Archive for October, 2008

I re-read A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut on Sunday, and I had to laugh when I got to this part:

Joe, a young man from Pittsburg, came up to me with one request: “Please tell me it will all be okay.”

“Welcome to Earth, young man,” I said. “It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it Joe, you’ve got to be kind!”

During a campaign season with all together too many Joes, it was pleasant to encounter Vonnegut’s Joe. If only elections could be as straightforward as Vonnegut was.

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The Annotated Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Yesterday I finished re-reading Pride and Prejudice, using David M. Shapard’s Annotated edition. It took me more than twice as long as just reading the novel only, but the annotations provided a lot of extra helpful and interesting information and it was very worth the extra time.

I found the annotations generally fit into three categories: word definitions, plot analysis, and explanations of historical context. The word definitions were interesting, even though I’m pretty comfortable with Jane Austen’s writing, because it points out situations where the exact definition of a word has changed since the early 1800s. For example, many times Jane Austen refers to a character’s “mind” – which in her time meant their personal character/disposition, rather than the current way we think of “mind” – as referring to one’s intellect or brain. That’s not a difference I realized before reading this edition.

Also, occasionally the annotations reference Jane Austen’s letters, which help to understand her opinions of love, marriage, and social situations of the time.

**Even though I think most anyone at all interested in Jane Austen probably already knows the plot of Pride & Prejudice (at the very least from the movies), I will still advise: Plot spoilers below.**

Here’s an example of how the annotations help to understand some of the historical context:
Mrs. Bennet, after hearing the surprising news that Elizabeth is now engaged to Mr. Darcy, responds:

“My dearest Child,” she cried, “I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! “Tis as good as a Lord!” And a special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence.”

I definitely had no clue what a “special licence” was, but the annotation explains:

“A marriage license granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the English church, that allowed a couple to marry whenever and wherever they wished. Only wealthy and prominent people would be able to procure such a license, so it carried great social prestige. In addition, a special license allowed one to marry in a home or private building – in contrast to a regular license, which, in addition to specifying the parish, required marriage in a chapel or church. Thus marriage by special license offered the maximum possible privacy, something that had become highly valued in weddings during this period.”

I highly recommend The Annotated Pride and Prejudice if you’d like to re-read the novel. If you’ve never read the novel before it might not be a good idea to start with this edition. As David M. Shapard points out in the beginning, a number of plot spoilers are included in the annotations.

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Beautiful 2009 calendar – I’ve already pre-ordered mine. :)

Photos of gorgeous bookstores from all over the world. (Found on Books on the Nightstand.)

Funny McSweeney’s article that imagines a university library getting the attention it deserves.

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For anyone interested in the book I wrote about last week, State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, it’s reviewed in this week’s NY Times Book Review.

The review gives several examples of the essays, and it’s a good introduction to the content of the book.

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I re-read The Great Gatsby a few days ago, and fell in love with it all over again.

I don’t think there are many passages in any book more beautiful and incredible than this one:

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

-From The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell

I have now read 3 of Sarah Vowell’s 4 books. This one, The Wordy Shipmates, comes out tomorrow, and I’m excited for her event at Barnes and Noble on Wednesday.

I enjoyed The Wordy Shipmates. It’s well written, and the Puritans are a fascinating subject. One of the things that makes Sarah Vowell so great is that she writes about areas of US History that usually get overlooked in most people’s education. In school we often learn about the “first thanksgiving” and then basically jump forward to the Boston Tea Party and The Declaration of Independence. In high school, there’s sometimes a brief stop in Salem. The Wordy Shipmates dives into the interesting lives of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its key figures.

I feel obliged to point out that this is not Sarah Vowell’s most entertaining book. I still enjoyed it, very much. But it’s her weightiest work so far, which I think is a good thing. You don’t have to have read her other books to appreciate this one. But if you’re looking for her sharp, witty humor that makes the pages fly by, it comes out more in her other books. There are splashes of it in The Wordy Shipmates, and it adds sparkle to the book. I guess what I’m basically trying to say is that this book is not as funny as her others, but it’s still a very interesting book that’s worth reading. I also think it may be her most important work, because of some of the uncomfortable parallels to our own culture.

I think the main reason I found this book a little hard to get through is that there are no chapters. It was the second book without chapters that I read in September, and they really bogged down my reading speed. I thrive on chapters – having a goal of how far to read before stopping and as a natural stopping point in the book.

Sarah Vowell will be on Letterman tonight, and The Daily Show tomorrow night.

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Nothing to Be Frightened Of

Julian Barnes

Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I have many Post It darts marking passages that are incredible. I’d like to type them all out here as evidence of how great this book is, but I believe the many treasures in this book must be better when you come across them through your own reading.

As the title suggests, this book is about the fear of death. I think everyone is afraid of death to some degree, and some people think about it much more than others. Julian Barnes is one of those people. The book is full of personal stories, opinions, and the opinions/thoughts about death by famous figures in history (mostly other writers).

I finished this book three weeks ago, but I still think about it frequently. I also have Julian Barnes to thank for exposing me to Jules Renard. (I previously posted about The Journal of Jules Renard.)

