It's Monday! What Are You Reading?: May 31, 2010 and June 7, 2010

Hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books, It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly bookish meme whereby bloggers share their reading for the past week.

Since I seemed to forget that last Monday was, in fact, Monday, I'm posting two weeks' worth of IMWAYR this week!

The last two weeks, I read:

The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy
The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens
Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy Book 5) by Richelle Mead
Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life and Everything in Between by Theresa Brown
The Art of Devotion by Samantha Bruce-Benjamin

The last two weeks, I reviewed:
This One Is Mine by Maria Semple
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens
The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy

This week, I'm reading:

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

This week, I hope to begin reading:
The English American by Alison Larkin
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Don't Die, My Love by Lurlene McDaniel (I want to see if this is as awesome a book as it was when I was in junior high!)

What are you reading this week?

Review: The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy

Title: The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories

Author: Thomas Hardy

Pages: 276

Source: Personal library

Rating: 9/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days."

Summary (From back of book): 

In the title story of this collection, Car'line Aspent, bewitched and seduced by the dazzling fiddler, Mop Ollamoor, rejects her loyal suitor Ned only to repent her decision and seek him out years later. The ten other tales share the theme of love, but they are more than simple love stories. Written with Hardy's customary compassion for ordinary men and women and his sharp sense of irony, they tell of romantic disasters, betrayals, misunderstandings and cruelties. And, as in Hardy's novels, it is frequently the women who fall in love unwisely, in defiance of their class, their expectations or their family loyalties, and suffer for their impulsiveness.

My Two Cents:

This collection of short stories is classic Hardy at its finest: Fatalistic and sympathetic at the same time. Anyone who's read Hardy's novels (Tess of the d'Urbervilles specifically comes to mind) knows that Hardy feels for the common man, but knows that fate does not spare those who need it.

My favorite story in this collection is "An Imaginative Woman," which tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a poet she's never met. As you're reading the story, you think there are a couple of ways it can end. When it finally does come to a close, Hardy provides a twist ending to rival those of Guy de Maupassant. It is well done and actually made me laugh out loud (I'm not sure if that was his original intention, but I like irony!).

Another great story is "Enter a Dragoon." After learning that the man she was supposed to marry three years ago was not killed in battle after all, Selina's family hurries to make the marriage final. It's not until after his death, though, that she learns the truth of what happened during those three lost years. I kind of saw the ending coming, but that didn't make it any less interesting of an ending.

Fans of Thomas Hardy's novels will enjoy this book full of looks into the lives of the common man who doesn't always get his happy ending.

Review: The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

Title: The Wife's Tale

Author: Lori Lansens

Pages: 353

Source: Library Thing Early Reviewers program

Rating: 8/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "Alone in the evenings, when the light had drained from the slate roof of her small rural home, and when her husband was working late, Mary Gooch would perform a striptease for the stars at the open bedroom window: shifting out of rumpled bottoms, slipping off blousy top, liberating breasts, peeling panties, her creamy flesh spilling forth until she was completely, exquisitely nude."

Summary (From book flap):

On the eve of their silver anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband, Jimmy -- still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school -- to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from her bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search.

She boards a plane for the first time in her life and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary learns that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she discovers fills her with an inner strength she's never felt before: perfect strangers who come to her rescue, an aging, sometimes hostile mother-in-law who needs her help, friends who enjoy her company. And through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself.

My Two Cents:

At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book. I'm not usually a big fan of books that focus largely on one characteristic of a character -- In this case, Mary's weight -- because it almost seems to reduce that character to a stereotype. With Mary, however, it soon becomes obvious that her weight is the outgrowth and cause of a lot of other factors in her life.

I've never had an experience with Lansens' work in the past, but I think I'll seek out her other novel. Her writing is smooth and easy to read. This book flows really well. I would sit down to read and look up after another 50 pages, surprised at how quickly the pages flew by.

I really liked Mary as a character. She is someone who, in the beginning of the book, clearly needs a change. It takes one major event to throw her out of her usual life, but she does a total 180 and becomes a whole new person. She steps outside herself and her own problems to help others, including her often abrasive mother-in-law and a woman she meets in a parking lot. I cheered for Mary through the whole book.

Lansens is great at rendering a lot of different people vividly. She has the ability to present an Israeli immigrant who drives a limousine with the same depth that she shows us Mary, and we get the same sense of a kindly bank teller that we do of Mary's husband. The minor characters are just as memorable as the major characters.

If you like stories with characters who make great changes in their lives or who get through a major crisis, or if you're a fan of non-traditional women's fiction (Is that even a category?), this book's for you.

Review: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Title: This Side of Paradise

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Pages: 255

Source: Personal library

Rating: 10/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while."

Summary (From Goodreads):

In this remarkable achievement, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unparalleled wit and keen social insight in his portrayal of college life through the struggles and doubts of Amory Blaine, a self-proclaimed genius with a love of knowledge and a penchant for the romantic. As Amory journeys into adulthood and leaves the aristocratic egotism of his youth behind, he becomes painfully aware of his lost innocence and the new sense of responsibility and regret that has taken its place.


My Two Cents:

Oh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, you never disappoint me.

While this book is not as elegant or rich as my all-time-favorite The Great Gatsby (This was Fitzgerald's first book, after all, and it was written to impress Zelda), it still has a lot of the classic Fitzgerald trademarks which make his writing so fabulous. There's a lot of class and social criticism in here, especially when Amory is at Yale. Fitzgerald has a gift for making fun of those with whom he associated, and the jokes are still funny 90 years later.

