There and Back Again

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, I wish I had hobbit feet, given the amount of trekking around I’ve been doing lately. Nothing so interesting as Middle Earth, however. I’ve been sightseeing nursing homes and extended care facilities for my dad, thus, the hiatus in these blog posts lately. So it is with delight that I return to an exotic voyage, and wind up my reviews of books on India with Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitizer Prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.

The fact that I’m commenting on this now is a sad demonstration of how little I am caught up with modern authors. Lahiri published this in 1999, but by the time I get to it, it’s already enshrined in the modern canon. I first heard about it while wiling away the hours driving the Nikipedia back and forth, back and forth. There has to be something worthwhile to do with all that car time and given my proclivity for productivity, we were listening to the Teaching Company’s Art of Reading. If it hits the sonorous products of the Teaching Company, you can be certain it’s gone from trendy to enshrined.

While the three previous books I’ve mentioned about India mostly dealt with India and people arriving there, this one pretty much concerns people who’ve bought a one way ticket and landed in the other direction—Indians lost and wandering around the U.S.

Ms. Lahiri’s spare use of language nevertheless manages to create some resonant tone poems. I’m always interested in finding a way to understand people whose culture, values and choices appear very foreign to me, and Ms. Lahiri really gives voice to a subgroup that is sometimes voiceless in the juggernaut of American culture. Even though I think I’m pretty much a squeaky liberal, I am certainly guilty of thinking of some groups as “those people”, and find it really soul-expanding to be helped to understand. Both Ms. Lahiri (and another writer I love, Nahguib Mahfouz) really help to create a feeling of commonality, without betraying their culture’s uniqueness.

I just wish her characters weren’t so sad. Wow, it’s really bleak for Indians in the U.S. Even with family and a good income, Ms. Lahiri’s characters are really in a struggle to define themselves, eke out happiness, achieve authentic relationships, and they have a tough time succeeding, if at all. For anyone who has trouble wrapping their mind around arranged marriages, Ms. Lahiri offers a window into what they might be like—i.e., not much different than the Western choose-for yourself-and-be-miserable. I wouldn’t say either system has a lock on the secret to happiness or misery. Maybe people operate much more out of their own characters, even within different cultural contexts.

The stories are soulful and ambiguous, and normally I really like narratives that serve up stuff you’re still chewing on later. But jeez, couldn’t she have left some of them at least a little happiness? Maybe it’s the economy now compared to 11 years ago; maybe it’s my own personal life experiences lately. But I’d like to see a little hope, a little romance, or, gosh, the tiniest touch of humor. I’ve heard Lahiri compared to Raymond Carver, but no dice, in my opinion. I mean, Lahiri’s characters have jobs, families, spouses, big houses—couldn’t they enjoy a little of it? Carver’s characters are often busted, sick, broke, and they still sometimes have hope and happiness. Okay, what Carver and Lahiri have in common is—they both write/wrote short stories.

All said and done, it’s a helluva first publication (although my guess is she’d been cranking the hard disc for a good long time.) She’s gone on since the 2000 prize to become a literary lion with a veritable bookstore shelf all to herself. Yeah, I’m jealous. She’s a good read. Just not on a dreary day.

An Indian Epic

It’s harder to comment on excellence than on the mediocre or mundane, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Paul Scott’s magnum opus, The Raj Quartet, is just that: excellent in every way. The characters will haunt your thoughts for years, the setting is so vivid you’ll look for turmeric stains on your fingers, you’ll never be able to hear the sound of a sitar again without it meaning something to you, and seeing Indian locations in the news will forever after remind you of defining incidents in the book.

The Raj Quartet is, obviously, four books that make up an entire saga. All of the characters are somehow inter-related, and many know each other. Spanning the early part of the 1940’s, the past events in the lives of the characters keep intruding on the lives of others. What emerges is a portrait of Anglo-Indian relations and relationships, the political and the private, as complicated as a mandala. There are enough broken love relationships for a Hindu epic; characters who could behave well but choose the opposite; rather ordinary people who somehow rise to greatness; the silly, the sordid, and the sots. You’ll find yourself in love with a few of the characters, and some of them you’ll wish you could shake firmly (or worse). Good people are not necessarily rewarded, and by the end you feel sorry for even the worst villains, or at least understand them a bit.