Julian Barnes is a celebrated novelist as well. I haven’t read anything else by him yet. At Strand I found a used copy of Something to Declare, which is a collection of essays on France. I also really want to read Flaubert’s Parrot.

Nothing to be Frightened of is the featured review on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. Garrison Keillor wrote the review, and it’s very good. At the end he wonders whether the book will be popular with Americans (it was published earlier this year in the UK), and I understand his concern. Americans might shy away from it, on the grounds of its subject matter being too morbid. I hope that’s not the case.

The first chapter of Nothing to be Frightened of is posted on NYTimes.com.

One note: If you are easily offended by religious views that are different that your own (specifically Agnosticism), you might want to avoid this book.

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Books Purchased – September 2008

Books Purchased: (This should actually be labeled “Books Acquired” this month because nine of them were birthday presents.)

Too Cool to be Forgotten by Alex Robinson
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by  Junot Diaz
Drown by Junot Diaz
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
Something to Declare by Julian Barnes
P. G. Wodehouse: A Biography by Frances Donaldson
Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
The Journal of Jules Renard
Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
Ballistics by Bill Collins
La Bella Figura by Beppe Severgnini
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
The Color of Water by James McBride
Eden’s Outcasts by John Matteson
Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi
The Best American Non-Required Reading 2008 edited by Dave Eggers
The Best American Comics 2008 edited by Linda Barry
Blankets by Craig Thompson

Books Read – September 2008

Books Read:

Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse
Too Cool to be Forgotten by Alex Robinson
Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
I read two more Jeeves and Wooster books this month. I’ve loved all of my ventures into the life of Bertie Wooster. Joy in the Morning was definitely my favorite of the two though, mainly because I thought the resolution of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves wasn’t as strong.

I’m having a lot of fun with my new found interest in graphic novels. I read Too Cool To Be Forgotten this month, a short but wonderful little graphic novel. The main character goes to a hypnotist to try to cure his smoking addiction. He finds himself transported fully back to high school. It was a very thought provoking situation. It made me wonder how I’d react to people and situations in my past, if I had the chance to go back with the knowledge I now have of what happens to them. There are some very touching scenes with his family, specifically with his dad (who is dead in the main character’s present). Surprisingly, it manages to do all this without being corny. I think that’s one of the benefits of the format of graphic novels.

I also read the first two Anne books – Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. I adored them both. I was familiar with the plot, since I’ve seen the movies and I read an abridged version a long time ago. But reading the full books was a wonderful experience. Anne Shirley is one of my favorite characters in literature. I’m excited to read the rest of the series.

I’m planning full posts on The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell and Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes, so if you’re interested in either of those, check back soon!

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State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

Matt Weiland

I was browsing the new book section in Borders during lunch this week, and I found a book called State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America.

The idea behind the book is that the editors, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, asked 50 writers to write about one of America’s 50 states. There’s a good variety of authors, including some of my favorites: Dave Eggers, John Hodgman, Sarah Vowell, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ann Patchett, and Alison Bechdel.

I read the Michigan essay, by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, while standing in Borders, and I really enjoyed it. It made me want to own the book so that I’d be able to open to any state at random and experience a little bit of Armchair Traveling.

The book was full price ($29.95) at Borders, so I didn’t buy it right away. I couldn’t resist it long though, I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday and got it, where it’s 20%, off plus my member discount. It’s also 34% off on Amazon.

According to the user reviews I read on Amazon, some of the state’s essays are dissapointing. That doesn’t really surprise me, with a collection of 50 essays some are bound to not be as wonderful.

If you want to see a full list of which author wrote about which state, it’s posted on the Amazon page for the book, if you scroll down a bit.

It’s also a beautiful book, with a fun map of the US on the end papers, and a section of full color glossy pictures pages in the middle. I’m considering getting more copies for christmas presents for my travel/book-loving friends and family.

Here’s the preview from Publisher’s Weekly:
Starred Review. Without leaving home or spending a cent on gas, readers of this book can enjoy a scenic view of the entire U.S. that is as familiar as it is disorienting. Weiland, deputy editor of the Paris Review, and Wilsey, editor-at-large for McSweeney’s, have gathered a group of 50 disparate voices to explore not just their experience in America, but the way each state was presented in the American Guide series of the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, in which the Works Project Administration (WPA), as part of F.D.R’s New Deal, put more than 6000 American writers to work creating a portrait of this country. The editors wanted to make a book inspired by the ideals behind the WPA Guides but they also wanted something more personal, more eccentric, and more partial. Obvious heavy-hitters—Dave Eggars (Illinois), Rick Moody (Connecticut), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island), Barry Hannah (Mississippi), William T. Vollmann (California)—are included, as well as some wonderful surprises. Alison Bechdel’s illustrated story about her life after moving to Vermont brilliantly combines personal history with historical fact, as does Charles Bock’s essay on growing up and working in his parent’s Las Vegas pawnshop. Mohammed Naseehu Ali’s tale of life in Michigan, after moving there from Ghana as a teen, illuminates what the unconditionally generous Michigan nature shares with the traditions of his own Hausa-Islamic culture. And Franzen’s imaginary interview with the state of New York is perhaps the high point among this collection of beguiling summations of something all the writers share: a love-hate relationship with how their chosen state has changed and evolved during the course of their lives.

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