I vacillated between liking and not liking Amory throughout the book, but I mostly thought he was a great character. He becomes much more likable as he begins to shed some of the pretensions of his youth and wealth. I couldn't wait to see what he did next, because he was always surprising me.

This book isn't for everyone, and it's not even for every fan of 1920s-era American literature. You have to be in the right mood to read this or else all the fun could be lost on you.

Review: This One Is Mine by Maria Semple

Title: This One Is Mine

Author: Maria Semple

Pages: 289

Source: Publisher

Rating: 4/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "David stood at the sink, a pine forest to his left, the Pacific Ocean to his right, and cursed the morning sun."

Summary (From back of book):

Violet Parry has a picture-perfect life: a beautiful house, a successful husband, a darling daughter. Violet can speak French, quote Sondheim, and whip up dinner from the vegetables in her garden. She has everything under control -- except her own happiness. All it takes is a chance encounter with Teddy Reyes, a roguish small-time bass player with a highly evolved sexuality, to open Violet's eyes to what she's missing and upend her life completely.

My Two Cents:

I tried to like this book. I really did. There was just so much standing in the way.

Semple's writing is good. It ought to be; she's worked for TV shows. She's funny and can really turn a phrase. She's got a sense for the narrative. And, she can write vivid characters. I could picture each of the people in this book really easily.

The problem was, there was not a single character in here that I either liked or empathized with. Wait. I did like Jeremy and I felt bad for Dot, the little girl, for being caught up in the mess that is her family. But as far as the others? I thought they were terrible people who did terrible things and got exactly what they deserved. And the characters in here did some absolutely awful things, not the least of which was adultery. I understand that this book is about finding happiness and that happiness people who seem to have everything can be incredibly unhappy, but did these characters really have to go to such extreme lengths to find their happiness? Maybe Semple was trying to portray a group of people and a lifestyle with which I don't identify, so maybe I missed a lot of the point, but I just could not take any interest in what happened to anyone in this book.

I've seen several reviews where people enjoyed this book but, for all of Semple's wit and writing talent, I just couldn't like it.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?: May 24, 2010

Hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books, It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly bookish meme whereby bloggers share their reading for the past week.

This week, I read:

Life, in Spite of Me: Extraordinary Hope after a Fatal Choice by Kristen Jane Anderson and Tricia Goyer

She's So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott

This week, I reviewed (Click on the title to read my review):

Play Dead by Ryan Brown

Life, in Spite of Me: Extraordinary Hope after a Fatal Choice by Kristen Jane Anderson and Tricia Goyer

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

Also on the blog this week:

I ask if anyone has interest in a Ulysses read-along

This week, I'm reading:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy

The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

This week, I hope to begin reading:

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy Book 5) by Richelle Mead

Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life and Everything in Between by Theresa Brown

What are you reading this week?

Review and blog tour: A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

Title: A Month in the Country

Author: J.L. Carr

Pages: 135

Source: Personal library

Rating: 8/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me."

Summary (From back of book):

In J.L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's extraordinary depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.

My Two Cents:

This was such a nice, simple little book that I just couldn't put it down. I think I finished it in just over an hour's time.

I had never heard of J.L. Carr prior to this round of the Spotlight Series tour on the New York Review Books classics, and was surprised to find that this novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. After reading it, I can see why it was given that distinction.

Carr's writing is straightforward and highly readable, but there's a sense of wistfulness that pervades the prose. His narrator, Tom Birkin, is telling the story from many years on (Carr says he wrote this novel in the tradition of Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree), and there's definitely a sense that we may not be getting the full story because the narrator's fond memories are glossing things over. That Birkin is an unreliable narrator, however, doesn't take away from this book any. In fact, I think it enhances the reading.

While Carr was able to write some great characters, especially in Moon and Kathy Ellerbeck, but it's the town that really shines as the star of this book. As I was reading this, I could picture exactly the idyllic little town in the English countryside. Oxgodby could have been any one of dozens of little English towns (Places such as Castle Combe came to my mind as coming from my personal travels), and its inhabitants could have been any small-town Englishmen. I felt myself getting nostalgic for the things I had seen and the places I had visited, much like Tom Birkin was nostalgic for the Oxgodby he knew.

I also liked the inclusion of Birkin's uncovering of the medieval mural in the plot. The churchgoing townspeople had this gorgeous, albeit somewhat disturbing, example of the medieval depiction of the end of the world painted right above their heads the whole time, and no one knew it. They were so busy focusing on their own lives (here on Earth) that they didn't look up (toward Heaven) and see what was right in front of their faces. It was a nice metaphor, I thought.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes novels about the English countryside, art or who just wants a quick read.

Note: I purchased a copy of this book for the Spotlight Series tour of the NYRB Classics.

New York Review Books Classics publishes unique and interesting classics from many eras and parts of the world. Some you may have heard of, others you'll discover for the first time! Often they are translated from other languages and include such greats as such as Euripides, Dante, Balzac, and Chekhov. NYRB Classics include not just fiction titles but also non-fiction such as memoirs, cookbooks, travel and literary criticism.

Just a sample of their authors: Daphne DuMaurier, Arthur Conan Doyle, Christina Stead, Mavis Gallant, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

Considered the wide range of eras, genres and nationalities you are sure to find something to suit your tastes.