Yeah, it’s long. Like everyone, I hope for short books that give me a satisfying sense of accomplishment—gee, I actually completed something. But, fond though I am of my blue pencil, I don’t think an editor could have cut a word in the 1,984 pages that make up my edition. Don’t let it stop you—consider it a cheap vacation. You might even learn more than you would on an actual trip to India, at considerably less cost. Although once you read this work, you’ll be looking at airfares the same way I am.

In the interest of honesty, I must admit that I saw the 14 episodes of The Jewel in the Crown before reading the books. This PBS series from the 80s is also terrific. Because I saw it first, I don’t know if the visuals would have matched my imagination, but I will say that the series is worthy of the book—subtly acted, not too many pretty boy actors, minor characters and subplots given their due. Fourteen episodes are a lot, but I’ve seen it twice now, and truthfully I’m thinking about watching it again with the Nikipedia. She won’t get all the subtlety at 16, but it’s no bad thing to see how complicated life can be, and what a variety of choices people make, with sometimes appalling consequences.

Along with Kristin Lavransdattir and Middlemarch (gosh, maybe I really do like LOOONNNNGGG books) this is probably in my 10 top list of all time. Read The Raj Quartet and expand your soul.

More ladies in distress—India

It’s tough out there. My previous post was about the plight of young Indian widows. It wasn’t so hot (or maybe it was, groan) for Western women who made their way there, either. East of the Sun, by Julia Gregson, is a chunky bedtime read about three women who travel to India pre-World War II to find husbands.

I didn’t love these characters, but I did find myself reading to the end because, ultimately, I did care what happened to them. Not all of the women are equally appealing, nor are they all as thoroughly fleshed out as one might wish, but you know all of them—everyone with female friends does, although I had some trouble actually identifying with any of them. I suppose I have a blind spot that happily ever after doesn’t necessarily mean getting married.

What Ms. Gregson has done superbly well, in my opinion, is handle point of view in an extremely interesting way, and anyone working on fiction should have a look. She does a masterful job of switching between how her characters see themselves (in chapters where one woman dominates) and then how other people see them. She does this quite well with one character in particular, Viva, whose interior monologue is confused and scared, but whom others see as, well, their mom or big sis.

One plot strand that was unusual in such a gal pal book was the introduction of a whacked out stalker for whom Viva has become responsible. His mental illness is never really specified, but Gregson does a great job of portraying his behavior and how the other characters understand and react to it.

Despite the exotic local, India just provides the excuse for a story that is really closer to Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants than it is to the Jewel in the Crown. But more about that in my next post. East of the Sun is a great book to read under an afghan with a cup of Darjeeling, when the Sunday New York Times is just a bit too much reality.

Booking a passage to India

Ever notice how ideas cluster? I didn’t actually set out to read a ton of material on India, but for some reason several books have recently insinuated themselves into my six foot high bedside stack. So, the next few blog posts will be discussing books set in India or about Indians. For some reason, most of these have a 20th or 21st century setting, so I’m going to skip the Mahabharata and Ramayana retellings which both Nikipedia and I read last year. If you’re interested, the R. K. Narayan versions were terrific.

I don’t read anywhere near as many YA novels as I should, given that I’m working on one, but those I read I generally enjoy, and highly recommend them to adults as well. Usually they’re easy to follow, tell a good story, and can be completed in two or three nights of bedtime reading. Homeless Bird, by Gloria Whelan, is one such and it won a ton of prizes, including the National Book Award in 2000. Spoiler alert—don’t read further if you don’t want to know the plot of the book.

Homeless Bird is about Koly, whose dirt-poor parents marry her off at a very young age to the son of a family they barely know. He turns out to be hopelessly ill (the family is trying to use dowry money for one last desperate attempt to save him).

After he dies, she has a miserable existence with her mother in law, who’s in pretty desperate straits herself, and who ultimately abandons her on the streets of Vrindavan, a city known as the City of Widows. Widows become a huge economic liability, and this is a city where some can stave off starvation by chanting at temples all day long. It’s a hopeless survival. There are several twists of fate, and Koly ends up (presumably) living happily ever after.

To some degree, this is a Cinderella trope. At first, I had a hard time placing what era the story was set in, until I started to see mention of computers and realized to my horror that Ms. Whelan was describing present day conditions. It’s particularly horrifying to be reminded that in this huge country there is no real social safety net and that in a place where I talk to well spoken people every day in call centers, other people—young and helpless girls—can starve to death any day of the week. It’s easy to shrug off horrors set in the past, but Ms. Whelan’s choice to set this story in the present day is arresting and impactful.

