The Egg Hunt

In City of Thieves by David Benioff, Lev is a boy in his late teens who is living in Leningrad during the siege.  His father has disappeared, and his mother and sister left to find safety away from the city, leaving Lev a virtual, if not a true, orphan.  When a dead German paratrooper falls from the sky outside his building, Lev and his friends break curfew to see what they can claim from his body.  Lev is caught and arrested, and faces execution for looting.  Soon a Red Army desserter, Kolya, is thrown into Lev's jail cell.  Kolya and Lev are given a reprieve, and told that if they can just bring a dozen eggs to a certain colonel by the following Thursday, they will be set free.  Of course, finding a dozen eggs in Leningrad during the siege is no easy task.

Kolya and Lev are given a letter from the colonel allowing them passage out of Leningrad, and they are off, searching the Nazi filled countryside for eggs.  Along the way they encounter a cast of characters - some who help them and some who make their journey more difficult.  If this is sounding like a chummy little adventure, remember that they are in the middle of World War II, everyone is starving, it is winter, and the Nazis are everywhere. 

This story of the siege of Leningrad is completely different from Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.   City is a men's coming of age story, and Winter Garden is a mother's version of the siege.  Both stories were great, and they really compliment each other with their differences.  A reader looking for more action would prefer City of Thieves.

While I really liked City, I would have liked it even more if it was true.  Benioff teases the reader by starting off with a prologue where a young writer named David is interviewing his grandfather about his life in Leningrad.  It was enough to make me think that City of Thieves is David Benioff's grandfather's story, much like Everything is Illuminated is based on Jonathan Safran Foer's grandfather's experience during the war.  Unfortunately, Benioff insists that the story is pure fiction.  I was willing to accept some of the more unlikely plot twists, and was especially impressed with Benioff's grandmother, when I thought that most of the story was true.  After all, if Louis Zamperini's story is true, what is so strange about two young men escaping execution by finding eggs? 

This book is one off my list for the Rewind Challenge.  Since I checked the audio book out of my library and listened to it that way, it also counts for the Audiobook Challenge and the I Love Library Books Challenge.  I'm moving right along. . .

Next Up On CD:  Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn

Still Reading:  The Vanishing by Wendy Webb

Brooklyn Affairs

The Love Affiars of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman is a book about Nate, a youngish writer who has paid his dues with book reviews and freelance work, and has a new novel about to hit the stands.  He is a bit of a playa in his set of over educated navel gazers, and when we meet him he is single.  This quickly changes when he meets Hannah at an ex-girlfriend's dinner party.  Hannah is everything that Nate typically doesn't date.  She is low key, smart, interesting and straight forward. 

At first Nate is really excited about the relationship, but as time goes on, he keeps trying to find things that are wrong.  He thinks about what he hasn't liked about other girlfriends, like that they nagged him.  Then he tests Hannah to see if he can make her nag him. Hannah is in a no win situation, where if she doesn't nag him, Nate will keep behaving badly until she finally does, at which point he can pounce on her for being a nag, just like all the rest.

As the title suggests (blatantly) the book is all about Nate's relationship drama.  When I read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I just didn't get it.  I know that it is supposed to be a comedy of manners, but I didn't find it funny.  Around that time, the New York Times reviewed Nathaniel P., and said that it was a modern day comedy of manners, set in the Brooklyn literary scene.  I would think that people who like Jane Austen's stories, but are looking for something a little more modern would like Nathaniel P.  It is interesting that Nathaniel P. is written in a Jane Austen style, but from the man's perspective, and that it is written by a woman.  I found myself wondering if men (or some men anyway) actually do think like Nate, or if the story is really telling how women believe men like Nate think.  Whichever it is, I frequently thought about a certain person who I dated in college while reading about Nate's manipulations.  Waldman's telling sounded about right to me.

Although it is said to be a comedy of manners, there wasn't that much that I found all that funny.  There were just a couple of pages that I turned down with sort of funny quotes.  The first is Nate complaining about Hannah, and saying "Apparently, no woman in the early twenty-first century is the kind of woman who (a) wants a boyfriend or (b) wants to talk about her relationship, no matter how much she (a) wants a boyfriend and (b) wants to talk about her relationship." 

The second quote is just two pages later where Nate is being deliberately rude to Hannah.  "'It's fine,' he said in the kind of cold, flat voice that only someone with serious Asperger's would take at face value.  Hannah's expression indicated to Nate that she did not suffer from Asperger's syndrome."  I think that one was funnier in context.

I was really looking forward to Nathaniel P., because it seems like all of my favorite authors (except Jess Walter) are living in Brooklyn, and reading a book set among them would be fun.  But what was I thinking?  That the characters would go on a double date with JSF and Nicole Krauss?  Yes, most of Nate's friends are authors or in the publishing industry, but somehow the story was lacking an element of excitement or activity that in my mind at least should have been there.  Waldman is the expert - she is part of that Brooklyn literary society, and should certainly know its pulse.  Maybe there's really not much action, with all of the authors feeling a certain resentment toward each other, and writing on different schedules and at different places.

Nathaniel P. is the second book that I have finished for the I Love Library Books Challenge.  28 more to go!

Next Up:  The Vanishing by Wendy Webb

Still Listening to:  City of Thieves by David Benioff

Typical Book Exchange

 

Last night, The Typical Book Group got together to exchange books, and talk about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  There were 10 of us there, which was great.  Each December, we clean our closets of the books that we are prepared to part with, and trade them with each other.  This year, I got a little aggressive, and gave away two of my unread books from the Off the Shelf Challenge, We Were the Mulvaneys and Death Comes to Pemberly.  The Mulvaneys had been sitting in my night stand for at least 4 years, and I have always dreaded reading it, but felt that I should because it was written by Joyce Carol Oates.  And we all know about Joyce Carol Oates.  Hello??  She was one of Jonathan Safran Foer's professors in college, and she helped him get started writing.  When I was Googling the connection to support this claim, I came across this article that I hadn't seen before.  Not much about JCO, but it talks about almost everything JSF has ever written.

