The Typical Book Exchange

Tonight was The Typical Book Group's annual book exchange!  There were nine of us there, and by luck, I got to pick first.  I exercised impressive self restraint (if I do say so myself), and left with only 3 books this year.  The ones I picked are The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve, and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.  I have somehow not read anything by Henry James, so I am interested in that one.  The Dante Club is a mystery set in Boston in 1865, and featuring detectives who study Dante's Inferno. I'm thinking that this one might be a little like The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

We were meant to talk about The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey tonight, but the group was just getting started on the discussion when I had to leave, after being there for two hours.  I listened to the book in audio form, but my friend, Nancy, who read it, wanted me to ask the group what they thought about the conversations with Faina not including quotation marks, when the conversations with the other neighbors were properly punctuated.  We felt that stylistic choice contributed to the question of whether Faina was a "real" girl or whether she could possibly be a snow girl, which really is the central issue of the narrative.

Next month we are going to read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I was surprised to see that I was 7th on the wait list for 11 copies of the book when I tried to request it from my library.  Hopefully I will get it in time to read it before the next meeting!

Still Reading:  Bring up the Bodies  by Hilary Mantel

Still Listening to:  Cleopatra:  A Life by Stacy Schiff

'Tis the Season

It's that time of year again, when the classic holiday special, Frosty the Snowman, is appearing on television screens everywhere.  The idea behind that story, in case you have somehow missed the point, is that children build a snowman who then comes to life.  The snowman wants to be just like the other kids, but finds that he can't do some things without putting his snowy body at risk of melting away.  In The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, the reader learns that the story of Frosty is actually based on a Russian or Eastern European fairy tale, which has several different variants, all of which involve a childless couple building a snowman that comes to life, but also comes to a tragic end. 

In The Snow Child, Jack and Mabel are just such a couple.  They moved to Alaska in the 1920s, and are trying to create a life for themselves in the wilderness.  Although they are living together with no nearby neighbors, they are also living apart, with each of them keeping secrets from the other.  Their existence is very lonely, with not even each other to confide in or depend upon for help.  One night, in a bout of uncharacteristic playfulness, they build a snow girl together.  They dress her in a scarf and gloves, and think nothing of it when they go to bed.  But the next morning, the snow girl is gone, along with the gloves and scarf. 

Soon thereafter, Jack and Mabel separately catch glimpses of a child in the woods, who appears to be wearing the scarf, and who also seems to be all alone.  Each of them questions whether they are really seeing what they think they are, as it seems so unlikely that a child would be near their home in the middle of winter.  Eventually, they learn that the child is a girl named Faina, but they still don't know why she is in the woods that surround their cabin. 

Throughout the story, Jack and Mabel wonder if Faina could possibly be the snowman that they made, brought to life.  Each finds reasons to believe that Faina is just a normal child living on her own in the woods, but still they wonder.  Because of the lack of communication in their relationship, they don't share their ideas or the facts that they have uncovered in support of those ideas with each other.  Wherever Faina is from, they want her to stay.  Mabel keeps her mind on the fairy tale, but comes to believe that for some stories, a person can write their own ending.

This is The Typical Book Group's pick for December, so I'll talk more about it next week when we meet.

Next up on CD:  Cleopatra:  A Life  by Stacy Schiff.  I'm not so sure about listening to a biography on audio book, but we'll see how it goes!

Still Reading:  Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

How to Read Clouds

For years, my sister has been recommending that I read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  In my defense, I tried.  In fact, I think that I gave it about 215 pages before giving up, which is pretty generous.  When I last tried reading it though, my daughter was just going through her testing for dyslexia, and I had a lot on my mind, other than trying to piece together the tangled web that Mitchell was weaving. 

This past Christmas, my sister bought me Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green by Mitchell.  She knew that I had tried CA before, and gave up, but she thought I should give it another try.  I wasn't exactly in a rush.  But, then I read Black Swan Green, and really loved it.  So, I agreed to give CA another look.

Even the second time around, Cloud Atlas was not an easy read.  Part of the problem is that for the first half of the book, the reader is trying to figure out what is going on.  But this time I realized that if I would have just hung in for 20 more pages the first time, I probably would have been hooked.  So, if you are interested and want to know how to read the book without getting frustrated, keep reading.  On the other hand, if you want to be surprised about how the book works, stop reading here.  I'll insert a nice picture of the CA movie poster, so you don't have to read more than you want.

OK.  For those who are still with me . . . see that tag line above?  "Everything is connected"?  Yes, it is.  To prepare yourself for reading CA, start with the back cover.  On the back of my copy, Michael Chabon describes the book as "The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes. . . "  Remember that.  Then, look at the names of the chapters.  You have "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", then "Letters from Zedelghem", then "Half Lives:  the First Luisa Rey Mystery", then "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", then "An Orison of Sonmi-451", then "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After".  Halfway though Sloosha's Crossin', you are halfway through the story of the book.  From that point, you will revisit the characters from the earlier chapters, in reverse order, starting with Orison of Sonmi, then Timothy Cavendish, etc.

Each chapter seems to be entirely unrelated to the others, with different characters, taking place in different periods of time.  The chronology, as it is, begins with Adam Ewing during the California Gold Rush.  It then progresses in each chapter, with the Timothy Cavendish chapters being the closest to modern day, and Sloosha's Crossin' being in the (hopefully) very distant future.  After the Sloosha's Crossin' chapter, time goes backward again until we return to the 1800s. 

Knowing this, I think you are now prepared to read CA.  The first time I tried it, I just didn't get why we were ending each chapter in the middle of a story, but never getting back to it.  You will get back to each story, but it will take a while.  As I read, I tried to look for the connections, and had corners turned down in my book all the way through the first Sonmi chapter, marking where I could look back to the precious hints I had recognized.  After Sloosha, however, Mitchell hits the reader over the head with the connections, in a way that ties everything together.

There are recurring themes, and Mitchell explores how each plays out in the different eras.  The battle of good versus evil begins with bullies as the bad guys, progresses to corporations as evildoers, and then progresses into the future even further, where we return to bullies. 

Mitchell has a couple of great and timeless quotes.  The first that I really liked, possibly because it could have fit just as well in Black Swan Green was "Prejudice is permafrost", which is in the first Sonmi chapter.  The second, which doesn't blog as well as it read, was from Sloosha,where two characters were talking about what separates the civilized societies from the violent ones.  The more optimistic character says that in the violent societies, there are savages with beautiful hearts, who might make a difference one day.  The doubting character says "'One day' was only a flea o' hope for us."  "Yay" says the other character, "but fleas ain't easy to rid."

Cloud Atlas is a good book, with a lot to discuss when it is finished.  Why are there two characters named Adam?  Do the birth marks mean what I think they do?  What caused the Fall?  Do the Henderson Triplets create the Sonmi culture?  But it would be a lot for most book groups to digest. 

Cloud Atlas was a NYT Notable Book in 2004.

Next up:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.  Yep, I managed to get it, even after it made the NYT Notables!

Still Listening to:  The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey