decidedly foul taste in one's mouth after a book that has done its best to disarm any pleasant notions of fairies the reader may have been holding onto.

Happily, those of a stout heart and of firm beliefs will have no trouble taking her arguments as interesting, her research as unusual and her tone as perhaps playful (rather than aggravating) and emerge from the other side of this book with some new ways of looking at the literature of fairies, but with their own private murmurings of "I do believe in fairies, I do...I do..." still pleasantly in tact.

I dina cair muckle far Rob Roy

Photo courtesy of Undiscovered Scotland

If I were to attempt to rival the sheer braininess of KT’s last post, I would put myself to the task of writing something about Roy Roy by Sir Walter Scott that has to do with the constant British use throughout the eighteenth century of an “Other” (often Scottish) as a way to define themselves as a nation. Unfortunately, having a decidedly English bent to my exploration of Britain as a whole, I’m afraid I am not as up the task as a scholar of Scottish history would be (or perhaps a good literary critic either). Thus, I am left to the task of discussing Rob Roy in my usual plebeian form of choice: the basic book review.

Rob Roy primarily tells the story not of its eponymous character but of a would-be poet named Francis (Frank to his buddies) Osbaldistone. In his desire to be a poet, Frank incurs the displeasure of his businessman father who assumed that his only child would take on the family business. (What, exactly, the family does other than deal with large amounts of money is one of the many things in Rob Roy that is not made particularly clear.) Mr. Osbaldistone Senior, thus incensed at his son’s betrayal of the familial calling, packs Frank off to live with his uncle, Sir Hildebrand, and his motley crew of rather stupid sons. In exchange, Sir Hildebrand sends his one brainy, but otherwise quite malignant, son (Rashleigh Osbaldistone) off to take on the family business that Frank so dislikes. Whilst staying with his uncle and rowdy country cousins, Frank falls in love with Sir Hildebrand’s ward, Diana Vernon, a remarkably plucky excuse for a heroine. Their love, of course, is forbidden since Diana must either marry Sir Hildebrand’s idiot son Thorncliffe or be confined to a nunnery. (Why these are the only two options is another loose plot point.) Needless to say the wicked Rashleigh gets up to all kinds of plotting when Frank’s father heads off to do unnamed but very important business on the Continent and it is up to Frank, Diana and (where did he just come from?!) Rob Roy to stop Rashleigh’s ruination of Osbaldistone family business.

That convoluted plot explanation aside, I assure you that the book was about as easy to follow (by which I mean not very). Having just finished it, I am still at odds to truly explain the latter half, wherein Rob Roy appears and the Jacobite Uprising of 1715 occurs, almost as an afterthought, whilst Frank and Co. traipse around the Highlands looking for some papers Rashleigh has stolen from Frank’s father’s firm. Indeed why Frank had to leave Sir Hildebrand’s and go into Scotland at all is rather unclear to me, as is most of his time in Scotland since it is primarily conducted in an unintelligibly written Scottish brogue. Rob Roy, while confusing to me in many ways, did make me recognize one of my all time top ten book pet peeves: writing accents out. Forgive me, but I honestly feel that the potency of the Scottish accent would have just as easily been communicated if anything said by any Scottish person in the book were simply written in plain English and followed by something like “he said in a thick Scottish brogue.” That would have saved us poor non-Scottish readers passages like “it was a Hieland loon gied the letter to that lang-tongued jaud the gudewife there.” What?!

The brogue and the plot aside, Scott did manage to have one shining moment in a book that otherwise left me longing for Ivanhoe. The two paragraphs below are by far the best parts of Rob Roy, even in their very bleakness. As there is little I can say to follow up the feeling in these passages, I will end my review here by saying that Rob Roy is a book that could have benefited from either more or less in the way of plot (it could have been a fascinating character study of the Osbaldistones if Scott had simply left Frank with Sir Hildebrand and his sons and one which I’d wager could have petered out just as disappointingly at the end as Rob Roy actually did) and definitely a lot less brogue.

In the second half, Frank and his buddies are captured successfully by English troops and then Rob Roy’s fearsome wife, Helen. After Helen gets them, another Englishman (Morris) happens upon the band of Highlanders and Helen stonily orders his execution after he pathetically begs for his life. Scott gives us these moving, if grisly, passages:

“The victim [Morris] was held fast by some, while others, binding a large stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck, and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half-naked and thus manacled, they hurled him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph, above which, however, his last death-shriek, the yell of mortal agony, was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark-blue waters, and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant to guard, lest, extricating himself from the load to which he was attached, the victim might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the wretched man sunk without effort, the waters which his life had disturbed, settled calmly over him, and the unit of that life for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.”

The reader, feeling the agony and horror of this act, is then taken along with Scott’s remorse and his feeling when he, as Frank, adds, “…I know not why it is a single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. I had seen that day several of my brave countrymen fall in battle: it seemed to me that they met a lot appropriate to humanity; and my bosom, though thrilling with interest, was affected with nothing of that sickening horror with which I beheld the unfortunate Morris put to death, and in cold blood.”

