Let’s start out with a confession about how much I resist following the madding crowd, often irrationally. A lifetime rebel without a cause.
When a book (or a restaurant or a museum exhibit or whatever) is very popular before I personally discover it, I develop a resistance to whatever is being blessed by the majority—this means that, for example, I never saw E.T. or read The DaVinci Code or saw the King Tut’s tomb exhibit or ate at Postrio or The French Laundry.
So it’s a really good thing that the P-Town Library book group read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo more than a year ago, right after it was released in the US. At that time, I knew nothing about Stieg Larsson or the Millenium Trilogy. That allowed me to read Volume I without feeling like I was a lemming, following the crowd. Because in this instance--and probably in many others--the madding crowd was right. Stieg Larsson, with no prior fiction-writing experience at all, created a set of characters in situations that are more compelling than almost anything I’ve ever read in my long life as a compulsive reader!
I can’t separate this book from the two that followed and, according to our Research Director, Ms. Brenda, who heard a lecture from the guy who translated all 3 books from Swedish into English, they really were for the most part intended to be 3 parts of a single story, except that no one would publish a 1500-page novel. That being said, to me, the first book was the most conventional of the 3, with a structure similar to a traditional mystery novel: establish characters, establish antagonists and protagonists, get main character(s) somehow involved in the mystery, unravel the mystery, tie up issues, end book. That fact didn’t make me dislike the book in any way, by the way. On its own, it was one of the most gripping mysteries I’ve ever read, but by the 2nd book, Larsson seemed to find his footing, and removed the need for an external mystery to set events in motion. His main cast of characters is interesting enough that they can carry an entire book simply by interacting with each other, in both good and very bad ways. The protagonists are Mikael, Lisbeth, Erika, the staff at Millenium, Annika, the few political characters with some integrity. The antagonists are the Swedish government and financial operatives, kingpins and worker bees in the sex trade, and Lisbeth’s father and brother, whom she first meets (and then kills) during the course of the 3 books.
In the first book, Lisbeth and Mikael interact personally, work together to solve the Vanger mystery, and have a brief affair. By the second book, their characters are so established and distinct that the need for them to interact directly is gone. They can contact and assist each other by communicating almost entirely through email and, when necessary, by hacking into each other’s hard-drives or by sending coded messages to each other through a world-wide band of above-the-law techno-outlaws.
Mikael is a character we can instantly like and identify with. He is a left-winger whose radicalism hasn’t softened over time. I think for the 4 of us, his causes make sense to us and we mostly land firmly on his side in any pressing social or political issues. What I’m most curious about is why so many people, including all of us, LOVE Lisbeth. On paper, she is antisocial, mentally unstable, capable of shocking acts of violence in order to right what she personally sees as a wrong. She can’t sustain relationships. She sometimes acts with remarkable kindness, mostly toward other lost souls like herself, but for the most part, she’s a confirmed loner who trusts nearly no one. She commits acts of horrible cruelty toward those who have been cruel to her or cruel to people to with whom she’s had some kind of positive connection. When she can, she steals from the rich to help the underdogs but also allows herself to benefit personally from her thefts. She is completely unapologetic about any of her actions.
So what makes us identify with her and love her?
I turn this question over to you, my beloved little band of bitter kittens!
And on the question of buy it, borrow it or skip it: I am firmly on the side of: BUY IT AND DON’T LOAN IT OUT! These are books I can see re-reading regularly. Now, my Volume 1 is in the hands of a friend of a friend, Book 2 is on my Kindle, and the librarian who runs the P-Town book group loaned all of us, in sequence, the copy of Book 3 her husband got her from Amazon.com.UK, before it was available in the US. So I will have to buy another copy of Volume 1 and grab Volume 3 off the Ethernet.
Buy, baby, buy is my advice!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Attending Hay Festival could be one of our goals!
As Ann recently said to me ... "hours you will never get back" and so I want you to be in the same boat. I have become totally hooked on following the Hay Festival . Held in that town in Wales filled with book stores. Here are the dates for 2011: May 26 - June 5. I have read most of the RSS feed supported by The Guardian newspaper, watched many minutes of author interviews and now trying to determine if there is a Hulu for the UK so I can watch every episode of The Book Show. The RSS feeds were so wonderful and when I got to this one today about the "little book club", had to share. This could be us next year!
