The Zen Leaf

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Thistle

“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” So goes the first line of Austen’s semi-satire of the old Gothic novel tradition. We follow Catherine as she goes off on her first “adventure” and manages to muddle a lot of her life by trying to relate too much to Udolpho and other Gothic novels. And of course, we also follow her as she falls in love.

Remember back in the spring, when I said I thought five chances were enough for Jane Austen and that I was giving up this book only a few chapters in? Well, I think I was suffering from major Austen burnout. For those of you who love Austen with a passion, you probably won’t understand this, but if I am exposed to her too often, I find her repetitive, monotonous, dry, and boring. When I first started reading her, I set out to read one novel per year, which felt like a sensible plan for me. There are several authors that I tend to read only on a yearly basis because too much exposure to them affects me in one way or another. Austen is one of them, but with joining a Jane Austen Book Club, I ended up reading a lot of her novels (plus modern sequels) very quickly, far quicker than I would have on my own. I think I just needed more space before I attempted Northanger Abbey.

I’ve long suspected this would be the Austen novel I’d like best. It’s different from the others, and I like the humor in it. I decided to give it a second chance right now solely because my Jane Austen Book Club is reading The Jane Austen Book Club for our January selection. I read that book back in 2008, when I’d only read one Austen book (Persuasion) and seen two movies (S&S, P&P). I knew I wanted to reread it after reading all six books. Hence, my giving NA another chance.

I’m glad I did, because this time around, I had great fun with the novel. It didn’t feel boring or dry at all to me, which proves to me that I was suffering from burnout! It probably ties with Pride & Prejudice as being my top favorite Austen novels. I loved all the pokes at Gothic novels, especially after having read some of them. My particular favorite is when John Thorpe starts talking about how novels like The Monk were the only kind he would read because they had substance in them. Ha! The Thorpes were amusing in general, and completely obnoxious, but I like that Austen downplayed the repetitive-joke humor that exists in most of her novels. I never felt like the jokes were repeated too often here.

Over all, it was a very fun experience, and I’m glad to have now made my way through the six Austen novels!

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics, humor | Leave a comment

If Not, Winter, by Sappho

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Thistle

If Not, Winter is a collection of all the fragments of poetry that remain from Sappho’s great body of work. Sappho was a singer and songwriter on the island of Lesbos, a woman who explored love with both men and women (and hence the origins of the word “lesbian” and “sapphic”) and whose fame and voice have lasted now through over 2,600 years. Her songs were recorded on papyri and much of it remains in tact only in part. Only one song remains in full. In this collection, Anne Carson has translated the fragments from papyri, as well as bits of song referred to by direct quote in other ancient sources. The book is presented in two languages, with the Greek on one side and the translation on the facing page. Where pieces are missing, that space is denoted by brackets.

This was a fascinating reading experience. I’ve never been much into poetry, you all know that, but this was different. Jason told me about this edition years ago, but I didn’t understand when he said that all the white space and fragments painted a picture for you. I didn’t understand how the white space was put together to be part of the poem. Now, I understand, because each one of these fragments tells a story. The story, of course, is incomplete, and I’m sure every reader will have a different interpretation of them. When all a poem says is “you burn me” (poem 38) or “we shall give, says father” (109) or “Leto and Niobe were beloved friends” (142), it’s almost like a writing prompt that just lets your imagination run with what might be. It was wonderful!

There were longer fragments, of course, with far more framing on the story, though still incomplete. For instance, poem 121:

but if you love us
choose a younger bed
for I cannot bear
to live with you when I am the older one

What sort of story does that call to mind for you? It’s so intriguing. It makes you dig into the space around it to try to find what Sappho was trying to say, especially when you start noticing patterns. For instance, there are four poems where she mentions her friend Atthis, a woman with whom it appears she had a romantic relationship, and a stormy one from the fragments I read. Or, at least, that’s my interpretation – because every interpretation is likely to be different.

