The Zen Leaf

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert (audio)

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Thistle

After a rough divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert set off on a year’s journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia. This book is her memoir of that year.

I’ve considered reading this book for years now, but never really had any motivation to do so. It seemed kind of new agey, not quite something I’d enjoy. But then I saw the preview for the movie and the scenery looked so pretty that I decided to try an audio version of the book. I figured, why not? All three of those countries, especially Indonesia, are ones I’m interested in.

There seems to be a fairly universal book blogger hatred towards Eat, Pray, Love, from what I can tell. For myself, the book wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t great, either, but it didn’t bother me as it seems to bother so many others. It was easy to listen to and I wasn’t offended by Gilbert’s journey or the way she went about trying to find herself. Her depression didn’t bother me, and I didn’t think she should just “stop whining” because she has so many wonderful things (something I’ve heard several people say, which bothers me because having dealt with depression myself, I know it doesn’t matter how many good things you have. Good things don’t fight depression). I didn’t mind that she got all semi-spiritual, because I didn’t see this book as a how-to guide for my own journey. I saw it as one woman’s personal journey, and I figure hey, she’s allowed to experience these things however she wishes to experience them.

So having got that out of the way, I’ll tell you what did bother me about this book – it was far too easy to see the hand of the writer in it. Of course, in a memoir, the narrator and the writer are obviously the same person, but the narrative voice and the writer’s hand are two different things. The narrator simply tells her story. The writer makes that story presentable to an audience, and in this case, the writer tried way too hard. It was all these little things. For instance, if Gilbert made a big deal about a word or phrase, you could bet everything you owned that somewhere, full circle, we would come back to that word or phrase and the coming back to it was meant to be “poignant.” That was very cheesy. There were lots of little tricks in there that were eye-rollingly groan-worthy.

But! Beyond those little tricks, I actually enjoyed listening to Gilbert’s story. She didn’t take the same path I would have taken, but I felt like she was sincere in the way she traveled. That sincerity is, to me, the most important thing in a memoir, and so I appreciated it and respected Gilbert for that. I didn’t always agree with her (Venice is NOT sombre!), but I could respect her opinion. I did think some of her ideas were a little silly, but she didn’t try to force them on me, so I could just agree to disagree with her.

Oddly, the whole time I was listening, I kept thinking how much better this book would have worked as fiction rather than memoir. Of course I know that it’s nonfiction and shouldn’t be treated like fiction, but I couldn’t help thinking how much better it would have flowed with less random interlude stories and more story arc. Ironically, though, the movie version was far more fictional, and I didn’t like it at all! They changed a lot and added a bunch of pointless conflict to increase melodrama and make it more cinematic. It was pretty, but the story was awful. Jason and I both watched it and both hated it. Funny, considering that a preview for the movie is what got me to read the book in the first place…

Performance: This audiobook was read by the author. It was, as per usual, read way too slowly, so it was perfect double-speed material. I liked the reading mostly, but was bothered when Gilbert would imitate the accents of the people she met. I tend to cringe when I hear people imitate accents in general, though, so maybe that’s just a pet peeve of mine.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged Asia, audio, divinity, food, nonfiction | 1 Comment

Troll: A Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Thistle

Mikael (aka Angel) has just broken up with his boyfriend to date a new guy, but the new guy, conflicted about his sexuality, rejects him the night they go out. Mikael returns home, drunk and dejected, to find a baby troll outside his apartment building. He takes the troll in and begins to care for it as if it was a pet, and an unusual relationship develops between them.

This was one of the most bizarre stories I’ve read in a very, very long time. It takes place in a world nearly identical to ours, with the big exception that trolls actually do exist. They are wild animals, but very intelligent as well, and much like the legends you hear of our elusive fairy creatures such as Bigfoot or the Chupacabra, humans rarely get a glimpse of them. But accepting the fact that in this world, there are trolls, the rest of the story is also really, really bizarre.

There are many elements to it. There is Mikael’s downstairs neighbor, a mail-order Filipino bride with an abusive husband. There’s Mikael’s odd relationships with three different men. And then there’s Mikael’s relationship with the troll itself, who is eventually named Pessi. The relationship starts as something almost parent-child in nature, but grows into something more…bestial…after a time. The whole book is punctuated every few chapters with excerpts from books (both real and fictional, I believe, though I can’t be sure) all about trolls.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this book. The concept was interesting and I was hooked right away. Then the book got a little too weird for me, and yet, I just had to keep reading. I was fascinated and sort of scornful all at the same time. Near the climax, it took a really interesting turn, but then fell apart at the end again. I don’t know. It was definitely a very different experience and I don’t regret reading it, but I’m not sure I fully understood the point. I read a couple reviews that said the trolls represented the more animal, instinctual part of a human being, and I guess I can see that, but I didn’t feel like all the disparate elements came together into a cohesive whole enough for me to get anything out of the book. Maybe some of it was lost in translation. I don’t know. In the end, I think it just wasn’t for me.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged LGBTQIA, speculative, translation, WTF moments | Leave a comment

Passing, by Nella Larsen

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Thistle

One day as Irene is visiting Chicago from New York, she meets up with an old friend of hers from childhood, Clare. Both women are African American, but pale-skinned enough that they can “pass” as white. Irene has chosen not to “pass,” but Clare has slipped into white society to the extent of marrying an extremely racist white man. This book deals both with the nature of Irene’s relationship with Clare and that of her relationship with her husband in New York as well.

