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November 06, 2007
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Sarah
gave
 
to:
She's Come Undone (Mass Market Paperback)
by Wally Lamb
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my rating:
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Sarah said:
"This is a novel written in the first person, from the point of view of a 12-year old girl (at the start of the book, anyway). I'm pretty sure Wally Lamb isn't a 12-year-old girl, and part of the enjoyment of reading She's Come Undone is how as...more
This is a novel written in the first person, from the point of view of a 12-year old girl (at the start of the book, anyway). I'm pretty sure Wally Lamb isn't a 12-year-old girl, and part of the enjoyment of reading She's Come Undone is how astonishingly well he pulls it off. It is written so well, the details and feelings in it are so painfully personal, that I spent a lot of time wondering how the hell a middle-aged man managed to channel a depressed, disadvantaged, fat, miserable, funny, angry, resourceful, vulnerable 12-year-old girl, with such absolute conviction. The character of Dolores is so realistically written that it is hard to believe it's not a memoir.
You know those books about childhood that romanticize and idealize it? The kids in such books are all plucky and essentially good and sweet. The villains are always completely villainous, and always get what they deserve. Sometimes it's nice to read these stories, especially if you want to escape reality for a while. She's Come Undone is not one of this type. The protagonist, Dolores, is a real kid. She's troubled, occasionally vicious, greedy, lost, funny, bright, kind. All the things that real kids are. And her childhood - like most real childhoods - is a minefield of danger, shame, fear, and vulnerability. Her eventual triumphs are realistic, too. There is no white horse and handsome prince, but she does come out okay in the end, after a long series of horrifyingly funny, desperately sad, bizarre events. Sounds like real life to me, and this is a great story, as well as a virtual textbook on how to fully inhabit a character who is superficially nothing like yourself....less
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New comment on Corrina's review of
King, Queen, Knave (Penguin Modern Classics)
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October 21, 2007
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Sarah
gave
to:
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: And Other Poems (Hardcover)
by T.S. Eliot
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my rating:
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Sarah said:
"Question: Why oh why do they make children read Prufrock in school? How can a kid, having run in from recess with pink perfect cheeks and years to go before hairs start sprouting out of weird places, have any idea what T.S. Eliot is talking about? Ho...more
Question: Why oh why do they make children read Prufrock in school? How can a kid, having run in from recess with pink perfect cheeks and years to go before hairs start sprouting out of weird places, have any idea what T.S. Eliot is talking about? How can someone who thinks 21-year-olds are ancient, possibly get Prufrock? I remember being asked to read this poem in fourth grade, and it is touching in an odd way to think back on the scene in the classroom - my 40-ish, balding teacher, bent almost double over his desk with his passion for this poem, begging, pleading with us callow, bright-eyed children, to get it - his desk might as well have been the Great Wall of China. We just stared and blinked our big anime eyes and thought he was a crazy old fart. Time didn't touch us yet. Like all kids, we thought it never would, that we had been spared by dint of our superiority. Poor Mr. Bull; he must have gone home, shaved his bunions and wept into his tea.
Years and years later, I took a class at San Francisco City College, which focused on three readings: Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had not re-read Prufrock since that 4th grade incident. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was inculcated in the theory that if a poem scans, rhymes, tells a cohesive story, or otherwise makes sense, it sucks. Ginsberg, Snyder, Diane DePrima, and anyone who wrote stream-of-consciousness, explosive, expressive id-based barbaric yawps = good; Shakespeare, St. Vincent Millay, Eliot, and essentially anyone whose work appeared in the reviled, rejected, Lackeys-of-the-Imperialist-Bourgeoisie-classical canon = bad.
At 11, I read it and couldn't believe how stupid it was. What the hell was this guy Eliot even talking about? I liked mermaids and peaches, but the rest of the poem might as well have been in a dead language.
At 30, I read it and every line sank into my soul and shook me. I had spent enough time on earth to feel the first stirrings of fear of mortality. I wasn't in my twenties anymore and I thought, this is the best damn poem I have ever read.
Maybe you have to get a bit older before this poem resonates with you - maybe you have to have felt the first stirrings of existential despair and the chill of mortality. Probably you have to have heard the eternal footman hold your coat, and snicker, and in short, be afraid.
There are so many parts of Prufrock that I love - that sum up the so-called 'human condition' so perfectly:
"Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherised upon a table.."
"I have measured out my life in coffee-spoons.."
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"
"I grow old, I grow old..I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled..."
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.."
And finally:
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
...less
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October 20, 2007
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Sarah
gave
to:
While I Was Gone (Paperback)
by Sue Miller
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Sarah said:
"Okay, okay, I know it's on Oprah's Book Club now, but really, some great books are - don't let your possible distate for Oprah Winfrey deter you from reading this book.
Sue Miller is a wonderful writer, and the story in While I Was Gone is in...more
Okay, okay, I know it's on Oprah's Book Club now, but really, some great books are - don't let your possible distate for Oprah Winfrey deter you from reading this book.
Sue Miller is a wonderful writer, and the story in While I Was Gone is incredibly compelling. I read it in one sitting and ignored chores for it. It's easy to read, conversational, straightforward. It seems for many pages that it's going to be a nostalgic memoir, about a middle-aged woman, in a long, comfortable marriage past its passionate days; a mother and veterinarian, looking back on her college days when she lived in a semi-communal household with a bunch of college friends in the '70s. Then strange things start to happen, and suddenly, it has turned into a bizarre murder mystery, with a shocking revelation when she finds out who did it. I remember getting to that part and actually saying, "Oh my god!" when the big reveal came.
The trick Sue Miller has is that her main character is SO believable. You know a ton of women like her. You may even be one. She's such a normal, flawed yet admirable, totally human person, that when things start getting shockingly weird, it resonates, because it makes you wonder how you would act if you were in the same situation?
I really love reading books which make you feel compassion for people who do horrible things. Like Lolita. It's a difficult trick to pull off, but it's such a humane point of view, and so much more realistic than the good guys/bad guys dichotomy of so many novels. Sometimes good people do really bad things, and the line is not so far away as we like to think... it's a great book and a quick read.
I find it odd that people will put a book down simply because the main character does something they don't approve of. I don't think Sue Miller was justifying, or advocating, infidelity at all in While I Was Gone. In fact, I believe she was trying to show how precious, yet fragile, marriage can be: Marriage is not the fairy tale it is sometimes made out to be. It can be dull, frustrating, crushing. It's real life, and passion fades, and you find yourself in a comfortable companionship with many rewards, but like the protagonist in this book, many married people find themselves wistfully wishing something exciting would happen - missing the flush of attraction, the ego-rush of being desired. That doesn't make the protagonist a bad person; it makes her real. And, in the end, she doesn't sleep with Eli - the whole point, to me, was how close she came - that she WOULD have done it, she would have thrown away her marriage, which would have devastated her, just to feel young and excited and wanted again. I think this is something we can all relate to. It's a nice fantasy, to think that you meet The One, marry him, and never ever miss being flirted with or desired or in passionate love. And one of the most interesting and realistic things in the book, to me, is that she would have done it, if she hadn't found out what she did, about Eli. Her husband, when she confesses her attraction, says it exactly - he tells her that one of the hardest things is that she has put him in the position of being grateful that Eli did such a horrible thing, so that he got to keep his marriage. And she is so relieved that she didn't throw her marriage away. Far from advocating infidelity, it's really more of a cautionary tale about the danger of taking the familiarity of marriage for granted.
I mean, if you don't want to read books about real people leading real lives, there are plenty of romance novels out there. ...less
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Sarah
gave
to:
Pride and Prejudice (Paperback)
by Jane Austen
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended for: Everyone
read in January, 1990
Sarah said:
"I can't say anything fascinating about Pride and Prejudice that hasn't already been said a thousand times. It is one of the best books I've ever read, if not the best. It is like a textbook on how to pace a story, which is a hard thing to do, ...more
I can't say anything fascinating about Pride and Prejudice that hasn't already been said a thousand times. It is one of the best books I've ever read, if not the best. It is like a textbook on how to pace a story, which is a hard thing to do, for me at least. It is a perfect social comedy. The dialogue is both believable, natural-seeming, and yet ten million times more interesting, witty and articulate than anything real people say. The characters are so well-drawn, interesting, and deep that you get drawn into the story from the first page. Elizabeth Bennet is such a charming, funny, wonderful character - Jane Austen wrote, in a letter, about Elizabeth: "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know..".