Ms. Whelan does an excellent job of portraying three dimensional villains. Her bad people make cruel choices, but you do have some understanding of why they make those choices, and you find yourself pitying or at least being able to forgive them. Also, characters are introduced subtly, and unfold over time, rather than the stock and unchanging minor characters one often encounters in a short novel.

The introduction of Vrindavan is fascinating—well off the familiar settings Westerners might stereotype as India. It had me running to a map and doing an internet search for more info. I think she includes the right amount for the average YA reader. However, I always wish for notes in the back of any novel that deals with historical or foreign settings. At least some links on the writer’s website would be nice. It’s a quibble. Maybe it’s a tribute—the writer has made you want to know more. To her credit, Ms. Whelan does supply a page of further information, but no links. Maybe that’s appropriate for YA readers. On second thought, maybe this book is intended for middle grades—I’m never quite sure where the cut point is.

I’m not very fond, any more, of books where the happy ending is that the girl gets the guy. Based on my own experience, that’s neither the end, nor necessarily very happy in real life. Given the realities of poor women in India, it appears that was one of the few resolutions available to the heroine, but I’m glad Ms. Whelan also gives her a trade where she can earn money and have some independence.

This book might be distressing to sensitive readers, adult or YA, but it provides a rich and thoughtful picture of a contemporary culture with troubling issues. It caused me to think a lot about the differences and, more disturbingly, the parallels between women’s situation in India and my own home culture. BTW, I've classified this as historical fiction, even though in my estimation it's not, because that's what the librarian who told me about the book billed it as.

Magic in the kitchen

I’ve fallen in love again. Maybe I’m particularly susceptible and lord knows I’ve made some bad choices in the past, but this time I think it’s the real thing.




I’ve fallen in love with Paul Child. If you’ve seen the movie version of Julie & Julia (not, for heaven’s sake the dumb and self serving book) or read My Life in France by (somewhat) Julia Child and (mostly) Alex Prud’homme, well, you can’t help but know what I mean.




A dear and now deceased friend of mine used to say, when looking at potential dates or other women’s husbands, “Where are the new men for the new women?” Well, Paul Child was that new man, and Julia was that new woman. Here was a guy who could fall madly, passionately in love with a gawky, quirky, strident woman at least a head taller and not be threatened. Nay, it appears that he felt himself among the happiest of mortals, and so was she. I wish she were still around, there’s a lot I’d like to learn and I don’t mean French cooking.



What strikes me particularly is how their marriage seemed to blend an impish sense of fun with the ability to endure, persevere, and make the best of some not-so-good situations. So little ego involved—she supported his career through a lot of ups and downs, and he plunged into assisting hers when, after many years, she actually had one and it became the better of the two. And which of us cannot cheer on a woman whose best career years were after fifty (and she didn’t even have the excuse of raising kids)?



Meryl Streep chews on the scenery a bit, and Julia wasn’t really that weird. I know; I learned to cook by watching her every day when I got home from college classes. She and I share a birthday (along with Napolean, hmmm) so I’m sure we share a connection. I hope some of that fairy dust will sift my way. Think I’ll go watch it again.

Off we go

I just took a caravan to Afghanistan, didn’t buy an airline ticket, and thank heavens didn’t get shot at. Rather, I’ve been snuggled under the cover of my very own down comforter, reading about other people getting knifed, mummified by desert winds, running off with tribal chieftains, and marrying men who already have several other wives in tow. Sometimes you just have to get out of yourself, know what I mean? If you want to know a whole lot about any number of countries, check out James Michener’s oeuvre. Chances are, he wrote about it.



The Michener book that’s been keeping me up nights is Caravan, published in the early sixties. It just goes to prove that if you do enough research, you can look prescient, even if the information was there all the time. Michener accurately predicted tribalism resulting in near civil war, Soviet invasion, extreme abuse of Afghani women, and a whole host of stuff you can read about any day in your newspaper’s front page. And if you want to get a really good perspective on why a war in Afghanistan is probably even more unwinnable than one in Iraq, why, look no further than this 40 year old book. The Afghanistan of Caravan makes other messed up countries, like Somalia and Nigeria, look like child’s play to get organized.



Nobody will ever accuse James Michener of intricate plots, psychodrama, or brevity (my soul mate!), but he knows how to amass a mountain of data as high as the Hindu Kush, twist it into a forthright yarn that shadows real characters, and by the time you plow through 300 to 1,000 pages, you know everything he knows about the subject. He wrote big books, but ones where the storytelling is so engaging that you find yourself reading over lunch, carrying the brick into the bathroom, and, in my case, burning yourself because you were stirring something with one hand while holding the book in the other.



In addition to Caravan, I’ve read Tales of the South Pacific, Hawaii and Caribbean. Hawaii is fun and poignant (don’t bother with the awful movie they made from part of it). After reading the horrifying Caribbean, I don’t think I’d ever be able to vacation there again. Best of all, though, was Michener’s autobiography, The World Is My Home. It was a pleasure to visit with this seemingly kind, self made guy who seldom has a bad word to say about anyone. Whether he was really that way in person (hmmm, he was married 3 times), we’ll never know. It’s a big book, but it leaves out perhaps as much as it includes. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for an easy read that will give you more entertainment than whatever you just rented from Netflix, check out Michener, any Michener. Years ago any of his books was eagerly awaited and an instant bestseller. You don’t hear about his work much since he passed away. More’s the pity.

Writing Mentor

I’m always on the lookout for mentors. I’ve had the privilege of a few good ones over the years: professors, an editor, a therapist or two. But as I get older, it’s increasingly difficult and depressing—I see from my alumni magazine many of my old professors are passing on, ones I wish I could have one more talk with. Perhaps I’ve arrived at an age in life where I shouldn’t need a mentor, but such is not the case.

Being a devotee of the printed word, my natural ecosystem involves books, and increasingly I find that they can serve well as mentors. I read a lot of books by writers on writing, but I find most of them are aimed at beginners and the never published. Like knitting books and jewelry craft books, the first third or half seems to be devoted to the same basic instructions, instructions I could have written myself long ago. No time anymore to wade through all that, especially given what books cost. So it was with great delight that I came across Word Work, by Bruce Holland Rogers. No idea where I heard of it.

Rogers considers so many facets of a writer’s concerns and issues that his book ought to be shaped like a dodecahedron. Each of the 35 chapters is short (3-4 pages) and many were apparently written as magazine columns. Don’t let the length fool you—these are nuggets that profitably can be read 3 or 4 times. I got it out of the library, but it’s a compelling buy—you just can’t absorb it all in one reading.

Rogers considers topics such as how to get started, how to fight for your identity, how and whether to form relationships with other writers, fighting negative feelings, and all the usual topics, but always with something fresh to say, or something which recasts the traditional wisdom, or something that draws from other fields in the service of the writer. Rogers must read a lot, and omnivorously, because he draws in wisdom from Kierkegaard to Maslow to S.I. Hayakawa, with a lot of stops in between. I found nearly every chapter worthwhile, so I’ll just pick out a few examples.

I’ve heard people prattling on about affirmations for years, but they always felt silly and self-deluding to me. Rogers explains how to write ones that won’t make you throw up, and why they work (hint: it ain’t magic). His discussion of time management showed me why I can stop feeling guilty about not writing much when the Nikipedia was younger—he says that you can only fulfill so many segments, and , “If your multiple callings require conflicting sacrifices, you probably won’t be able to balance them perfectly…” How many heroic roles can you take on? Parent, lover, friend, writer, and a full time job? Something’s got to go. I found this oddly comforting. In order to write, you will have to find ways to defend and protect your identity, and this book gives many techniques that show how. In fact, in most of the book musicians, artists, etc. could profitably substitute their own art every time Rogers says “writer” and probably find the techniques just as relevant. It’s all just very wise, fresh and, well, creative.

I tried to find more info on Rogers, but the web results were pretty thin. Apparently he’s living and working in Europe, having landed a Fulbright for 2010. I hope he comes back soon. I want to move in with him. Darn, he’s already married.

Good books about Great Books

Whenever non-homeschoolers find out that I’ve homeschooled the Nikipedia for the past 8 years, I immediately get one or both of the following questions: What about socialization? and, How did you know what to teach? The first question is usually asked by someone who has just spent a lot of time complaining about peer influence on their kids, disinterested, crazy or cruel teachers, etc., so I’m usually able to answer, “Yes, I’m so glad she’s avoided most of that.” The second question always leaves me square mouthed.

Why? Because it’s invariably asked by a college educated adult, often one with many years of post- graduate study. Holy baccalaureate, Batman, if you’ve spent more than 16 years in the halls of academe, you should have some idea what you found valuable to study, some grip on the basics of at least an elementary school education, and some ability to organize information into a logical order. Add to that the amount of sample syllabi online, the plethora of educational materials catalogs that are often as thick as phonebooks (particularly if they’re peddling to homeschoolers), and I don’t think it should take a parent all that long to come up with some direction. How on earth do the same parents judge whether they are happy with the education their children are receiving in regular schools?

My guess is that most parents don’t think so much about what content their child is learning so much as whether said offspring is “doing well” according to the school’s standards. Maybe if the child starts zooming through math or gets in trouble for inserting a more interesting, higher level book inside the duller, dumber book the class is reading, the parent will get an inkling that the child needs more challenging material. By the time college application season rolls around, some parents will start to seek lists of 100 books Every High Schooler should have read.

There’s a minor industry, however, in books about books, telling us what we should have read in high school, college, and most of our adult life, instead of being the slackers that many of us were. Because the Nikipedia was bored with kid’s books by about sixth grade (except for science fiction and an 8 foot shelf of Star Trek novels she bought at a used book sale), I’ve acquired quite a collection of these books on great books. In case anyone else has many spare hours that they can’t think what to do with, or actually might consider homeschooling, I offer this review. Beats Cliff’s notes.

The granddaddy of the genre has to be Clifton Fadiman’s The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Fadiman has been dead for 10 years, and the book was updated by John Major, especially to include non-Western literature. A lot of people have objected to the revisions, but I am so grateful to finally have solid suggestions for something not written in Europe. I find the summaries to be a bit short, however, and not all that opinionated or thought provoking. Still, it’s a good catalog to order from, so to speak. Definitely a book shelf basic.

Susan Wise Bauer has a collection aimed at adults who would like to self-educate, The Well-Educated Mind. Bauer wrote a homeschooling war horse that we have followed more or less closely for curriculum suggestions over our homeschooling career, The Well-Trained Mind. WTM is definitely aimed at parents trying to think through what to teach, but I suspect Well-Educated is for all those parents who took a look at WTM, gulped, and decided their own education was woeful. Bauer treats great lit by genre (WTM works through it chronologically by subject, which I prefer, actually) and is heavy on the ancients, although she does include some modern literature as well. I’ve enjoyed owning both of these, but I’d browse them at the library to see if you need all the background instruction in how to read each genre. Otherwise, you may just want to note her suggestions.




Book Smart is billed as “Your essential reading list for becoming a literary genius in 365 days”. I like this one, but I suspect it’s because I’ve read a lot of the books she suggests and so I feel smart and smug. Jane Mallison has organized her lists by month, and given each month a theme. She has some good advice on how to work your way through the list and which ones to choose (way more than I could possibly get through in one 365 day period and I read pretty quickly). All of the selections are fiction, and most are Western. However, the non-Western works are terrific, and she includes two of my favorite lesser known authors, Sigrid Undset and Naguib Mahfouz (both Nobel prize winners). Nice book for ideas, but not, and not intended to be, a comprehensive compendium.



A great one for browsing in the little room is Steven Gilbar’s Good Books, which really is a compendium of books that you should have read, have read, never heard of but want to read now, etc. Good Books has plenty of info for non-fiction selections, and is organized by topics (e.g., the World, Society, Work, Nature, etc.). I stuck so many post-its in this one that it looks like a porcupine, and you never want to have this in the same room as you have access to Amazon. Each description is only a few sentences, but it was enough to do me in.



I’m not a huge fan of Michael Clay Thompson’s homeschooling books, but I really enjoyed Thinkers. This consists of essays on why you should want to read the 20 books discussed: literature, history, and science, for the most part, with satisfying discussions of each book. You’ll feel compelled to read them all, and wish for a sabbatical to do so. BTW, I'm not including a link for this one, as Amazon only has a listing for it at $100. Geez, it's a small paperback. Try to get it from the library.

David Denby makes me crazy with Great Books. It recounts his effort to go back to Columbia, attend their core curriculum classes, and re-read all the books he had first read when he attended college there 30 years earlier. As I’ve said before, education is so wasted on the young, but this guy made a book of taking that literally. I got through about 96 pages until I realized I have to read or re-read along with him, and boy that’s a big project. If you want to embark on a similar project, or just look up what he has to say on the books he covers, I can’t imagine a more entertaining companion. Definitely a personal vision.



