Lurking in My Library

A semi-occasional something or other on my reading list, also cross-posted at Wandering the Midwest. We both have Kindles, and we’re in love with them. This is officially a thing.

Title of book: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, published 1891

Title of Review: Poor Tess!, or This is My Scarlet Letter moment


Synopsis: Tess is a sweet and responsible English girl (she can’t be more than 15 or so) with a pair of useless drunks as parents. She works very hard to maintain their status quo of crushing poverty and occasionally attend school and care for her siblings. Her useless drunk of a father, John, encounters the parson one day, and the parson informs him that John’s a descendant of the long-dead noble line of the d’Urbervilles, and refers to him as ‘Sir John.’ Sir John, being a useless drunk bastard, takes this occasion as an opportunity to cease working and spend money he doesn’t have. He entices his useless drunk of a wife to join him, and, long story short, he oversleeps for his important trip to sell turnips or something in a nearby town, and Tess’s useless drunk of a mother urges Tess to take the trip in the middle of the night with a small sibling that will be no help. Tess falls asleep while steering the horse, the postman collides with her carriage(?), and the horse dies. As it is the family’s only horse, Tess feels guilty enough to allow her parents to pimp her as a chicken-tender to a family of d’Urbervilles in a nearby town in the hopes that she can marry a rich distant cousin. She comes home knocked up because the distant cousin (who is not a distant cousin, but the son of a nouveau-riche family that just borrowed the name) is a pushy, rapey, psychopath and he refuses to marry her. The baby dies. And then things get fucked up. Tess is kinda a Riot Grrrl of her day.

Favorite moment: The intro conversation between the parson and John Durbeyfield sets the tone for the entire book. It’s almost Shakespearean, and it makes me wish I’d studied this book in college.

Least favorite moment: Pretty much any scene involving Tess and another person.

Line I highlighted (this may be my favorite aspect of the Kindle. Get one): “experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.”

Arbitrary rating scale: This book gets 4 out 5 stars and 5 out of 5 feminist awakenings

What a more traditional review would talk about: Hardy’s clear affection for the pagan-esque rituals of agrarian life, and his thoughtful exploration of religious hypocrisy and the ways that it can supersede the lack of individual religious belief. There’s a religious debate that runs through this book that I don’t quite understand, but I bet that it’s fascinating if you have the proper historical context.


The Review:

The synopsis above covers roughly the first third of this incredibly fucked-up book. I refuse to give you a full synopsis because I want you to read it, and wallow in all its fucked-up glory. The ending is amazing and completely insane, it’s like one of those really pretty songs that you sang as a kid, and then you grew up and realized that the whole song is about dead people. This is the Scarborough Fair of literature. Seriously, read it.

What the hell does the title of my review mean? Well, my mother once told me a story about how my grandmother said that reading The Scarlet Letter is what made her a feminist. I read that book as a junior in high school and I was already a feminist, but I absolutely understood the outrage (which may not even be true, cuz god knows every story about my family is an elaborate version of the telephone game). So this book just reawakened all of my (not necessarily dormant) feminist fury. Why do Tess’s parents ship Tess off? She’s the oldest, but she’s also incredibly pretty. They want to sell off their prettiest asset so that they can continue to be shitty people without having to worry overmuch. A solid 25 percent of the book is about the street harassment Tess faces for the high crime of walking down the road while pretty. After her baby dies, she meets a man and falls in love. He’s smart and avant-garde and full of fresh ideas, but when he finds out about her history, he gives her 50 pounds and takes off for Brazil. Because he’s an asshole. Every speck of happiness within her reached is smashed against the rocks because she had the temerity to be raped by an asshole. When Tess finally decides to be the actor instead of the acted upon, the resulted is as desperate, pathetic, and warped as you would expect from a person that’s only allowed to exist at the mercy of a league of shitty people that never have to pay for anything that they do to her. Also, it’s violent and awesome and a little punk rock. I’m so glad I watched Sucker Punch in the middle or reading this book. They’re a great combo. It took me a long time to read this book, because I was furious at everyone in it not named Tess. I’m so very glad I read it though, and if you have a Kindle (or a Kindle app) it’s free. Go get it.

What I'm Reading

Note to self: There’s no such thing as “light” reading about working mothers.

So, after Jezebel did this piece, I decided to buy the book. If you know me, you know that this means nothing. My list of books to buy (a word document I tried to fix and upload at one point, but got too busy) sits at about 300 right now. I have eight books on my dresser waiting to be read. I’m in the middle of two books right now, and there are three other ‘unopened’ books hanging out on my Kindle, waiting for my attention. I have a book problem.