The first sentence is a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek social commentary: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in posession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
One thing I love about Jane Austen is that she never takes herself seriously, yet she clearly loves her characters, even when they are behaving idiotically. She seems to have had a great eye for the ridiculous in people and society, but not a bitter, hateful one. I've read many essays about the feminism of Jane Austen's writing; she clearly saw the desperation and despair of the social position of women: Unable to work, or even to inherit, they had to marry, and marry well, or live in poverty. And Jane Austen clearly saw women as intellectually equal to men. It must have been a frustrating, demeaning experience. Women probably were very lucky if they even liked the men they had to marry - Elizabeth came very close to being married off to the dorky, unbearably pompous Mr. Collilns - yet she ends up married very well, to Mr. Darcy, who she not only deeply loves, but appreciates very much for his fortune: She says, to her sister Jane, when Jane asks her how long Elizabeth has loved Mr. Darcy: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." ...less
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Sarah
gave
to:
The Log from the "Sea of Cortez" (Penguin Modern Classics)
by John Steinbeck
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in January, 1988
Sarah said:
"This is kind of a cheat, because it's not the main book that I love, it's the preface Steinbeck added to it after Ed Ricketts died, called About Ed Ricketts. Ed Ricketts was the founder of the Pacific Biology Labs, in Monterey, and the charact...more
This is kind of a cheat, because it's not the main book that I love, it's the preface Steinbeck added to it after Ed Ricketts died, called About Ed Ricketts. Ed Ricketts was the founder of the Pacific Biology Labs, in Monterey, and the character of Doc in Cannery Row was based on him. Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts were great friends. Ed was an almost mythical figure - a brilliant, eccentric guy. He changed marine biology - and all biology - by re-classifying organisms by their habitat, instead of the usual species/phylum setup. He took long trips, like the one to the Sea of Cortez which Steinbeck went on, to collect and document sea creatures. He was fascinated by them. He loved the ugliest, weirdest ones the most - he used to call his girlfriend "Wormy" as a fond nickname, because he loved worms so much. He was always wading around in tidepools, but hated to get his head wet, and wore a sou'wester in the shower. He spoke many languages, had an expensive safe in which he kept only cheese, and loved women - what's not to like? He was the unofficial benefactor of a group of street bums in Monterey, and kept them in beer and tobacco by hiring them to catch frogs and collect tidepool creatures.
Steinbeck wrote About Ed Ricketts after Ricketts' car stalled on the train track in Monterey and was hit by a train. He died after a few days in the hospital. Ed Rickett's laboratory was bought by a consortium of admirers, and it remains today, a little grey shacklike building, which stands out like a neon sign in the middle of the horrible tourist theme park that Monterey's Cannery Row has become. You can see it, in between the Monterey Aquarium and Bubba Gump's Shrimp Factory, for god's sake. You can walk up the creaky old steps, and look in the window - it's been kept up exactly as it was when Ed died, with a spartan little room with a cot and an old army blanket where Ed slept, and beyond, his lab, with big jars holding weird, pickled creatures that Ed caught. You can't go in, but they open it up a few times a year for small groups.
The way Steinbeck wrote about Ed Ricketts, the picture he drew of him, is a touching display of love and respect and friendship. If I could meet one dead person, it would be Ed Ricketts, based on the stories Steinbeck tells. ...less
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Sarah
gave
to:
Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Vladimir Nabokov
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended for: Everyone
read in January, 1993
Sarah said:
"How can I possibly review Lolita? Nabokov was a ridiculous genius. English wasn't even his second or third language, I don't think. But he wrote better in English than most native speaking authors.
The first paragraph is a perfect example:...more
How can I possibly review Lolita? Nabokov was a ridiculous genius. English wasn't even his second or third language, I don't think. But he wrote better in English than most native speaking authors.
The first paragraph is a perfect example: "Lolita - light of my life; fire of my loins; my sin, my soul, Lolita. The tip of the tongue, taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap at three on the teeth: Lolita." Read that out loud and feel the rhythm of it, the way every sound of every word works together. Nabokov did a lot of that - he loved the sounds of words and paid attention to the way they sounded, as well as the meaning.
This is a book written from the point of view of a pedophile, about his love for a pre-teenage girl, and Nabokov manages to make you sympathize and understand Humbert Humbert. And the writing is so god damned beautiful. There is not one extra word, or unnecessary sentence; everything is crafted so perfectly and yet it never seems overworked or arduous. It all comes tripping out, perfectly natural, and it's such a great story.
For another great Nabokov read - King, Queen, Knave....less
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