Invitation to the Classics is beloved of homeschoolers, although more so with those of the conservative Christian stripe. I’ve found it to have very useful summaries and backgrounds on the authors and their time periods, but I think the authors have sometimes selected lesser works by great authors. It includes college-type discussion/essay questions, but they nearly all ask you to think of these works as a Christian, or what would Christians do. I suppose how you define Christian will have something to do with your answers. I’m still wondering what a “Christian world view” is, and I don’t think Jesus joined the Republican party, but what do I know? Not a bad reference work to inflict on your high school age child, with some lively discussions possible.



If you can dig it up used, Gail Thain Parker’s book College on Your Own is a great edition to refer to. Parker kicked up quite a bit of controversy while she was (briefly) the 30-something president of Bennington, but this is a very serious look at the basics (and then some!) of various fields of college study. It’s dated (1978) and contains a lot of really dull books, but it’s great for a glimpse at what you might read if you had majored in the subject (or have a child who’s thinking about the major). That said, I majored in Sociology at just about this time, got a stellar Graduate Record score, and read maybe 25% of the books suggested. But I do feel guilty. You can, too.



Beowulf on the Beach (Jack Murninghan) is one I just picked up last week. It’s highly opinionated and personal. So far I’m not totally in sync with what he likes and dislikes, but he is funny. It’s pretty clear that he’s a lot younger than most of the people who do these greatest hits books, and it’s nice to see that sort of take on some of these hoary chestnuts. No non-Western stuff (he says it’s beyond him to compile). I really appreciate that he’s willing to wade through some looong works that I’ve always meant to get to (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, etc.) and picked out the “good parts”. I think the Nikipedia will also appreciate some abridgement in her assignments.



A sub-genre of books-about-books is writers-about-books. In this category, I’ve enjoyed the following for browsing (haven’t read them thoroughly).

The Top Ten, edited by J. Peder Zane, allows you to look up what an awful lot of contemporary writers like. There was apparently great agreement on some books, but many writers mention some very offbeat but interesting selections, and quite a few contribute memoirs and appreciations. Nice book for a Sunday afternoon.



Francine Prose (no slouch herself at the book production biz and is that a perfect name?) tells you how in Reading Like A Writer. While this is a very different format than the other books I’ve mentioned (the chapters focus on how to improve your writing, with examples from great books), she does provide a neat list of “books to be read immediately” at the end. You’ll have to read the rest of the book to find out why. This would be a great companion to a reading program (or high school class) introducing reading from a more skills oriented perspective; call it creative writing through literature.



Finally, A Passion for Books is one I’ve enjoyed for its often thought provoking essays by prominent literati about books, experiences, and just general book amour. It’s another one for the little room or in bed for nights when you really should already be asleep, as most of the essays are just a few pages long.



Okay, if you’ve read this far, I get to gripe a little. What about modern works, and I don’t mean Hemingway and Faulkner? Can’t someone stick their neck out a little and pick something less than 50 years old? Gosh, maybe I’ll write one myself. And another thing, what about creative non-fiction? Tracy Kidder, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen, M.F.K. Fisher…?

But, as they say, that’s a story for another time.

No rapture

Okay, I know they’re two of the hippest authors around; Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, that is. I know so because my in-house authority on everything cool (aka teenage daughter) has assured me so. I even heard Neil Gaiman speak at the Printers Row Lit Festival in June, and liked him a lot. He was self effacing, dressed in black (the color of the entire contents of my closet, also), and reassuringly middle aged. He had some good jokes, too, although I’ve since seen the same ones at venues all over the internet. So, the guy recognizes a good thing (in fact, several good things) when he sees it. In the weeks after the Lit Fest, I saw him here, there and everywhere. Was I just being hyper-aware? No, he gets his name and face around as much as Obama on campaign—okay, maybe I’m just a tad jealous of his promotion machine.

With great trembling and anticipation, therefore, I picked up Good Omens, which my authority cites as a cult classic. No, actually, my daughter insisted I would be hopelessly déclassé (yes she uses words like that) if I did not instantly consume it. Read it I did, all 367 pages, and the month and a half it took me to force myself to finish it seemed longer than waiting for the Second Coming. It’s a so-clever novel about the Apocalypse (wink) which you’re not supposed to figure out right away unless you’re a teen (wink, wink) or a 50 something writer who’s seen this kind of “clever” for about 45 years now. Oh, and the good angel has some faults (wink, wink, wink) and the bad angel isn’t so bad (wink). I got all that by, maybe, page 20. Then, for 347 more pages I have to trail these guys around England while they do absolutely nothing, have no character arc, and nobody in the book has the slightest human appeal. Pratchett and Gaiman must have developed serious ticks by now from all that winking. I do get to figure out who are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and other stuff that’s so obvious my Giant Schnauzer could spot it.