This little book club went to the Hay festival
How one book club expands its repertoire by going on an annual tour to the Hay festival
In a cottage outside Hay there is the clink of car keys dropping into a bowl on the coffee table as a group of teachers, architects, housing managers and IT officers in 1970s shirts and dresses take turns to read from the "lost" Booker prize novels of 1970.
The car keys and the background music – Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush, of course – are little jokes to add an extra dash of that decade to the opening night of this book club's annual trip to the Hay festival. The 10 university friends set up the group five years ago and every year head to Hay for a special session of the club, where they mix nightly discussions of their set texts with a daily trawl of undiscovered and familiar authors at the festival.
Caroline Chatwin, 32, a criminology lecturer based in Canterbury, set up the club so the old friends could expand their reading. Despite being dispersed across Britain, the 10 meet every two months to discuss their chosen book, ending the night by giving it their mark out of 10 – by simultaneously closing their eyes and holding out their fingers.
The highlight, however, is "book club on tour" at Hay. "It's become a staple of the calendar," says Jon Twemlow, a teacher from Sheffield. "It's been really good to see authors we've discussed and discovering authors we wouldn't have otherwise known about," says Rhona Griffiths, who is also a teacher.
If that does not sound very rock'n'roll, the group don't start formal discussions of Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat until 11.30pm, when IT officer Mike Brophy stands up and announces: "I really like this book but I'm too drunk to explain why." But debate is sparked up and continues until the small hours when they mark Spark with a 7.5/10. At Hay the next day, the group heads off en masse to see Andrea Levy. Members so far have loved Kazuo Ishiguro ("very self-possessed"), Quentin Blake and Grayson Perry. Each year, Hay offers up surprises. Jan Morris was their big discovery last year, and members are already buying armfuls of books, which they will nominate for discussions. But Hay does not always turn them on to their favourites. Three years ago, they were persuaded to pick up Martin Amis's Yellow Dog. Its final score? 0.64/10, the lowest ever.
Monday, June 7, 2010
How to Add a Picture to a Posting
Adding pictures to your posting is easy ... and yes, that's what I say about all of the posting stuff. These instructions are for adding a picture to your post ... not to your account (which shows up on comments).
Step 1. have the picture stored somewhere on your computer storage (hard drive, flash drive, etc). If you're using a picture from the internet (i.e. book cover) you need to copy and paste it to your computer first.
Step 1. have the picture stored somewhere on your computer storage (hard drive, flash drive, etc). If you're using a picture from the internet (i.e. book cover) you need to copy and paste it to your computer first.Step 2. open a NEW POST and add your text (it's easier to manipulate the picture if there is text in the posting first)
Step 3. click on the INSERT IMAGE icon (looks like a little picture)
Step 4. click on BROWSE and find your picture
Step 5. when you see your picture in the pop-up box, click OKAY
Steo 6. once the picture is in your posting, it will have a bar that lets you re-size and move it; if the bar disappears, click on the picture to get it back.
Voila, you have a picture in your posting. BTW, that's me with my mother and brother, Bob.
Another BTW, about "tags" ... you do not have to use tags ... posting and adding pictures work without tags.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
OK, Set for May Books...Oh, Wait, It's June...
I am feeling a tiny bit hampered because I loaned my copy to a friend who first hated it and then LOVED LOVED LOVED it, so much so that she loaned it to a person I don't know at all, and I have a sinking feeling that my copy will never be seen again, so I will be forced to do my comments based on being 15 months out from having read the book.
I will pull an initiating comment (see, I made up a new book club term) later this week, after I finish Olive Kitteridge for the P-Town Library Book Group and have 5 social lunches out (it's either feast or famine with me) and prepare myself mentally for having my lumbar MRI done. But any of you who are chomping at the bit to comment, please go ahead. We've all read the book and love it, I think, so it doesn't much matter who starts.
And I swear that someday, I'll figure out how to format my posts. Until then...
Susan, Techno-phobe
Noah's Compass - Anne Tyler
First, I must admit that I am a big Anne Tyler fan. Others may get bogged down with the slow pace, but I found it oddly comforting. Probably because I am usually going full bore and I appreciate reading about people who live another life.
Anyway, this story follows Liam Pennywell, whose life just didn't turn out the way he expected. This fact surprises him which is odd because he is pretty passive. I thought that I wouldn't like him - that I would just want to shake him, but he was compelling in an odd way. His relationships with his children and ex-wife are complicated and he does stumble. No major life revelations or Hollywood ending. Just a deep look into someone who, although multi-layered, you'd probably just walk by on the street.