Then there are those poems that are made up of multiple fragments, where the white space becomes even more important. For instance, poem 6:

so
]

]
]
]
]

Go [
so we may see [
]
lady

of gold arms [
]
]
doom
]

Isn’t that just fascinating?? Wouldn’t you love to know the story behind that, to know what fills up those empty spaces? And then to see the Greek side by side with the English, more Greek letters than English, but not enough that a full word can be translated, so that it shows as only blank brackets on the English side.

The cover of this book has a photo of a papyrus. I’m not sure it’s of Sappho’s work, but still, it made me appreciate the work Carson (and other translators) have had to do to keep Sappho’s songs available to us, even in fragments. I’m not sure I’ve ever been struck with just how old a work like this is, or how amazing it is that we still have access to it. I’ve read lots of ancient texts before, tons of old Greek and Roman stuff in particular, but it was years ago and I never fully comprehended the power of words coming to us on mostly-destroyed paper from the BC era. Imagine something you’ve written or said enduring thousands of years into the future! It just fills me with awe, and makes poem 147, the last I’ll quote here, very poignant, even if this isn’t at all what Sappho meant when she wrote it:

someone will remember us
I say
even in another time

Posted in 2010, Adult, Poetry | Tagged classics, favorite, LGBTQIA, translation | 1 Comment

A Wish After Midnight, by Zetta Elliott

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Thistle

Brooklyn, 2001. Fifteen year old Genna lives in the slums and dreams of getting out of her neighborhood. She wants to go to college and become a psychiatrist. Nearly every day, she goes to a local garden and wishes in the fountain there to escape her life. When that wish comes true, though, it’s not exactly what she expected. Genna finds herself in Civil War-era Brooklyn instead. It’s a premise very similar to Kindred, a book I loved earlier this year, but the experience of reading it was very different for me.

Unsurprisingly, A Wish After Midnight focuses a lot on discrimination, and not just applied to African Americans. There was prejudice against women and the Irish back in the Civil War era, and prejudice against whites and within the black community in the modern section. The first third of the book takes place solely in the present (which actually surprised me going in, as I expected to go back in time sooner), where Genna suffers through prejudice in her own neighborhood. She’s quiet, not particularly good looking, and studious, so people think she’s a snob and a teacher’s pet. She doesn’t fit in, but she also doesn’t fit in in the white world, where people look at her suspiciously because of her shabby, poor clothes and the color of her skin.

The book isn’t written in a way to only show one sort of discrimination, though. The feeling of being discriminated against is one that many people have felt, and not just because of skin tone. A Wish After Midnight is written in a way that you can sympathize and understand Genna based on your own experiences. As I read about Genna walking around feeling self-conscious, like everyone – black and white – was looking at her and judging her, I could empathize. I’m very overweight, and I know that feeling of being either stared at or completely ignored because of the way I look. I know what it feels like to have my every move scrutinized, and to be cast aside or thought of as less than human because of my weight. It was really nice to read a book that showed how multi-faceted the subject of prejudice and discrimination can be.

I especially love how Elliott juxtaposed the present-day discrimination with that of Civil War-era discrimination. To see how white Americans would hire black servants before they would hire Irish servants. To see how an interracial relationship was looked on with horror and often met with violence. It was wonderful to see how not everyone was prejudiced, and how much people worked to help each other at times. It was also great to see the discrimination against blacks balanced by discrimination against whites, which isn’t often addressed. Several of the black characters in this book hated white people on principle, without getting to know them (like Genna’s mom and boyfriend). They instantly judged the white people by their skin as well, creating a circle of discrimination. It’s good to have both sides in the book, I think.

Despite the fact that this book was similar in idea to Kindred, I got very different things out of it. I didn’t feel like it was a copy or an updated version of Kindred or anything. They are very different books, with different ideas and themes. I’m glad to have read both of them, and particularly glad to read them only a few months apart. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged historical, POC, speculative | Leave a comment

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Thistle

One day, Dash is at The Strand and finds a red notebook with some instructions in them. He follows the instructions, which eventually lead to a back-and-forth set of dares between him and the notebook’s owner, a girl named Lily whom he’s never met. The book is filled with Christmas and romance! It’s my second attempt this winter at a Christmasy sort of book.

