Books I’m reading and have read
Saturday, August 4th, 2007BOOK/S I AM PRESENTLY READING:
CHE GUEVARA: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE. Jon Lee Anderson. 754 pages with black-and-white photographs. Exquisitely detailed biography of the good-looking, asthmatic, medically trained Argentinian hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
SEVEN VOICES ONE DREAM. Mary Ann Cahill. 212 pages with black-and-white photographs. Choppy patchwork of interviews with the founders of La Leche League. Interviewer’s questions can detract from the otherwise interesting responses and memories (though often repetitive) of the seven housewives who started an international organization in 1956 from humble roots in suburban Chicago. Some macro editing would help this otherwise charming group/organization memoir. Contains photos of the founders in the early days and with their families.
AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR: A NOVEL. Patrick Taylor. 337 pages. Taylor is an actual M.D. from Northern Ireland. The original title was The Apprenticeship of Dr. Laverty, but perhaps that didn’t grab American readers like anything with “Irish” in the title.
BOOKS I HAVE READ, from the most recent to when I started keeping records in July 2003:
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. Khalid Hosseini. Follows several Afghani women and the men, soldiers, and regimes that torment them through war, child-bearing, marriage, sacrifice, and escape. An excellent companion to Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.
EINSTEIN’S DREAMS. Alan Lightman. 179 pages. Physicist-author imagines fantastical turns and twists of time and sequences of life in patent clerk Einstein’s Vienna (?) and Zurich (?).
THE CITY OF FALLING ANGELS. John Berendt. 398 pages. Nonfiction series of pieces about Venice centered around the burning down of the opera house Fenice (”feh-NEE-chay”). A detailed look at culture and the Italian and American players in the history, culture, and preservation of Venice.
THE RISING SHORE–ROANOKE. Deborah Homsher. 270 pages. Fiction based on the facts known about the Roanoke, Virginia, “Lost Colony.” Follows story of two women–Eleanor Dare and her serving girl Margaret Lawrence–as they navigate growing up and sailing to the New World. I had lunch with the author with Jane Maestro in Ithaca, New York, in March 2008.
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Erich Maria Remarque. Author is from Osnabruck, Germany–where all the Grossmans are from–and served in WWI. Gentle, insightful, coming-of-age in the trenches of World War I. Also saw two movies based on book. Both quite good. The 1930 version has strengths as does the recent remake with Richard “John Boy” Thomas. Required reading for the whole world.
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN. Rory Stewart. 297 pages. Scotsman walks across Afghanistan right after the fall of the Taliban. Text is interspersed with author’s sketches.
THE GLEEMAIDEN. Sylvian Hamilton. 405 pages. Third of a novel series featuring the knight Sir Richard Straccan. Can be confusing with story lines and characters from the author’s previous THE BONE-PEDLAR. I hadn’t realized “glee” is Irish for song: now “glee club” makes a lot more sense. I picked this book up in Dubai, but I don’t usually go for historical fantasy.
IGNORANCE: A NOVEL. Milan Kundera. Translated from the French by Linda Asher. 195 pages. Twists and emotional turns of two Czech emigres who return to Prague after 20 years. Both remember yet don’t remember. Kundera interjects snatches of The Odyssesy, as Odysseus grapples with returning to Ithaca.
THE BRONTES: A FAMILY HISTORY. John Cannon. 141 pages. A small book that packs a literary wallop. The Brontes’ family history in Ireland (where the family name was originally Brunty) seems to contain many of the plots of the Bronte sisters’ books. Fascinating and a requirement for any English major’s book shelf.
THE NARROWS. Michael Connelly. 400 pages. I’m not a mystery buff, but the settings had me hooked. From Los Angeles to Catalina Island to Las Vegas to the Mojave Desert (notably the Zzyzzx exit), the details are personally compelling for this southwestern gal. The detective, Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch, is a sad, complicated yet ethical character you woudn’t mind sharing an apartment complex with.
A STEP FROM HEAVEN. An Na. 156 pages. Heartbreaking and wonderful story of a Korean girl’s assimmilation into southern California culture along with her depressed, abusive father and her carrying-on mother.
THE DANCING GIRLS OF LAHORE: SELLING LOVE AND SAVING DREAMS IN PAKISTAN’S PLEASURE DISTRICT. Louise Brown. 290 pages. Brown is an English woman who lives for extended periods in a Lahore red-light district documenting the culture of the sex workers and their families. Brown also recommends Ruswa’s UMRAD JAN ADA, Manto’s SELECTED STORIES, and Weiss’s WALLS WITHIN WALLS plus several films about Indian and Pakistani women.