Recommend: Hard to say - I like to have her hardbacks in my collection, but I suppose borrowing it would work for everyone else.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Extra Reading Article from the London Times About the Glories of Being in a Book Group
It was ten years ago and I was a new mum at the local school. My son bounced into the playground and made friends while I stood on the fringes wondering what the parent protocol might be and feeling slightly awkward. Conversations were eventually struck up, coffees drunk and then, after a few months, came an invitation. Would I like to join a book club?
It was like being in an Enid Blyton story; I was being asked to join a secret society. So I was flattered — and then worried. Book clubs presumably read books and I did not do that. Oh, I read my kind of book — the kind where the writer was dead and themes were deep — but I could not possibly read contemporary fiction.
“Do you read books by living authors?” I asked. Instead of retracting the offer the women rubbed their hands together, delighted with the challenge of converting me to modernity. I will admit that I accepted more as a chance to meet other mums than to broaden my literary horizons. I held out little hope of actually enjoying any of the books.
The first novel chosen was Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I did not enjoy it. It tried too hard to bring multicultural Britain to life and, while the melting pot that is London is a tempting subject, I did not want to have to fall into it and drown among all its characters; there were far, far too many for me. It explored too many themes and was not as well written as the Gogol I had just finished. But I remember the experience of encountering it through the group vividly; the reading of it, the ensuing discussion, the ripe Brie and grapes we munched while discussing its flaws.
“It wasn’t quite the right choice was it?” the woman who picked it will say even now.The more polite club members will say it was fine, while I agree it was a disappointment. But it was not a dreadful book, the cheese and wine were more than fine —and my new friends were fun.
So we moved on to the next book and my heart sank: it was Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams. It sounded awful. It would surely be whimsical and soppy and indulgent and quite possibly dull and earnest to boot. One love letter is more than enough for me, I thought.“Are you sure?” I asked, “I would never pick up something with a title like that.” I dutifully read it, though — and that was when I became a true, even zealous, book club fan. Four Letters is remarkable; a moving and quietly beautiful novel and one I would never have read without my book club. The other members did not have to gloat, for I freely admitted my folly.
In some respects a book club sounds counterintuitive. Reading is a solitary pursuit, an opportunity to shut out the world of work or the drone of the television. For years I would, after devouring a great novel, feel low upon finishing it. It was worse than the end of a holiday. I had been part of a whole new world, a separate society, an individual’s trials and tribulations, murder and redemption or love and hate and then, with the turn of a final page, it was gone.
Book clubs are a cure for that sudden onset of depression. Instead of feeling lost upon finishing a captivating novel, you feel a buzz of anticipation. What did the rest of the gang make of it? You do not have to foist the book you have just enjoyed upon someone and have to wait for them to decide to read it. With a book club you know a group of people are reading it at the same time as you. They drop hints. The book is getting stodgy or it has picked up after a slow start or have you got to the part where the priest . . ? No, I won’t spoil it.
The gathering represents closure and a pain-free way to start another book. Instead of saying to no one in particular, with a deep sigh, “Ah, that was so moving” and being looked at as if you are either slightly simple or overly bookish, you can say it and receive a knowing nod or an informed shake of the head.
A book club can help to sort out the niggling little details that never quite made sense. Did the boy see the murder or imagine he had seen it? Together you assemble the clues and even if you conclude that the author was deliberately obtuse and we are not supposed to reach an answer at least you can share the frustration and thereby neutralise it.
The rise of the book club has transformed the way we feel about reading. Where there were geeks there are now trend setters. Books are cool. Books are common currency. “What team do you support?” and “What are you reading right now?” are interchangeable in the realm of casual conversation. It is more interesting to discover if someone has read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road rather than seen the film. No harm at all in consuming both, of course, and many book clubs will watch together the film version of a book and then decide which was best. It is not always the book that wins, either: Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement and the film made of it being a case in point.
Book clubs were spreading like a virus before Oprah and Richard & Judy launched their own television versions. Both were hugely successful because they did what all good book clubs should do. They pushed their audiences. Oprah asked a nation to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez — and no one batted an eye. Richard & Judy’s readers took on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Books were chosen, not because they were safe bets, but because they would be loved.