So. I’ve loved one Cohn-Levithan duet (Nick & Norah) and disliked another (Naomi & Ely), so I went into this book hoping that it would be far more NN than NE. I would have read it either way, but thankfully Darren also made me sigh in relief when he reported that the book was more NN than NE, so I went into it without any trepidation.

The book was so much fun! I loved seeing how the dares unfolded, from the mild to the mildly creepy. It was interesting to see these two very different people work their way to each other, and wonder if it’ll ever be possible for them to stick together. I like that they wonder that too. In Dash’s words, “Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend.”

I have to admit, I liked Dash far more than Lily. Lily reminded me too much of some of the female characters from NE. I think it might just be Rachel Cohn’s style that I don’t take well, honestly. There were things in Lily’s section that mirrored all the issues I had with both other books, right down to the gay stereotyping near the end of the book. Really? Only gay teen boys would like to eat dairy products? WTF? Lily also has a lot of false starts that come…um…after she’s already run nearly the whole mile. Imagine a runner who gets almost to the finish line only to stop and question whether or not this was her race in the first place, and there you have Lily. Or Norah. Or Naomi. They always ask in the end what they should have asked in the beginning. It feels unbelievable to me, but maybe it’s just a personality type I don’t mesh well with. In any case, it was only a minor annoyance. I just wanted to explain why I love Dash’s character so much better. He felt more real to me, with the added bonus that I love Levithan’s writing.

The book was very funny and I laughed out loud a lot. I particularly got a kick out of the hysterical mother’s group, the fictional Pixar movie description, and the digs at news media. I enjoyed nearly every minute of reading (aside from the gay stereotyping in the one section, which again seems to be Cohn’s style). This was a great holiday read, fun and fast and light. Far better than my last trial with Christmasy books! Oh, and for those who were turned off the other Cohn-Levithan books because of the sex and swearing, this is a MUCH cleaner book.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | 1 Comment

Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches, by Virginia Woolf

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Thistle

This is an interesting little book that I picked up solely because I love Virginia Woolf and thought it would be fun to read through some of her writing sketches. I didn’t realize that instead it would be extracts from a journal she kept in 1909. When I first read through the pieces – I read them before reading the foreword, introduction, or commentary – I thought they were sketches (as the subtitle “and Other Sketches” suggests) of characters and scenes. In that respect, I thought the book was quite interesting. But then, when I read the rest of the parts of the book, I realized that these were journal entries, and thus not nearly as interesting to me. It didn’t help that the collection was begun with a foreword by Doris Lessing, a foreword that is biting, sarcastic, and horrible in tone, and which I half-skipped because it made me hate Lessing (a person I had no feeling about at all before). I don’t know. It was sort of like when I read the journal parts of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams collection from Sylvia Plath. They were well written, but not particularly my favorite thing to read. I really didn’t get much out of this collection, which is sad.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics, collection | Leave a comment

The Mark, by Jen Nadol

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Thistle

Don’t judge this book by its cover, all my readers who wouldn’t normally read a book like this one. Please, take a moment to read the review – The Mark is very different from what you might expect.

Cassandra – aptly named – can tell when someone’s about to die. They have a mild glow around them, and when she sees this, she knows they will be dead in a matter of hours. Cursed with this knowledge, she tries to sort through what she should do about it. Should she tell people? Would they think she’s crazy (classic Cassandra complex), or would they listen to her? If they do listen to her, is she right to warn them? Can she prevent deaths, and if so, should she? Should she interfere with fate, or is it just that person’s right time to die? If it’s their time to die, should she try to give them a chance to put things right in their world or say goodbye to loved ones? These are the questions that burden her.