Romance and forests (and maybe a few vampires)

Her beauty, touched with the languid delicacy of illness, gained from sentiment what it lost in bloom...now entered another stranger, a young Chevalier...in [whom] elegance was happily blended with strength, and had a countenance animated, but not haughty; noble, yet expressive...

I had an existential crisis the other day when one of my good friends (NOT an English major) told me she was reading Twilight. Now, I am of the opinion that while this book is explosively popular, that just makes it explosively popular trash teen fiction of the Buffy-meets-Mr Darcy type, mixed with a little early Anne Rice and, I don't know, Nora Roberts. Obviously Stephanie Meyer has been able to tap into some deep yearning teenage girls have to marry and have raucously violent sex with glittery, undead 100-year-old teenage boys, but that still doesn't make the books good, and neither does throwing in the odd symbol (here, have an apple).

While I was on my high horse, however, ranting about this to said friend, I realized something. One, that I probably should read the book before I judge (another issue for another post) and two, that a lot of what I read on an every day basis for my Popular Literature program was, in fact, described as trash at one point or another.

Case in point: Anne Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest. This is a story about a beautiful orphan girl named Adeline who is taken in by a family running from their debts in Paris to the French forest, where they take refuge in an abandoned abbey. Here, in the various nooks and crannies that ruined abbeys are wont to have, they find a manuscript which appears to be the diary of a man who had been imprisoned there, a rusty dagger, and a skeleton.

Eventually this family meets the owner of said abbey, a Marquis who decides he wants to marry Adeline. Unfortunately for him, he is accompanied by a handsome young chevalier by the name of Theodore, who quickly forms a very intense (and yet chaste) attachment to Adeline and spends much of the rest of the story fighting off the evil Marquis and his henchmen with one arm while supporting the swooning Adeline with the other. There is blood, swordplay, incest, lost-and-found nobility, and an outrageously happy ending. It's amazing - and yet the subject matter would seem to be undeniably trashy.

Critics of the time declaimed it as unrealistic, superstitious and likely to make young women hysterical over nothing. Jane Austen wrote a whole novel, Northanger Abbey, that basically said that silly girls who read silly novels like The Romance of the Forest will get silly, irrational ideas and start to see ghosts and specters and murder everywhere they look, and will have to be talked down by sensible (if a bit effeminate) men who they will eventually marry.

Other novels I have read recently can be accused of the same flaw. The Great God Pan, Lady Audley's Secret, and She: A History of Adventure all involve a lot of sexuality (if not actual sex), a lot of coincidence, and a real penchant for sensationalism. In that case, who am I to say that the intense-yet-chaste nature of Adeline and Theodore's relationship has more literary merit than the similar relationship between Edward and Bella?

Well, the simple answer is that I'm an English student. This means that while I am not the most educated person on the face of the planet, and while I have a profound lack of knowledge of literary criticism that I blame squarely on my American education, I can recognize literary theme, sociological contexts, and moral, spiritual and social issues in texts.

This also means that I can tell you that The Romance of the Forest has stood up to criticism for almost two centuries now. Critics have ripped this book and its genre to shreds, and have found layers upon layers of intention and meaning and issues that I simply don't have time or room to go into in full.

You could make a living off of the portrayal of women in Radcliffe's novels (including the fact that Radcliffe clearly knew that most women hate women they feel threatened by in some way, which explains why Adeline's foster-mother hates her because Adeline is prettier than she is, but Adeline can easily make friends with Theodore's pretty sister). Radcliffe was also aware of the tension between the supernatural and the rational, which she dramatizes by using seemingly supernatural events to create suspense and interest, but also ultimately explaining them away with rational (though pretty contrived) conclusions. This novel is a representation of the battle between pre- and post-Enlightenment thought, in which Enlightenment is the victor.

It also shows a continuing British nationalism, in that Radcliffe set the story in France, a crazy place where crazy things will happen that could never occur in Britain. The importance of social order is another major theme -- it's shown later that the Marquis gained his title through murdering the rightful heir, an act for which later he is severely punished, and everyone is eventually returned to their rightful social standings and marry people of the correct class. The few working-class characters are mostly evil, and mostly die.

But what can you say about Twilight or other books of its ilk?

Well, teenagers yearn for love/sex but may be scared of it, hence the fact that Bella does not have a single romantic choice that involves her not falling in love with a potentially dangerous supernatural being. Teenagers are still children enough to love the fantastic, but adult enough to be interested in more mature themes. And the covers are nice, if nothing else.

On a more personal note, Stephanie Meyer seems to believe that women should fear men, or she is at least is at least informed by one conservative Christian view that men are raging sex beasts who lose rationality in the hunt for someone to mate with. Bella's choices seem to be a wolf-man and a blood-sucker, not rational beings by any means, and certainly connected with images of violence and consumption. Not exactly a positive view -- and take a look at one of the creepiest movie posters I've seen, with Mr. Dashing Vampire hovering over Miss Helpless and Submissive Female like a barely modified incubus. The Nightmare, anyone?

Okay, so maybe that's a little extreme. The thing is, besides the obvious allure of the Dark Side, there isn't a broader scope to this novel, so far as I can see. Bella never has a real choice -- her choices range from not so good to worse, from marrying a vampire and becoming one of the undead to hooking up with a werewolf and possibly being destroyed by vampires. Maybe it's a statement about how love conquers death. Or maybe we're all dead. Or something.