BLOODY FALLS OF THE COPPERMINE; MADNESS, MURDER, AND THE COLLISION OF CULTURES IN THE ARCTIC, 1913. McKay Jenkins. 236 pages. Two Catholic priests go up to northern Canada to convert Eskimo people who’ve seen maybe three white people in their entire lives. The priests are murdered, an enthusiastic crew from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police go up to investigate, and things, of course, fall further apart. Some RCMP members quite sensitive, though. The main Eskimo suspect tells the court he thought the two white men were trappers. Therein lies the kernel of this cultural tragedy.
MARCH: A NOVEL. Geraldine Brooks. 273 pages. Brooks takes Mr. March from Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN and fleshes out his Civil War experiences: what happens to a man during war, and how can he return to his family but a grossly changed man? I watched COLD MOUNTAIN right afterwards. If CM’s Inman had lived, he might have been just as broken and emotionally knotted up as March. The Australian author Brooks is the wife of Tony Horwitz, whose CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC I also really enjoyed.
THE RED-HAIRED GIRL FROM THE BOG: THE LANDSCAPE OF CELTIC MYTH AND SPIRIT. Patricia Monaghan. 250 pages with pronunciation guide, glossary, notes, and an index. To my delight, Monaghan starts with describing the hag magic of County Clare. Makes me want to return to Ireland, this book in hand.
THE LADY AND THE UNICORN. Tracy Chevalier. 248 pages. Historical fiction based on the few facts known about the six huge luminous ”The Lady and the Unicorn” tapestry series in the Cluny Museum in Paris. I would have liked more details of medieval Paris, but I’ll take Chevalier’s take on this.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. Alexander Dumas. I unashamedly read the abridged version. Dumas wrote this during the same year as he wrote THE THREE MUSKETEERS. I have read that he had a studio of writers whom he supervised.
ETHAN FROME. 1911. Edith Wharton. 130 pages. The themes and images really pop out of this dimunutive book: being trapped and crippled, power and manipulation, sex, choices, suicide pacts, and the desolation of finances and of dreams. Zeena Pierce (pierces the heart, piercing manner) and Mattie Silver (shining) are names carefully chosen by Wharton. “Florida” seems to be a symbol of all that’s warm and what could have been for Ethan. Wharton wrote this while living in Paris on the rue de Varenne, a street with nice apartment complexes and the Biron Hotel (now the Rodin Museum). From rue Varenne, you can see the Hotel des Invalides and its dome where Napoleon is buried. In Wharton’s time, Rodin was working in the Hotel Biron with other artists. Wharton’s upper class situation seems almost cruel as she carefully chronicles Starkfield’s “inarticulate” (her word) New Englanders.
MADAME BOVARY. 1857. Gustave Flaubert. 321 pages. Careful, detailed writing. Slow going but quite wonderful. Emma Bovary is woefully unprepared for life, though sometimes I felt the truly tragic figure was her husband Charles. The short description of the aimless eight-hour ride where Emma is seduced in a carriage is masterful.
SHE CAME TO STAY. 1943. Simon de Beauvoir. 409 pages. Her first novel, based on the menage-a-troi between her, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Olga Kosakievicz (to whom the book is dedicated). Endless conversation with little action.
THE RAZOR’S EDGE. 1943. Somerset Maugham. 314 pages. I’m rereading this. The writing is measured and gorgeous. The Everyman Larry character compelling, but the narrative bogs down when Larry describes religion in India.
INTO A PARIS QUARTIER: REINE MARGOT’S CHAPEL AND OTHER HAUNTS OF ST.-GERMAIN. 2003. Diane Johnson. 194 pages. Ex-pat author describes her neighborhood and its history in great detail. Book weakens when she makes modern political comments.
A MOVEABLE FEAST. 1964 (but covers 1922-26). Ernest Heminway. 140 pages. I reread these short sketches about living in Paris before he became famous. Paris is a feast you keep with you the rest of your life, thus the moveable part. Tales of meeting, drinking, and hanging out with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Scott and Zelda were a tragedy together.
TETE-A-TETE: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR AND JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. 2007. Hazel Rowley. 351 pages. Brings these two to agonizing life. Jean-Paul was constantly falling love with new women; Simone was bi-sexual and prone to fits of sobbing over her own love affairs and shortcomings. Fascinating to learn the details of Simone’s life that she then used in her fiction.
LONESOME TRAVELER. 1960. Jack Kerouac. Eight essays. Such brilliant, original writing with not a single cliche or wasted breath of a word. In biography, he comes off as casual and sloppy; in his own observations, he seems keen and precise.
WORDS IN A FRENCH LIFE: LESSONS IN LOVE AND LANGUAGE FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. 2006. Kristin Espinasse. 282 pages of comments and French lessons based on Espinasse’s blog <french-word-a-day.com>
KEROUAC: A BIOGRAPHY. 1974. Ann Charters. 367 pages with fascinating, detailed notes. Dizzying back-and-forth of Ti Jean’s unhappy life. Fascinating, wearying, drunken catalogue. Kerouac’s travels more complex and erratic than even On the Road reveals.