I’ve wanted to read this book now for about 1.5 years, since I saw an ARC (that they weren’t giving away sadly) at ALA in summer 2009. I’m not normally into paranormal YA, but this one had a special appeal to me. See, my grandmother – as crazy as this sounds – periodically goes through something similar to this. When she meets someone who will die in the near future, she gets this sort of headache and she just knows. This has happened all her life. It’s not the only thing she can see or feel psychically, or whatever you want to call it. My grandmother knew before I did each time I got pregnant. She would inform everyone in the family, so that when I called to tell, they all knew already, even though I lived across the country and she hadn’t talked to me at all. She just knew. She knows when someone’s about to get severely ill, or go through a divorce. She saw her own father’s death in a dream months before it happened, down to the exact way he died, and tried to warn everyone, only to be ignored. She had a dream foreshadowing the death of her children, and was able to prevent it from happening by explaining the circumstances to her oldest daughter. It doesn’t happen all the time. She doesn’t know everything. But when she knows something, she knows, and we listen.

Again, I know it sounds crazy. I don’t expect anyone to believe it, and I wouldn’t believe it myself except that I’ve seen and experienced it over and over again. So you can see why a book on this subject would really appeal to me. I do admit, though, that I was leery of the book. The problem with an explosion of any genre is that books are pushed out as fast as possible to capitalize on the movement. Many times the writing, style, voice, and character development are sacrificed in the rush. I worried this would be one of those books, the sort of book I could skim through and end up feeling very meh about.

It wasn’t. I was really surprised, especially now after two months of mostly mediocre books, but Jen Nadol writes fabulously. This book was far less concept-driven and more philosophical. Cassie takes a philosophy class throughout the course of the book and learns about all different ways to think about life, the meaning of life, and duty. She struggles with all those questions I mentioned in my synopsis. She tries different ways of dealing with this thing she can do, and different ways of looking at it.

There is so much packed in here, and all these themes are so well explored. Cassie is a wonderful character, and her discoveries about herself, her family, and her strength along the way are gradual and realistic. I can’t tell you how good it was to read something so wonderful again!

There’s only one bad thing I can say about the book: I wish I hadn’t read the last four chapters. They smacked of market manipulation. They changed the book from a wonderful character introspection to a way-out-there paranormal. It went from heart-rending to completely unbelievable. And what for? Well, to me it felt like a trilogy setup, though of course I might be wrong. That’s just what it felt like. It really irritated me, though, because the book could have cut off those four chapters, adding a concluding chapter, and worked as a brilliant standalone. The reveals in those last chapters felt completely wrong for the tone of the book, and I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough. I didn’t like them at all. I don’t like the current trend towards trilogies (whether or not that’s what was going on here) and I wish more authors/publishers would just let books stay as standalones.

Personally, I’m just going to pretend those last four chapters don’t exist and I won’t be reading any sequels. I’m not going to let those last chapters ruin what was otherwise a wonderful reading experience, and I highly recommend the book without them. Jen Nadol’s writing is wonderful and she has some really deep thoughts that run through The Mark.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged psychology, revisiting, speculative | 1 Comment

The Hour Before the Dawn, by William Somerset Maugham

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Thistle

So I really thought this book was going to be the end of my reading rut. I haven’t read a book I loved loved loved since The Tapestry of Love back in early October, and when I started this lesser-known book by one of my favorite classic authors, I was immediately swept away. I loved the writing, I loved the characters, I loved everything. Until the second half of the book. I can pinpoint the exact place where it seemed like Maugham decided to change his story around completely. The second half was rushed, out of character, and sloppy. I can see now why this is a lesser known work of Maugham’s, but it makes me sad because the first half was SO GOOD. Sigh.

This is the story of a British family right around the start of WWII. It’s a large family, and there are several interwoven plotlines. There were probably three main stories, so I’m going to focus on those three here. It was the third that really sent the book into a tailspin, and yet it’s also the third that is probably the most well known.*

The first story is that of the oldest son of the family, Roger, and his wife May. Roger works for the Military Intelligence and is gone constantly. He and May grew up together and always knew they’d get married, but after eight years of marriage, May realizes that it was companionship and not love, familiarity and not feeling, that she entered the marriage with. The two are practically brother and sister, with no passion between them at all, not even at the beginning of their relationship. And now May has fallen in love with another man and wants to divorce Roger.