It is ultimately all about shared experience. Why, given that we can replay practically every TV show that we like, do most of us prefer to watch EastEnders and Britain’s Got Talent when they are first screened? It is because we want to join in the chat about them afterwards at work or school. It is so much more fun if you know millions of other people are gasping or giggling at the same moment that you are. The same is true of books.
It is less painful to read a flawed novel if you are not alone and more pleasurable to devour a superb one if you know you can share your thoughts almost immediately. A good book will always make you feel special, as if the author had you in mind. It will always transport you away from your sofa or deckchair to Victorian Clerkenwell or outer space. When you land back in your chair, though, it is rather nice to be able to talk about the journey with someone who has been there too.
It was like being in an Enid Blyton story; I was being asked to join a secret society. So I was flattered — and then worried. Book clubs presumably read books and I did not do that. Oh, I read my kind of book — the kind where the writer was dead and themes were deep — but I could not possibly read contemporary fiction.
“Do you read books by living authors?” I asked. Instead of retracting the offer the women rubbed their hands together, delighted with the challenge of converting me to modernity. I will admit that I accepted more as a chance to meet other mums than to broaden my literary horizons. I held out little hope of actually enjoying any of the books.
The first novel chosen was Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I did not enjoy it. It tried too hard to bring multicultural Britain to life and, while the melting pot that is London is a tempting subject, I did not want to have to fall into it and drown among all its characters; there were far, far too many for me. It explored too many themes and was not as well written as the Gogol I had just finished. But I remember the experience of encountering it through the group vividly; the reading of it, the ensuing discussion, the ripe Brie and grapes we munched while discussing its flaws.
“It wasn’t quite the right choice was it?” the woman who picked it will say even now.The more polite club members will say it was fine, while I agree it was a disappointment. But it was not a dreadful book, the cheese and wine were more than fine —and my new friends were fun.
So we moved on to the next book and my heart sank: it was Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams. It sounded awful. It would surely be whimsical and soppy and indulgent and quite possibly dull and earnest to boot. One love letter is more than enough for me, I thought.“Are you sure?” I asked, “I would never pick up something with a title like that.” I dutifully read it, though — and that was when I became a true, even zealous, book club fan. Four Letters is remarkable; a moving and quietly beautiful novel and one I would never have read without my book club. The other members did not have to gloat, for I freely admitted my folly.
In some respects a book club sounds counterintuitive. Reading is a solitary pursuit, an opportunity to shut out the world of work or the drone of the television. For years I would, after devouring a great novel, feel low upon finishing it. It was worse than the end of a holiday. I had been part of a whole new world, a separate society, an individual’s trials and tribulations, murder and redemption or love and hate and then, with the turn of a final page, it was gone.
Book clubs are a cure for that sudden onset of depression. Instead of feeling lost upon finishing a captivating novel, you feel a buzz of anticipation. What did the rest of the gang make of it? You do not have to foist the book you have just enjoyed upon someone and have to wait for them to decide to read it. With a book club you know a group of people are reading it at the same time as you. They drop hints. The book is getting stodgy or it has picked up after a slow start or have you got to the part where the priest . . ? No, I won’t spoil it.
The gathering represents closure and a pain-free way to start another book. Instead of saying to no one in particular, with a deep sigh, “Ah, that was so moving” and being looked at as if you are either slightly simple or overly bookish, you can say it and receive a knowing nod or an informed shake of the head.
A book club can help to sort out the niggling little details that never quite made sense. Did the boy see the murder or imagine he had seen it? Together you assemble the clues and even if you conclude that the author was deliberately obtuse and we are not supposed to reach an answer at least you can share the frustration and thereby neutralise it.
The rise of the book club has transformed the way we feel about reading. Where there were geeks there are now trend setters. Books are cool. Books are common currency. “What team do you support?” and “What are you reading right now?” are interchangeable in the realm of casual conversation. It is more interesting to discover if someone has read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road rather than seen the film. No harm at all in consuming both, of course, and many book clubs will watch together the film version of a book and then decide which was best. It is not always the book that wins, either: Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement and the film made of it being a case in point.
Book clubs were spreading like a virus before Oprah and Richard & Judy launched their own television versions. Both were hugely successful because they did what all good book clubs should do. They pushed their audiences. Oprah asked a nation to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez — and no one batted an eye. Richard & Judy’s readers took on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Books were chosen, not because they were safe bets, but because they would be loved.