So, anyhow, back to the Typical Book Group.  We usually pick numbers from a hat or a bowl or whatever to decide who gets to choose first, second, etc.  This year, I got 9th.  Did you notice that I said that there were 10 people there?  So, I was surprised that a copy of The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling was still available for me to snag.  I also got a book called The Tudors by G. J. Meyer, which I hadn't heard anything about, and two cookbooks. 

After the exchange, we talked about Harold Fry.  There was quite a lot to say.  We all pretty much agreed that Harold seemed like a nice enough guy, but not anyone who we were dying to meet.  We talked about his journey, and Queenie, and about the effect his journey had on his wife, Maureen.  Our host, Kim had printed out some discussion questions that she had found online, and we thought it was odd that none of them dealt with the subject of alcoholism.  We all had ideas of what we thought would happen, which actually didn't happen, but in the end we felt that Joyce found the right ending.  Rachel Joyce, I mean.  I'm not exactly on a first name basis with JCO.

In the spirit of the season, I offered the Typical Book Groupers the opportunity to review Joyce's new book, Perfect, which is coming out next month.  Kim took me up on it.  Kim has a blog of her own, where she claims to review books, but she keeps her blog private.  I can only guess what she writes about me there . . . So, stay tuned, and we should soon have a guest blogger, or at least opinions dictated by Kim, and transcribed by yours truly.

We didn't decide on a book to read next month, so that will be a surprise as well. 

Still Reading:  The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.  I am loving this book so far, and only wish that I had more time to read it!

Still Listening to:  Winter of the World by Ken Follett

Doing What Dad Did

For years, Amazon and GoodReads have been recommending that I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  At first, I thought that it was a newly released book.  Then, I noticed it in the "classics corners" of used book sales. Finally, I had seen it enough times, and I had to pick it up.

Things Fall Apart is the story of Okonkwo, who is an honored man within his village.  Okonkwo has a few wives and many children.  He lives in his fathers' village and worships his fathers' gods.  I didn't misplace my apostrophe.  In Okonkwo's world, the man always lives in his father's village, and his father lived in his father's village, and so forth, so that many generations of men before Okonkwo were living where he lives in very much the same way that he is living.  Okonkwo's time is different from that of his fathers though, because villagers are beginning to see white men.  At first, the white men are thought to be albinos, or possibly even lepers.  All too soon it becomes clear that these white men are not just people from a nearby village with a disease or a skin condition.  They are people from another country, intent on converting Okonkwo's people to Christianity.

While reading Things Fall Apart, I was never sure of when the story was supposed to have been taking place, or where it was set.  Most obviously, Okonkwo's village was called "Umofia", and I could tell by the tone of the story, the names that were used, and the fables of the villagers that Umofia was in Africa.  I knew that the book was published in 1958, but because of how the villagers referred to the passage of time, it was not clear what decade they were living in.  According to Wikipedia, it was set in the 1890s, which I probably would have realized if I knew more about the colonizing of Africa.  Wiki also says that Umofia was supposed to be in Nigeria.

I thought a lot about what, exactly, makes Things Fall Apart a "classic".  Judging by the standard of whether it was published before my parents graduated from high school (check) and whether it is likely to appear on my son's high school required reading list (check), then it is a classic.  I've complained about my son's required reading lists to my son, saying that he should be reading more modern works.  While he likes contemporary fiction, he doesn't feel that anything new is likely to ever qualify as a classic.  It's tough to think of anything, even books that I love, that are going to be discussed and relevant in another 20 or 50 years.  As much as I would like for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer to become a classic, it may not translate well to people who weren't alive on 9/11.  Some of the other books that I've loved that are set in a less specific period and may remain relevant longer, like The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen or Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin are simply too long for required reading lists.  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell is a solid candidate that has been suggested by others with voices louder than mine, and I have noticed that my son will be seeing some Barbara Kingsolver on his lists in his junior and senior years.  But what makes a classic?

As I was reading Things Fall Apart, I was sort of thinking of it in comparison to Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  Both stories are set in a time in the past, and paint vivid portraits a certain  community during that period.  A person in Africa reading Grapes of Wrath and thinking that they have a good understanding of America in 2013 would be just as misled as a person in America reading Things and thinking that they understand the modern tribes of Africa.  There are great books set in Africa that could give a reader a better grasp of what it is like now (or at least during my lifetime), including The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and What is the What by Dave Eggers.  However, like those books mentioned above, these are also a little long for reading during a high school trimester.  Things' short length, at only 209 pages, may be what has kept it on the reading lists, which is sort of sad.  Maybe spending a longer amount of time on a longer book, rather than trying to fit a set number of books into the trimester would allow our kids to stop the cycle of reading the books that their fathers read, for the sake of reading what their fathers read.

Next Up on CD:  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

STILL Reading:  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.  I have no excuse as to why this book is taking me so long to read!  I am really liking it, and even considered whether it could be considered a modern classic.  But if it is taking me this long, how long would it take a distracted high school student?

Score!

Yep.  It's that time again.  Time for my library's semiannual used book sale!  I got some good ones tonight. 

To begin with, I got two books off my TBR list - Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.  In the past I have complained about the complete absence of books by Murakami and issues of McSweeney's at these sales.  Not this time!  I got a copy of Murakami's IQ84.  Yes, it was withdrawn from my library, meaning that no one in my zip code wanted to read it, but I can take the jacket off, tear out the bar code page, and pretend that it is just like new.  And I need to come to terms with the fact that I should send Dave Eggers more money and buy McSweeney's, because those are clearly *never* going to show up at this sale.

I got a few books by authors who I have liked before.  Specifically, I got The Zero by Jess Walters, which I had never even heard of before; A Secret Kept by Tatiana DeRosnay, which I can hardly wait to start; Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart; and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin.

GoodReads thinks that I'll like Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, so I grabbed that one when I saw it.  I also got a "Not for Sale Advanced Reader's Edition" of The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, which people on GoodReads are constantly talking about.

In the spirit of judging a book by its cover, I got The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto.  Doesn't that one have an awesome cover?  It's hard to tell from this picture, but the flowers are glossy, and the black and white photo behind them is matte.  Electrical Field is apparently the story of Japanese Canadians during World War II.  There's one WWII Civilian Story that I haven't read yet.








Finally (and worth the wait) I got a hard cover copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  Somehow, I have never even seen a hard cover copy of this book before, and it's my very favorite.  A while back I met JSF, and he signed my son's copy of Extremely Loud.  I have an unsigned paperback, but I'm happy to have the hard cover too.

And now, I'm off to read . . . By the way, but totally off topic, my son says that he had a dream last night that I was a famous author.  Isn't that a great dream?  I love it.  Now to get him thinking of being an author himself . . .

Listening to:  OK.  I broke down.  AM radio was driving me crazy, and FM radio was in constant repeat mode.  I'm listening to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet by David Mitchell.  I have holds on Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt in both audio and paper form at the library, but haven't gotten either one.  Since I already own  Autumns on paper, I figured that if I get Wolves on audio, I'll stop listening, and just read  Autumns.  If I get the paper version of Wolves, I'll keep listening to Autumns.  Whatever.

Still Reading:  The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Accidental and Untrue

If a mockumentary is a fake documentary, then is a mockuoir a deliberately fake memoir?  Let's agree that it is.  In that case, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is a mockuoir by Ron Currie, Jr.  What makes this a mockuoir instead of just a plain novel is that Currie names the main character after himself, Ron Currie, Jr., and portions of the story also happened in his life.  What makes it different from a memoir, especially in this era where we know that memoirs are frequently fully of falsehoods, is that the main character insists that every word is true, even though we know very well that it is not.  Currie isn't the first author to name characters after himself.  Jonathan Safran Foer named the main character after himself in Everything is Illuminated, and Orhan Pamuk has included characters with his own name in a few of his books, as examples.  But neither of those authors have insisted that their stories are true, when they are obviously fictional.  Thus, the mockuoir.

FLPM shifts between three main story lines.  The first of these is the story of the main character's father's death, which I believe is also the story of the author's father's death.  The second story line is about the main character's obsession with an unobtainable woman named Emma.  Portions of this story are also likely the true story of the author's lost love.  The third is not a story so much as the main character's (and probably, the author's) thoughts and concerns about the future of artificial intelligence, and whether it will mean the end to all mankind.

In FLPM, Ron moves to a Caribean island at the request of the girl who he hopes will be his girlfriend.  She stays behind in the mainland US, to remake her life after her divorce.  While Ron is living on the island, he finds fist fights and a substitute girlfriend.  One thing leads to another, and Ron accidentally fakes his own suicide.  Throughout all this, we are flashing back to Ron's father's last days, and various stages of his relationship with Emma.

Some of the reviews that I read about this book complained that it was not linear, and was hard to follow.  I would say that it is no less linear than Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  One thing that differentiated this book from any other that I have read is that there are page breaks at the end of each train of thought.  So, while this is a 340 page book, if it had "normal" page breaks, it would have probably only been about 250 pages.  These random page breaks gave the reader an easy out, where a person could quit reading at any point, rather than feeling like they should get to the end of the chapter.  Obviously, this was deliberate, and consistent with Ron's (the character's and the author's) feigned indifference as to whether anyone finishes the book.

The artificial intelligence storyline hinted at the Sonmi story in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, with ruminations on whether souls can be grown in mechanical creations.  In a more timely observation, Currie mentions Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic runner with two prosthetic legs, as an example of how "non organic enhancements" will change the future of sports.  I would think that now, with Pistorius in the news for killing his girlfriend, Currie would like to re-write this section, somehow making Pistorius into an example of artificial intelligence working against humans, even when the soul was (or should have been) naturally developed.

I read FLPM at the request of Shannon Twomey of Viking, Penguin Books.  She sent me a free copy of the book and asked me to review it.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  Next month I will be reviewing The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes as my "industry requested review".

Next Up:  The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. 

Review and Preview

Goodbye 2012!  As far as years go, you really weren't so bad.  Maybe you were even a little good.  For Christmas I got The Patrick Melrose Novels and At Last  by Edward St. Aubyn, which shows that it pays to drop gift hints.  I also got the DVD of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, to add to my Jonathan Safran Foer obsession collection.  December is almost over, and as far as I am aware, no one has launched anything as exciting as the OASIS, which is the massively multiplayer game featured in Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, that was said to have been released in December of 2012.  I think we are better off without it.  I mean really, we can barely handle Words With Friends.

My favorite books that I read in 2012 are these:

1.  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
4. Stone Arabia by Dana Spoitta
5.  Helen of Troy by Margaret George

in that order.  Your favorite books that I read in 2012 (based on page views) are:

1. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
2.  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
3.  Helen of Troy by Margaret George
4.  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
5.  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

in that order.  So we almost agree, which is good.

For 2013, I have decided to sign up again for the Off the Shelf Challenge.  The idea of this challenge is that the participants should read books that they already own, in order to move them off their shelves.   This time I am only going to commit to moving 15 books off of my shelf.  Last time I committed to 24, and read 26.  I don't want to commit to that many this year, so that I can feel like I can review books for authors or read books that I pick up during the year, without feeling like I am failing the challenge.  So, here is the list of books that I plan to read in 2013.  As I read them, I will cross them out, and provide a link to my review.




1.  The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott Reviewed 1/26/13
2.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Reviewed 7/16/13
3.  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano Reviewed 3/31/13
4.  Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks Reviewed 2/6/13
5.  The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury
6.  True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey Reviewed 11/16/13
7.  My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
8.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon  Reviewed 9/21/13
9.  Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
10.  Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
11.  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers  Reviewed 2/14/13
12.  In the Woods by Tana French Reviewed 10/21/13
13.  Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes
14.  The End of Sparta by Victor Davis Hanson
15.  The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie
16.  Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
17.  The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
18.  The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings Reviewed 2/25/13
19.  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Reviewed 3/9/13
20.  The Iliad by Homer Reviewed 11/29/13
21.  The Odyssey by Homer  Reviewed 1/15/2013
22.  The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Reviewed 4/6/13
23.  Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
24.  The Titans by John Jakes
25.  The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella Reviewed 5/2/13
26.  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
27.  Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy Reviewed 12/16/13
28.  The Last Life by Claire Messud Reviewed 7/29/13
29.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell Reviewed 5/12/13
30.  We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
31.  The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett
32.  The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
33.  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman  Reviewed 6/29/13
34.  The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
35.  At Last by Edward St. Aubyn Reviewed 8/22/13
36.  The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn Reviewed 8/6/13
37.  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine Reviewed 8/22/13
38.  The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve Reviewed 9/11/13
39.  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin Reviewed 9/26/13
40.  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
41.  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Reviewed 1/19/13
42.  Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
43.  Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

There are a lot of great books on this list, and I can't wait to get started!  I'll keep you posted on my progress.

For now, I am

Still Reading:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I am LOVING this book so far!

Still Listening to:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Next Year in Jerusalem

So why, exactly, did I read New American Haggadah?  Because Jonathan Safran Foer edited it.  That's why. 

A Haggadah is a book of readings for the Seder dinner during Passover.  As a Presbyterian, I first learned about a Haggadah when I read People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.  That book is about the very famous Sarajevo Haggadah, which has survived since around the year 1350.  There are many Haggadahs, and my assumption is that most Jewish families probably have one that they bring out year after year. 

At first I was put off by the size of JSF's Haggadah.  It is the same size as my daughter's hard cover middle school yearbook, to give you an idea.  That made it inconvenient for taking with me to read in spare moments.  But then it occurred to me that a Haggadah is really not meant for reading in random minutes, and that the size is probably very suitable for positioning on a Seder table.  Additionally, the art work on the pages is in watercolor, mostly in jewel tones.  After reading just the introduction, I learned that it is common for the pages of a Haggadah to become wine stained, which will blend in perfectly with the art.

New American Haggadah has commentary every few pages, with sections titled "Playground", "Library", "Nation" and "House of Study".  The Playground sections were the best, with wisdom aimed at children.  For instance, here the child is advised how to respond to the four kinds of parents at the Seder table, in parody of the four kinds of children referenced in the reading.  The Simple Parent will say "'. . . stop slouching at the table.' In answer to such statements, the Wise Child will roll his eyes in the direction of the ceiling and declare, 'Let my people go!'  The Parent Who Is Unable to Inquire has had too much wine and should be excused from the table."  The Playground also points out how Elijah has it much better than Santa, since Elijah is welcome to eat anywhere and Santa only gets cookies if he bribes children with presents.

As a new comer to the Haggadah, I learned a lot, though admittedly, I skimmed some of the readings.  The three things that I like about the Haggadah (not just this one, but the Haggadah as a whole) are:

1.  The whole point of the Haggadah is to help Jewish celebrants to remember.  As such, there are step by step instructions as to who should say what, and what should be consumed when.  No one is expected to remember on their own, and the directions are clear. 

2.  The Haggadah changes over time, and for the intended reader.  For example there's Haggadah for Jewish Buddhists, a feminist Haggadah, and an optional orange added to the Seder in recognition of marginalized members of the community.

3.  It is a do-it-yourself project.  The Open Source Haggadah is an online software framework that makes it easy for a person to make their own Haggadah.

So, should you rush out and get New American Haggadah?  If you are in the market for a Haggadah, absolutely!  However, if you, like me, are looking for something Jonathan Safran Foer-ish, you won't find it here. 

Next up:  Three Weeks in December by Audrey Schulman

Still Listening to:  Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Food for Thought

After reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I decided that while I was not yet ready to become a vegetarian, I was willing to commit to making more conscious decisions about the meat that I would eat.  This led me to buy a 1/4 cow.  Once we had eaten all of the steaks, I started looking for ideas of what to do with the cuts of meat that I had never heard of before.  Like cube steak.  This led me to The Pioneer Woman. 

The Pioneer Woman, aka Ree Drummond, hosts a great website full of recipes, like this one for Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich, which has cube steak as the main ingredient.  If you have not checked out her blog, seriously, click on the link above, and do it now.  What I like about her is that she talks in a friendly voice, and includes pictures of every single step, so that you cannot get anything wrong.  At least theoretically.  I found a few favorite recipes on her website, and check back to it from time to time.  In fact, you might notice that there is a link to her website at the bottom right hand side of this blog, so if you are ever wondering what Ree is up to, you can click to her through me.  Yeah, we're pretty tight.

After enjoying the Pioneer Woman's blog, I bought myself her cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks:  Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl for my husband to give me for Christmas.  I was thrilled that it was just like the blog, with lots of pictures of the food items, and of Ree's family.  The book had two disappointments for me though:  1) I tried making her flat apple pie, three times, and it always leaked and stuck to the pan; and 2)  my favorite of her recipes, spaghetti and meat balls, wasn't in the book.  The spaghetti problem was solved when my birthday rolled along, and my sister-in-law bought me Ree's second cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks:  Food from my Frontier, where she included the spaghetti recipe, but used rigatoni instead.  Still no luck on the apple pie.  But my sister-in-law also got me Ree's memoir, Pioneer Woman:  Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - - A Love Story.

In the meantime, Ree started doing a show on the cooking channel, which I DVRed, and sometimes watched.  I found that I liked Ree much better in writing than on TV.  She just seemed to have more personality in her blog than what came through on TV.  So, I put off reading the memoir, thinking that maybe I was over her.

Pioneer Woman:  Black Heels to Tractor Wheels is the story of Ree meeting and falling in love with her husband, who she calls "Marlboro Man".  I was sort of unimpressed with the premise - did I really want to read someone's true love story?  I mean, if it was William and Kate's, I'd read it for sure. And I have read Henry VIII and Anne's love story countless times.  But the love story of a contemporary blogger?  After the first 50 pages, I was hooked.  In fact, I'm thinking that the next time I'm really frustrated with my husband, I should sit down and write the story of how we met and fell in love.  If nothing else, it would probably help me to feel a little more forgiving.