Really, though, I think Stephanie Meyer just wanted to tell a good story. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as we recognize that for what it is. I mean, Nora Roberts can tell a pretty good story. But it takes something more than a good plot to make something a good book. And while The Romance of the Forest and other novels of that type make statements about real and relevant issues, and thus take their place in the canon, books like Twilight really don't seem to have a point -- beyond giving girls an excuse to fantasize about sleeping with the sparkling undead.

'Beginner's Greek' Proves Cinematically Wonderful

Author's Note:Because I feel rather like all the books I write about are slightly stodgy nonfiction books, I give you a review I wrote for my school paper last year on a much more people-friendly book called Beginner's Greek.

One of the many complimentary things I can say about Beginner's Greek by James Collins is that it is undoubtedly the most cinematic book I have ever read. Never before have I been struck within the first few pages so forcefully that the book I was holding in my hands should undoubtedly be a movie. It was like love at first sight, appropriately enough, except it was movie at first sight.

Beginner's Greek is, at its gushy heart, a romance novel. Before utterly turning you off with that statement, let me say it is a romance novel in the same way that Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel. Beginner's Greek is the story of a man, Peter, who has been idealistically waiting all his life to fall in love at first sight. He decides that this will happen most easily on a long airplane flight since there is plenty of time for the first spark, a friendly conversation, some flirting and the creation of a genuine bond between two people. The book begins when his adorable, though unrealistic, view of falling in love actually occurs. Peter falls in love with Holly and then, in a cruel twist of fate - one of many scattered painfully throughout the novel - he inexplicably loses her number. The rest of the book takes us on an almost painful journey as Peter and Holly try to recover their lost love through a series of increasingly unbelievable and unfortunate events.

It sounds sappy, but it really is quite good. It is a quick, light read that I thoroughly enjoyed over spring break. The only downfall of an otherwise happy book is that author James Collins goes a little too far. There are just one too many unfortunate events to keep our lovers apart. The whole book is comprised of various events that keep them apart, open up opportunities for them to be together and then create something else to keep them apart. It's all very frustrating since almost none of the events are the characters' fault. At least in any good Austen novel you can hope for some personal growth that will allow the characters to finally be together. Collins' novel is not that kind of book.

Beginner's Greek is a book about Fate, and the reader, like the characters themselves, must keep believing in Fate and that it ultimately will do good in the end. Repeating to myself, "My gosh, there simply must be a happy ending to this," was really what got me through it at the end of the day, especially towards the end, when Collins apparently couldn't keep himself from throwing in that one last "keep them apart" event. A reader's incredulity and frustration can only be suppressed so long, Mr. Collins.

Presumably, Beginner's Greek will soon be coming to a cinema near you - for how could it not with such writing and positive belief in Fate? - but I recommend reading the book first. It's optimistic and touching; it lets you get into the heads of the characters and really feel for them as movies cannot do, no matter how many voice-overs the filmmaker helpfully provides. And if there are things every Smithie needs at this time of the semester, if not always, they are friendly happy endings and a good dose of optimism.

Books About Books

I recently completed The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee and it reminded me of one of my favorite sub-genres, most commonly found in used bookstores but now making a pleasant resurgence in other bookstores: books about books.

Books about books may sound like an annoyingly redundant form of literature, but I assure you it is a beautiful thing. In a pretentious frame of mind, I suppose I would compare it to a great cathedral. Books about books are created solely for the glorification of something else or, in their case, some other book or books. Cathedrals, similarly, are built solely for the glorification of, depending on who you ask, God, the town or Art. In any event, not for the sake of the cathedral itself. I would also argue that books about books and cathedrals also share a grand beauty, cathedrals with flying buttresses and stained glass and books about books with the perfect words. Indeed, books about books, being written by those who love books possibly best of all readers (to such an extent that they felt compelled to write a whole book about how much they love books), are often some of the most eloquent books you'll find.

Suffice to say, I generally love the form even if it can go horribly awry as is the case with Rereadings, a book of essays collected by the great Anne Fadiman. The essays all center around the idea of rereading a favorite book and each of the essays is, tragically, written by a different author. All attempt the high art of writing a book about books (or in this case an essay about books) and most, frankly, fail. There is always the opportunity in a book about books to be too self-centered and most of the essayists in Rereadings seize this opportunity with zeal. The essays range from wholly pretentious to literary criticism (a thing quite different from books about books) to simply egotistical. In my opinion, the book about books is ideally two parts intelligence, one part biography and one part adoration mixed with some good old fashioned good writing. Of the authors in this collection, only Ms. Fadiman succeeds at this.

In fact, the greatest of all books about books for me will always be Ex Libris by Ms. Fadiman. I often try to articulate just what is so wonderful about this book, but it is well nigh impossible. Suffice to say that the writing borders on divine and whenever I read (and reread and reread) it, I am simultaneously struck with awe, jealousy and admiration that such writing still exists in this digital world. At the risk of veering into fangirl territory, I will leave off and simply recommend vigorously that you read it.


