janeajones juggles books in 2011

1. William Blake, The Book of Thel, The Visions of the Daughters of Albion and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
2. Kamalini Sengupta, Rajmahal
3. Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
4. Anna Lillios, Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
5. Geoff Ryman, Was
6. A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden
7. Lynn Nottage, Las Meninas
8. Brad Wallace, Sarasota's Asolo: A History of the State Theatre of Florida
9. Emily Carr, Klee Wyck
10. Yann Martel, Life of Pi
11. Tove Jansson, Fair Play
12. Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
13. Christina Sunley, The Tricking of Freya
14. Tea Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
15. Ana Menendez, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
16. Anne Sheldon, The Adventures of a Faithful Counselor
17. Ana Menendez, Adios, Happy Homeland!
18. Iris Murdoch, The Bell
19. B.J. Welborn, Traveling Literary America
20. Don Lago, Zion and Bryce Canyon Trivia
21. Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
22. Tove Jansson, A Winter Book
23. Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock
24. Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Last Rituals: A Novel of Suspense
25. Yrsa Sigurdardottir, My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland
26. Kathryn Stockett, The Help
27. Frans G. Bengtsson, The Long Ships
28. Marianne Fredriksson, Hanna's Daughters
29. Michele Roberts, The Wild Girl
30. Elizabeth Taylor, The Wedding Group
31. Tove Jansson, Travelling Light
32. Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford
33. Thomas E. Kennedy, In the Company of Angels
34. Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun
35. Magdalena Tulli, In Red
36. Brooke Stevens, The Circus of the Earth and Air
37. Manu Joseph, Serious Men

Welcome back!

Thanks, Jane -- I always look forward to your thread!

And . . . waiting for the first review/discussion . . . :-)

I seem to be not reading more than reading at the moment -- Rajmahal by Kamalini Sengupta, Apollo's Angels; A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans, Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and The Brothers Karamazov-- hope to finish something soon.

Same here. I just need to get through this week and catch up on life in general. I'm still reading BK, though I'll probably finish soon. I surely don't need more books to read, but Crossing the Creek sounds fascinating. I'll look forward to reading about it when you get the chance. Also, I heard a really interesting interview with Jennifer Homans on the NYT book review podcast.

Crossing the Creek does sound fascinating. I've put it on my BN.COM waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist, but I'll also be looking for your comments on it.

Robert

Popping in to take a peek...

I'm still dipping into all the books I had started in January, but I've been teaching Blake to my students this week. We've gone beyond The Songs of Innocence and Experience into The Book of Thel, The Visions of the Daughters of Albion and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell -- glorious stuff.



Infancy, fearless, lustful, happy! nestling for delight
In laps of pleasure; Innocence! honest, open, seeking
The vigorous joys of morning light; open to virgin bliss.
Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty! child of night & sleep
When thou awakest. wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys
Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclos'd!
Then com'st thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble
With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy,
And brand it with the name of whore: & sell it in the night,
In silence, ev'n without a whisper, and in seeming sleep,
Religious dream and holy vespers, light thy smoky fires:
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty!
This knowing, artful, secret. fearful, cautious, trembling hypocrite.
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys
Of life are harlots: and Theotormon is a sick mans dream
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness

from Visions of the Daughters of Albion -- complete here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Visions_of_the_Daughters_of_Albion

There once was a William Blake coloring book - it came out about 1973 or so, so I wonder if it still exists. I took a reading and conference from a psychology professor and we colored and discussed Blake. (He was somewhat eclectic in what he considered psychology).

OOh -- I like coloring books -- did a lot of them myself in the 1970s, but I never saw a Blake one.

2. Rajmahal by Kamalini Sengupta

FINALLY finished a book! This one is a rather nostalgic, but not really sentimental, look into postcolonial Calcutta. Review forthcoming in Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue10/reviews_3.php

3. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Swamplandia! is an old-fashioned alligator-wrestling attraction run by the Bigtree family on the edge of the Everglades. Although "Big Chief" Bigtree honors the Seminole heritage (their eldest daughter is named after Osceola, the hero of the Seminole Wars), the family has no real Native American heritage. Hilola Bigtree, the star of Swamplandia!'s attractions and mother of Kiwi, Osceola and Ava, has just died of cancer. The theme park has lost its draw, and the family has lost its glue. Facing foreclosure on the park, the family unravels.

Seventeen-year Kiwi, with dreams of attending Harvard, runs off to Loomis County intent on getting an education -- he gets a janitorial job with the rival theme park, Dark World. "Big Chief" goes on one of his periodical decampments to the mainland, leaving the sisters, sixteen-year old Ossie and thirteen-year old Ava, to fend for themselves. Ossie falls in love with the ghost of Louis Thanksgiving, a young dredger from the Depression era, who died when the dredge engine exploded. When Ossie leaves to "marry" Louis, Ava, accompanied by her baby red alligator and the strange Bird Man, goes into the depths of the Glades, looking for the entrance to the underworld to rescue her sister.

Swamplandia! is neither a fantasy nor a young-adult novel. While it teases with elements of magical-realism, it finally is firmly grounded in social and psychological realism. The reality is certainly that of Florida-weird, but it is both probing and delicate. Russell, a Miami native, knows her Florida history and captures the evolution from Florida road-side attractions like Swamplandia! to the mechanized fantasy-world attractions represented by Dark World (whose visitors are known as "Lost Souls"). Her descriptions of both the stark beauty of the Everglades and the grimy attractions of a petty casino-cum-stripclub are precise and evocative.