One of my favorite characters in Ree's true story is her brother, Mike.  While she never says what it is about Mike that makes him a different learner, my guess is Down's Syndrome.  The story of Mike, and how he reacts to the changes in Ree's life, such as telling everyone in a mall that she is getting married, is hysterical.  There is a group home near my house with 5 developmentally disabled adult men living in it, and I could imagine each of them reacting to news of a sibling getting married in a similar way.  Begin the sibling of a different learner can be a tough row to hoe.   Ree gets flustered by Mike's demands and expectations, but loves Marlboro Man even more when she sees how well he treats her brother.  I don't recall any mentions of Mike in the cookbooks, but I think I will go back and check out some of her shows that I DVRed and never watched to see if he makes an appearance.

Another great thing about the book is that at the end, Ree includes the recipes for most of the meals that she mentions in the story. I liked that about the last book that I reviewed, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris too, so I've decided to add a new tag - "Recipes Included". 

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels ends just after Ree's first child is born.  I was expecting to hear more of the story of how she started blogging, why she decided to home school, and how she got so great at photography.  The point of the title, if not the book, was to illustrate what a huge change it was for Ree to move from her posh life in the suburbs to Marlboro Man's Ranch, but I can't imagine her any place else.  If a "Book 2" comes out, I will be sure to pick it up.

Next Up:  The Night In Question:  Stories by Tobias Wolff

Still Listening To:  The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

Oh No She Didn't

Oh yes, I did.  How, when I was out walking my dog, and noticed that a neighbor who is moving has left a card catalog by the curb, could I not stop?  My favorite scene in my favorite book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, involves Oskar looking up his dad's name in a card catalog.  And now I have my own.

There it is!  Yes, there's a water spot on the top, but nothing I couldn't hide with a place mat.  Of course, my ultimate plan would be to refinish it.  However, if I zoom out, and show you the rest of the garage, you might notice that I already have a china cabinet (left) and a barrister's bookcase (right) waiting for my tender loving care.

You might also notice that my husband's car is missing.  Do you really think that I would be able to garbage pick an out of date storage unit if he was home? 

Did you see my ball of twine?  Here it is up close:

Now that's some twine!  What will I ever do with it?  I have no idea, but it was $5.00 at an estate sale, and I couldn't resist. 

If you are in need of the perfect garbage picking vehicle, I highly recommend the Little Tikes Explorer Wagon pictured below:

We got ours about 14 years ago, when I was pregnant with my son.  It has hauled everything from kids to coolers to landscaping pavers.  We have two cracked wheels now, so I know it won't last forever.  It's sort of funny to be in the market for a new wagon (exactly the same, please) when my youngest child is 12. 

Not such a literary post, but I had to share my good fortune with someone!

I missed the Typical Book Group meeting this week.  They discussed Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.  I read the book before I started blogging, but I did mention it in passing when I wrote about The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.  They also picked the BFB (Big Fat Book) that we'll read over the summer.  The official word hasn't come out to us absentee members yet, but rumor has it we'll be reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King.  It's been on my TBR list for a while, so I hope that rumor is confirmed.

Still Reading:  A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles.  I had to go on a flight this week, and wanted to take it with me, so I bought the Kindle version.  I didn't think that a 968 page hard covered book would be the best traveling companion.  Plus, now I know that I am 61% complete.

Almost Done Listening to:  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  I am really liking this book and will be blogging about it soon.

All Tortoise, No Hare

Well, I wasn't expecting to have to give a "half time report" about Emma by Jane Austen, but the reading is going so slowly that I feel the need!  Emma is only about 400 pages, but it is taking me forever.  Right before I started reading, I was at my friend, Kim's house, trying to have a conversation with her.  It wasn't going so well because I couldn't take my eyes off of her TV.  Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone was on, and I couldn't help but watch it, even though I had seen it several times before.  Kim mentioned that she had heard that Clueless was based on Emma. 

Every once in a while a movie comes out that is supposed to be a modern day adaptation of a classic, and usually, it is hard to identify which classic they are trying to mimic.  In the case of Clueless, however, the adaptation is spot on.  As I read about Emma and Harriett, I am picturing Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy.  In a clever jab at lawyers, Clueless replaces Emma's feeble and nervous father with Cher's distracted litigator dad.  Both daughters think that their dads are helpless without them, and so far at least in the book, they are right.  I just hit the 52% complete mark on my Kindle last night, so I still have a lot of story to cover.

I'm not exactly plowing through Helen of Troy by Margaret George, either.  When I checked it out of the library on CD, I knew that it was 30 hours of story of 25 CDs, but I wasn't expecting it to take quite so long.  I'm only on the 14th disc now, and I started listening almost a month ago.  Right now, the Greeks are just beginning to attack the Trojans.  In this story, which most modern scholars think is only a myth, a 25 year old woman falls in love and runs off with a 16 year old man.  If we adapted this story to modern times, Helen would be a teacher and Paris would be her student.  Instead of leading to war, the "love" would lead to jail  for the woman.  You would think that the story of Helen would be enough to remind young teachers that their enticing students are just not worth it.

In Other News:   Here is a great article about Jonathan Safran Foer turning 35.   It is framed in the form of questions, in honor of his recently released Haggadah.  The article is more personal than others that I have read, and explores his relationships with his parents and grandparents, most specifically in regard to his first book, Everything is Illuminated.  My favorite part of the article is toward the end, where the author, Aleksandar Hemon is discussing JSF's special attention to Hemon's 4 year old daughter after Hemon and his wife lost their 1 year old child in 2010.  "[Ella] has a huge plush shark which he sent to her around that time, which she calls Jonathan, and sleeps with the shark."  How could I not think of JSF's wife's book, Great House?  In that book, which was published in 2010, a character writes a story about people sleeping, and being attached by electrodes to a shark in a tank.  The shark absorbs all of their nightmares and things that are too difficult to bear, so that they can sleep in peace.  Sweet dreams, Ella.

JSF News

Well, my Facebook BFF, Jonathan Safran Foer, has just informed me that his new book is coming out on March 5!  Here is a link to a review.  You may recall that I mentioned just over a year ago that I had heard a rumor that he was working on a version of a Haggadah.  It appears that the rumors are true, and this new Haggadah will be out in time for Passover.  According to Wikipedia, a Haggadah is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder, and is read at the Seder table. 