(I really don’t have a problem, and if I do it’s the fact that my brother-in-law gave me Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games early this year, and reading those 8 books threw off my schedule. I give him full credit for the backlog this year. Next year will be different.)

So I bought this because I’m reading a nonfiction book about a German pastor I learned about via the Kindle Daily deal (damn you Kindle Daily Deal!) and it is so. damn. dry. I want to finish it, but I go through these long phases where I just don’t care about his siblings, the family holiday celebrations, or the letters to grandma. I need frequent breaks.

Hubby and I went to Chicago for the funeral and I knew I didn’t want to read Holocaust-themed nonfiction, so I picked up I Don’t Know How She Does It and settled in to the trip.

Note to readers: What follows is not a review. It’s a personal, visceral, profanity-laden rant about my feelings after reading the book. If you’re looking for in-depth analysis, you’ll have to catch me on another day. Also, spoilers.

So this book made me want to open up a vein. I went into it expecting something like “Bridget Jones becomes a mom,” and I got something more like 9 to 5, except the bad guys kind of win. Apparently the only way to succeed at a parenting is to give up your high-stress high-profile career and live on your less ambitious husband’s salary. Also, single women that don’t want children should have them anyway, because the main character felt ‘awe’ when her children were born. That doesn’t make any damn sense.

I’m in a labyrinth here. The book tries desperately to paint a picture of the unfairness of judging the main character’s choices in parenting. I don’t actually want to judge her parenting choices. Thing is, every person in her life judges her parenting choices, AND SHE LETS THEM. She’s a well-paid, high-powered hedge fund manager with no backbone. Ultimately, she decides that everyone in her life that made her feel small, from the misogynists to overcompensating moms to her heinous in-laws, are somehow right. If all of these characters are right and she is wrong, then why isn’t a single one of them likable? I stayed up all night after reading this book, trying to figure out if my decision to TRY to get pregnant was going to destroy any hope of a career. I know that she’s a fictional character; I know she has more money than I do, and I know that she worked in a field with a LOT more men. Yet I found myself troubled and anxious about this book because it seemed to say that, no matter your gifts and talents, there’s only ONE WAY TO BE A MOTHER, and that way is all-consuming.

I’m not a mother (yet), but I’m obsessed with the mechanics of working motherhood. I’m less interested in the opt-out/opt-in debate, because it is presented as an argument for rich people. It’s never, “do I want to stay home?”, it’s always “am I squandering my intelligence/pedigree/greatness on kiddie time?” The real-life SAHMs I know don’t present their problems or choices in this way. A lot of them stay home because they don’t demand pay that would exceed day care. That’s an issue I can understand.

The thing is, even if I was rich, I’d still want to work. I’d want my children to see me working. I’d want to them to understand that coming home after accomplishing something is important. I think that ambition gets a bad rap in our society, and I want my kids to appreciate and nurture their ambitions. If, heaven forbid, one of my kids ends up in an abusive or otherwise nonfunctioning relationship, I’d want him or her to realize that economic independence is the way out. That’s easier to do if he or she grows up in a situation where economic independence is the norm for both spouses.

I can’t be appeased by a tacked-on ending about securing funding for a “lady business.” The ending almost makes it worse. She can only use her skills for a dollhouse factory. Because she’s a MOTHER. She can’t fight back against the environment in her office. She has to leave. Because she’s a MOTHER. It's the only option. How fucking depressing is that?

What I’m Reading

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else
By Michael Gates Gill

1. If your office has a community bookshelf, use it as an opportunity to read something you wouldn’t normally read. I found one of my favorite books that way.
2. Keep your expectations low.

Full disclosure: I don’t care for Starbucks coffee. It tastes like they burned the beans. Also I don’t go for fancy whippacinolatta stuff, so it’s not a business that really appeals to me.

I am a speed-reader. I can’t always stop myself from blowing through books and articles (especially if the language is fairly basic), and sometimes I think I lose something. I often read books over again, so I can kick back and enjoy the way that writers play with language. I don’t need to read this one again.

Michael Gates Gill grew up rich and a child of the rich, went to an Ivy League university, used his secret-society connections to land a high-powered, high-paying advertising job, meet loads of famous people, moved whenever his company told him to, and then he got old. Then he got fired. Then his consulting business dried up. Then he knocked up a woman he met at a gym. Then his wife left him. Then he discovered he had a (minor) brain tumor that causing him to lose his hearing.

Did you get all of that? I know it’s kind of involved. This is an autobiography, and there’s little motivation to skimp on details when you’re writing an autobiography. (unless you were President.) That’s why a book about working at Starbucks also includes a story about tea with the Queen. And one about meeting Frank Sinatra. And one about running with bulls in Pamplona because he wants to impress Hemingway. And one about how his dad’s archenemy is the guy that wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Still with me?

This book is bad. It’s not terrible (though the never-ending BJs to Starbucks are pretty ridic. And he can’t write dialogue to save his life, every character, regardless of age, ethnicity or educational background, sounds exactly like him, and nobody ever uses contractions), but it’s bad. I hate to say this, because Michael Gates Gill clearly needs a hug. He’s a very emotional man, and he has some legitimate regrets about the way he lived his life (Even though he did what he was raised to do. We are all screwed in some way), and he’s working really hard to repair that damage. It’s just…the man is fighting so hard for perspective and making so little progress and I kinda want to shake him. Also I don't care about his famous people encounters, and they seem really out of place in the narrative.

He’s sitting in Starbucks at the end of his rope (and in a very expensive suit), when a woman jokingly asks him if he wants a job. He says yes, without thinking. She says, “are you sure you can work for me?” and then he tells us about how much he loved his black nanny and how lonely she was when he left. Since his prospective boss is also black, this is relevant. Because this is how many black people he knows.(did I mention he lives in NYC?)

So he stumbles horribly through the interview and gets hired to work a month later. He’s not hired to work in the Starbucks he was sitting in, and this is a problem because he’s one of those people that only goes so far north and so far east or something (I don’t know New York, but I am familiar with this sort because they’re all over the Detroit suburbs). So this causes a panic, and he has to learn to ride the bus. MGG is always learning things.

He learned to clean the bathroom, and work the cash register, and talk to customers, and speak to his coworkers with respect, and carry trash bags and he’s the happiest he’s been in his life. He also realized that in his past life he’d purposely destroyed the career of woman much like his boss because she didn’t look like him. And he’s very sorry.

And I’m very irritated. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with the guy. I mean, I don’t sympathize A LOT, but I do sympathize. I just…he revels in his new life like it’s a hobby. I never read Eat, Pray, Love because I thought it would be like this. Except this is full-time.

So I recommend skipping this one, but if my review is a bit too vague, just read these lyrics instead.

What I'm reading

I finished Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman, shortly after this book, and it was a welcome change. Gaiman's short stories range from the terrifying to the simply strange, and when he doesn't tell me the big secret, I'm fairly confident that I don't want all the answers. I realize that there's been some brouhaha over his profile in the New Yorker, but I don't agree with the outrage, and every time I read one of his books, I'm just grateful for good imaginative narratives in this world.

Next book (I've already started it, and I'm loving it): Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip.

What I'm reading (maybe it's me)

So I've finished The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent. The book follows a 10-year-old girl and her family in an early American settlement. Her family is implicated in charges of witchcraft (and spreading the plague) and several members are tried in Salem. The author is a descendant of one of her characters, so clearly she has some attachment to her work.

That being said, she covers three years in about 300 pages, (100 pages per year, roughly) and most of it is about fried beaver tails and skirt hems and sewing lessons. When she wasn't covering the exacting minutiae of life in 1690, she's was alluding to some deep secret of the father of the family relating to his life back in England. The icing of the piece is the bloated, bloated, bloated writing.

Now, maybe it's me, but I shouldn't have to sit through 300 pages of skirt hems and harvest time just to get to a trial that's barely mentioned and then another 7 pages where the narrator discovers the detail of her father's secret and then declines to share it with us. It doesn't seem fair to bore the living shit out of me and then refuse to deliver. I know that there are people who dig this stuff, they prefer to read fictionalized history because they suspect that real histories are too dry. If this is the best example of that genre, I'll make sure to avoid it in the future.

I feel cheated by this. There was no story in this story, and the one secret that I was actually interested in is still left unexplained. This is Kent's first book, and I'm trying to look at it more kindly in that light (forgiving endless unnecessary metaphors and the like), but I don't think I'll ever pick up another book by this author. Now, if you click the link at the top of the post, you'll see that the amazon reviewers seem to vehemently disagree with me. So, maybe it's me.

It's not, this book sucked.

The 2009-2010 book list

Okay, sorry this took so long. I'm really feeling the limitations of my blogger skills right now. The titles in italics are books I already own (I've already read the first 3, and I'm in the middle of number 4). Through the year, these are the books that I'll be covering in my semi-regular "What I'm reading" posts. (Possibly some extras too.) Give a holler if you have any other suggestions. I'll update on the hubby later in the day, or later in the week.