Hugh Walpole (above with his dachshund), perhaps more well-known as a novelist, wrote a lovely little piece of bibliomania called Reading: An Essay. I stumbled across it in a used book store, and I have never been quite so pleased with an impulse buy. It is delightful, relatable, eloquent, amusing and intelligent. In addition, the book is rather autobiographical but, despite coming from a gay man living in the 1920s, is still perfectly applicable to today. I guess reading and readers haven't changed much in the ensuing decades, which is rather as comforting as this book is.

Mr. Buzbee's The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop enters this realm of extremely good books about books with aplomb. His book is described as "a memoir, a history" and it is wonderfully both. Unlike Ms. Fadiman's collection of unconnected essays in Ex Libris, Mr. Buzbee's book has a narrative that follows his life in books and bookstores with a cleverly parallel account of the history of the book and bookstore as an institution. Both sides of the story are fascinating and the book only falls slightly short in the latter chapters when Mr. Buzbee feels compelled to take a stance on the "literacy is dead!" debate that has risen with the Internet as well as toss in his two cents on what his favorite bookstores are and why. The history of the book parallel has died out by this point, which is a shame, as it might have enlivened the later chapters. That aside, the book is a genuine joy and I heartily recommend it as I head out the door to find other books by Mr. Buzbee.

Next Up: Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott. At last! A return to fiction!

"A Curious History"? More like a winding history

Nothing would have made me happier than to be able to come to you after reading Footnote: A Curious History and say it was amazing. That it approached levels of humor, interest and impressive research that are laudable in such a specific and unusual text. That I was charmed by the idea of such a topic and that the book's actual content kept me equally excited and inspired throughout.

However, the truth is actually much duller. "Dull" is, in fact, the word of choice for this "curious" history of the footnote. In the book, Anthony Grafton admirably attempts to create a history of citations in the field of history. Where did the footnote begin? To whom do we owe this great, academic debt? I say he attempts to do this because his text is so utterly winding that one often finds one's mind wandering away down some more interesting mental path only to be jarred back into the book before you by (in my case) a literal jolt from the subway.

On the outset, Grafton asked some interesting questions about where the footnote came from and perhaps with a stronger editor, this book would have flourished. As it is, the reader often loses sight of Grafton's interesting questions and, even worse, his argument towards answering them. Almost every chapter wound through interesting historical VIPs and era-specific savage academic debate only to have an argument tacked on the end by Grafton as if to remind us that he is, in fact, building up one. Remember? Unfortunately, the reader does not and there is absolutely no overall sense of a budding argument. Rather, it just seems like your basic nonfiction book filled with little stories, but with nothing coherent to tie them all together. Were the book done correctly, the footnote would very obviously be that something.

Happily, I can say that the research is quite impressive. Grafton clearly went through his paces, not just in terms of English sources, but German, French and Latin ones. (Indeed, Grafton's sheer linguistic prowess alone makes the book rather impressive.) Also, Grafton rather charmingly makes good and full use of the footnote, filling up half-pages with notes on his sources. On the downside, his footnotes are nothing like those of Gibbon (which he hails as "witty" and generally seems to think quite highly of). Instead, his footnotes are merely notes, comprised of the quoted text in its entirety and with few comments, which I think might have improved the readability of the text greatly.

This book seemed to promise so much to a bibliophile and ended up being just so impossibly dull that I couldn't even top off the epilogue. (Although Grafton did seem on the verge of perhaps "tying up" his poorly defined argument.) The highlight of the book is undeniably the people you meet in it. While the narrative flags and the argument is almost invisible, the people are really wonderful. Most notably, Leopold van Ranke, best-known as one of the founders of modern citation but also an ardent lover of archives and historian extraordinaire, Gibbon (see above) and Pierre Bayle, a Huguenot and author of what many consider to be the first encyclopedia (complete with extensive notes, of course).

The people and research are undeniably great and it is just a shame that Grafton's narrative and argument couldn't rise to the levels of his other parts.

Next up: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

Corruption of an adult by a minor

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Would you believe I didn't know the origins, or indeed, the true meaning of the term "Lolita" until a few weeks ago?

Being an English graduate student living with another English graduate student, naturally the topic of favorite books comes up. After I blabbed for about half an hour about and The Catcher in the Rye and Great Expectations, my apartment-mate mentioned that her favorite book was Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.

"It's so beautiful," she told me, telling me stories about how Nabokov was so obsessed with finding the perfect word order that he wrote the words of every sentence on index cards and moved the cards around until the flow was just right. On top of it, English is not Nabokov's first language, which leads to both a self-consciousness about language and a compulsion to get everything exact.

She was right, to an extent. The first paragraph was jewel-like, incredible, amazing; other parts scattered throughout were heart-breakingly beautiful. Still, the plot and the language was not sufficient to make me forget that this was a 40-year-old man having an affair with a 12-year-old girl (however nymph-like she may be). Beautiful though it may be, I couldn't move beyond the gross-out factor.

I wasn't quite getting it. I had read too fast, the plot was a little boring, and I was confused by the ending because I had missed a key clue earlier in the book. Thankfully one of my other friends has a passion for Lolita and an excellent DVD collection, which contained Adrian Lyne's version of the story.

This version, made in 1997, stars a striking Jeremy Irons and a self-conciously sexual Dominique Swain. It's so very clear in this version that Lolita knows what she is doing to Humbert, that Humbert loves her rather than just lusts after her, and the complete and utter Freudian nightmare that is their relationship is painted in much clearer terms (this portrayal just helped clarify their relationship, not take away from the book's portrayal of it at all).

I cried at the end (which is nothing new to regular readers of this blog, but this time it was justified). I even forgot somehow that this older man was technically the criminal, and this manipulative, cheating shrew was ostensibily some sort of victim. All I saw was a man so in love he would do anything to keep his lover his, and at the same time a man desperate to protect his 'daughter' from the clutches of dirty old men.

Please, do read Lolita. There are some beautiful scenes that the movie doesn't bother to go into, and if nothing else, it's worth reading just to marvel at how brilliant Nabokov must be to be able to write like this in what is not his first language.

But if you find that the novel falls a little short for you, go rent the Adrian Lyne version of the film and spend two hours or so watching Dominique Swain drive Jeremy Irons out of his mind. I promise, it will bring your appreciation of the story to a whole other level.

Reflections on Onliness

This past week I read both Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo, which made me question every action I've ever taken and wonder if it is totally textbook only child, and Washington Square, which has an only child as its heroine. Perhaps because I read Only Child first, my reading of Washington Square was necessarily tainted by the attempted psychoanalysis I now give to things related to only children. However, that aside, here are my thoughts on both.

At the obvious risk of outing myself, I am an only child and it was for this reason that I wanted to read Only Child (and because I recently made the acquaintance of one of the co-editors, another only). I hoped that I would read the book and either find commiseration in things I never realized were only child things or realize that I was what I hoped to be: a utterly not stereotypical only. (You know the type. Self-centered, spoiled, bratty. A general headache.) However, what the book ended up doing was opening up a Scylla and Charybdis of things I never thought to worry about before. For example, when you're an only, who is there to remember your family memories after your parents are gone? It's just you. Similarly, who is there to help you take care of your elderly parents? Again, just you. And who will be there to grieve when those parents are gone? Can anyone but a sibling feel the kind of pain you feel over the loss of your parents? I don't care how many cousins and other well-meaning relatives you have, I can't imagine anyone feeling the loss of either of my parents more sorely than yours truly.

That said, I also feel compelled to make everyone around me read this book. It honestly affected my life and the way I think about things and what more can you ask for in a book? There is this curtain of curiosity that exists between onlies and non-onlies. It is sheer and you can just make out the shapes on the other side, but you can never really join them, but that doesn't ever stop you from wondering what it is like over there. I think Only Child just might be the answer to pulling back that curtain a wee tad and learning a little more about the other side.

Having gotten those essays under my belt, I turned to Washington Square by Henry James. It is my second James and the official New York City Big Read this year, so it seemed like a good choice. And, as fate would have it, an utterly appropriate choice following Only Child since the heroine is an only. While my first James (The Aspern Papers) was utterly disappointing, I really enjoyed Washington Square.

The book is a close character study focusing on four characters, Dr. Sloper, Catherine Sloper, Mrs. Penniman and Morris Townsend. There is a small plot, but the characters are mainly what move the story. This works quite well since James is extremely deft at keeping up the mystery of someone's "true" character. While he left the women in the book utterly unambiguous in their character (e.g. Catherine is sweet but simple and Mrs. Penniman is foolish), the two males were much more complicated and their motives are less easy to see. And, coming at the book from the perspective of only-child-ness, Catherine was a wonderful treat. The conflicts set up by the essays in Only Child, such as the unenviable decision an only must eventually make between parents and mate, played out beautifully in Washington Square.

On the whole, I would probably recommend Washington Square if you were simply looking for something well-done and eloquent to read and Only Child if you want something to talk to your only friends about or, if you are an only, something to make you worry to no end. (Doesn't sound appealing? Better stick with the James, then.)

Since I can't seem to access my shelf at right, I give you
Next Up: Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton.

By Way of Introduction

The thing you should know about me is that I have a problem. It's been a life-long problem, but one that has only truly manifested itself now that I have a regular paycheck. The problem is thus: I simply cannot (and I mean really cannot, even when I put my sternest stuff to the task) stop buying books. To give you an idea of the magnitude of my problem (and the detriment to my bank account), I give you the following list of books that I have purchased merely in the last week:

The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading by Francis Spufford
Once Voice Please by Sam McBratney and Russel Ayto
Washington Square by Henry James
The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo edited by Deborah Seigel and Daphne Uviller
Orientalism by Edward Said
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
Footnote: A Short History by (someone whose name I can't remember but who rather wonderfully wrote an entire book about footnotes with numerous and lengthy footnotes)
Amor Est Sensus Quidam Peculiaris by Joan Walsh Anglund

Yes, indeed, the last is entirely in Latin, a language that, at my best, I am only passingly fluent in. I doubt I could ever read an entire book in Latin even after studying it for semesters on end. That alone should be indicative of my problem.