A great book about a Haggadah is People of the Book by Geraldine March, which tells a fictionalized version of how the Sarajevo Haggadah (one of the oldest known to exist) may have survived through the ages.  Based on the review, JSF's book is not about a Haggadah, but is a Haggadah.

As a Presbyterian, I don't need to rush to get this book in time for Seder, but due to my devotion to JSF, I have added it to my TBR list.  Do you think that JSF announced that his book is coming out today as a special birthday present to me?  Somehow, I doubt that, but it is a strange coincidence . .  .

Thinking about reading a traditional text from another religion reminded me of the thought that crosses my mind from time to time that I should read the Koran.  I did some quick Googling, and found an online Koran reading group,  but of course, that took place last year.  I also found some Western Koran scholars who suggested that one cannot just pick up a Koran and read it without explanation. So, as an attempt to learn something about the Koran, without overwhelming myself, I have also added The Muslim Next Door:  The Qur'an, The Media, and That Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali to my reading list.

Not that I'm considering making any spiritual changes in my life, but a little knowledge never hurt anyone.  Right?

Still Reading:  Emma by Jane Austen

Still Listening to:  Helen of Troy by Margaret George

Extremely Good & Incredibly Right

I saw the movie, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, last night, and loved it.  I sort of expected to not like the movie, since the book is my all time favorite, and I knew that the movie couldn't do everything that is done in the book within the 2 hours and 6 minutes that it is on the screen.  While the movie was not exactly like the book, it is true to the spirit of the book, and well worth the price of a ticket.

My favorite scene from the book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, where Oskar looks up his dad's name in Mr. A.R. Black's card catalogue, was not in the movie.  In fact, A.R. Black was not in the movie, even though he was such an integral character in the book.  The other Blacks who Oskar visits in the book are also mostly absent.  The movie shows Oskar visiting lots of people, but we don't really get to know the people that he visits.  In the book, the grandma has a much more important role than in the movie, and in the movie, the grandpa has a much more important role than in the book, but it works.

My husband, who hasn't read the book, felt that something about the phone messages that the dad left on 9/11 was unresolved.  It didn't bother me, because I knew what happened in the book, and it was like the movie left off before what happened in the book could happen.  The issue of Oskar's mom being MIA throughout most of the book was resolved in the movie more completely than in the book, and I liked how the screenwriter did that.

All told, if I could buy the DVD today, I would and I'd watch it again right now.

Still Reading:  This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
 
Still Listening to:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  Another Oscar.  I hope I like him too.

JSF at MSU

Each year, Michigan State University chooses a book for all of its incoming freshmen to read as part of its "One Book, One Community" initiative.  The idea is that if everyone reads the same book, they will all start the year having that in common, and having something to share with each other.  This year, the book that they selected was my all time favorite, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The choice of this book was brilliant, due to this year being the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  Extremely Loud is the story of a boy, Oskar, whose dad is killed in one of the World Trade Center buildings.  At the time of the story, in 2001, Oskar is nine years old.  This means that if Oskar was a real person, he could be a student at MSU right now.

Tonight, Jonathan Safran Foer came to East Lansing to talk about his book.  He was incredible.  He talked a little about his work, and himself, and then opened the floor for questions.  When asked about his writing process, he said that he can't use an outline, because if he did, the best that he would ever get from himself is what he expected to get.  Instead he said that he tries for more.   "I want to do more than what I can do, and I want to write better than I am able to write" is how he explained it.  He also said that the best writers are not the people who start off as the most talented writers, but instead they are those who just keep writing.

At the end of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar receives a heartfelt letter from his idol, Stephen Hawking.  JSF revealed that earlier in the day, an MSU student had asked him if the letter was really from Stephen Hawking.  It took JSF a few minutes to understand that the student thought that the letter may have been written by Oskar's mom, instead of Hawking.  JSF said that he had never thought about that possibility, but now that he considered it, yes, the letter must have come from Oskar's mom.  How cool is that?  He is not only willing to discuss his book and answer questions about it, but he is willing to reconsider what it means.  He compared his books to the scores written for orchestras.  Just as the score needs the orchestra to be fully realized, his books need the readers' interpretations.

JSF was also remarkably generous with his time.  The line of people waiting for him to sign their books twisted and turned, and I have no doubt that some people are still in it.  He signed my son's copy of Extremely Loud, and my copy of Tree of Codes.  Extremely Loud is scheduled to come out as a movie next year.  I will have to see it, because I won't be able to stay away, but I am planning on being disappointed in it.  I just hope I can get my son to read the book before he sees the movie, because once he's seen that, I'm afraid the power of the story will be lost, and he'll never understand why I thought it was such a great book.

THIS JUST IN!  Thorougly unattractive picture of me with JSF!  Love it!

Dear Gentle Reader,

As I have mentioned, the premise is this:  Jonathan Safran Foer took a book by Bruno Schulz called Street of Crocodiles, cut it apart, as if with an exacto knife, and created a whole new story, which he calls Tree of Codes.  This is what one page looks like:

That's my lime green paper behind the page, so that you can see better.  The book is extremely delicate, and must have been very difficult to make.  I first ordered Tree of Codes on February 22, from Borders.com.  At that time, it was not available on Amazon, unless I wanted to pay two times the list price from "these sellers".  Borders expected to ship it in 2 weeks.  A month later, I contacted Borders to see where the book was, and was informed that they didn't have it, and that if they didn't have it in another month, they would cancel my order.  Another month went by, and they made good on their promise.  Throughout April and May, I kept checking Amazon to see if they had gotten copies in.  Finally, in desperation, I just googled the name of the book, hoping to find it at a reasonable price at some independent book store, anywhere.  Then Amazon had it.  I ordered, and it arrived - about 4 months after my original order, just like Amazon predicted when the book was first released!

When I say that this book is delicate, I mean that it is only for gentle readers.  As careful as I was, I almost tore a page a couple of times.  This is what 4 pages together look like, to give you an idea:

The words on one page can easily get stuck on the next.  I love libraries, but Tree of Codes is not an appropriate library book - it would not make it through more than 2 or 3 checkouts.  This means that if you want to read Tree, you probably will have to buy it.  I have heard a rumor that JSF made the book in this delicate manner in order to defeat the e-readers, and get people to buy paper books.  I mean obviously, he could have blacked or whited out the words, and made it much easier to publish.  I have to say that the kindle people could probably figure out a way to put the book in electronic form, but I am guessing that it might involve taking a picture of each page, with a blank page behind it. 