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates The Beautiful Struggle
2. Moveable Feast, Hemingway
3. Push by Sapphire
4. Kathleen Kent The Heretic’s Daughter
5. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
6. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
7. Word War Z: An Oral history of the zombie wars by Max Brooks
8. Looking for Calvin and Hobbes by Nevin Martell
9. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
10. Dream City by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood
11. The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
12. Eyal Press Absolute Convictions
13. Robert Leleux Beautiful Boy
14. Uglies by Scott Westefeld
15. Blindness by Jose Saramago
16. Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
17. The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace
18. Toy Monster: The Big Bad World of mattel
19. Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
20. Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce
21. Erasure by Percival Everett
22. Super in the City by Daphne Uviller
23. Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent
24. Gimme Shelter by Mary Elizabeth Williams
25. Dating Jesus by Susan Campbell
26. Escape by Caroyln Jessup
27. A Grand Army of Black Men by Edwin S. Redkey
28. American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan
29. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
30. American Odyssey by Robert Conot
31. A Nation Under Our Feet by Stephen Hahn
32. The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
33. The rage of a Privileged Class by Ellis Cose
34. the social theory of practices by Stephen turner
35. When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race by Judith Stone
36. Bad Boys by Ann Ferguson
37. Garfield minus Garfield
38. Washington, D.C. Protests: Scenes from Home Rule to the Civil Rights Movement By Mark S. Greek
39. American Colonies by Alan Taylor
40. The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood
41. Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
42. Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon
43. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings
44. The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money by Brad DeLong and Stephen Cohen
45. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
46. Weevils In The Wheat: Interviews With Virginia Ex-slaves
47. Lauren Sandler's Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement
48. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
49. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
50. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
51. Confederate Emancipation by Bruce Levine

What I'm reading

I’ve read two books and two Sandman volumes since Christmas. I’d like to comment on Sandman as a larger work when I’ve finished the whole series. Neil Gaiman is such an elegant and nuanced writer (and a pretty good blogger), that I don’t want to comment on what’s going on in his work until I get to see the whole picture. I love comic book ‘volumes.’ I don’t have the time to track individual comics (I have a hard enough time remembering which volume I’m due to read next if I wait too long), and the volumes are as meaty as a novella, and a great way to spend an afternoon for me. Sandman is a particular favorite, because my husband and I read them at about the same pace, (he’s a slower reader of other things) and we can share them and discuss them…usually at least. So, Sandman is great (and please, please, Neil Gaiman, write some more novels) but it’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

On to the books. I read The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates, my favorite blogger. There’s not much I can say about this book without dissolving into fangirl gushing, so I’ll just say that I consider it required reading for everyone.

The other book I read (and the whole point of this post, finally, in the third paragraph, because I've become really undisciplined in my writing) was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This book was an anomaly for me for a few reasons. First, I compile a list throughout the year of books I want to read or sound interesting, and I try to pursue books on that list first (comic books not included, I go through too fast), this book was not on that list. Second, I’d convinced myself that Barbara Kingsolver was a romance novelist, and I don’t read romance novels (though, in the spirit of this blogger, I may reconsider). So, I heard Kingsolver speak about her new book on NPR, and I decided to check her out. My office has a small table devoted to book sharing, so I picked up The Poisonwood Bible.

The book details the life of a family (mother, father, and 4 daughters) that decides to travel to the Congo for a missionary post in 1959. The book covers the transition of Congo into Zaire, as well as the (mostly hamfisted) attempts of the missionary father to convert members of their small village to Christianity. Each chapter of the book is narrated by a different female member of the family (we never hear the father from his own perspective) and spans several decades.

At the core, this is a book about the failure of will and the futility of arrogance. The Price family moves to the Congo with hopefulness and surety. They’re confident that they have everything on their side: the right god, the right morals, the proper lessons. Rev. Price even travels with seedlings, since he intends to teach the villagers the proper way to harvest the proper food. The longer they stay, the more apparent it is that they have nothing to offer the villagers or themselves. For all they’re surety, they are completely unprepared. Each family member responds to this in a different way and as a result of different incidents. Eventually the Congo consumes them (in one case, literally) and they are forever changed.