I tell you this by way of introducing you to my reading habits, clearly rather varied and often entirely unexpected even to myself, and to give you a teaser for what's coming up. Having purchased these books, I should now rightfully be compelled to read them. So here's hoping that during my tenure at this lovely blog, I'll get to write about all these books in some way or another. (And we'll just count the above comments as the extent of my writings on Amor Est Sensus Quidam Pecularis since I think we all know I shall probably never muscle my way through that one.)

Teasers

I stole this from the book blog Reading Adventures (a "Blog of Note" this week) and thought it was an easy way to get a vaguely interesting post out. It's also a fairly decent way to keep you even vaguely interested in the books I'm reading currently.

Here's the deal: I have grabbed the books I have in the "On The Shelf" bar to your right, flipped to a random page, and chose two sentences between lines 7 and 12 on that page. Ready? Okay --

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
"They also wanted 'For Those Who Willingly Made The Supreme Sacrifice' to be written on the front. Father refused to back down on the sculpture, saying they could consider themselves lucky the Weary Soldier had two arms and two legs, not to mention a head, and that if they didn't watch out he'd go for bare-naked realism all the way and the statue would be made of rotting body fragments, of which he had stepped on a good many in his day."

Lolita by Valdimir Nabokov

"I watched dark-and-handsome, not un-Celtic, probably high-church, very high-church, Dr Humbert see his daughter off to school. I watched him greet with his slow smile and pleasantly arched thick black ad-eyebrows good Mrs Holigan, who smelled of the plague (and would head, I knew, for master's gin at the first opportunity)."

The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe

"All was dark and silent. She called aloud for help, but no person appeared; and the windows were so high, that it was impossible to escape unassisted."

Let me just add briefly here that the above teaser is typical of The Romance of the Forest, in which the heroine is constantly calling for help in the middle of the most deserted situations and then pacing, wringing her hands and crying until (most improbably) someone rescues her. At this point she usually faints, and the hapless rescuer is forced to either carry her out of her imprisonment or to stay until she recovers and try to fend off whomever might come to investigate.

Welcome to the Club

I would like to introduce my new co-blogger, Corey! She has been solo blogging over at Travels Through Life and we've done some joint writing in the past on various projects, so I'm excited to have her on board!

Reading-wise, Corey tends to be far more comfortable than I am with the non-fiction side of things, especially anything involving the British Empire, Egypt, and Emerson. Also, she reads things like Dumas. This is why she's brilliant and probably going to go to Oxford for a PhD and I am getting a master's in Popular Literature.

But welcome, Corey, and I'm so glad there's someone around here who wouldn't be caught dead with a Jodi Picoult novel in her hands! Though let's face it, if you're having a bad day, there's nothing like some cheesy chick lit to cheer anyone up.

Works in Progress

I've been a little busy -- not so busy, though, that it's kept me from buying six books in two weeks, and starting reading three of them. Here's what you can expect in the upcoming weeks, as well as a few tidbits about my purchases recently:

* Arthur & George by Julian Barnes -- I picked this up for 1 euro at Charlie Byrne's in Galway, which I viewed as fate, since a friend and I had just been talking about it. It's about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, and since it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I'm guessing it's pretty decent.

* Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling -- I couldn't resist picking this up at some bargain-basement/thrift store in Galway, especially with a two and a half hour train ride ahead of me. I won't review this one, but I'm loving the chance to read it again and pick up on all the stuff I missed earlier. I am kind of glad I waited on Harry Potter until most of the buzz was over...it's giving me the chance to read it without getting caught up in the frenzy and judge objectively how good the series is and how likely it is to last.

* The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood -- I am deeply in love with Margaret Atwood. Actually, I kind of want to be her. She is one of the most versitile and original writers, and when she finds her stride, everything that comes from her pen is so beautifully written and so true that I can hardly tear myself away. This book is getting a review once I finish it, and once I find the time. Oh, and by the way, read Oryx and Crake if you like dystopian novels, and The Robber Bride if you don't. Also, The Edible Woman was my favorite Atwood for a long time, and even though it's her first novel, it's well worth reading.

* The Romance of the Forest by Anne Radcliffe -- The Gothic novel that spawned all other Gothic novels! Radcliffe was so popular in her day, and she was enough of an influence on literature that Jane Austen felt the need to take the piss out of her (heh -- pardon my Irish) in Northanger Abbey. Can't wait to start this one!

* Chocolat by Jonanne Harris -- I won't review this one, I don't think, since I've already read it, but I would recommend it, even to people who have seen the movie. It's different from the movie, but it's really fun and better-written; even though I loved the film, the book is better. I'm a big fan of Joanne Harris, especially Gentlemen and Players, but this one comes a close second.

* Christmas Books by Charles Dickens -- Okay, this one is just bragging, but I was so freaking excited...I found an edition of this book at the Temple Bar Book Market for six euro, and was excited enough just to find an old copy of a Dickens book. Then I opened the cover, and read this: "Xmas 1903 / To Dear James / with best wishes / MOC". The copyright date is 1894, the condition is beautiful, and I was so thrilled I couldn't stop from grinning as I paid the lady running the stall. She probably thought I was crazy, but then most people here do, so I'm not worried about it.

* Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. As read by Hugh Laurie -- I found this set of 3 CDs tucked away in the corner of the Classics section of Hodges Figgis, and I grabbed it like it was a gold nugget. And I suppose it is, even though I'm sure millions of copies are out there, this was the first I had seen, and I didn't even know it existed. It was also the last one on the shelf, so for all I know, it could have been a direct gift from God, dropped there to reward me for actually going through with this crazy-ass idea to move to another country and get a master's. Then again, if it was a heavenly gift, I suppose it wouldn't have had an ISBN or, ya know, a price tag on it...anyway, I cannot WAIT to listen to this, and it might actually inspire an entry on Great Expectations, so be looking for that! Note: There is a an audio version of this on iTunes, but not read by Hugh Laurie, so I don't know if it's worth it.

Take Me Away

Those of you who know me (which is, um, all of you) know that I have moved about three, maybe four times since January and am about to move again to a city which I’ve never been to. As much as I’d like to think of myself as a free-spirited, wild-eyed rover, that is really about as far away from my true personality as possible. So obviously, I feel the need to escape from the sheer panic induced by words like “plane” and “airport” and “moving boxes” and “luggage.” Me being me, I bury myself in a book.

This is cheesy, but all of you already know this on some level – books create worlds of their own. They are reflections of how the author thinks the world works, or how the world could work with a few modifications. With enough modifications, the author can create a world of their own, and then the book could become science fiction or fantasy, depending on how in depth the modifications are and the direction they take the novel.

So, my reading life lately has been all about escaping this world for alternative ones. Here’s what I’ve been turning to instead of dealing with the trials of my everyday life:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

This, I think, is the best book ever to read in an airport. The chapters are relatively short, and the beginning and end are very exciting, and the middle is marginally so. What this means for you is that as you’re waiting for your flight to take off, you will be totally engrossed in the novel, but not so engrossed that you can’t fall asleep during a long flight. You’ll have plenty of the novel to occupy you during a layover, and then enough to keep you awake during a short flight that you don’t want to drop off during.

This novel is a mostly prewar vampire hunt, in which two graduate students, prompted by the disappearance of a professor, go to hunt down Dracula’s tomb. The story is told in the form of the one graduate student telling his daughter what happened, letters the professor left before his disappearance, and the daughter filling in narration from her own vampire hunt that resulted from her father’s. It’s amazing – even if the first time I read it, I did have to give up in the middle and try again. It does take a little focus, but if you’re in an airport, you have nothing but time and nothing else to focus on.

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a fantasy nerd. Like, so big of a fantasy nerd that I have to keep myself from reading it, or it’s all I’d read. In fact, when I found Robin Hobb, her books are all I did read for the course of a few months.

I actually got into her Farseer books from her book Golden Fool, which has some of the same characters but not the same plot line. The trilogy is basically about this young boy named FitzChivalry (oh, I know) who is the lovechild (mm-hmm) of the late and lamented Prince Chivalry and some woman from the mountain country. Turns out that not only can Fitz communicate with animals and perform some pretty powerful magic, he has what it takes to be the official Royal Assassin and help Prince Verity and King Shrewd keep their kingdom from being taken over.

I don’t even remember whom, exactly, they are fighting – all I know is that Fitz makes friends with a wolf puppy named Nighteyes somewhere in the second book. From then on I was hooked. Probably not a book to really read in public unless you don’t care if other people judge your reading choices.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

I just put that title down for the sake of naming a specific Harry Potter book; really any of them will do, but I tend to prefer the later ones for escapism. I enjoy Goblet of Fire because it isn’t nearly as dark as Order of the Phoenix, all the good characters are still alive, and Harry isn’t quite an obnoxious teenager yet.

Half-Blood Prince, though, would also be good, or Prisoner of Azkaban – just note that the later ones are a little more sophisticated than the first few, which makes them better suited to the purpose of keeping your attention for a longer period of time. And I don’t know about you, but I can never remember exactly the way the book turns out, even if I’ve read it before, so there’s always that element of suspense.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Wow, is this a book that sucks you in and won’t let go. It’s a retelling of Authurian myth but with an emphasis on goddess worship and Lancelot’s heritage as the son of the Lady of the Lake. Here’s my only caveat: I haven’t read this whole book, and what I did read was a long time ago.

However, this is more the exception that proves the rule, as the only reason I didn’t finish it was because I was in my uber-Christian high school years, and couldn’t separate the fact that I thought goddess worship was wrong from the fact that maybe it was okay in the context of the book and, you know, for fictional characters. I am going to go back to it, though, once I have the chance, because I remember being so drawn in, that I could barely make myself stop. I did, though, because this is what good Christian girls are supposed to do, resist heresy and Satan in all his forms, even if that form is a really, really interesting book. This is also why I didn’t read Harry Potter until I was almost 20, but that’s another story.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The only book in this list that I have barely even started, but that’s because I am saving it for the inevitable breakdown that will surely follow my move to Dublin. I need an extraordinarily good book to keep me occupied between the time my mother drops me off at Buffalo’s airport and the time I finally settle into life at Trinity, a period of anywhere from a week to two months (after which I will fly back to California, only to have to make that adjustment all over again. Yay fun).