So how's the story?  Dark and gray.  Don't get me wrong, it is typical JSF, with "nothing"s and "everything"s aplenty, which I love.  It's amazing that JSF was able to find his own voice within someone else's words.  But given that JSF started with Schulz's colorful imagery, I was hoping for something completely different from Street of Crocodiles.  Instead, it sort of told a similar story, with more blame on the mother.  Maybe, if I hadn't read Crocodiles first, I would have interpreted Tree of Codes differently.  As I was reading JSF's salvaged words, I was remembering how Schulz's story was progressing at that point, which may have shaped my vision. 

As for the paragraph that I quoted in the last post, JSF didn't use a single word, and cut out the whole thing. I love the concept that JSF used to make this book work.  I would like to try it myself, with the same book, and see if I can come up with a totally different story. Maybe if I can find some spare time I'll buy another copy of Crocodiles, and cross out words with a pencil.  It seems like this could be an online writer's workshop, with the Schulz estate posting an editable version of Crocodiles online, and inspired readers paying a fee to the estate to cut it down to form their own story.  It wouldn't look as awesome as JSF's book, but it would make a great experiment.

Here's my attempt at taking Schulz's words, as edited down by JSF, to form my meaning:


The tree of codes was better than a paper imitation

 Next up:  I'm not sure.  I have A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan on hold at the library, and as of yesterday, they said that I should have it in 2 days.  As of today, they say the wait is "undetermined".  I may go ahead and start All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz while I wait.

Still listening to:  Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Words of Inspiration

When I heard that Jonathan Safran Foer's favorite book was The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, and that he had written a new book using some of Schulz's words but die cutting out others, I felt like a literary loser.  How could it be that I had never heard of this renowned masterpiece?  Then I checked at my library, and found that they didn't have it.  In fact, there are very few libraries in Michigan that do stock it.

Schulz was an author and artist who was murdered as a side effect of the Holocaust.  He was working on a painting for one Gestapo officer, when another Gestapo officer got mad at the first, and killed Schulz as vengeance. 

I decided to read Crocodiles because I wanted to read Tree of Codes, which is the book that Jonathan Safran Foer wrote using Schulz's words.  As such, I read Crocodiles knowing that someone else had looked at the narrative, loved it, and cut it to pieces in order to create a new and different story.  In reading Crocodiles it is easy to see how JSF got his idea. 

Schulz uses words in a way unlike any other author I have read.  His sentences are so full of metaphor, that I am actually not sure that I properly understood the story, and plan to read it again.  As an example, this is Schulz describing the work of two seamstresses:

"The girls trod absentmindedly on the bright shreds of material, wading carelessly in the rubbish of a possible carnival, in the storeroom for some great unrealized masquerade.  They disentangled themselves with nervous giggles from the trimmings, their eyes laughed into the mirrors.  Their hearts, the quick magic of their fingers were not in the boring dresses which remained on the table, but in the thousand scraps, the frivolous and fickle trimmings, with the colorful fantastic snowstorm with which they could smother the whole city."

I can't wait to see what JSF does with this paragraph.  He could take these words about seamstresses, and include them in a story about a carnival, rubbish, magic, a snowstorm, or any of 70 or 80 other topics. 

As I understand it, in its most simple terms, Crocodiles is the story of a father drifting deeper and deeper into dementia, as told by his young son.  But there's so much more.  With the story being told in Schulz' language of metaphor and allusion, it twists and turns like a dark fairy tale.  Through it all, the son seeks and finds glimmers of brilliance in his father.

In one such moment, the father is studying the same scientific principles as the brother in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.   I would really like to know if Bender has read Crocodiles, and deliberately modeled her novel as an updated and expanded examination of one of its topics, or if the similarities are purely coincidental.

The version of Crocodiles that I read also includes Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and a few other stories by Schulz.  While I plan to read more of Schulz in the future, I am putting Crocodiles down now, so that I can start Tree of Codes to see where JSF takes Schulz's story while it is still fresh, if jumbled, in my mind.

In Other News:  Valentino Achak Deng accepted my Facebook Friend Request!

Next Up, obviously:  Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Still listening to:  Sunset Park  by Paul Auster, which also has had me thinking of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. This is strange, because Sunset Park has very little in common with Crocodiles.  Stay tuned.

More, Please

After reading page 289 of Nicole Krauss' new book, Great House, I greedily turned to the next page.  And found it blank.  I flipped through the next few blank pages too, searching for words.  Then, desperate, I considered turning back to page 1, and starting all over again.  This is definitely a book that I will read again, and I'm not really a person who has time to read books twice.
  
I finished reading Great House while on a break during a seminar.  Once the seminar resumed, I couldn't help myself from disturbing the people around me by pulling the book out to confirm dates, to see who had blue eyes and whose were black, and to try to make the connections that I know I missed the first time through.  The next time that I read it, I will try to pay more attention to the paintings mentioned in each story. I'm wondering if they give hints to what will happen either in that story or in one of the others. I also want to think about the piano. It seems like it must mean something that two characters play a grand piano. Finally, I will notice what each character is writing - there is a writer in each story, and their work could offer hints. I may also be tempted to write a timeline and insert births, deaths, and important events to see how they all fit.

Great House was a finalist for the National Book Award for 2010, but the final award went to Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon. Now I will have to add Lord of Misrule to my TBR list, just to compare.

Yes, I admit it.  I am obsessed with Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, who are pictured on your left.  They are my favorite literary couple, with Glen David Gold and Alice Sebold a solid but distant second.  When I pick up one of NK's books, I do so with the assumption that it will not be as good as the last book that I read by JSF.  But on my list of my 10 all time favorite books, Nicole Krauss is the only author with 2 books on this list, with both The History of Love and Great House.