The book had a profound effect on me. Aside from the careful examination of white privilege and its pitfalls (and it WAS careful, more careful than I was expecting), the theme of how life changes you more than you can change lives was powerful for me. I feel that I’ve been teetering on the edge of some sort of emotional growth spurt for months now. I seem to be becoming someone…more. I’ve not given my consent to these changes, and I don’t quite know what they are, but the fact remains that I’m being consumed by the raft of shit that has hit my family in recent months, and that some of these changes will be permanent. One of them seems to be a newfound lack of faith in the power of my will to change my world. That change rattles at the foundations of who I am and how I see myself, and I don’t really know what to do with it. It’s an arrogance that has kept me warm and safe for as long as I’ve felt warm and safe. But the fact remains that those seeds won’t grow in the soil that I’m in, and I somehow have to redefine what’s proper for me in this new context.

When I get a chance, I'll publish the book list, and I'll track how many I get through.

What i'm reading

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Okay, people have been raving about this book for some time. I'm was wary of reading it because of something I like to call the Amelie Effect. When that movie came out, everyone and their mother was over the moon about it. "So clever," "So inventive," "You should see it!" So I did. Snooze.

So I've been wary of this kind of hype ever since. The Pulitzer Prize piqued my interest, so I gave it a go.

The book follows a family of Dominicans living in both Santo Domingo and New York. The book is full of Spanish phrases, science fiction references, and Dominican history. This book is like music. I felt like some of it just went gliding through my brain. I can't remember being so charmed by a book that was so sad. I'm still thinking about what the mongoose means. I highly recommend it.

What I'm Reading

You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore is best known for the book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. I haven’t read that yet, so I don’t have much to say about it (I think I’m reading that after my next book) other than this: the topic doesn’t strike me as a stretch for this author, and I’m betting it’s pretty good.

This book is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and follows the adventures of vampires set loose on San Francisco. I loved Fiends, it really captured the best of Moore’s skills, creating lovingly-created wacky subcultures that find themselves interconnected through loneliness and necessity (the book contains one of the funniest marriage proposals I’ve ever read).

That being said, there’s a passage in the book about how sleeping vampires don’t wake up during the day, and how a mortal considers dressing his vampire girlfriend up in a cheerleader outfit and sexually assaulting her. The book doesn’t treat the idea as assault (though that’s what it is), and our meek little beta male seems to think better of it.

And then, it pops up in You Suck. Except now, it’s actually happened, and the two characters discuss this egregious breach of trust as if it were a social faux pas. So now I hate the book. There were some interesting elements, it overlaps with another Moore book I enjoy, and I finished (because I rarely put a book down forever), but rape is not okay. It’s not something that happens because an awkward young man that’s new to relationships doesn’t know the score. It’s something that happens because of fucking rapists. I don’t understand why that’s so fucking confusing for people, and I’m fresh out of understanding on the topic. So, thumbs down, and a break from Christopher Moore for the moment.

Other favorites by this author: Bloodsucking Fiends

What I’m reading next: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I want to see what all the fuss is about.

This Post is better suited for Monday morning

My football picks are 8-4, and the Jets-Miami game has set a new precedent for me. Fake punts are now the best indicator of a crazy game.

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. I was light on posting because my in-laws came to town to help us out. Hubby started chemo yesterday, and it’s good to have someone here to advocate for him full time, while I do annoying things like work. My father-in-law went home, but my mother-in-law is here for a month. I’m really glad to have some help!

There’s something about the city that I live in and fall. It comes in at night, and summer beats it back by early afternoon. The mornings are quite crisp these days, but by mid-afternoon everyone sheds their hoodies. It looks like an accelerated version of the shift from winter to spring. I kinda dig it, to be honest. It’s a small distraction from the sheer speed of my life these days. It’s nice.

So I finished the book I’m going to report on this week, I just need to collect my thoughts about a troubling trend I’m seeing in these books, and I’ll send all of my insights straight to you. I’m out of pocket this weekend, so I’ll try to load you up on good stuff before Friday when I disappear again.

What I'm reading

Fluke: Or, I know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore is best known for the book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. I haven’t read that yet, so I don’t have much to say about it (I think I’m reading that after my next book) other than this: the topic doesn’t strike me as a stretch for this author, and I’m betting it’s pretty good.

Fluke follows the adventures of a whale scientist and his crew as they try to discover why whales sing. There’s a parallel to a biblical story, and a fair amount of magic, which made it easier to get through the science (and faux-science).

The exploration of the “beta male” is an ongoing theme in Moore’s work. (A Dirty Job has a great definition of the beta male.) His male characters are typically brave, kind, and eventually heroic, but they all begin the books obsessed with their own inadequacies. Moore is skillful at making these strange neurotic heroes compelling. Also, Moore has a knack for describing (or inventing) subcultures that are engaging and entertaining.

I probably shouldn’t try to write another one of these at 7 in the morning.

Other favorites by this author: Bloodsucking Fiends

What I’m reading next: You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore