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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

May reads

Mansfield Park.

That's it, that's the only book I've read in its entirety during the month of May. I don't know WHEN the last time was that I only read one book in a month; it's almost embarrassing. We bookish nerdy types have our image to maintain, after all.

Excuses:

• I've been crocheting lots. I made a baby blanket for my sister-in-law (well, for her baby, who's due to arrive any day now) as well as a baby's sweater set which I hope to sell but will probably end up giving away, and I've begun another sweater set too (this has to do with the promise I made myself that I would clean out my craft box this year. The yarn with which I am making these sweater sets? was bought to make something for C. When she was in utero. I have a bad, bad habit of not finishing projects, and I'm trying to reform. We'll see how long it lasts; I have about eight other projects lined up when this one's done.
  
• Thanks to the crocheting, I've been watching movies. And not JUST P&P on endless loop, although Austen has certainly been a mainstay in my DVD experience. I've also watched "Les Miserables" with Liam Neeson (worth watching) and a handful of other more forgettable rented films.
  
• School. School is going really well. Who knows why that should interfere more this month than any other, but still. (I have come up with a slightly more time-consuming, but much better method by which the kids do their chapter summaries... but all told I don't think that makes much of an additional cut into my reading time.)
  
• Um. I am halfway through Emma and also My Sister's Keeper which I just picked up at the library today?
  
• I've been reading out loud to the family (Swiss Family Robinson) and hearing the kids read out loud to me (Ramona and her Father, Max's Chocolate Chicken, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which C recently bought for herself even though I have a copy, a wise move since my copy is a tattered one I got in the third or fourth grade and I'd rather not have her completely destroy it).
  
• Probably The Nikon is a lot to blame. It's hard to read and take pictures at the same time. Although I feel like I've kind of lost it with the photography thing. All of a sudden all the pictures I take look really boring.
  
• I've been outdoors lots.
  

That's all I can come up with -- a pretty poor covering for my shame, when all's said and done. Maybe I should just give it up and admit that I'm not the nerd you thought I was.

About Mansfield Park -- what a book. I don't think it's anybody's favorite Austen book, simply because Fanny is not as likeable a heroine as Elizabeth or Anne (my personal favorite) or even Emma; she's not strong-willed in a spunky way; she doesn't stand up for herself; she doesn't win her man by making him crazy about her against his will, but rather by default when the woman he really is crazy about turns out to be a soulless heathen. I'm not as bothered by some aspects of the book as most other people are -- I can get past the extremely dated narrative objection to (shock and horror) PLAYACTING because I can see it as a representation of moral collapse and indecency, which I do have a problem with myself. I like that the lack of moral underpinnings in Henry and Mary Crawford (I just now realized that our two cats are named after an Austenian brother and sister) is a major stumbling block in their relations with upstanding people, and I like the disapproval subtly heaped on Sir Thomas because he neglected the moral training of his children, and I like the fact that a married woman who ran away with another man felt the consequences for the rest of her life. In short, I'm enough of a fuddy-duddy that a lot of the story resonates with me in a way that it fails to do with most modern readers. ;)

Monday, May 09, 2005

mother's day etc.

Well, I'm going to join the ranks of Christian women bloggers who are explaining why they're not blogging as often anymore. My reasons aren't as cool as theirs -- especially Molly; I mean, who can top having a baby as a reason to stay away from the computer? But I do have a little list of reasons. I have a crochet project I'm working on really hard; I am trying to get through Mansfield Park; we're getting to the end of the school year and I'm getting that "you slacker, your children are going to hate you when they're adults because you basically took off the entire months of March and April from any kind of regular sit-down school every year and that meant that they reached the age of 18 barely able to multiply single-digit numbers and now they live in the ghetto and scrounge in trash cans for a living THANKS A WHOLE LOT MOM" kind of panic. I KNOW it's not true, I mean, heck, if I stopped right now they could probably get jobs with, I dunno, the postal service or something. And most importantly, they're growing and blossoming and reading and writing (sometimes even legibly, but don't count on it) and being creative and they're very bright and everything. It's just this kind of opposite-of-spring-fever thing I get every year, don't mind me.

Also, it has been raining again, so I haven't been taking a whole lot of pictures to post, or going for walks. And the biggest reason is that I have a tendency to spend way too much time sitting here in front of this machine, and I need to work on curtailing that to a conscionable level. Don't expect me to disappear (especially because my resolve on this sort of thing is notoriously weak), but don't expect a post every day either, I guess. Which, hey, who's been expecting that lately anyway.

quick Mother's Day summation: I spent the day at home, except for a brief excursion to the library's used book sale, because LT woke up in the wee small hours on Sunday, throwing up. It ended up being a one-off, but we couldn't know that in time to go to church or the family gathering afterward. Plus I was up at 3 a.m., washing sheets and blankets and cuddling my nine-year-old (!!), and that is not conducive to getting up bright and early. It ended up being a pretty nice day, all things considered. We didn't play a family board game like I wanted to (the boys' round of the Star Wars trading card game thing or whatever it's called took longer than they thought it would), but I didn't have to wash dishes or cook, and I DID have ice cream and cookies. Definitely a day for the positive column. :)

Saturday, April 30, 2005

April reads

I kept thinking I'd finish more books this month, but I've been in less of a reading mood lately than I usually am. It must be the crocheting. Anyway, here are my measly four (completed) books for April:

1. Anne of Avonlea -- L.M. Montgomery -- 2
   
   • This has always been my least favorite of all the Anne books; I like it even less than the really episodic ones later in the series which were written years after she finished the rest of them. This one has some of the most annoying characterization of any book I've ever even remotely liked -- I always just read it because I feel like I have to, before I can move on to the rest of the series.
     
   
   


2. Sense and Sensibility -- Jane Austen -- 5
   
   • What can one say? It's Austen for crying out loud. (Every time I read this, my love for Colonel Brandon and for Elinor increases, and my hatred for Robert Ferrars and the Steele sisters increases even more.)
     
   
   


3. Pride and Prejudice -- Jane Austen -- 5
   
   • Again with the 'what can one say'. In fact I'm not even going to try. Just writing the title makes me want to dive into this one again.
     
   
   


4. Anne of the Island -- L.M. Montgomery -- 3
   
   • Usually I like this one pretty well but it just fell really flat for me this time. Maybe because it pales in contrast with P&P? I mean, anything would. Or maybe because the older I get, the more distance I feel from the lighthearted college life depicted in this book. I've "grown up" with Anne Shirley -- when I discovered her books I was the same age as Anne when she arrived at Green Gables, and I've read them over and over through the years, getting older (necessarily) as I went, passing up Anne as a teenager and then Anne as a college student and then Anne as a working woman and then Anne as a young wife and new mother, until now I'm more in a Rainbow Valley sort of stage. And that's kind of depressing -- because Rainbow Valley is where Anne pretty much completely disappears.

     Oh, wait a minute. This was a review for Anne of the Island, wasn't it. Sigh. Um, OK. Less Philippa next time please, Maud.
     

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

out of practice

I've had a lot of little thoughts buzzing around in my head, but I'm having a hard time writing about them. So here are a few little tidbits, none of which is worthy of anywhere near an entire journal entry on its own.

• I'm feeling SO MUCH BETTER. Seriously, yesterday was, like, the turnaround day for me. I was able to take not one but TWO (very short) walks yesterday; I am not up to my normal levels of activity yet, but I'm acting a lot less like an invalid and I'm not suffering for it like I did even on Monday when I decided to just live normally. I'm glad T has stayed home, because I am not supposed to so much as lift a gallon of milk, and he's handy for keeping me from OVER-doing it (plus, hey, we've blown our entire vacation budget for the summer on this surgery, so T being at home for these three weeks is pretty much all we're going to get; might as well enjoy it, right?). But he doesn't have to be constantly at my beck and call now, which I think is probably a good thing. And that's hopefully the last time I'll write ANYTHING in this journal about this whole recuperation thing -- I know everyone must be bored with it by now.
  
  
• LT has decided to spend all of his money (that's $110, $50 of which he just got for his birthday) on a Father's Day present for T. He's actually been planning this for quite some time. I would say "there's not a selfish bone in his body" but that's not QUITE true. But there are certainly fewer selfish bones than there were in my body when I was nine.
  
  
• Also about LT: doesn't this look... vaguely disturbing? Or at least decidedly uncomfortable? He was just lying like that, all ho-hum, writing in his journal during school this morning. (I remember being a kid and sitting on my bottom with my knees splayed out to the side like an M and hearing similar comments from adults about that. I guess kids are just made of rubber.)
  

• I have a whole post about Hosea 4 written but I set it aside until I can read it with some objectivity because right now I think it seems really scattered and nearly pointless.
  
  
• I haven't done nearly as much reading this month as I had thought I would. I've only read 4 books. I can't even remember finishing anything before I went in for surgery. And everything I've been reading has been rereads, except for one book which I'm not sure I'm going to finish called Theodora's Diary. It's supposed to be a kind of Christian Bridget Jones. Except that it relies a wee bit too heavily on the kind of bland humor that gets passed around via email -- you know, the whole funny-mistakes-in-church-bulletins stuff -- and on caricatures of various Christian fringe-ish sorts of groups. I think the author (and publisher) figured she had a captive audience, consisting of all these Christian women whose consciences won't let them really get into the more vulgar humor on the market today -- and hey, she's British, so that's a plus, right? All I can say about this book is: YAWN. The four books I've finished are two Austens (S&S and P&P; I'm on MP now) and two L.M. Montgomerys (Anne of the Island and Anne of Avonlea. Neither of those last two is doing anything for me this time around either, which is sad. Must be something wrong with me.)
  

• Um, I think that's finally all. Cripes, SHUT UP, Rachel.

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Saturday, April 09, 2005

big decisions

I'm going to the hospital on Thursday to have surgery. As if it weren't hard enough to make a decision on the scale of the one I had to make to arrive at that point, now that it IS decided, I face what is possibly an even bigger quandary:

What the heck am I going to bring to read?

So far I have in my stack: Anne of the Island. A Shakespeare omnibus edition, Four Comedies, which includes Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice. The ancient hardcover edition of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn that I bought at the Salvation Army thrift store a couple of weeks ago (possibly the most serendipitous purchase I've made in years; I have wanted this book for a long, long time, and this is a nice old edition without any modern soft-focus art on the cover, and that's exactly what this book SHOULD be. And I got it for fifty cents). I also have my bound paper journal, which I haven't written in since last fall, and of course I'll be bringing my Bible; maybe I'll study Romans in addition to my daily reading, where I'm in Joshua.

It's not like I plan to read ALL of these. I just want a variety to choose from, because who knows what my mood will be? And -- here's the scary thought -- I really don't want to be down there in the hospital, alone and in pain at eleven o'clock at night, and suddenly think of the ONE book I REALLY want to read, and have it not be with me. I wonder if I could have the surgery at home. You think? Then we'd at least be just down the street from the library... T wouldn't mind a little library outing, would he?...

Anyone have suggestions? I'm open to them, as long as they leave room in my bag for my stuffed Grover, who has been through a lot of hospital hours with me.

I hadn't planned to post this initially; I was going to keep it all lighthearted, but, well, here are some of the worries I keep giving to God and then snatching back from Him, in case you were, you know, fresh out of things to pray for:

• Pain. There will be a lot of pain, this I know.
• Loneliness. I am not really accustomed to sitting alone in a hospital room from the end of visiting hours to the beginning of visiting hours the next day.
• Coming out of the anesthetic. I'm not worried that I won't; I'm OK with that. It's just that -- well, I'm sure there must be a more miserable physical sensation than coming out of a drugged sleep into debilitating pain, but I've never had to deal with it, and, well, I feel wimpy right now.
• Having to explain to the entire world why I'm having a hysterectomy at thirty, or else having everyone think I'm trying to keep some deep dark secret if I just say "I've had surgery." I know, I know. None of anyone's business, and I worry too much what people think. But there it is. Here's a short synopsis of "why", since I know if I don't do this I'll have to do it in the comments anyway. I hope it's not TMI; just in case, you might skip to the next bullet if you're squeamish and/or male. Adenomyosis (basically low-grade endometriosis) --> really horrific, um, well, girl stuff --> severe anemia --> exacerbation of supraventricular tachycardia --> weakened heart, possible severe heart problems later. And over all of that is a family history that makes my gynecologist's pen nearly catch on fire from scribbling notes anytime I have to remind him of it. So.
• The possibility that I will be coming home to an utter disaster area. This is not very likely; T is nicer than that. But I know how things can get away from a person.
• Getting a roommate who wants the TV on all the time. Oh please, no. Please. ;)

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

March reads

I just realized that I forgot to post about the books I read during the month of March. Again, this is books finished, not simply dabbled in or begun. It's a VERY short list this month, thanks to a) good weather getting us outside, b) work, c) The Nikon, d) this blog, e) all the OTHER blogs I started reading recently, and f) Les Misérables. I couldn't start another one while I was reading that because I was afraid I'd give up and not go back to it.

March:

1. Les Misérables -- Victor Hugo -- story/characterization 5. actual book as a whole: 3
   • There's a detailed review of this in this post.
2. Izzy, Willy-Nilly -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4.5
   • This is a book I first read in junior high, and I revisit it periodically. Cynthia Voigt has a way of writing about young people that makes theme seem as real as the person sitting next to you, or more so, and she tackles serious issues without either minimalizing them or preaching for pages on end about them.

     One aspect of this book that I particularly like, more even than the drunk driving discussion, which is the main theme, is its treatment of friendship and of the issues: what makes a friend? How important is it to "fit in"? It looks at the judgments made by those who do fit in about those who don't in a really satisfying and subtle way, through the character Rosamund Webber, who is one of my literary heroes.

3. No Children, No Pets -- Marion Holland -- 4.5
   • This is an old (1950's-ish) children's book, somewhat in the style of an Americanized "Secret Seven" kind of thing, but with fewer children involved. My mother read it aloud to my brother and me when we were children, and I just finished reading it aloud to my children, who hung on every word just as I did when I was little. I enjoyed it myself as well; it's interesting, if for nothing else, as a nostalgic look at pre-Disney, pre-space-center Florida.
4. Much Ado About Nothing -- William Shakespeare -- **
   • ** How do you rate Shakespeare? You just don't. Either you restate the obvious or you look like someone who's trying to be different simply for the sake of noncomformity. So no number rating for this one. I will say that I actually really anjoyed reading it, and not just from the standpoint of being a person in love with language and its use. I was interested; I wanted to know what happened next. I didn't even know the story, so this was lots of FUN to read.

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Friday, March 25, 2005

a book meme from Ria

I've not been as addicted to memes lately as I used to be, but KiwiRia passed me this baton, so how could I refuse? That's like getting my name in a KS list post! ;)

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451-- which book do you want to be?

Hmm. Which book? I don't know. It's not so much the paper and ink that are key to what's important in a book, it's the content (although I realize that for many many years, print was basically the only enduring medium for retaining content, and so was very important) -- so I would be one of the people memorizing books in the woods -- a human book, so to speak.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I've answered this one a few times. Justin in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Stan Crandall in Fifteen, among others.

The last book you bought is:
Actually, it was Fahrenheit 451.

The last book you read:

Les Misérables.

What are you currently reading?
After Les Mis I wanted something stirring and pungent without being heavy, so I'm reading some Cynthia Voigt -- Izzy, Willy-Nilly. I also am midway through Anne of Avonlea but I haven't picked it up in a while. And in my morning reading, I've just started Joshua and am a few chapters in.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
1) The Bible
2) War and Peace. I'd be sure to get through it then.
3) Anne of Green Gables, the definitive "comfort read" for me.
4) Pride and Prejudice

5) Persuasion

Whom are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Kristen, Jenn, and -- Mary, do you still keep an online journal? If you do, send me a link, missy!

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

finis (a book review)

Finally, I have defeated the behemoth. Les Misérables has been vanquished and will probably never again stray from my bookshelf. Which is a shame, because the story itself is really good, and Jean Valjean will go down in my personal literary history as one of my top ten characters. He's very well-written while also being almost completely admirable, which is somewhat rare. But Victor Hugo felt it necessary to give the complete history of every aspect of anything mentioned in his story. Something happens to one of the characters during the battle of Waterloo? Forty pages detailing the entire battle, but not in such a way that a person who doesn't already have a good grasp of Who's Who In The Napoleonic Wars can understand it. A character escapes through the Paris sewer system? Let's have a lengthy treatise on the history, advantages, and shortcomings thereof. Yes, OF THE SEWER SYSTEM. (not for reading while eating, that section). And then there were the discussions of all these little barricaded city uprisings in early 19th century Paris which I was supposed to already know about, but which I was basically just hearing about for the first time (thank you public school system), and let's not forget the pages of tribute to the city of Paris itself and all its beauties and uglinesses and street urchins, and all the pages devoted to discussions of royalists and how they felt about republicans and how everyone felt about Buonapartists, and all the allusions to Voltaire and Rousseau... all of which succeeded in making me feel like a complete idiot because I had only the faintest of faint ideas what they were talking about. All this extra stuff seriously dampened my enjoyment of what was otherwise a really, really superb book.

I am reminded of a discussion on an author's weblog about how much the author should tell, and how much s/he should assume her readers will be able to figure out (the author in question had been accused of being overly subtle, since she runs little subtexts through her stories which are so well-hidden that almost nobody finds them). Hugo seemed to miss the boat completely on both sides of this issue. He assumed knowledge on his readers' part about the intricacies of French (and even more specifically, Parisian) government and customs in the early nineteenth century, while simultaneously feeling the need to go into far too much detail about nearly inconsequential side issues. If he'd made five or six books out of this one -- one ripping good yarn and several academic treatises on various subjects in which he was obviously quite interested and well-versed -- he'd have saved at least this reader a lot of frustration. For once there's a book for which a condensed treatment on film would be a blessing. I can't wait to see the movie of this one.
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Monday, February 28, 2005

Books read in February

They didn't all get reviewed this month, but at least I'm keeping my resolution and writing them all down...

1. 2/3: finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (read aloud) -- Robert C. O'Brien -- 4.5 -- 233 pages
   • I first encountered this book in the third grade, after I had already become rather obsessed with reading the books on which movies were based to find all the things I missed in the movie. The mid-80's cartoon made from this story is a pale, overdrawn shadow of the original, which is understated, humorous, serious, fascinating, and altogether wonderful. Every time I read it (and that's a lot of times), I fall into the world of the mice and rats and live in it until I am done. The pages of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH contain adventure, pathos, energy, and completely knowable characters -- including a certain VERY crush-worthy rat. The "moral lessons are couched in this very real fantasy story without even a breath of overbearing preachiness or condescension. This is truly a book for adults and children to cherish.
   
   
2. 2/5: finished Anne of Green Gables -- L.M. Montgomery -- 5 -- 301 pages
   
   
   
3. 2/6: Go Ahead, Secret Seven -- Enid Blyton -- 4.5 -- (book on tape)
   
   
   
   


4. 2/8: What To Keep -- Rachel Cline -- 3 -- 304 pages
   • I'm the first person to admit that I read a lot of "chick books", in among the other genres I enjoy. And this seemed like standard chick-book fare -- divorce, hints at borderline sexual abuse, a problematic relationship between a girl/woman and her mother, the death of a substitute mother, the adoption of her teenaged son -- with a few twists, but it was told in such a cumbersome way that at times I had a hard time getting through it. The prose simply didn't flow well for me. However, for what it is, it was worth reading once, and I did enjoy some aspects of it.
   
   
5. 2/11: Life of Pi -- Yann Martel -- 4.5 -- 319 pages
   • This novel has earned so much international attention that it seems like anything I could say about it would be laughably miniature in scope. I will say that the final section of the story transformed it, for me, from an enjoyable, quirky, sometimes very violent adventure story, into an absolute masterpiece of a novel, one that leaves the reader thinking, chewing the plot, savoring the taste, studying all the levels and parallels and saying, "but what..." and "oh, of course." I finished reading this before falling asleep, and every time I woke in the night my mind was filled with thoughts of Pi. If that's not the mark of a good book, I don't know what is. (Philosophically speaking, this is definitely a book to be read with discernment, and it has some very disturbing (gory) moments. For thinking adults, though, even with that caveat, I still see it as a really worthwhile read.)
   
   
6. 2/13: Firefly Summer -- Maeve Binchy -- 5 -- 601 pages
   • I think every time I read a Maeve Binchy book I have a new favorite. Well, not quite. But this definitely ranks high on my list of favorites of her books. The cast of characters is miles long and by the fourth chapter you feel like you've known them all your life; the story is just complicated enough and with enough twists to keep it interesting without feeling too contrived. The driving strength in most of Binchy's books is, for me, the dialogue. Nobody writes it like she does, so naturally and with just enough of an Irish sound to it to make it seem quirky to my American ears, without being overdone. The interactions between her characters, and her characters themselves, are so real that the strange circumstances in which they will always find themselves as long as she is writing about them seem as familiar to me as my own life does.
   
   
7. Fahrenheit 451 -- Ray Bradbury -- 4.5
   • I think of this book as the third in a trilogy of mid-20th-century futuristic morality tales. Whereas 1984 was a study of totalitarian government, and Brave New World was a warning about taking science and technology too far, Fahrenheit 451 delves more into the social dangers Bradbury saw as he looked into a future dominated by television and political correctness, where reading became less and less popular until finally nobody cared when the government banned it. This is a stirring book, one that will make you think. Of course Bradbury didn't get everything right in his horrifying vision of the not-too-distant future. But that doesn't make it any less chilling.

That list goes up through about the fifteenth. Then I started Les Misérables. Hey, I'm halfway through...
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Monday, January 31, 2005

January reads

Books read in January:



Title (bold indicates first-time read) -- Author -- Rating (out of 5)

1. finished Mistress Pat -- L.M. Montgomery -- 4
• Most people know about Anne of Green Gables, and most girls have probably read it at some
  point. It's one of my very favorite books, one that, humble
  "kidlit" as it is, has even changed my life in many ways. What
  most people maybe don't know
  is that L.M. Montgomery wrote around 20 other novels -- seven more in
  the Anne series, an Emily series (probably her second-best-known
  books), two Pat books, two Story Girl books, a few standalone
  children's books, and two books written for adults; all these books are
  well worth reading. Mistress
  Pat is the sequel to Pat of
  Silver Bush; these novels were written late in Montgomery's
  life, and are darker than the Annes -- notably, Mistress Pat is
  possibly the darkest of Montgomery's novels and was written under the
  influence of a deep depression which clouded the second half of her
  life. I definitely recommend this pair of books, although you
  will pretty much need to read Pat of
  Silver Bush first. Pat in the first book is in close
  contention for the position of my favorite Montgomery heroine.
  Also, this short series has the distinction of containing one of
  Montgomery's two actual knowable male characters, in the young
  Hilary. He'll disappoint you by pretty much disappearing till the
  end of the last page of the second book, however, as Montgomery's
  romantic heroes were wont to do once she got out of her depth with
  them. "Write what you know", for this author, sadly didn't
  include strong men or normal romantic relationships.




2. finished Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Brontë -- 5
• I always have a very difficult time choosing a favorite
  book. However, when I am forced to make a short list (I never can
  just come up with one), style="font-style: italic;">Jane Eyre is always on it.
  Yes, it's dark and gloomy and has a very gothic feel. Yes, it has
  its preachy moments. But what a wonderful story, what style="font-weight: bold;">living characters. What
  sigh-worthy romance. (sigh).




3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
   -- Mark Haddon -- 4.5
• I was in love with this book from the first page.
  Literally. And like any love relationship, it ran into a few
  snags, but was overall a deeply enriching experience. Haddon's
  first novel is a deft handling of the story of a teenaged boy with
  Asperger's Syndrome, told from his point of view. Amazing that a
  book "told" by a person who doesn't understand humor can be so funny --
  but the humor comes in with his emotionless, dry discussion of
  situations that are sometimes, honestly, not funny at all. And
  the book isn't all laughs, either; as the mother of a person with
  Tourette Syndrome, a disorder which manifests itself in some ways that
  are similar to the autism spectrum, I found that this reading was
  peppered with insights and "YES!" moments.




4. finished A Tale of Two Cities -- Dickens -- 4
• I started listening to this on CD in December while I was
  sewing, and then I listened to it some more while I was painting my
  bedroom, and then I couldn't wait to get to the end, so I read the last
  half-dozen chapters from my copy of the book, in bed one night. I
  love Dickens, and this book is no exception; bonus points for teaching
  me more about the French Revolution than I learned in school, while
  managing to also maintain an individual human scope. Most of the
  characters are perhaps less "Dickensian" than usual, although there are
  notable exceptions (Mr. Cruncher as a messenger who "moonlights" as a
  grave robber and chides his wife for "flopping" is probably the style="font-style: italic;">most notable). Dickens
  doesn't have a 150-year-old reputation as the master of verbiage and
  characterization for nothing; what more can I say?




5. Until The Real Thing Comes Along -- Elizabeth Berg
   -- 3 for content, 5 for style
• Like I do with most Bergs, I read this in one day. Her
  poignant, feel-it-in-your-spine observations were thick on the page, as
  they are in all of her books. I was especially touched by the
  descriptions of babies as the main character struggled with singleness
  and the ticking of her biological clock. I was less thrilled with
  her solution to the problem (becoming pregnant by her gay
  ex-lover). It was an interesting idea, and the author is honest
  about the emotional difficulties involved, but it just didn't resonate
  with me, and I didn't want her to go through with it.
  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book, and Ms. Berg certainly didn't miss
  her mark with her trademark raw, emotional descriptions that make you
  realize that you've thought the same thing your whole life but just
  never thought to put it exactly that way.




6. Good Grief
   -- Lolly Winston -- 4
• I had a hard time really getting into this book at first; I
  sort of got off on the wrong foot with it and it seemed amateurish and,
  I don't know, untouchable is
  a word that came to mind. I definitely felt like I was on the
  outside of the book looking in. I can't put my finger on the
  point at which that changed, but it did, and I enjoyed the second half
  of the book much more than the first. This is Winston's first
  novel, and her handling of the loss of a husband seems so skillful
  (from my position of inexperience, at least) that I found myself
  wanting to look her up and find out if she's a widow herself. As
  far as style, that was where my main problem was with the book early
  on; it seemed like something I could have written. Then I started
  to notice some phrases that sang out at me in an almost
  Elizabeth-Bergish sort of way, and then there were more and more of
  them, and before I knew it, whether it had been my mood at the
  beginning of the book causing the problem, or whether the style really
  improved so much for the second half, I found myself fully enthralled
  by the end, rooting for Sophie like she were my best friend.




7. Villette
   -- Charlotte Brontë -- 3.5
• I've had this book on my shelves for years, and I finally plowed through it this month. It took almost four weeks, which is a long time in book years, for me, anyway. I just had such a hard time getting into the protagonist's head for the first three-quarters of it or so, and I disliked most of the members of the "supporting cast", with one exception, that being Mrs. Bretton. Finally, however, Lucy Snowe really clicked for me, and the rest of the book was quite enjoyable. It wasn't Jane Eyre, but on the strength of those chapters the book was able to stand alone on its own merits for me. I was touched by the growing relationship between Lucy and the man she loved; I was glad to see some of the uselessly annoying characters come to have a raison d'être before the last page. I won't mention the one thing that really bothered me about the story, even after I really began to enjoy it, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but if it weren't for that one thing I'd probably have given this book a better rating.




8. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
   -- Ann Patchett -- 2.5
• What merit I found in this book was due almost entirely to Patchett's narrative style. The author of two of my most-often-recommended books, Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant, doesn't disappoint on that score in this -- what does one call it, a memoir?
  
  And therein lies the main problem -- it's not a memoir, but it's told with too much almost-voyeuristic detail to be a respectable biography. I suppose that what it's supposed to be is a memoir of a friendship, as well as a memorial tribute of sorts, but it would have been better, in my opinion, as an essay, without spending what amounts to a large part of a book going into so many sordid personal details. If someone writes about her own (appalling, really, in this case) promiscuity and drug use, you feel that she has the right to do so and that she's given you the right to read it -- whether one is interested in that sort of thing or not, she's putting the choice in the reader's hands. But no matter how close Patchett was to Lucy Grealy, the other half of the titular friendship, I felt like she was overstepping her rights. It was like she was giving us Lucy's diary to read, without her consent. I enjoyed reading about the more innocent aspects of their shared life -- their inside jokes, for example, and their trials and successes as writers -- but it seemed like a page couldn't go by without a shot of the kind of details that I personally think would have been better kept between Ann and Lucy, especially since Lucy wasn't the one telling the story.
  
  I do realize that she was probably trying to avoid the standard "triumph of the human spirit" biography -- indeed, Ann and Lucy had a running joke about the various attempts people would make to turn Lucy into that kind of lesson. But somehow going too far in the other direction was even worse, for me, anyway.
  
  Obviously Patchett cared deeply about Lucy and had reasons for writing about her life the way she did. And not being on the inside, so to speak, I really don't have anything to say about whether this story should have been written or not. But as a reader, a looker-on, I can say that I do wish I had been able to leave Lucy some respectful privacy. Had I known how deeply private this story was, I'd not have chosen to read it.
  

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