The narration of the novel alternates, chapter-by-chapter, between the first person of Ava and a third person omniscient with Kiwi. The disconnection among the siblings initially bothered me, but I think that was Russell's intent. The conclusion of the novel perhaps wraps up too neatly -- a minor quibble. Swamplandia! is Russell's first novel, following her acclaimed short story collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which I have not read; I now plan to. She is definitely an intriguing new voice.

13 - Ooh, glad to know. I've been seeing this floating around and it sounded intriguing.

#13 Jane - This fits my (southern) Florida theme quite nicely...except maybe it's too wacky for me. I'm going to keep this in mind and see where I'm at later this year. I may try it out. (PS. I adored MSD's River of Grass, which I just finished).

4. Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by Anna Lillios

Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings met in 1942 after they had published their most famous novels (Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Yearling) and their memoirs of life in small Florida towns (Dust Tracks on the Road and Cross Creek). For decades the nature of their relationship has been a matter of literary gossip and scholarly speculation.

In a meticulously researched book, Lillios draws on interviews with friends and acquaintances of the two writers and Rawlings' extensive correspondence in the University of Florida collection, as well as on the work of earlier scholars, to piece together the complex friendship that blossomed between the two women.

In the Jim Crow South of the 1940s and 1950s, strange dances were performed in the interactions of races, classes and genders -- so strange that those who grew up after the 1960s find them incomprehensible. With acumen and sensitivity Lillios interprets some of the choreography of these dances and reveals new insights into the difficult last decade of the writers' lives (Rawlings died in 1953, Hurston in 1960).

While this is definitely an academic study with many quotes and citations, it is carefully constructed and reads easily. Recommended for anyone interested in the life and work of either writer or the evolving racial consciousness of the American South.

#16 - That goes on the on the wishlist. I will be reading Cross Creek soon.

I'm adding Swamplandia! and Crossing the Creek to my wish list. Thanks for those excellent reviews!

Sorry for the double post...

6. Was by Geoff Ryman

Geoff Ryman's Was is a phantasia on L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. It interweaves the stories of Dorothy Gael, a young orphan sent to live with her Aunt Emma in Kansas; Jonathan, the star of horror films, stricken with AIDS, Frances "Baby" Gumm who grew up to be Judy Garland; and Bill Davison, a high-school football star, whose life is forever changed by his encounter with Dynamite Dotty, an inmate in the insane asylum where he works as he waits for his induction into the army. I found it an incredibly sad, but oddly addictive book. It is at once a savage indictment of adults' misunderstanding and mistreatment of children and a Romantic celebration of childhood imagination, "trailing clouds of glory" -- spiced with the history of pioneers and "bloody Kansas."
The author perhaps tries to do too much in the novel, but it is certainly haunting for any reader who grew up infected with The Wizard of Oz.

6. The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt

I think Angels and Insects is the only other A.S. Byatt novel I have read. I'm not quite sure why I have avoided her -- I'm a big fan of Margaret Drabble, her sister's work. And yes, I'm aware of the "estrangement" between the two.

That said, The Virgin in the Garden is the first of a quartet about Frederica Potter -- here an extremely bright young girl of 17 readying to take her A levels and looking forward to a brilliant university career at Oxford or Cambridge. She's the second child in an academic family. Her father, Bill Potter, a careless, hot-headed English Master, teaches at a local boys' school in Yorkshire. He considers that Stephanie, Frederica's elder sister, is wasting her university degree by teaching at the local girls' school. The youngest child, Marcus, is terrified of his father, withdrawn, and sees the world in visual patterns (in current terms he probably has Asberger's syndrome). Mother Winifred desperately tries to hold the family together.

The year is 1952 -- Elizabeth II is about to be crowned, and England is in a frenzy of post-war celebration. Alexander Wedderburn, the second English Master, has been commissioned to write a verse drama, Astraea, chronicling the reign of Elizabeth I. The town, the countryside, and the wider theatre community are caught up into the production -- professional actors are brought in to play the leads, as locals and students play supporting roles. Frederica is cast as the young Elizabeth.

Mirth and mayhem ensue. Love and lust are in the air -- as are literature and alchemical experiments. The novel is full of allusions to Elizabethan history and English literature, as well as the social mores of the 1950s. Byatt certainly exploits her academic background. I found the novel at once humorously satirical and darkly ironic. The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger -- obviously she had sequels in mind.

Oh The virgin in the garden sounds good. I have added it to my "To Buy" list.

The ghosts of Kamalini Sengupta's Rajmahal fret and fume over renovations made to the Calcutta mansion as it is sold and divided into six apartments. Even more disturbing is the motley cross-section of fashionable Calcutta society that moves into those apartments....

Review of Rajmahal is up in the new issue of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue10/reviews_3.php

Jane, Rajmahal sounds intriguing. I have read a review of this before I think, anyway its already on my to buy list

So, I really should read Midnight's Children...then go here...it's the "should" part that seems so daunting. Great review Jane!

Las Meninas by Lynn Nottage

I saw an epic production of Nottage's Las Meninas at the Asolo last night. Nottage won the Pulitzer last year for her drama, Ruined -- which I saw in production at Florida Studio Theatre last year. She's a remarkable new voice in American theatre.

Las Meninas dramatizes the story (claimed by Nottage to be true, and which research tangentially documents) that Louis XIV's queen, Marie Therese, had a daughter by an African dwarf, Nabo. When the daughter was born, she was immediately sent to a convent which she was never allowed to leave.

The play, narrated by the daughter on the eve of her taking vows, is at once funny and tragic and, in good Brechtian tradition, epic. The acting was impeccable, and the production, using amazing projections, moved seamlessly from multiple scenes at the the court of Versailles to the convent to an Africa remembered in the tales of Nabo. Great evening in the theatre.

http://sites.google.com/site/sgulland/thequeen'smysterydaughter

http://asolorep.org/shows/las-meninas/2010-2011

Great review of The Virgin in the Garden - ever since I read Byatt's The Children's Book I've been meaning to get to more of her work. Thanks for bringing this one to my attention!

Oh, and Rajmahal sounds wonderful as well :)

Jane, Interesting link to the queen's mystery daughter. Another of those historical incidents where people can let their imagination run wild. A virtuous queen with voluminous skirts where her pet dwarf played - hmm I wonder.

An interesting mix of reading, Jane, thanks for sharing it.

Thanks for mentioning Lynn Nottage's new play, Jane. I just missed seeing "Ruined" in NYC last year (or was it in 2009?), but it will come to Atlanta's Horizon Theatre this fall. PBS' NewsHour had a nice story about her and "Ruined" a couple of years ago:


Congo's Civil War Is Rich Seam for Prize-Winning Playwright

Anyone want an investigative journalism job:
http://motherjones.tumblr.com/post/4046557808/the-best-journalism-job-want-ad-ev...

Ah, Sarasota!

8. Sarasota's Asolo: A History of the State Theatre of Florida by Brad Wallace

Brad Wallace began and ended his acting career at the Asolo. His history of the theatre is a labor of love that documents the triumphs and tribulations of a regional theatre in a town that cherishes its artistic institutions. He chronicles the Asolo's growth from a summer festival of Baroque theatre sponsored by Florida State University to a thriving regional theatre that also nurtures an important MFA Conservatory for actors.The chronicle is heavy on finances, politics and directoral personalities, a bit light on the artistic end of things. Enlightening for anyone interested in the inner workings of making a non-profit arts organization successful.

9. Klee Wyck by Emily Carr

review coming soon....well, a week later --

Emily Carr is renowned Canadian artist, most noted for her paintings of British Colombia, particularly the remote areas and Native culture. Klee Wyck, whose title comes from the name -- Laughing One -- the Natives gave to Carr, is a series of 21 descriptive essays about her forays into the wilderness and the friendships she developed. She is particularly taken by the totems -- especially those of D'Sonoqua, the wild woman of the forest who is feared for stealing children and revered for her gift of knowledge:

"Like the D'Sonoqua of the other villages, she was carved into the bole of a red cedar tree. Sun and storm had bleached the wood, moss here and there softened the crudeness of the modelling; sincerity underlay every stroke....
I sat down to sketch. What was the noise of purring and rubbing going on about my feet? Cats. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing right, and counted a dozen of them. They jumped into my lap and sprang to my shoulders. They were real -- and very feminine.
There we were--D'Sonoqua, the cats and I -- the woman who only a few moments ago had forced herself to come behind the houses in trembling fear of the 'wild woman of the woods: -- wild in the sense that forest-creatures are wild -- shy, untouchable."
Highly recommended.


Emily Carr, Zunoqua of the Cat Village, 1931

I'm adding the Emily Carr to my wishlist. I first heard of her when I saw quite a collection of her paintings (I don't remember if it was at the museum in Vancouver or in Victoria) I didn't realize she also wrote.

>33 janeajones: I like what you wrote about Klee Wyck--It was one of my favorites of her 8 or so books. I stumbled onto Emily Carr and her Dogs: Flirt, Punk, and Loo and proceeded to read 2 or 3 more of her books before I started to look up her art on the Web, so I thought she was a writer who happened to paint, but then I found out she was a painter who happened to write. I hope you read and enjoy her other books.
(edited typo)

Very little time to read the last 6 weeks -- both work and real life intruded intensively -- I was lucky to read the daily newspaper. But life has settled down again, and I just finished

11.Tove Jansson's Fair Play



In this series of linked stories, Jansson explores the daily lives and relationship of two artists, Mari and Jonna, who have lived together for decades. It's pretty clear the stories are based on the lives of Jansson and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, the Finnish graphic artist. The brief stories are illuminating snapshots of their work, their travels, their memories and their accommodation of each other as they live separately, but together. It's a quiet celebration of art and love.

Jane, Nice to see you posting again. Any comment on Life of Pi? Did it deserve it's Booker?

I'm reading Swamplandia! now, because of your review, and really enjoying the "Florida-weird" setting.

37> Dan, I enjoyed Life of Pi -- its a very clever journey parable/allegory, but I thought it ended a bit too neatly -- one of those books that could do without the last chapter imho. I think I'm going to have to revisit it to judge it prizeworthy or not.

38> So glad you're enjoying Swamplandia -- one of my faves this year.

12. Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

I've not read any other of Ondaatje's works (though I saw the film of The English Patient), so I can't compare this early work -- 1970 -- of his to anything else he has written.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a series of vignettes -- poems and prose poems -- that brutally brings the reader into the last year or so of Billy the Kid's life as he encounters, eludes and finally is killed by Pat Garrett. The descriptions of the New Mexico desert are unflinching as are the matter-of-fact accounts of those gunned down in the duel between the lawmen and the outlaws. We see Billy and Garrett in multiple views -- their own, each other's and from some of the women they encountered. It's a spare, but multi-layered account of survival on the edges of civilization where only amorality exists.

White walls neon on the eye
1880 November 23 my birthday

catching flies with my left hand
bringing the fist to my ear
hearing the scream grey buzz
as their legs cramp their heads with no air
so eyes split and release

open fingers
the air and sun hit them like pollen
sun flood drying them red
catching flies
angry weather in my head, too

Nice review of Fair Play, Jane. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, so I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

Hi Jane, I have seen The collected works of Billy the Kid around and wondered what it was like. I am a big fan of Ondaatje's prose and from your review I think I would enjoy it. I didn't realise it was an early work. It's on my to buy list.