I really enjoyed the first half of this novella. Before I read Karen’s review of this book, I’d never heard of “passing” at all. I’ve known African Americans who were very pale-skinned, but I never thought about that being an active tool for changing one’s life back in the age that this book takes place. It was interesting, because it showed three different women, all pale enough to “pass,” and the ways that they lived. Clare lived a very dangerous and precarious life with a racist husband. Gertrude, another childhood friend, had married a man she’d grown up with, so he knew about her race even though she “passed” for white in society. Irene never “passed,” though she used her coloring to defy rules of restaurants, hotels, etc who would keep her out because of her race. The juxtaposition of these three different women, especially when they all meet Clare’s husband together, was fascinating.

The second half of the novel dealt more with Irene’s troubled relationship with her husband. I felt like this part of the story detracted from the central narrative set up in the beginning. Actually, I felt like I’d stepped out of one story and was now in a completely different one. The two came back together, in ways that were chilling, but I did feel like much of the second half of the story meandered too far away from the center. If more had been written about Irene’s homelife before meeting Clare, or the two plots had been interwoven more, I think it would have worked better. There was just a certain amount of disjointedness in the flow, and I felt the end message was far different from what the beginning of the book said it would be.

I wanted to read more about “passing” and the consequences of living a life that denies who you really are. It was interesting to hear about Clare’s aching to go back to her home and her roots. It’s the same way I imagine a refugee or someone in exile must feel, unable to safely go home again. That was the part that interested me. I wish that had stayed the central focus of the novella. It didn’t, and what became the center was okay, but not what I was looking for.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics, POC | Leave a comment

Mondays in the Middle East, by David Cross

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Thistle

Mondays in the Middle East is a collection of emails. David Cross and his family lived in the Middle East for many years, where he studied the culture. Every week on Monday he would send an email home to friends/family as a way of giving updates on what was going on in his world. These emails usually contained cultural stories, similarities or differences, often with a bit of humor to them. The emails in this collection talk about things that happened in Oman, Bahrain, and Egypt, though primarily the first two.

I’ve mentioned in the past that my sister has spent years in the Middle East, first in Yemen and now for the last three years in Palestine. She comes back to the US for a few months every year, and the stories she relates about her experiences there are very similar to the way the emails in this book were written. Jason asked me, when he found out what this book was about, if these usually-funny anecdotes were written in a way that treated the people in the Middle East as “silly little foreigners.” So many Americans, I’m sad to say, often treat other cultures this way, but I’m glad to say that these stories were not at all like that. They were far more like the ones my sister tells, with full respect for the culture, and often poking fun at the respective narrator for bumbling around trying to figure out what he/she is supposed to be doing. I never felt like David Cross thought of the cultures he was living in as inferior or silly or wrong. They were different than his Midwest-Wisconsin culture in some ways, similar in others. He was able to compare and contrast without any sort of judgement, which was lovely.

There isn’t too much else I can say about the collection. I laughed quite a lot, I learned about Bahrain and Oman (and definitely want to travel to both now!), and there were several stories Cross told that made me get all sentimental and almost weepy. I’ve not spent much time in the Middle East myself, just ten days in Palestine when my sister got married, but I recognized a lot of cultural things, particularly the friendliness and generosity of many of the people in that region. My favorite story was when Cross recounted the efforts an Egyptian salesman took to make him feel welcome and happy. This man spent hours of his time and a (comparative) good amount of his money in just being friendly. That friendliness is something I loved about that short time I spent in the Middle East and what I think very few Americans see when they hear news stories about that part of the world. In a time when “Arab” and “Muslim” has become synonymous with “terrorist” in the minds of so many in our country, it’s books like this one that really show that those things aren’t really one at the same. Cross really shows just how beautiful and wonderful a culture different from ours can be.

I should mention one other thing about the collection – the only thing that bothered me in it. Each email ended with the phrase, “that’s just another Monday in the Middle East.” Because these were sent as a series of emails once a week for many years, this was probably just fine for reading on the original schedule. However, sitting down to read twenty emails in a row one afternoon, the phrase becomes irritating very quickly. To make sure it didn’t influence my feelings on the collection as a whole, I just trained myself not to read the last sentence of each email, which worked pretty well for me.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged Middle East, nonfiction, POC | Leave a comment

Mrs. Craddock, by William Somerset Maugham

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Thistle

When Bertha Ley falls in love with a farmer on her family’s land, Edward Craddock, she flies against convention to marry beneath her. Her love is passionate, violent, and irrational, while Edward’s love for her is calm, sensible, and steady. Due to this inequality, Bertha is often more miserable than happy as the years pass.

This is a book about an unequal marriage, about the contrast between expectations and reality, and about disillusionment. It’s an adult coming-of-age story of sorts. Bertha’s violent romantic sentiment doesn’t go well with Edward’s equanimity. His only passion is for his Country and his Duty, and everything else he takes with complete calm. Bertha’s aunt, Miss Ley, makes a very telling statement on the inequality of their marriage:

…for Bertha…the book of life is written throughout in italics; for Edward it is all in the big round hand of the copy-book heading. Don’t you think it will make the reading of the book somewhat difficult?

Bertha is slowly brought to misery by her unequal marriage, slowly brought to see the truth – that her husband isn’t who she imagined him to be. She, like so many people, put her own expectations onto him, blinded herself to the truth because she was in love. What did she care for his faults? Faults made him all the more beautiful…until they inconvenience her. She accuses Edward of selfishness all throughout the book, but in truth, she is just as selfish. All the characters are.

You see the same sort of relationship echoed in multiple ways in this book. One half of the relationship wants to be loved, the other half is fairly indifferent and takes advantage of that love. For example, Bertha unconsciously plays the same role with her friend Fanny Glover as Edward plays to her. Her friendship with Fanny is not romantic, but Fanny is a lonely woman who wants nothing more than to have a real friend, and Bertha wouldn’t even notice if she disappeared, and treats her that way. Sometimes she goes right from chastising Edward for neglecting her to neglecting Fanny in the same afternoon. It really shows just how blind Bertha is.

I first read this book ten years ago, the first week of 2001. I really connected with Bertha, all the parts of her. I knew what it felt like to be overly sentimental, to be in love with love, to feel aggrieved when my emotions were treated like they were nothing more than silliness or due to fatigue. I knew what it felt like to go from one extreme of love to the other extreme of hatred in a moment of severe disillusionment, a circle of intense emotions skipping from one end to the other so much more easily than growing indifferent. I felt everything that she felt, even as I knew she was acting like a fool. Now, a decade later, I still feel for her. I still love Bertha despite her blindness and foolishness. I know what it feels like to be that young in mind, and then to grow up too fast and feel far above your age. Maugham captured that personality and those emotions perfectly.

This is still one of my favorite books by Maugham. There is so much in here that I’m having trouble parsing out what I want to talk about. I could probably go on for quite a lot longer than this, but I shouldn’t. I could talk about Maugham’s ripping apart the sort of politician Edward Craddock becomes, or about Miss Ley’s standoffish cynicism, or how the false idol Bertha holds in Edward’s place in her mind gets stripped away, or Bertha’s almost-affair with a boy nearly ten years younger than her, or more. There is so much in this little book! But I’ll stop now. I’ve said enough. I hope more people will read this book, because it’s really wonderful!

Note: Originally read in January 2001.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics, favorite, memorable, reread | 2 Comments

Stories, by Vladimir Nabokov

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Thistle

Nearly 70 short stories fill this volume, which is supposed to be all of Nabokov’s known short stories. I read most of these over the last few weeks of December, leaving only a handful to finish up in 2011.

I’ve read a lot of Nabokov over the years, and while I have the utmost respect for everything the guy writes, I find myself pretty divided on what I enjoy and don’t enjoy. I’m particularly fond of his earlier works, and less fond of the latter, mostly because I believe his more recent novels tend to sacrifice story for style. Nabokov is a stylistic genius, but I do think at times he lets that go to his head and goes a little overboard on style. I don’t remember where I found it, but I read an article once where he was quoted as saying the story was less important to him than the way the words fit together, and that makes perfect sense with what I’ve read by him. My favorites of his are when words and plot and character all come together to balance each other out.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find a lot of that in these short stories. In story after story, the language was beautiful, poetic, and sometimes so thick that I had a hard time finding my way through it. But at the same time, I felt Nabokov often just didn’t have time to put together enough plot and character to make all that beautiful language feel worthwhile to me. To others, perhaps, but not to me, because all three of those elements are important to me, and I don’t feel like he reaches his full potential in most of this volume. Maybe I’m just ignorant and maybe most of the stories just went over my head. I’ll be the first to admit that Nabokov is a million times more intelligent than I am! But at the same time, I couldn’t help it: I was bored. A lot.

The nice thing, though, was that slogging through almost 70 stories that I didn’t really enjoy, I would occasionally come across one that appealed to me, and they seemed brighter for the dullness around them. There were four in particular that I really, really enjoyed and I’m going to touch on each of them briefly instead of spending any more time discussing the collection as a whole. These are in the order they appear in the collection, not in preference order.

The Thunderstorm: This had to be the most beautifully written story in the entire collection. Perhaps it helps that I love thunderstorms and Nabokov really captured the feel of all that static in the air, the anticipation, the way your heart starts shivering as the storm rolls in. My favorite line in the collection came from this story: I was intoxicated by those bluish tremors, by the keen, volatile chill. I went up to the wet window ledge and inhaled the unearthly air, which made my heart ring like glass.

The Return of Chorb: An interesting little story about a man whose wife dies on their honeymoon, and how he can’t bring himself to tell her parents what happened. The muted grief, drowning in a state of semi-denial, was so well done here, and the ending chilled me. This was the best story for mood and tone.

Lips to Lips: This was probably my favorite of all the stories. It’s about a writer trying to get published, who gets buoyed up only to be disillusioned in a brutal way. It opens with a section of the man’s writing, with correction marks and everything, and my heart twisted for him as he went on what is obviously, to the reader, a naive and dangerous path. He was my favorite character and the one I connected with most in the collection.

The Word: It could be a dream, a vision, or a hallucination, but however you interpret it, the imagery was the most beautiful of all the stories I read.

I wish there had been more here that I loved, but I’m content with four.

Posted in 2011, Adult, Prose | Tagged classics, collection | Leave a comment

The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (audio)

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Thistle

Wanderer is a Soul, a parasitic alien who has lived through multiple lives on multiple planets before coming to earth to invade a new host, a girl named Melanie. Earth has been mostly taken over by the new alien race, so that human bodies walk around controlled by the Souls who live attached to their brains. The Souls are meant to take over their bodies completely, while the human brain/soul disappears, but Melanie won’t disappear. She fights, and soon Wanderer can no longer be sure what parts of her are herself and what parts are Melanie.

I picked this audiobook up on a whim while browsing at my library a few weeks ago. I read the first two Twilight books a couple years back and wasn’t terribly impressed, so I didn’t expect that this was one I’d listen to for more than a few minutes. Doubly so because I’m not really a science fiction person unless it concerns a dystopia. But from the very beginning of this book, I was hooked. The story is intriguing, the narration is perfect, and the science fiction elements are very light. The focus is on the human/emotional aspects of the situation rather than the science parts.

The Host is told from Wanderer’s point of view, which made it far more interesting than if it had been told from a human’s point of view. Through Wanderer’s eyes, you see both sides of the story – that of the Souls, and that of the humans whose bodies are being used as hosts. While it might seem black-and-white from either groups’ point of view, neither group is really bad. Neither group is better than the other. Both have their good and bad points, their strengths and weaknesses. Much of the story is about relationships between people, relationships of many kinds: romance, friendship, parent-child, and more. It explores if people from different worlds – in this case, literally – can really come to understand each other despite extreme prejudice on both sides.

The Host also puts an interesting spin on nature versus nurture, in that Wanderer, and other souls, inherit memories and feelings from their hosts. It also discusses several other difficult topics, such as euthanasia and sacrifice of one for the good of a group. Two different types of romance are also contrasted, an intense, fiery, uncontrollable love and a strong, stable, constant love. I personally prefer the latter, and I have to admit, I fell completely in love with Ian (and I’m not saying any more than that!). The fiery love between Melanie and Jared actually felt forced and a little silly to me, and is probably my only qualm about the entire book. It was the only relationship that didn’t feel as real as all the rest of them.

The ending of the book is perfect. I know people complain about epilogues a lot, but I really enjoyed this one. It was long, drawn out, just like another chapter. I don’t want to give away details, but I think it ended in exactly the right way, in a way that took a difficult situation and said okay, maybe we were all wrong, and maybe working together we can make things right. Hopeful, but not without loss, either. I was disappointed to find out there are sequels planned. While I would love to read more about all the characters, who feel very real for me after spending four weeks listening to their saga, I thought The Host was a perfect standalone novel and I don’t want a sequel to ruin it, especially just for the sake of sequels.

I’m so happy this was my first book of 2011! It was a perfect opener.

Performance: This audiobook of The Host is about 23 hours long, read by Kate Reading. It was a very, very slow read, so I listened to the entire thing on double-speed, which brought Reading’s narration to a normal spoken-aloud speed and truncated the audio to half its length. Other than the slowness, I think Reading did a great job. She was able to perform subtle voice changes for each character and she put a lot of emotion into what she was reading. When I was done listening, I immediately wanted to listen to the book all over again, both for the story and for the audio. I’m very glad I chose the audio version of this book, because I’m not sure I would have gotten as much out of it in print.

Note: I relistened to this book in Feb 2016 and it was just a wonderful the second time around!

Posted in 2011, 2016, Adult, Prose | Tagged audio, comfort, dream-invader, favorite, memorable, reread, speculative | 3 Comments

2010 in Books

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Thistle

This year has been extremely difficult for me. In my personal world, I’ve dealt with illnesses, death, betrayals, libel, psychos, financial difficulties, health issues, severe depression, a huge upheaval in my writing world, and the stress of three months spent in the process of preparing for a cross-country move that, in the end, didn’t happen. In other words, this year sucked. Horribly. It’s been the worst year I’ve had in quite a long time and I’ll be glad to put it behind me. Unfortunately, that omnipresent awfulness found its way into my reading year as well. I did read some wonderful books, oh yes, but considering I spent most of the year reading only what I wanted, not to mention trying about 300 books only to discard them, I’ve not had a good reading year. The first quarter of the year was the worst. Book after book was mediocre to bad. None of my favorites of the year came from that quarter, and six of my fifteen worst books of the year were read then. How’s that for awful? Second and third quarters were better, particularly in July when I hit a brief spell of wonderful books all in a row. The last quarter of the year was mixed. The beginning of October and most of December were wonderful, but the 6-7 weeks in between? Same as that first quarter, mediocre to awful. Bleagh. Most of my 5-star books were concentrated into three parts of the year: a week in July, two weeks in late Sept/early October, and a week in December. I’d rather they be spread out a bit more!!

I’m really hoping that 2011 will be better. I don’t know what to blame the rut on. I can’t blame them on challenges or “should” reads, since I quit my challenges and read what I wanted most of the year. I can’t blame them on reading too many books too quickly, because some of my best months were when I was reading tons. I can’t blame them on modern lit or classics or adult or YA lit, because the blahness was across the board. And I really don’t think that my own blah mood was the problem. None of these were books that I could tell I’d like better if I was in the right mood, and for instance in July, when I had the great spell, I was in the middle of horrible stress and depression. So it’s not mood either. I’m blaming it on 2010. Bad year. It’s time to leave it behind!!

So, in the spirit of getting it all behind me, here is my end-of-year stat report! Yes, I’m a complete stat nerd!!

General stats:
Total books: 217
Full reviews: 197
Mini reviews: 18
Individual Short Stories: 88

First-time reads: 196
Rereads: 21

Just for fun: 86
Read deliberately: 131

Source stats:
Bought: 102
Gift/Win: 25
Swap Site: 16
Borrowed/Library/Web: 50
Review copy: 24 (11 from BEA)

Note: That “bought” category does not mean bought in 2010. Many of them were bought years ago. They were bought from a whole variety of sources, from full price at a chain store to 50 cents at a library sale. I’m glad that over half of my books this year were ones I didn’t pay for…I wish I’d gotten more use out of my swap sites though. Hopefully I will going forward!

Type stats:
Novels/Novellas: 179
–Speculative: 81
–Realistic: 98
Nonfiction: 21
Collections/Anthologies: 6
Plays: 5
Poetry: 6

Text: 179 (including 3 eBooks)
Graphic/Photo/Art: 30
Audio: 8

No real surprises here. I’m happy that I read the equivalent of nearly 2 nonfiction books per month. That’s definitely up from previous years. I also read more poetry and plays, and listened to more audiobooks. Collections are about the same for the last two years, and GNs are about the same as last year (the first year I read them). I’m satisfied with these stats, though I expect the GNs will go down and audiobooks will go up in 2011.

Time stats:
Classics: 64
Contemporary: 153

2000s: 133
1900s: 63
1800s: 17
pre-1800s: 4

Oldest book: If Not, Winter by Sappho (~600 BC)
Newest book: Matched by Ally Condie (Nov 30, 2010)

I’m very happy with my classics stats this year! Nearly a third of my books were classics, and I read more than one per week. I’m back to the percentage I was reading in 2008, and far better than the 20% classics of 2009. Of course, I expect my classic-to-contemporary ratio to drastically change this year with the whole Classic Weekly project. I’m also very happy with my range of reading. Without planning it at all, I read at least one book from every decade from the 1840s to present, plus books from the 1810s, 1790s, 1760s, 1750s, and BC era. That’s pretty awesome.

Age stats:
Adult: 108
YA: 73
Juvenile: 36

This is about on par with what I read in 2009 for YA and children’s fiction, but my adult fiction reading has increased a lot, probably because of the increased concentration on classics. In 2008, there was a far greater percentage of children’s books on my list and only 2-3 YA books total. I’d guess my stats in 2011 will be heavily adult-centered. I have very little YA left on my TBR, and now that my kids are getting into that middle grade age, I’ve found I don’t really want to spend time with that age group in books.

Place stats:
World-lit: 47

Countries visited: US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Mali, Senegal, Ecuador, Germany, Palestine, Denmark, France, Greenland, Czech Republic, Italy, Nigeria, Spain, Morocco, India, Nepal, Suriname, Paraguay, Turkey, Mexico, Portugal, Lebanon, Jordan, Malawi, Hungary, Switzerland, Ireland, Colombia, Argentina, Israel, Japan, Norway, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Greece, and Kuwait

I made a map for this, because I love maps!!

I think I need to read more from Africa and Asia next year. This map and countries listed above, btw, are based solely on book setting, not on author’s country. I might change this stat for next year to include author origin too.

Author stats:
New to me authors: 112
Total authors: 157

By men: 83
By women: 130
Mixed team: 4

Most read authors:
JK Rowling – 8
Suzanne Collins – 7
Francesca Lia Block – 5 (the Dangerous Angels series)
Laurie Faria Stolarz – 5 (the Blue is for Nightmares series)
David Levithan – 5 (standalone novels & collaborations)
William Somerset Maugham – 5 (standalone novels/nonfiction)

My ratio of men to women authors (40/60) is about the same as last year (didn’t track it in ’08). I imagine it’s the high modern book content that tips the scale towards the women’s side. Next year there will probably be more balance, or perhaps a tip towards the men’s side. I bet there’ll be less new-to-me authors as well in 2011.

Other stats:
GLBT: 49
POC: 65
Chunksters: 20
In translation: 20
Languages: French (8), Russian (3), Arabic (3), German (2), Hungarian (1), Norwegian (1), Portuguese (1), Ancient Greek (1)

My GLBT reading is far up from previous years, as well as my POC reading and chunksters. I’m really happy with all of those numbers! Translations are slightly up, but interestingly come from far fewer languages…

Wrap Up:
Best reading month: I didn’t really have an overall “good” month, but instead those three small spurts of good in July, October, and December.

Worst reading month: March!!!!! (Was that emphatic enough?) March was horrible, followed closely by November’s awfulness.

Best book-related discoveries: It’s been a tradition since I first started blogging to include my best book-related discoveries here in my year in review post. In 2008, it was Lois Lowry. In 2009, it was YA and graphic novels. In 2010, I also have a double answer.

1) Émile Zola. What an amazing discovery it was to find out that he was not dry and boring like I expected him to be for years, but instead one of the best authors I’ve ever come across. I’ve read three of his novels now, with a bunch more on my shelves, and have yet to be disappointed.

2) Audiobooks. I used to think I didn’t like audiobooks, but after listening Return of the Native read by Alan Rickman, I fell completely in love. It still takes me a long time to listen to most of them, but I love what listening to them does for my reading experience. I’ve gotten to the point where I can physically read most books quickly, often in a single day, and when I read books like that, they tend to fall away from my memory after awhile. Listening to a book over a few weeks takes them to a whole new level, and many of my favorite books of the year have come from audiobooks, even though I only listened to eight altogether. I remember them all so much better, and I get more out of them. I’m so happy to make this discovery!

So that’s all for my stats. Now for my best of 2010 lists!

People have been putting up Best of 2010 lists for nearly two months now, but I just couldn’t do it until I was officially done reading/reviewing books in 2010! Now, I’m done, so it’s time to evaluate my 217 (yikes!) books of 2010 to decide my “best of.”

This survey comes from Jamie at The Perpetual Page-Turner. Despite the way the questions are worded, I simply can’t limit myself to one book per answer! Sorry!

1. Best books of 2010? This is a big question in a year where I read 217 books! I had a very difficult time narrowing my list down to 15. I had to drop some very good books from the list so I didn’t have too many on there, and that makes me a little sad. But I narrowed it down. Rather than list them all here, I’ll list them with the reasons why they made the list after this survey.

2. Worst book of 2010? I’ve read fifteen books this year that I’d consider “horrible” instead of just “bad.” These round out the bottom five of those: Daddy-Long-Legs, because I felt it was shallow and degrading to women; Bleak House, for the caricatures and the fact that 75% of the prose could have been comfortably cut; African Sojourn, because it was degrading and stereotypical; Market Day, because the end horribly ruined what would otherwise have been a gorgeous 5-star graphic novel; and the very worst – the GN adaptation of Crime & Punishment, because nearly a year later, I still can’t even see the cover of this book without getting sick to my stomach, and I now have no desire to ever read the actual version of C&P.

3. Most Disappointing Book of 2010? Fingersmith. I really expected to love it, but I disliked every minute even though I forced myself to read all 700ish pages. 😦

4. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2010? Liar, entirely because of how much the twist surprised me; Rowan the Strange, because with that cover, I expected to hate the book!; and Germinal, because I’d avoided Zola for years and expected him to be a cross between Flaubert and Wharton, two authors I really dislike

5. Book you recommended to people most in 2010? No surprises here: Germinal, Little Children, The Kid Table, Crossed Wires, and The Painted Veil by Maugham. That last one I didn’t even read this year, but have read three times in the past, and is usually my go-to suggestion for Maugham. Since I’ve read a lot of Maugham this year, I’ve ended up recommending this one a lot.

6. Best series you discovered in 2010? I rarely read through a full series, but this year one really captivated me: The Blue is for Nightmares series by Laurie Faria Stolarz. I read the five books back to back, unable to gulp it down fast enough.

7. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2010? Zola!!!!!!! Gosh I’m so predictable. I also confirmed Rosy Thornton as one of my favs.

8. Most hilarious read of 2010? I’m giggling just thinking of this list: Good Omens, Gothic Charm School, Cold Comfort Farm, and Dick and Jane and Vampires.

9. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2010? This has to be Mockingjay because not only could I not stop reading, but immediately read it a second time, and then read the entire series again because I still hadn’t had enough.

10. Book you most anticipated in 2010? Matched, because of the personal connection, and Mockingjay, because…well, it was Mockingjay!!

11. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2010?

12. Most memorable character in 2010? Ah! Too many. Hm, let’s see: Humbert Humbert, Barbara (Notes on a Scandal), Katniss Everdeen, Eustacia Vye (Return of the Native), Merrycat (We Have Always Lived in the Castle), and…can I just add the entire cast of Good Omens?

13. Most beautifully written book in 2010? Going by language alone? Lolita, Sonnets from the Portuguese, and Notes on a Scandal.

14. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2010? Sonnets from the Portuguese, because it showed me for the first time ever that there IS some poetry out there that I love, and The Return of the Native, because it started my love affair with audiobooks.

15. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2010 to finally read? There are very few books left on my TBR that are ones I’ve put off for a long time. This year, I can only think of two, and one (Bleak House) did not end up being a good experience! So my only answer here will have to be Germinal. I’m so glad I finally sucked it up and gave Zola a chance!

The rest of this survey is about Book Blogging in 2010:

1. New favorite book blog you discovered in 2010? Just like with the books, I couldn’t pick just one! Five of my favorite new-to-me blogs (in alphabetical order) are A Literary Odyssey, Erin Reads, Lifetime Reading Plan, Park Benches & Bookends, and She Reads Novels. I also don’t want to leave out two brand-new favorites I just discovered in the last two weeks: Cousins Read and Your Move, Dickens. There are so many others I had to leave out…sigh. Sorry y’all!

2. Favorite review that you wrote in 2010? Return of the Native. I had more fun writing that review than I ever have writing a review before.

3. Best discussion you had on your blog? I had several really good discussions this year, but the one that generated the most debate was probably on my Your Summary or Someone Else’s post.

4. Most thought-provoking review or discussion you read on somebody else’s blog? Amy did a whole series of posts in late summer/early fall about books and reading that really touched me and got me thinking. An example would be her Less is More post. That’s not the only one, but it’s a particularly good one. She put into words everything I’d been feeling and struggling with and I’m very thankful for that.

5. Best event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, memes, etc.)? Event-wise, this was definitely BEA and the Book Blogger Con. Virtual event-wise, my favorite this year has probably been the RIP Challenge, because I threw myself into it completely and loved nearly every book I read for it.

6. Best moment of book blogging in 2010? I’m not sure I could pick out a “best” moment, but the one that touched me most was all the support I got, from bloggers and strangers alike, after the NY Times Crap…

7. Best bookish discovery (book related sites, book stores, etc.)? Above I said that my best discoveries of the year have been Émile Zola and audiobooks, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what this question is looking for. I haven’t really discovered any book related sites or book stores or stuff like that, though, so that answer will just have to do!

***
So that’s the survey, and here are my top 15 books of 2010, listed in the order I read them:

Germinal by Émile Zola – So I’ve been raving about this one all year, and I imagine if I was hard-pressed to pick a single best book of 2010, this very well might be it. I never would have expected French realism about coal miners to end up in my best-of list, but Germinal was just fantastic. I’m very much looking forward to rereading it with my book club in 2011!

French Milk by Lucy Knisley – This book was so much fun. I think it helps that I had many of the same experiences in France. I get a kick out of this one every time I think about it.

Little Children by Tom Perrotta – Like reading The Awakening only in modern times. Oh my gosh. So powerful.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe – I hated this book nearly the entire time I was reading it. I almost didn’t finish it, but I kept going, and once I hit the end, I really understood this book. Everything got turned around in my head, and I fell in love with it!

Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller – Brilliant writing, absolutely brilliant. Barbara is one of the creepiest, most fascinating narrators I’ve ever read, and the prose is gorgeous.

Theatre by William Somerset Maugham – A reread for me, this is one of my favorite Maugham books ever! I loved it even more this time around.

The Kid Table by Andrea Seigel – This was like reading a quirky book about me and my cousins. So much fun!!

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – First book of poetry that I ever liked, and one that made me cry the whole way through.

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (audio) – Not only was Alan Rickman’s reading of this book stunning, but the book itself made me fall in love with Hardy!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – Just like Notes on a Scandal, the prose and characterization and tone of this book are all brilliant! (And I would have included that cover in my best covers this year IF it had been the cover of the version I read. Sadly, I read one with a really ugly cover…but happily, my mom got me a copy with this wonderful cover for Christmas, yay!)

The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis – This was pure sensationalism, but so much fun that I still find myself giggling over it months later.

Gothic Charm School by Jillian Venters – Nonfiction that hit really close to my heart, with all my gothic aesthetic tastes!! 😀

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (audio) – This is probably the funniest and most fun (funnest?) book I’ve read all year. I can see myself rereading it multiple times in the future, picking out new little references every time I read.

If Not, Winter by Sappho – Second book of poetry I ever liked! I love how this made me think so much about writing in general, and prodded my imagination in ways I never expected. It made me want to write again, and gave me a lovely look at enduring beyond death.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (audio) – A reread. I listened to the wonderful audio by Jeremy Irons, and once again, the writing just captured me!

Honorable Mentions (because I can’t help at least mentioning the ones that sadly got cut!): The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon, Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani, Harry Potter Film Wizardry, Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton (reread), Kindred by Octavia Butler, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged end of year | 2 Comments

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Thistle

Nineteen year old Flora Poste has just been orphaned. She doesn’t want to work – why work if you can easily live off others? – so she sets out to mooch off her extended family until she decides to marry, which will, of course, settle her financially for life! She is welcomed to join her distant cousins the Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm, where everything’s a little bit off. The farm supposedly has a curse on it, and all the Starkadders who live there are constrained by the elderly matron of the family, Aunt Ada Doom. Because Aunt Ada “saw something nasty in the woodshed” as a child, she has gone mad and threatens to get worse if any of the Starkadders leave the farm. Flora is not one for chaos and disorder, however, and she’s determined on reshaping Cold Comfort Farm.

That description is just a tiny glimpse of the satire that is Cold Comfort Farm. This book was recommended to me about a year ago by my friend Kim, who likened it to one of my short stories (also a satire). It was right around Christmas when she told me this, so for some bizarre reason I associate this book with Christmas. Considering the book takes place from spring to summer, that makes no real sense, but hey, I decided to read it at Christmas anyway!

At first when I began the book, I had a hard time getting into it. The prose was a little dry, and the satire didn’t seem very funny. Oh there were silly names like Adam Lambsbreath and statements like “She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while you were eating an apple.” These things made me smile a bit, but on the whole, the first 75-100 pages of this novel were a bit dull for me. But I stuck to the book, and I’m glad I did, because then it took a swing towards hilarious and I was laughing out loud the rest of the book. It all started with the introduction of the intellectual, Mr. Mybug, who says things like:

Hullo, Flora Poste. Do you believe that women have souls?

and

Sooner or later we should have to tackle the problem of homosexuality. We should have to tackle the problem of Lesbians and old maids.

and who talks about nothing but sex and his book, wherein he “proves” that Branwell Bronte actually wrote all the Bronte sisters’ novels. Mr. Mybug would normally be a disgusting character, except that his entire purpose in the novel is for us to laugh at people like him (I read somewhere that he’s supposed to be a loose portrayal of DH Lawrence, which I admit made me chuckle a little).