Maugham explores this theme a LOT in his books, but both May and Roger transcend the normal attributes that Maugham gives to his characters in this situation. At first Roger seems like a bumbling, oblivious sort of guy, easy-going but not demonstrative. He could have been carbon-copied from Edward Craddock in Mrs. Craddock. But then, he turns out to be different. He has an extremely intelligent character, crafty and underhanded in dealing with spies in the MI office, charming when he needs to be to gain someone’s trust, and really devoted to his wife, even if not in the way she needs. May is different as well. She is not passionate or hysterical, but logical, calm, and really wants to do the right thing. She doesn’t cheat on her husband, but instead acknowledges her love for this new person and wants to talk to her husband before she acts on her feelings at all. It ends up being one of those situations of two people who simply aren’t right for each other, even if they care about each other a lot. It was really fascinating to watch their story unfold.

The second story has to do with Roger’s younger brother Jim, a college-aged boy who is a conscientious objector. Their family has always been military – fathers, grandfathers, husbands, sons, everyone – and Jim’s refusal to go into war is something that shocks everyone. He is willing to go to work for England, taking the place of soldiers who have left their jobs to go to war, but he says he can not in good conscience kill another person. He’s a pacifist and believes war will lead only to bad things. This was not a very popular viewpoint at the time, and Jim endures ridicule, discrimination, and rejection.

His family, however, is extremely close-knit. It reminds me a lot of my family, honestly, the way all the siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles are all so close we might have grown up together in the same household. The bond I have with my cousins, for instance, is so strong I can’t even imagine losing one of them. It would be like losing part of myself. Jim’s family is the same way. No one in the family agrees with him, but they try not to hurt him with their pain and anger. They can’t understand him, and they avoid the subject whenever possible, but they all do as his mother says:

You’re expected to treat him as my dearly loved son. The laws of England give him the right to do what he feels is his duty. No one in my family shall blame him. I will allow none of you by anything you say or anything you do to hurt him.

All of this was accompanied by some interesting information about conscientious objectors in early 1940s England. It was a really fascinating thing to read about.

But then there came the third plot. I won’t say much about it, because it would involve a major spoiler (the above plots aren’t spoilers – they’re there from the beginning). What I will say is that it was about a spy, and far more heavily focused on the war and the tension between England and Germany. This could have been good, especially the tension part, but instead, all the other plotlines fell apart in all this. Roger and May both started doing things that were out of character and a little silly. Jim’s mother starts insulting him for no reason. The spy once had a specific personality but then changed completely near the end of the book. Jim does some things that are completely contrary to his world view. Roger’s sister Jane, who is always a gaudy, silly creature, turns into the worst kind of farce, to the point of being insulting to women in general. The whole thing just falls apart, as if Maugham set up this beautiful story and then just didn’t know where to take it, or decided to write a different story instead. How frustrating.

I love Maugham, but this is not one of his better books. The first half is gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful, and if it had gone in a completely different direction that second half, it would have been so much better. But it didn’t, so I’m left slightly disappointed. I’m still glad I found and read the book, though, and I’m definitely keeping my copy (an original hardback first edition printing, I believe, found at a library sale for 50 cents). The first half was beautiful enough for me to still want to keep it! But I do wish the second half had been better.

*As I was looking for images for this book, I discovered there was a 1944 movie with Veronica Lake that focuses on the spy plotline. Interesting! I think I’ll have to check that one out. Assuming I can find it, as it’s not on Netflix or at my library. Sigh.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics | Leave a comment

Illyria, by Elizabeth Hand

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Thistle

The Tierney family all descended from a theatre tradition, though for several generations, that tradition has been shunned. The two youngest cousins, Rogan and Maddy, both have stage inclinations though, the former to singing, the latter to acting. They are also in love with each other despite being first cousins, and have to hide that love from the rest of their family.