I hadn't heard of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid but now I HAVE to find it since I'm probably going to visit New Mexico this summer.

41> Darryl -- I'm on a bit of a Tove Jansson kick -- currently reading The Summer Book -- I think I'm going to do a paper on her takes on growing old for an academic conference in the Fall. I wish the NYRB would republish her The Sculptor's Daughter

42 and 43> Barry and Steven -- enjoy your time with the outlaw!

13. The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley

Sunley's first novel is a coming-of-age, coming-to-consciousness story told by the protagonist, Freya Morris, raised in New England by her widowed mother, but the granddaughter of the famed Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands (poet of New Iceland). Freya spends summers in Gimli, the Canadian settlement of Icelandic immigrants, as she and her mother visit her grandmother and aunt Birdie.

Freya's epistolary narration -- she is writing to an unknown cousin, a child given up at birth by Birdie -- reveals the interrelationships and conflicts among the three generations of women as she grows up. The best aspect of the novel is the weaving in of fascinating Icelandic lore -- myth, history, geography, and the all important love of the spoken and written word. While I found the characters a bit stereotypical in their personalities, Sunley's descriptive powers with landscape and place are powerful. I certainly enjoyed the book enough to look forward to see how Sunley's writing will develop in her next novel.

That sounds very interesting - I will have to look out for it.

I read things about Iceland, including short reports on the bank failures there, because I have read Independent People. I am not disappointed; my fascination continues. So The Tricking of Freya goes onto my wishlist.

Thanks,

Robert

14. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

Tea Obreht's debut novel is set in the Balkans in what seems to the former Yugoslavia where Obreht was born in 1985. The narrator, Natalia, is a young doctor, travelling with a friend to innoculate the children of an orphanage. She has just learned that her grandfather has died alone in a town near the orphanage, and she promises her grandmother to retrieve his effects. Evoking Eastern European folklore, the horrific history of the Balkans throughout the 20th century, and Kipling's The Jungle Book, Natalia recounts her history with her grandfather, their trips to the zoo, and the stories he told her about his childhood and youth. The style reminded me at times of Olga Tokarczuk's novels; though Obreht is not quite so dreamy, she too affirms the necessity of custom and ritual to survive the travails of terrible times. The Tiger's Wife is a fascinating meditation on life and death from such a young author.

" When your fight has purpose -- to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent -- it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling -- when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event -- there is nothing but hate, and the long slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed on it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them, then the fight is endless, and comes in waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it."

What a depressing paragraph you have quoted Jane.

It is -- but it strikes me as very true. Although the troubles in the Balkans are a backdrop to The Tiger's Wife, the book itself, while embracing sad realities, is ultimately life-affirming, as is so much written in the vein of magical realism.

Jane - The Tiger's Wife sounds interesting, nice review and thought-provoking excerpt. Depressing, yet...

15. In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menendez

I'm about to read Menendez's new book for a Belletrista review, so I thought I should read this well-received collection of stories, published in 2001, that has been sitting on a bookshelf for years.

The stories, all concerned with the exiled Cuban community in Miami, are beautifully written, wry, and melancholy. The title of the book refers to a joke about Juanito, a mangy dog from Cuba who lands in Miami and is spurned by an impeccably groomed French poodle. He protests: "Pardon me, your highness,,,, here in America, I may be a short, insignificant mutt, but in Cuba I was a German shepherd."

Menendez paints her members of the Cuban community (almost all from the wealthy first-wave of exiles) as suffering from a variety of displacement disorders. As the years go by, and their hopes of returning to Cuba fade, their children grow up, some marry outside the Cuban community (usually unhappily), they regain prosperity in a variety of commercial ventures, but there is little sense of assimilation into a broader American society. These stories are soaked in nostalgia and longing. I will be very interested to see if in her new book, Menendez moves on into the younger generations to explore that assimilation process.

16. The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor by Anne Sheldon

This is a breezy poetic retelling of the Mesopotamian Inanna myth from the viewpoint of Ninshubur, the "faithful counselor" to Inanna. Sheldon is a storyteller and states that after many retellings of the story of Inanna as reconstructed by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, she felt there was a voice missing from the tale, so she set out to rectify the deficit.

Sheldon sets her retelling in a rather engaging amalgam of contemporary times and ancient Mesopotamia. The only difficulty in following the poem might be an unfamiliarity with Wolkstein's Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, on which Sheldon heavily relies. For the most part, the poetry is open and easy and quick to read.

The Invitation from Hell

Childbirth, dinner parties, a much grander house --
nothing had dulled Inanna's taste for adventure.
I was still content to work out,
get laid, and hunt the occasional boar.

Lying across a patchwork quilt,
made by her acolytes
from the last rainbow,
she tore open the black-bordered envelope,
scanned it, and skimmed it to the floor.

"The King of Hell is dead," she said.

The hair rose on the back of my neck.
"How? I thought he was immortal."

"Yes. A troubling precedent.
Who knows? My sister is ingenious.
But I shall attend the funeral."

..............

"It isn't pretty sibling rivalry,
but there are things you have to know
before you absolutely know they're unimportant.
And aside from questions
of Comparative Power, Beauty, and Happiness,
I have to know
I'm not afraid
of not coming back."

#52 Have to love the title! And glad to hear the book measures up (I have a mental category of books whose titles are the best things about them!).

ditto, and looking forward to your review of the new one!