Every character is meant to spear a personality type. I just couldn’t stop laughing as, for instance, the psychiatrist diagnoses his eight-month old baby with paranoid tendencies or when Adam Lambsbreath gets weepy over the mop Flora gives him for washing dishes (and then hangs it on the wall because it’s so “pretty”). The whole book is meant to laugh at tropes in popular lit from the time period, as well as older authors like Thomas Hardy and the Brontes. While I’ve never read a lot of popular lit from the early 20th century (just classics mostly), I definitely recognize the satire as applied to some of the 1800s classics. It made me giggle, even if I like Hardy and the Brontes!

One of the best things about this satire, though, is that it’s not a tragicomedy. (Not that tragicomedies are bad! I just wasn’t in the mood for one.) The satires I’ve read in the past tend to turn into poignant, biting tragedies by the end, books like Catch-22, or plays like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and I was not in the mood to be bitten when I read Cold Comfort Farm. This book does not turn sour. It had a nice, tidy happy ending! Of course, the ending itself is a satire of happy endings, but still, at least it didn’t end by making me feel awful. For my last book of 2010, I needed that happy ending, satire or not! This was a great end-of-year read, and Christmasy or not, a perfect holiday book as well!

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

Christmas Holiday, by William Somerset Maugham

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Thistle

Charley Mason, part of a fairly well-to-do family in England, goes to Paris for his Christmas holidays to visit an old friend and have a bit of fun. Everything changes, though, when Charley’s friend (Simon, now very changed) introduces him to a Russian refugee prostitute named Lydia on his first night in Paris. Lydia, wife of a convicted murderer-drug-dealer-thief, has suffered through more than Charley could ever have imagined, and yet she still remains devoted to all the things and people who have made her miserable. It’s something that, in his sheltered life, Charley cannot comprehend, no matter how much he tries to understand.

This is a reread for me, though I only have the vaguest recollections of this book from the first time I read it. On reread, I can see why that is. Despite the intriguing plot outline, the book itself is not very memorable, not for plot alone anyway. I’m actually in two minds about this book. The ideas it put forth were very interesting and I loved exploring them, but the manner in which the book is set up and written is very dull. I’ll talk about that part first, and then move on to the ideas expressed.

This plot is primarily Lydia’s story, with Simon’s and Charley’s only secondary, but the narration stays with Charley. Charley is a very passive narrator, and in order to get a full scope of what Lydia has been through, about 90% of this book is back-story. The chapters go something like this: Charley and Lydia go somewhere, then she tells him part of her story for thirty pages. Next chapter, they go somewhere else, and she tells him another part of the story for thirty pages. Then Charley visits Simon, and Simon tells him the next part of Lydia’s story for thirty pages. In the present, the actual storyline, almost nothing happens. Charley spends a couple days with Lydia, sees Simon a few times, and goes back to England in the end.

A book in back-story is not fun. It’s actually rather boring, to be just info-dumped like that. I kept wondering why Maugham didn’t just write Lydia’s story as the primary plot, but after awhile, I understood why he didn’t. It had to do with the major theme he was exploring. It’s a theme he explores often and that I’ve seen in other books of his, and one I particularly enjoy: naivety versus knowledge.

Charley is a happy and fairly innocent person. Simon asks him in the beginning how he plans to spend his next year, and the year after that, and so on, and Charley has no problem looking forward into the future, knowing his life will just repeat endlessly. He doesn’t mind doing his job faithfully, spending cheery Christmases with his family, playing mediocre piano and painting mediocre paintings, and so on. It doesn’t bother him. He’s never been exposed to anything different, and so nothing troubles his world. Through the course of Christmas Holiday, however, Charley is exposed to all the insane, self-depriving views of Simon’s new world outlook, and then introduced to a woman who has been through more than he can comprehend. She not only exposes him to sorrow, but she weeps passionately at a concert he takes her to, and forces him to examine why he likes various paintings in the Louvre that he claims to like. They both play piano for each other. He plays technically well, but with no feeling, whereas she messes up constantly, but evokes strong emotion in her notes.

Charley is overwhelmed by all this new stuff coming at him. At one point, he thinks about Christmas at home:

There’d have been a lot of kissing under the mistletoe, a lot of fun, a lot of ragging, a lot of laughter; they were all having a grand time. It seemed very far away, but thank God, it was there, normal, decent, sane and real; this was a nightmare.

Charley has entered a sort of hell, where his mask of naivety is ripped away and he’s forced to see what’s really out there in the world. This book, while in one way is so much Lydia’s story, is really about Charley. About how Charley is affected, about how he changes because his innocence is stripped away. That’s the thing about truth and knowledge – when you gain them, you can never go back to that more innocent state. When you grow up, you lose your childhood.

A couple weeks ago, I talked about those “lightning strike” moments and how I don’t believe in them. I believe in more gradual change, something that worms its way inside you and alters you from the inside out over a period of time. How could Charley fail to change after a week spent with these people? He couldn’t. There’s no way to put that mask back on, and to me, the saddest part of the book was seeing Charley go back to England, fully thinking he was leaving the insanity of this world behind him. There’s no way to leave it behind, though. It found its way inside him. It rooted itself in the music he plays for his family, in the way he feels like a foreigner among them, in the way he thinks. Simon’s questions to him in the beginning are revisited, only now that future, repetitive and cheerful, feels bleak and illusory, a “pleasant parlour-game that grown-ups played to amuse children.” Charley wonders how “the bottom had fallen out of his world.”

Note: Review date is only an approximate of when this book was read/reviewed in 2010.

Note: Originally read in ~2004-ish.

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