My opinions on this book naturally elicited a huge sigh and significant eye rolling from world’s foremost authority. However, there is one thing I’m very grateful for—I’m going straight to heaven. I already did my time in purgatory.

10 classic books; 5 enjoyable, 5 not so much

From the 6 foot high pile next to my bed, five classic books I just can’t seem to finish:
1. Moby Dick
2. Don Quixote
I’ve made a run at both of these so many times over the years. I’d like to assign them to my daughter. I’m afraid she’ll call family services on me if I do. Has anyone besides an English professor ever finished these books?
3. The Bible. Even read as literature, I can’t do it. I’ve made it through Genesis, Daniel, Ruth and Matthew. That’s all. Several translations.
4. Herodotus, The Histories. We have the Landmark edition, which weighs a thousand pounds and stops my breathing when placed on my abdomen while lying in bed reading. My daughter “assigned” this book to me. She loved it—calls the guy the ”Ancient Geek”.
5. Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book. This one begins with a dog story that makes me ralph. It goes on for hundreds of pages that have no point that I can ascertain, about people that make reality tv contestants look smart. Except that they murder each other. I guess it just proves that people can be vile and shallow no matter what century they live in.
And five classics that kept me up all night:
1. Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter. Actually, this kept me up for about a week, as it’s a trilogy. I bought the first book on a Friday evening, thinking that I wasn’t sure if I wanted all three. Saturday morning I helped them open the bookstore, and the whole weekend was shot after that. Great medieval saga, heartbreaking and compelling.
2. George Elliott, Middlemarch. This was in the other pile when I was younger, but when I picked it up a couple of years ago, it suddenly had transformed from dull to compelling. Certain books speak to certain ages, and I think you might need to be over 40 to really get this one. A great delineation of older, but sadly wiser, and what we pay for that knowledge.
3. Mark Twain, Joan of Arc. Twain thought this might be his best book. It isn’t, but it’s sweet and believable, and the man sure could tell a story.
4. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Okay, maybe this is cheating because what we have is fragmentary and pretty short. But I found it a touching portrayal of friendship, the quest to find and develop an authentic self, and the despair of confronting mortality.
5. Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights. I just read that this is one of the most hated books assigned to high school students. Is thwarted romance and heartbreaking yearning dead? Do we have no time for vividly evoked place and passion? Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier are probably rolling in their graves.

I do suspect that different books speak to us at different ages and after different life events. For years, I could not get through the Iliad, then forced myself to read it before dear daughter found it on her reading list. Where before it had seemed to me a simple gory catalog, now it seems one of the greatest anti-war works ever written. Who can fail to read about all the painful, individual deaths without mourning the lost lives, the tragedies of someone’s brother, son, father? Who can fail to root for Hector, trapped in a situation not of his making, trying to do the right thing as it destroys his life? Can we not all identify with Achilles, who makes such bad decisions in anger and finds out too late what really means something to him? It didn’t keep me up nights, but it did make for compelling reading.

They’re called classics because they bear up well for a second, a third, a late-in-life reading. Just maybe not all of them. Or maybe I’m not old enough, yet.

Not a book review

Reviewers hate to give a sincere effort a bad review. Sure, if the book is an obvious stinker—say, a children’s book by a so-called celebrity author—it’s easy to pull out the long knives. When the book obviously entailed a lot of effort and research, and (even worse!) the author appears to be a decent and dedicated person, it’s a lot harder.

Years ago I’d read and enjoyed the first book by she who will not be named. Recently, I even heard her speak, and she seems like a serious and thoughtful writer, my kinda girl. So I was prepared to like her book, and picked it up with great anticipation. It’s an absolute train wreck. Billed as an historical NOVEL, it is blissfully free of any semblance of plot. As one editor put it about bad historical fiction, you can almost see the index cards laid out on the dining room table. I don’t think there was a single fact about the book’s subject that wasn’t crammed in somewhere. Often, the facts were foisted upon the reader by the execrable and neophyte practice of having characters tell each other about facts that each of them had every reason to know already. I probably ground my dental work down by several millimeters while reading those sections.

On and on it goes, for 870 pages. Doesn’t anyone at her (major) publisher own a blue pencil? Is the delete key missing on their keyboard? I wasted night after night of bedtime reading, hoping against hope that somewhere in this phone book this author would eventually hit her stride and give me something to think about. Plus, her main character is such an impossible twit that by page 350 I was rooting for the bad guys to do her in, and ready to cheer when they finally did.