For me, the sign of a really great book is that I want to talk about it as soon as I finish reading it.  To that end, I have added a page of "spoilers" to this blog, where I have posted  my ideas about how certain characters are connected, and how I wish (and have decided in my own mind) that others are.  To bring you up to date from the last posting, however, I will say that the second half of the book revisited each of the four stories that were in the first half, and most of the questions were answered.  The unanswered questions are the most tantalizing, because I think that they probably really were answered, and that I just missed it. 

Go. Get. It. And. Read.        Now.

Next Up:  The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd

Still Listening to:  Inheritance of Loss  by Kiran Desai

Jinx!

 I hope that I don't jinx the book by saying this, but I am LOVING Great House by Nicole Krauss so far.  The book was billed as the story of different people whose lives are tied together through their ownership of a certain desk over many years.  I expected it to be similar to People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, in which the lives of the various characters are unified through their ownership of a specific book.  I was even more convinced that Great House would be like People of the Book after reading that Nicole Krauss' husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, was working a version of a Haggadah, since the book that POTB featured was a very special Haggadah.

However, now that I am half way through Great House, it is reminding me of several books that I love, but not POTB.  The first chapter is about a woman living in New York and a man from Chile.  Without going into too much detail, it reminded me of The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal, which is set in South America, and in which several key characters "disappear" at the hands of a cruel and paranoid government. 

The chapters of Great House could each stand alone as short stories.  The second story/chapter, called "True Kindness" may be the best short story that I have ever read.  It shows with a simple, concise clarity the factions created in a family when one child meets a father's expectations, and the other, while successful in the world, does not.  This story made me think of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. 

The fourth story/chapter includes brother and sister characters that reminded me of those in The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  Additionally, the house in which they live is on the verge of becoming a crumbling British estate, so of course I am also reminded of the siblings in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  There's also the rumor of sibling incest, which makes me think of The Thirteenth Tale  by Diane Setterfield.  The image of a grand piano suspended from a high ceiling in place of a chandelier from this fourth story is stuck in my head and not likely to leave any time soon.

The second half of the book is promising to bring all of the story/chapters together, and I can't wait to read more.  I read over 100 pages today, and I almost want to slow down so that it lasts longer. 

Still Listening to:  The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

It's the most wonderful day of the year. . . yes it's Thanksgiving, but that's not why.  Yes, it's also the night before Black Friday, which I also love, but that's not why.  It's the day that I found the New York Times 2010 Notable Books List online!  The list won't be published in the paper for two more weeks, but I've found that if you Google compulsively for it this time of the year, eventually it will appear!  Here is the list.

Of course, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen made the list.  Other books on my TBR list that made it are Great House by Nicole Krauss, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  I was disappointed to see that Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin and Sunnyside by Glen David Gold didn't make the cut.  I was also surprised not to see Just Kids by Patti Smith, especially since it just won the National Book Award. 

After reading the new list, my TBR list now includes Contested Will - Who Wrote Shakespeare by James Shapiro, which is about the controversy concerning who actually wrote the works accredited to Shakespeare, and why we are so obsessed with the question.  I also added Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson.  How could I not want to read a book by that name?

In other good news, Jonathan Safran Foer has a new book out!  It is called Tree of Codes, and it sounds really interesting.  According to the Vanity Fair article that I read, JSF loves the book, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.  He decided to write a new book using some of the words from The Street of Crocodiles, in the order in which they are written, to write an entirely different story.  The book is die cut, so that it looks like someone cut out some of Schulz's words on each page with an Exacto knife.  I am really excited about the concept of this book, but of course, I will have to read The Street of Crocodiles before reading Tree of Codes in order to appreciate it.  Additionally, Amazon says that if I order it, the book will ship in 1 to 4 MONTHS.  Huh???  Is JSF personally cutting out the omitted words just for me? 

All in all, it is a pretty wonderful day!

Still reading:  The Hidden by Tobias Hill.  OK.  I'll level with you.  The reason that I really wanted to read it is that the NYT review that I read made it sound like The Hidden would be along the same lines as The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl.  So far (220 pages in) I am still intrigued, but prepared to be disappointed.  I'll keep you posted.

Still Listening to:  Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.  I am intrigued by this one too!  I keep forgetting it is a memoir - it seems more like fiction, but is so poignant because it is real.

Museums of Love

In Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close  by Jonathan Safran Foer, the main character, Oskar, scours New York in search of someone who can answer his questions about his dad, who died in the 9/11 attacks.  One person who Oskar meets is Georgia Black, who invites Oskar in to visit the museum which she has created in honor of her husband.  It contains his baby shoes, his war medals, his report cards, old photos, etc.  Oskar is feeling  "heavy boots" about the museum, which is how Oskar refers to the type of sadness that keeps him up at night. He thinks that the museum shows how much Mrs. Black loved her husband and he assumes that she must miss him terribly, like he misses his dad.  Suddenly, in walks Mr. Black, who is now anxious to show Oskar his own museum which he has created, presumably featuring Georgia.

With these museums in mind, I read The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk, determined that I would not be fooled by the foreboding and ominous hints that the main character, Kemal, drops about the museum that he creates for his love, Fuson.  Pamuk even teased that he admired JSF, and that he was borrowing from his style, in that he introduced himself, Orhan Pamuk, as a guest at an engagement party, just as JSF uses himself as a primary character in his earlier book, Everything is Illuminated.  In fact, it was not until page 469, when Kemal states "After all, a love story that ends happily scarcely deserves more than a few sentences!" that I began to believe that this story really would be a tragedy.

The Museum of Innocence  is not a page turner, but I think that is intentional.  I got through the first 200 pages at a steady pace, but slowed down considerably from pages 200 through 450, while the pace of Kemal's relationship with Fuson stalls.  In fact, if I didn't remember Georgia Black, and wasn't so confident that it would all end well, I probably would have stopped reading.  With it all said and done, I am glad to have read Museum, but am anxious to get on to my next book.

By the way, today was the 2010 Chicago Marathon, which I so did not run, but which was the original reason behind this blog. When I first started blogging, I planned to chronicle every mile that I ran in training, and the books that I thought about while I was running.  Oh well.  I'm really not feeling heavy boots about missing it!

Next up:  Freedom by Jonathan Franzen