17. Adios, Happy Homeland! by Ana Menendez

Working to finish the review of this one for Belletrista tonight as we set off for points westward tomorrow morning.

How does one escape? From what one does one need to escape? Why? Ana Menéndez's new collection of interlinked tales is all about escape artists, starting with the author herself. Each tale is attributed to a concocted author, for whom Menéndez has supplied an appropriately imaginative biographical note, including one for herself: "Ana Menéndez is the pseudonym of an imaginary writer and translator, invented, if not to lend coherence to this collection, at least to offer it the pretense of contemporary relevance."

Adios, Happy Homeland! is a flight of fancy, or rather, a collection of flights of fancy..... more at Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue12/reviews.php

Nice review of The Tiger's Wife, Jane; I'll read that for Orange July in a couple of weeks.

I went to a reading and Q&A session by Tea Obreht yesterday at Chautauqua. She was thoroughly delightful -- young, engaging, friendly, full of stories about her travels back to the Balkans (she was born in Belgrade, left at 7 to live in Cyprus and Egypt, ended up in CA, and went to grad school at Cornell). I had found The Tiger's Wife an incredibly sophisticated and layered story -- quite amazing from such a young writer.

Oooo, I'm jealous - I would love to hear Tea Obreht speak. The Tiger's Wife was one of my favourites for the year too.

ETA: Is she working on a second novel?

59> she said she had started another before all the book touring had begun -- set in a similar venue but with very different themes. I have a feeling it may be awhile before it is sees the bookstores.

Well, after a six-week road trip with limited internet access and the start of a new school year, I'm dipping my toes back into LT. We wandered our way out west to visit family in Colorado and then onto Zion and Bryce Canyons. On the drive from FL, we punctuated our stops with a sort of literary pilgrimage to a Fitzgerald house in AL, Welty's and Faulkner's houses in MS, Twain's birthplace in Hannibal, MO, the preserved interior of Helen Hunt Jackson's house in Colorado Springs and later, Willa Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud, NE. For the interested, pictures are here (with a couple of earlier excursions): http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=9...

And for the gorgeous vistas of southern Utah, go here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=1...

I'll try and catch up with book reviews over the next week.

Enjoyed the slide show

Literature and rocks, a great mix. Nice to have you back here.

Wow, Bryce Canyon is spectacular! Lovely pictures, Jane.

62 and 63> glad you enjoyed the treks, Barry and Dan. I'm trying to return to LT conviviality, but life keeps on getting in the way.

64> Thanks, Cait. The canyons are incredible, and the pictures do not do justice to the overwhelming nature.

I'm going to try to catch up with brief notices of books I've read over the summer.


18. The Bell by Iris Murdoch

I found this 1958 novel by Murdoch at once intriguing in its plot and rather old-fashioned in its concerns. Dora Greenfield, the errant young wife of a priggish and rigid scholar, joins her husband at a rural religious community where he is examining manuscripts. The founder of the community, Michael Meade, is a repressed homosexual, trying to channel his spiritual energies into an agrarian utopia. Youthful exuberance, prickly communal relationships, and frustrated passions lead some to tragic ends and others to new life horizons. As always, Murdoch is a master stylist.

19. Traveling Literary America by B.J. Welborn

While Welborn claims to have written "A Complete Guide to Literary Landmarks," this doesn't quite live up to its billing -- not every literary site in America is included. That said, it was a great reference for planning our literary roadtrip through the South and Southwest this summer. Welborn also includes good information about the sites she highlights -- Location, Frame of Reference, Significance, About the Site, Hot Tips, The Best Stuff, The Writer and His/Her Work, and Elsewhere in the Area. I'd also recommend it as an interesting book to dip in and out for armchair travelers and readers of American lit.

20. Zion and Bryce Canyon Trivia by Don Lago

Fascinating information about the canyons in a easy-to-read Q&A format. Lago arranges his material in thematic chapters: Geography, Geology, Wildlife, Plants, History, Red Rock Culture, Cosmos National Park, Adventures and Deaths. Recommended for the curious visitor and children of all ages.

and
21. and 22. The Summer Book and A Winter Book by Tove Jansson

Jansson's writing is limpid, luminous and quietly exhilarating. The Summer Book is her acclaimed novel about the relationship between an aging grandmother and her young, motherless granddaughter as they summer on a remote Finnish island. Their interaction is simple, straightforward, and not in-the-least mawkish. But it's in the subtlety of their conversation that Jansson reveals her pre-occupations with discovery, creativity and aging.

"Later, Grandmother remarked on the curious fact that wild animals, cats for example, cannot understand the difference between a rat and a bird.

'Then they're dumb!' said Sophia curtly. 'Rats are hideous, and birds are nice. I don't think I'll talk to Moppy for three days.' And she stopped talking to her cat....

'You know what?' Sophia said. 'I wish Moppy had never been born. Or else that I'd never been born. That would have been better.'

'So you're still not speaking to each other?' Grandmother asked.

'Not a word,' Sophia said. 'I don't know what to do. And if I do forgive him -- what fun is that when he doesn't even care?' Grandmother couldn't think of anything to say."

A Winter Book is a collection of stories from Jansson's autobiographical The Sculptor's Daughter (Bildhuggarens Dotter) and other collections not translated into English. I wish New York Review of Books or some other publisher would reprint The Sculptor's Daughter as it is impossible to get a copy in English. Again, it is beautifully written although here we have excerpts rather than complete works.

and
24. and 25. Last Rituals and My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Quick, entertaining vacation mysteries. Thora Gudmundsdottir, a lawyer in Reykjavik, is recently divorced, trying to juggle her children, her law practice, and an interested foreign suitor. She becomes embroiled in murders that are grisly and connected to the folklore and history of Iceland. The Icelandic milieu is interesting, but I don't remember much about the plots, so they obviously didn't resonate very deeply.

23. Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather

In that this novel is set in 17th c. Quebec, it's rather anomalous for Willa Cather. I don't really know what her affinity for the setting or people was. However, it's a gentle, if gritty, picture of life for an apothecary, Euclide Auclair, and his motherless daughter, Cecile. The novel is steeped in French colonialism, Roman Catholicism, and the hardships and joys of life in a settling into a new life in Canada. The book is character and environment, not plot driven, but it is meant to savored. Cather evokes the people and the sense of place with skill and grace.

26. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Umm -- mixed feelings. I remember visiting my aunt in Birmingham, AL, in the early 1960s during the Jim Crow era and being appalled by the "White" and "Colored" signs. I remember the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. I visited the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery and Eudora Welty's house in Jackson MS this summer and remembered the sacrifices made by so many Civil Rights advocates and protesters. Thankfully Jim Crow is no more, and we have managed to elect an African-American President (although he is still dogged by racist criticism, hidden though it may be behind Tea Party politics).

The Help is an oddly "feel good" book for white Americans who want to feel superior to Southerners who advocated segregation and oppression, And it's not a bad history lesson for our children and grandchildren who hopefully go to integrated classrooms and labor in integrated work environments and think we live in a post-racist society.

It's engaging, but a bit clunky and somewhat unbelievable. Do I believe the protagonists would get away so easily with this kind of expose -- no. Do I believe their lives went forward so hopefully -- no. Do I believe Skeeter made a career for herself in NYC -- maybe.

I'd be fascinated by a study made of the comparison between black and white readers of their reception of this book and of the film (which I actually thought was more skillfully done than the novel).

The Bell was one of the first novels I read in English, and it has given me a life-long pleasure reading Iris Murdoch. Your review is short, but exactly catches the essence and atmosphere of the book. This will eventually be one of the books I want to reread.

I came to Willa Cather much, much later, and Shadows on the Rock looks interesting. I hope to buy the Library of America edition (three vols.) with all her works.

Thanks for the visit Edwin -- I'm looking forward to picking up Cather's Nebraska-set The Song of the Lark soon.

27. The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson

I wasn't quite as enthralled with The Long Ships as other LT readers have been, but it was good summer, swashbuckling, Swedish reading. I think I'll leave the descriptions and reviews to those who have already posted on the book's main page.

I can't comment on the contents of The Long Ships, but the cover is glorious.

I was a big fan of The Long Ships but you probably have to be in the mood for it.

>72 janeajones: Your take on the novel confirms my reservations about reading that particular novel. I am also not interested in seeing the similarly themed Sandra Bullock feel-good movie.

You had some interesting summer reading!

78 Lois -- it's a fast read if you want to see what all the hype is about. I don't care if I ever see another Sandra Bullock movie; she just doesn't do it for me.

She does it for me. I'll go to the next Sandra Bullock movie regardless of the reviews. I thought her football movie was well-enough told.

Robert

28. Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson

This turned out to be a Scandinavian-read summer. I actually bought Hanna's Daughters for my mother and read it when I was visiting. Hanna's Daughters is a novel of 3 generations of Swedish women.

Hanna, the daughter of peasant family, although raped as a young servant, married an ambitious miller and moved into the country gentry. But as the country moved into the 20th century, the agricultural economy languished, and when Hanna's husband died, the family was forced to move to Goteborg and learn to make their way in the city. Johanna, Hanna's daughter, after a disastrous stint in domestic service with a doctor's family, worked in a delicatessen and joined the Social Democrats as a young woman. She married a dashing young carpenter who took her sailing and bought her a house with a garden. However, it was not until after WWII, when she returned to work, earning her own money, that she felt secure and respected. She had mixed feelings when her daughter Anna went off to university and moved within the bourgeosie, the class she had despised since her youth. Anna supported herself as a writer even after her divorce from her adored, but womanizing, husband. It is Anna who delves into the stories of her mothers and grandmothers, revealing generations of secrets.

The summary sounds a bit like a soap opera, and Fredriksson sometimes resorts to stereotypes -- but the novel weaves in a century of Swedish history with a compelling family history. She skillfully navigates different narrative voices as she moves back and forth within the generations.

As a fourth-generation Swedish immigrant from families of strong women, I identified with the familial patterns and expectations. It's probably not a book for everyone, but the women in my family loved it.

80> We all have our own appreciated performers. Lots of people I know hate Gwenyth Paltrow, but I find her quite delightful -- I could watch Shakespeare in Love over and over.

The Wild Girl by Michele Roberts

meh. Somewhere between D.H. Lawrence's The Man Who Died and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Yet another telling of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. This one was a bit fraught for my taste. It does have the virtue that the author did her homework with the Gnostic gospels, but it goes a bit overboard at the end with the invocation of the Goddess. I probably would have been much more sympathetic had I read the book when it was published in 1984. It seems a bit tired to me now.

>80 Mr.Durick: The point wasn't the performer but the movie theme. (But, as a side note, there have been a few Bullock movies I've enjoyed over the years).

>81 janeajones: Hannah's Daughters sounds interesting (I think I saw it in a catalog recently...) but I've promised myself I would first read another Elin Wagner, if I can lay my hands on one (not sure much as been translated beyond the recent Penwoman). I have no Swedish family ties though.