This was an interesting novella, part coming of age, part family saga, part critique on talent versus training, part star-crossed love story. I enjoyed it, despite some big flaws, so I want to get those flaws out of the way first in this review so I can concentrate on the parts I really loved.

First, it’s historical fiction, but at times seems inconsistent with the timeline. I had a hard time placing the era, which I only discovered late in the book must have been the 60s or early 70s. At the beginning I thought it must be early 20th century, but then every once in awhile there would be a very modern reference from the narrator looking back over her life, so I knew it had to be closer. That was only a small thing though. The biggest flaw for me was that at times there were distractions to the narrative. I loved reading about the odd love story, and the theatre stuff, and the different paths of the two cousins. Periodically, though, there would be some side plotlines that seemed to lead into new territory that were then just abandoned. I felt like the book could have done with less of those and more development on the main points.

Okay. So those were the flaws. They kept me from saying this is a wonderful book and instead I’ll say it’s simply a good book. I enjoyed it despite the problems. The reason I think I loved it so much was because of a juxtaposition of talent and training, as well as the idea of burning out versus never shining as brightly. Maddy says, near the end:

In love, as in theatre, I had never had any magic. True, I never flamed out. And I never shone, not even for a moment, the way my cousin had.

Rogan has a beautiful voice that captivates everyone who hears it. When he uses it, he uses it fully, never conserving himself or treating himself well. He smokes and gets hooked on drugs, and his performance record is spotty at best, but still alive. Maddy, on the other hand, has only a small amount of inborn talent. She can’t captivate people on stage the way Rogan can, and she can’t sing at all. Everything she does in acting, she must learn. She must be taught. She has enough talent and dedication to learn, but not enough to ever become a star. But because she is focused so much more on training, whereas Rogan has no reason to ever really train, he is a star that burns bright and dies, while she is the moon that steadily reflects on and supports another person’s glory.

I used to think about this a lot, especially when it came to music. I remember when Kurt Cobain killed himself in the mid-90s and people saying it was such a waste, so much pure, raw talent gone in that instant, but then others questioned that position. Perhaps suicide wasn’t the best answer, but what if he’d just quit, at the height of his career, as many amazing musicians do? What if he quit before he burned out and faded away? There was that question – is it better to be steady and have a long career, even if you never get to be that star, or is it better to burst into a firework that awes people, and then disappear?

It’s not just in music, but in all areas of art. Think about it in books. There are some authors (Harper Lee is the first to come to mind) who wrote something brilliant and then never published again. There are some authors who wrote something brilliant, but everything else they ever wrote was just mediocre and forgotten. Then there are authors who wrote multiple works, maybe none of which were brilliant, but which add up to a huge body of great-if-not-brilliant books. Is one of these paths better than another?

This book really got me thinking, and that’s why I liked it so much.

One other note: I think this is meant to be a YA novel (or at least I’ve seen people classify it that way on GoodReads), but it didn’t feel like YA. Sure, the protagonists were young and they grow into adulthood, so that there’s a certain amount of coming-of-age in it, but the ideas in it felt more adult than YA to me. YA-friendly, if you don’t mind drugs and some heavy sex scenes, but still very adult in theme. Maybe that’s just what I got out of it, but it didn’t feel like any other YA novel I’ve ever read, so I’m classifying it as adult for the purposes of this review.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged psychology | Leave a comment

Gone, by Lisa McMann

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Thistle

My thoughts on this book followed the same pattern as the last two in the series. It was a fun series to read but nothing earth-shattering or particularly memorable. Each book made for a fun afternoon of reading. I think I probably liked this book more than the others because it got a little more personal, though at the same time it felt disconnected from the rest of the series. It also had a couple things in the writing that grated on my nerves, but that’s been the same since the beginning. Anyway, it was fun. Nothing more to say than that, really.

Book 1: Wake
Book 2: Fade

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged speculative | Leave a comment

Protected: Let It Snow, by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Thistle

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged collection | Enter your password to view comments.