All serious authors by now are asking themselves how this stuff gets published. Disabuse yourself of the notion that you have to be good to get published. There’s a huge greenbacks factor here—the first book made a ton of money, and I’ll bet the presales on this one were enough (ahem) to cover the paper costs and gold foil on the cover. I can’t believe I did my small part by purchasing this brick.

Still, I’m not going to out her. She’s gone on to publish a bunch more books, so someone must like them, and she had many fans when I heard her speak. A lot of work went into this book, and I do applaud that. I’m also a chicken—if I run into her again, I don’t want to have to hide. But if it’s 870 pages long, a Literary Guild Selection, and published by St. Martin’s, don’t buy it!

Two Rare Birds

Karen Essex had so much élan and verve when I met her at the recent Historical Novel Society’s conference that I couldn’t wait to get one of her books. She had a great deal of marketing savvy and cast a steely eye on the publishing scene. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted her work to be as excellent as she seemed, or whether I was actually filled with envy and hoping to be able to feel superior to a creature of publicity (oh really I’m above all that. I wish.)

Essex has written two biographical novels about Egypt, Kleopatra and Pharaoh, but I happened to stop in at the local and massive Little City Used Book Sale and there, in a pristine cover, was her book Leonardo’s Swans. It was Fortuna, as one of her characters would say. This book (344 pages, Doubleday) is a fictional exploration of the lives and relationships of two incredibly gifted and powerful women who were also sisters: Isabella and Beatrice d’Este. Both were patrons of the arts: Isabella supported Andrea Mantegna and many others, while Leonardo da Vinci did what some consider his best work while under the patronage of the Duke of Milan, Beatrice’s husband Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo’s Swans does an excellent job re-imagining what might have been the psychological truths and interpersonal relationships among these people based on the known facts. This is what the best historical fiction does: helps us to see as living people those who are frozen in artistic styles that look like no one we know, or who have accomplished deeds (or descended into infamy) that we, on the surface, can hardly imagine.

Essex makes these women so human that you can almost think of them as members of your book club or someone you might have lunch with. Also, they both seem so accessible that I had to keep reminding myself that these were two of the most powerful and influential women of their own (indeed of any) time. During the period the story covers, both Isabella and Beatrice were only in their late teens and early twenties. Maybe speaking several languages and being well read in the classics can produce this, but it’s still very hard to believe that teenagers could achieve the levels of intellectual, political and artistic sophistication that these women apparently did. The details of their lives are better than any complicated family saga, and I polished off the book in a few very late nights.

While I highly recommend this book for either a long day at the beach, a time when you are stuck in an airport for twelve hours (that’s where I cracked the covers) or in front of a fire with a nice afghan cradling you, I must say that certain aspects of the book made me angry at her publishers. First, the cover. The hardcover has a very sensuous nude reproduction of a painting by Cesare da Sesto of Ledo and the Swan. This is purportedly a copy of a lost Leonardo. While the theme of the painting is certainly part of the book, so many other great paintings are mentioned in the book that the reader craves to have them at hand while reading. Leonardo painted very few portraits of contemporary women, and four of them are integral to the plot of this book: Cecilia Gallerani ( a mistress of Ludovico Sforza), the gorgeous Lady with an Ermine, which toured the U.S. several years ago; La Belle Ferronière, reputed to be Lucrezia Crivelli, another mistress of Ludovico Sforza; a portrait of Beatrice (Ludovico’s wife—busy guy) and a sketch of Isabella, who spends most of the book consumed with envy of the oils of the others. (The other two non-religious portraits are, of course, the Mona Lisa and Ginevra de’ Benci, the only Leonardo in the U.S., at the National Gallery in Washington.) The paperback version has another beautiful painting, but not of these ladies.


My other (minor) gripe is that I spotted two paragraphs (or their very near cousins) that were each repeated in other sections of the book. After my own experiences with editing, I can well understand how multiple revisions and edits can make that happen. Still, I’d have been happier if someone caught that. It may not be noticeable unless you are reading through the entire book in two sittings, as I did, while stuck sleeping on the floor of an airport at 1 am.

Ludovico Sforza and Isabella d’Este aren’t exactly household words, and unless you have a particular interest in the Renaissance, you may not have run across them before. But once you read this book, they’ll seem like fascinating people from your past. As indeed, they are.