It is ultimately all about shared experience. Why, given that we can replay practically every TV show that we like, do most of us prefer to watch EastEnders and Britain’s Got Talent when they are first screened? It is because we want to join in the chat about them afterwards at work or school. It is so much more fun if you know millions of other people are gasping or giggling at the same moment that you are. The same is true of books.
It is less painful to read a flawed novel if you are not alone and more pleasurable to devour a superb one if you know you can share your thoughts almost immediately. A good book will always make you feel special, as if the author had you in mind. It will always transport you away from your sofa or deckchair to Victorian Clerkenwell or outer space. When you land back in your chair, though, it is rather nice to be able to talk about the journey with someone who has been there too.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time to talk about Flave and Paloma
This time around I actually managed to finish the main selection for this month. Perhaps the subtle pressure of being the May chairman had something to do with it!?
Flave
I selected The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie because it had gotten a lot of attention within the mystery reading community when the book came out in 2009 and it was on my “to be read stack”. Many authors have benefited from such attention and their series were off and running. Apparently Bradley has agreed to 3 or maybe it is 5 more books to complete the arc of this story.
Not really sure why by the end I was indifferent. Perhaps because it didn’t really matter that Flave was 11-years old. Had I gotten tired of her riding her bike around the countryside. Had I gotten tired of passages like the following:
I hated Mrs. Mullet’s seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so, I wanted to clamber up onto the table, and with a sausage on the end of a fork as my scepter, shout in my best Laurence Olivier voice, “will no one rid us of this turbulent pastry cook?” (p. 49)
The villagers still held novenas to pray she wouldn’t come out of retirement. (p. 62)
Seconds later the two of us were doubled over, hands covering our mouths, hopping about the room, snorting in unison like a pair of trained seals. (p. 90)
Years of practice-come hell or high water-have given her the left hand of a Joe Louis and the right hand of a Beau Brummell (or so Daffy says). (p. 104)
“What’s up, Dogger?” I asked lightly, trying to make it sound a little bit – but not too much – like Bugs Bunny. (p. 110)
One moment his cheeks were puffed out like the face of the winds that blow across medieval maps, and the next they were as hollow as a horse trader’s. (p. 176)
Charles Darwin had once pointed out that the fiercest competition for survival came from one’s own tribe, and as the fifth of six children – and with three older sisters – he was obviously in a position to know what he was talking about. (p. 224)
While clever, funny and creating a tone, could an 11-year really be in possession of such information. Okay it is fiction, maybe it does not matter. Just let it go and enjoy the affect. But then my practical side surfaces and I think, okay how can this knowledge be explained: she listened to the radio, Flave has been reading since she came out of the womb, they have a subscription to every newspaper printed in Britain, there is one or maybe many amazing libraries in this house, etc. Hmmmmmm?!
And now for something completely different. If you were wondering about that composition of Peitro Domenico Paradisi “Toccata” that Flave waxes on about on page 105 “the greatest musical accomplishment in the entire history of the world…” Click on this link http://www.ilike.com/artist/Pietro+Domenico+Paradisi/track/Toccata+in+La .
I was pleased to know that all my movie going and TV watching has not been in vain. I got the reference on p. 283. “Too late! Too late! The maiden cried. Curfew shall not ring tonight!” Remember that scene in Desk Set when the computer, EMMARAC, is printing out all the stanza’s of the narrative poem “Curfew must not ring tonight” and Catherine Hepburn’s character, Bunny Watson, is quoting from memory? See all experiences will eventually be useful and dare I say “connected”.
So did I like anything? Yes I like the embryo relationship presented between Flave and Dogger, which I assume will continue in all the books. Dogger appears to be the only one who is really looking out for people in the house. Which reminds me, what was that long chapter with the Father unburdening himself, in the prison cell? Doesn’t he spend the rest of the book behaving like a hermit, a recluse, a non-parental unit? Also I was completely charmed by the nicknames of the other two sisters: Feely for Ophelia and Daffy for Daphne.
My Vote: BORROW IT!
Paloma
Much less to say about The Elegance of the Hedgehog because I have not finished reading this book. And now I have to admit to skipping or at best scanning the “philosophy” chapters. What can I say? I am a gal who is all about the characters in the story!!!
My Vote: BORROW IT!
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