But this really isn’t about me complaining – I think this novel will do the trick, as it’s about magic returning to England during the Napoleanic Wars and, apparently, a rivalry between two magicians. And hey, Neil Gaiman liked it, and I like Neil Gaiman, so who am I to doubt his word?

What's the story, morning glory?

Or, in other words, what is going on with the total lack of posting? In case you are wondering, yes, I am planning on posting more in the future, but my moving around so much is making it hard to blog, even when I read wonderfully ridiculous books like The Monk that are sooooo worth writing about.

I will be off line for much of next week and probably too busy to blog for another two weeks after that, but I will continue to write posts on my computer and actually post them when I get the chance.

Speaking of which, I'll blog about it later, but if you have the chance, read The Monk and just try not to laugh your ass off. Yeah, it moves a little slowly, but you're allowed to skim, since you don't have to read the whole thing for class like I did. It's better than a Harlequin romance, I swear. I felt like I was getting away with something when I read it in public, that's how salacious it was. There is a love child -- that's all I'll say.

Comfort Reading

As I come closer to the end of the summer and the beginning of graduate school, I am finding myself getting more and more apprehensive about my future. And, like many others, when I get nervous, I eat. Or at least cook – sometimes the only cure for a bad case of nerves is to pound a cup of toasted slivered almonds into crumbs for a batch of Almond Cookies. It’s amazing what fifteen minutes with a rolling pin and a Ziploc bag full of nuts can do for your sanity.

But I can’t cook all the time, and I’d rather not gain the freshman fifteen before I become a first-year again, so sometimes I have to replace the rolling pin with a book. Here are my “comfort foods” of literature, some chicken noodle soup for your soul, if you will, but a little more literally (and a little less annoyingly – does anyone else hate those books like I do?):

The Fourth Star by Lisa Brenner
This book follows the staff of Daniel, a formerly four-star New York restaurant that was bumped down to three stars when a new food critic came to the New York Times. The staff tries desperately over the course of a year to gain back that last star, and reporter Lisa Brenner shadows them in all aspects, from front of the house service to back of the house food preparation.

It really impresses me how much Ms Brenner manages to cram into this book, and how much real dialogue she is able to capture. I felt as though maybe this book could have been more like a movie or a TV show, what with all of the drama and action in there. It’s one of my favorites, and a definite must-read.

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Julie and Julia is the story of Julie Powell, who comes to a crisis when she is told she has a hormonal imbalance that will make it hard for her to have children if she doesn’t do it soon. This, of course, in typical Sex and the City fashion, makes Ms Powell feel as though she has done nothing useful with her life. Her husband suggests she go to culinary school, and Ms Powell retorts that if she wanted to learn to cook, she would just work her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

And the rest is history. A copy of the book is procured, a blog is started, and ingredients like beef marrow and squab start appearing in the Powell kitchen. The book is well-written; Ms Powell is kind of abrasive at times, but her redeeming factor is that she is aware of her tendency to overreact and there is generally a little undertone of either amusement or shame when she recounts her more dramatic episodes. I didn’t think the pieces of Julia Child’s life that punctuate the book were strictly necessary, but I also didn’t think there was anything really wrong with them – I just found Julie’s life more interesting than Julia’s.

Waiting by Debra Ginsberg
I think everyone should read one book on waitressing or restaurants in the course of their lives, and preferably sooner than later. Though it’s nearly impossible to fully understand the things servers have to put up with from clients and back of house staff alike without actually ever working as one, reading one book like this will convince you that servers work a lot harder than most of us give them credit for.

I have read a few blogs by servers that are amusing and enlightening, and one thing that seems common to all of them is the lament that people simply don’t know how to behave when they go out to eat. Poor tipping, over-the-top demands and the inability of parents to control their children are the main topics that get these servers steamed up.

Debra Ginsberg also gets rather angry throughout the course of the book, but since she breaks up her rants with stories about working in a diner and a few bars, as well as statistics on tipping and other matters, she’s much more readable than many of the server blogs out there. She also clearly defines characters, as if writing a novel, which many bloggers don’t. However, if you’re still interested, check out Waiter Rant, The Insane Waiter and I Serve Idiots (I know he tells you to go to a different URL, but that address is defunct).

French Lessons by Peter Mayle
I am pretty sure this is the first food book I ever read, so it’s on here for the purpose of nostalgia, if nothing else. How can I neglect the author who taught me that truffles are mushrooms, not just little balls of chocolate, and yes, people really do eat and enjoy snails?

Mr Mayle begins the book with a story about traveling to France for the first time and sampling their version of the British classic, fish and chips. This first meal is like a revelation to him, as British food is notoriously bad, and French food is notoriously awesome.

The Gourmet Cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichel
It is impossible for me to resist a bargain, which is how I ended up taking this book home with me from a discount store. I used to read Gourmet magazine, and having read Ms Reichel’s Garlic and Sapphires and Tender at the Bone, I knew at least the preface of this cookbook would be worth reading.

It was, of course, but the rest of the book proved just as amazing. As promised on the back of the dust jacket, this is, in fact, the only cookbook I think I will ever need. Short of pulling a Julie and Julia-type cooking marathon with Gourmet, I know I will never work my way through everything it has to offer. Still, I can try...red wine risotto, anyone?