84 > Penwoman is definitely on my wishlist, but I'm trying to resist buying books for awhile as I have a conference paper to write, too many papers to grade, and shelves of TBRs.

30. The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor

The Wedding Group is a a rather fascinating, if somewhat grim, little book about Cressy, a young woman who escapes her arty, religious, communal family only to become entrapped by marriage and pregnancy in another suffocating family. Taylor is best at delineating characters and exploring the choices that lead individuals to box themselves into unhappy situations.

31. Travelling Light by Tove Jansson

I stayed up half the night reading this collection of stories. Originally published in 1987 when Tove Jansson was 73, about half the stories in Travelling Light focus on the conditions of growing older that force all of us to make accommodations: marginalization, loneliness, relocation, even patronization. Jansson brilliantly explores these issues with a light touch and always leaves the conclusions to open speculation by the reader. The subjects of the other stories range from the account of an unpleasant child who intrudes upon a family's summer idyll and the imaginative adventures a pair of brothers have playing Tarzan in the forest to a friend visiting her old roommate and youthful haunts. The threads that tie all the stories together are the necessity for passion and the danger of nostalgia. As Ali Smith points out in her introduction about character in one of the stories: "she learns exactly why we move on, why nostalgia is deathly, why we can't and mustn't go backwards in life." Highly recommended.

I love the Virago Modern Classics. They have such a nice design, and feature so many women writers one would otherwise rarely hear of. I have read quite a few, and am always interested to read reviews about more of them. Thanks for bringing this to light.

We spent the weekend in and out of the Ringling International Arts Festival http://www.ringlingartsfestival.org -- a rather remarkable partnership between the Ringling Museum and the Baryshnikov Center that brings artists from around the world to Sarasota for a week in October. We moved between Argentine tangos and rancheros with Soledad Villamil to the Brooklyn Rider string quartet whose first piece, "Beloved Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged" by Colin Jacobsen, based on Arabic love songs and Italian Laude was exquisite. Dance-wise we experienced the history of evolution with Company Stefanie Batten Bland's Terra Firma and the savage deconstruction of Irish step dance by Colin Dunne. Delicious.

I've reread all of Tove Jansson's novels in the last few weeks to prepare a conference paper on her exploration of aging. They're even better the second time around. Paper was successfully delivered on Thursday in Melbourne, FL, and I spent two nights on the deck overlooking the ocean reflecting a full moon.

Now I have to go back to reading student essays. : (

32. A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess

In his "Author's Note," Burgess reveals that in 1940, as the Luftwaffe was attempting to destroy England, he was typing his university thesis on Marlowe. But, it was not until 1993, the quatercenterary of Marlowe's death, that he published his long-promised-to-himself novel about Christopher Marlowe: "Now, with the commemoration of Marlowe's murder in 1593, I am able to pay such homage as is possible to an ageing writer."

A Dead Man in Deptford is a breathtaking tour-de-force through the theatres, spy-rings, noble houses and stews of late Elizabethan England. Narrated by an unnamed actor, famed for his portrayal of Belphoebe as a boy, who observes and speculates about Marlowe's forays in poet-tasting, play-making and spying, the novel brings the reader a richness, both strange and familiar. Most of the university wits and early playwrights make an appearance -- Lyly, Kyd, Lodge, Nashe, Greene -- even a young Will from Warwickshire.

Burgess's Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, is the brilliant, but impoverished scholarship student who is lured into the sometimes profitable, but inescapable, spy ring of Sir Francis Walsingham's "Service." His servitude is sweetened by a passionate relationship with Sir Francis's young cousin, Thomas Walsingham.

Burgess is in love with the English language, most particularly here the language of early modern English with its inventiveness and muscularity. We overhear Marlowe struggling with his "mighty line" -- the blank verse that would serve not only his plays, but Shakespeare's, so well:

The five to the line was not natural. There were no fives in nature save in cinquefoil flowers. No wait, five fingers, but the thumb was of a different make and purpose. He meant that the rhythm of two or four was in nature, for it was the heart beating and the walking legs. So then the line pentametric was unnatural unless its fifth beat was take to be a starting a new suppositious four. To ride in triumph through Persepolis. There was a pause, sure, after that, and a long one, either in the air or in the head. There was a justification for end-stopping and the line as a bludgeon. Moreover.

For anyone interested in the Elizabethan theatre, A Dead Man in Deptford is required reading.

Excellent review of Dead Man in Deptford which I am looking forward to reading

Thanks, bas -- I can't imagine how Burgess's novels have escaped me all these years. I read Re Joyce in graduate school and, of course, saw the film of A Clockwork Orange (which I didn't really like), but other than that, he's been completely under my radar.

Nice review of A Dead Man in Deptford. I've scheduled my non-LT reading group to read Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford back to back next year.

Nothing Like the Sun and Burgess's study of Shakespeare are currently en poste from Amazon -- looking forward to see how he deals with the Bard.

33. In the Company of Angels by Thomas E. Kennedy -- an LTER that is long overdue a review.

Kennedy's novel is about pain -- the pain of torture, the pain of abuse, the pain of illness, the pain of grief, and the pain of desire. It is also about the healing power of love. Dr. Thorkild Kristensen of Copenhagen's Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims is prodding Nardo, the survivor of Pinochet's Chilean hell, to recall and confront his torture. Michaela Ibsen, divorced from her abusive husband, caretaker for her aged parents, is navigating an affair with Voss, a prominent jurist, much younger than she. Kennedy's skill is in playing with a variety of narrative viewpoints: 3rd person omniscient for Nardo, Michaela and Voss, interspersed with the 1st person observer of Dr. Kristensen. The novel is a page turner, but I must admit, I had some reservations about Kennedy's detailed dwelling on physical pain in its many manifestations -- a kind of tortured porn? I'm probably out of the mainstream reaction here, but I guess I've lived long enough not to need all the specifics. That said, In the Company of Angels is a compelling read.

I think I might share your reservations Jane on In the company of angels and so I will give this one a miss. Thanks for the review.

A Dead Man in Deptford is at the top of my wish list. I will one day probably have to order it. Your excellent review simply confirms my expectations of the book.

You might like Tamburlaine must die. I liked that a lot.

96> It's certainly not a must-read, bas.

97> Thanks, Edwin -- I'll keep an eye out for it.

34. Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess

Burgess's novel is subtitled A Story of Shakespeare's Love-life, an apt description of this highly entertaining book. It has many of the qualities of his later A Dead Man in Deptford -- the delight in early modern English, juicy bits about the lives and venues of Elizabethans from courtly nobility to tradesmen and actors to the rabble on the streets of London and cameo appearances by the playwrights and theatre personae of the day -- among them Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Ben Jonson, the Burbages and Henslowe, Ned Alleyn, Will Kemp, John Heminges and Henry Condell.

Burgess's genius in this book is his intertwining of Shakespeare's writings with his early sexual escapades and his ambition -- particularly in his relationships with Henry Wriothesley the Earl of Southampton, and with the "dark lady" here a once-captive Muslim born Fatima, called Lucy -- the two major subjects of the sonnets. Of course, the biographical aspects are highly speculative, and I found Burgess's implication that the later plays were "inspired" by a syphilitic infection rather disturbing. Still it is a novel -- and another good tour through 17th-century England.

Jane, Nothing like the sun is one that I keep meaning to read.

35. In Red by Magdalena Tulli

An intriguing little book about an imagined town in Poland called Stitches. I'm reviewing it for Belletrista, but I think I'll need to read it again before I sit down to write.

I got this from Archipelago and am looking forward to reading it.

Catching up (after way too long). Your two Burgess reviews are quite fascinating. Thomas E. Kennedy is listed in the 1997 Cimarron Review I just picked up as the "International Editor"

I have In Red, too; I look forward to reading your review of it.

I am completely absorbed by In Red, which I am reading now.

Hmm...I'll probably add In Red to my planned reads for 2012.

ETA: BTW, are you planning to renew your Archipelago subscription next year, Rebecca (and anyone else who is a subscriber)?

I'm way behind on my Archipelago reading, but I am going to renew it. (No book-buying ban for me!)

36. The Circus of the Earth and Air by Brooke Stevens

I probably should have abandoned this novel when I first began thinking that much of the writing was pretty klunky, but I have an odd fascination for the circus, and I was hoping that Stevens would make the book pay off in the end -- he doesn't.

The book has an interesting fantasy premise -- Alex Barton's wife volunteers for a disappearing act at an itinerant circus performance, but the magician fails to make her reappear. Understandably distraught, Alex embarks on a quest to find his wife, but all traces of the circus have disappeared when he awakes in the morning. Eventually he gets wind of a secret circus organization on a remote island and embarks on a nightmarish journey. There are some interesting insights into the circus and performers, but Stevens obviously couldn't decide what kind of a novel he was writing, and the book goes off into multiple directions, leaving lots of loose ends. Maybe a good editor could have helped him make something of this first novel -- but I doubt it. Nothing I would recommend.

37. Serious Men by Manu Joseph, ARC, LTER

Thank goodness, my last book of the year was much better than the penultimate one! Serious Men is delightful -- a cleverly and beautifully written satire with intriguing characters and an insightful look at the divide between the haves and have-nots in contemporary Mumbai.

Ayyan Mani, a Dalit (formerly untouchable) clerk works for Brahmin scientists in the Institute of Theory and Research as they search for the influences of alien life of earth. At home, Ayyan lives in one room of a massive chawl tenement with his soap-opera addicted wife, Oja, and eleven-year old son, Adit. He is determined to make life for his family more exciting, and he proceeds in classic trickster fashion.

His boss, the renowned astronomer and Director of the Institute, Dr. Arvind Archarya, becomes embroiled in a war with his colleagues over the methodologies of finding alien life and in an extra-marital affair with the first woman scientist at the Institute. Ayyan does not hesitate to take advantage of the situation revelling in the discomfiture of the Brahmins.

That said, Joseph writes with a light touch and grants all the major characters their humanity (there are some dastardly villains to spice up the mixture). Highly recommended for an entertaining read.

Club Read 2012 thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/128280
Happy New Year all!

Year-end summary:

This was a light reading year for me -- coping with life circumstances -- a bad fall by my mother and a 6 week road trip (I can't read in the car).

Total books: 37
Novels: 27
Memoirs: 2
Narrative Poems: 3
Plays: 1
Lit Crit: 1
Local History: 1
Travel Books: 2

Books by Female authors: 24
Books by Male authors: 13
Authors new to me: 18
Multiple books: 4 by Tove Jansson, 2 by Anthony Burgess, 2 by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Translated Books: 9
Countries of origin: USA -- 16, UK -- 7, Finland -- 4, Canada -- 3, Sweden --2, India -- 2, Iceland -- 2, Poland -- 1

Favorite Novels (in order read)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson
A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess
In Red by Magdalena Tulli
Serious Men by Manu Joseph

Favorite Narrative Poem
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje

Favorite Non-Fiction
Crossing the Creek by Anna Lillios
Travelling Literary America by B.J. Welborn

Least Favorite
The Wild Girl by Michele Roberts
The Circus of the Earth and Air by Brooke Stevens