It's ONLY July 14

Here it is, Bastille Day, mid-July, and I feel as if summer's nearly over. Ridiculous. But since I get more reading done in the summer, though, I feel "time's winged chariot" fast on my heels. My to-read stack doesn't seem to diminish at all. (Does anyone else remember school cafeteria spaghetti? It had a weird supernatural quality for me: I ate and ate and the quantity never seemed to change.)

I keep revising and re-prioritizing. Something catches my attention, and another book slides back down the list. I try to imagine if I had to queue my reading list the way I do Netflix DVD orders. I'd constantly be clicking move up and move down.

For now, I'm working on a couple I can't wait to share--one audio, one print--but I hear little voices over my shoulder whispering "Read me next."

It's ONLY July 14

Weird Sisters

Although Eleanor Brown's novel The Weird Sisters may lack the elements of literature that stand the test of time, it offered two elements that caught my attention right away. First, of course, there's the title's allusion to Shakespeare's three witches that encounter Macbeth and Banquo in Act I. Second, the novel is a story of the relationship of three grown sisters.

As a Shakespeare lover of the first order, I enjoyed the way the whole family, inspired by their professor father, work lines of Shakespeare into their conversation. The plot brings two sisters home--in semi-shame, Bean after losing a job when caught stealing from her company, Cordy, pregnant after wandering across the country aimlessly after dropping out of college. Their older sister Rose, a non-tenured math professor also returns home when her fiance accepts a temporary position at Oxford. All converge on the house after their mother's diagnosis with breast cancer and must wrestle with their own pasts and futures.

Rather than playing with subtleties as she works in the Shakespearean references, Brown just goes for the obvious fun. The girls are named, after all, for Rosalind, Bianca (oh yes, the second daughter), and Cordelia, the youngest, and Daddy's favorite.

As one of five sisters myself, I had no problem believing that three sisters could be so very different or that each could be jockeying for position as the parents' favorite, always fearing disappointing the family.

Returning to a small college town, the sisters must find their place (and in a way that only happens in make-believe), jobs just fall into their laps--at the local sandwich shop, at the library, at the local college.

The book has no heavy message or deep meaning (unless you're really looking for one). It's just a quick fun read--and a chance to brush up your Shakespeare!

Weird Sisters

Weaving a Story Line

I first encountered Nicole Krauss through her novel History of Love, a book that sat on my shelf awhile before I ventured in. That book reminded me in a way of Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (and yes, I did have to look up the title again to remember which adverb goes with which adjective). Both have young narrators and weave together what at first seems to be disconnected plot lines. Both also have threads of Holocaust narratives as well.

I started Great House once unsuccessfully, then picked it back up during my vacation and couldn't put it down. Again the pulls together characters with only thin connections--if any at all--in New York, London, and Jerusalem. The single connection is a large, usual desk, first introduced by a narrator (one of several) who agrees to keep furniture for a young poet returning to Chile. The desk is the single piece to which she becomes attached, eventually using it while writing her novels. The other characters include the husband of another, more famous author who owned the desk, a brother and sister whose father recovers personal items lost during the Holocaust, a son who returns home to stay with his estranged father in Israel after quitting his job as a judge in England.

The significance of the title also makes a late appearance in the narrative, reinforcing the idea of collective memory. I have finally learned to highlight and make notes in my i-Book, so I can at least look back for the patches of yellow.

This is not the kind of narrative for which I could provide a spoiler. In fact, this is one of the handfuls of books that I finish then turn back and re-read the last chapter or two, just to be sure I comprehend how the story is resolved. I can often (well, maybe I should say sometimes) read a book and feel satisfied when I'm finished without needing to talk about it. This is not one of those books. I have a genuine desire to go back through and chart the people, places, and timeline. I have a need to talk about this clever, intricately woven tale with someone else. I'm just not through with it yet.

Weaving a Story Line

Road Reads

This past week my husband and I headed to Arizona for one of our "bucket list" destinations, the Grand Canyon. Of course, I packed more than enough to read on the way, but I have to admit that the scenery on the trip was so overwhelming that I didn't bury my nose in a book for most of the car trip. I did, however, have plenty of plane time during the cross-country trip.

On the way there, I finished Lisa Genova's new novel Left Neglected. Her novel Still Alice, about a woman with early onset Alzheimer's was so beautifully written. The author's expertise as a Harvard-educated neuroscientist brings a credibility to her books, but her writing holds up literarily as well. In this novel, the main character Sarah Nickerson who, with her husband's help, balances a family and a powerful, high-powered career until a car accident leaves her with a serious brain injury called left neglect. Because of injuries to the right side of her brain, she can't use--or even see- her right arm, right leg; she can't see food on the left side of her plate or people on the left side of her room.

The drama in the book comes not only from the changes to Sarah, but the changes in family dynamics. Her mother, who practically disappeared from life after losing a son in a drowning accident, comes back into her daughter's life. Genova introduces a group that helps handicapped individuals to ski, and she provides information at the conclusion of the book.

Both of Genova's books could easily have veered into maudlin tear-jerkers, but instead, both presented women who faced tremendous life-changing events with dignity.

Check back in a day or two for my review of Nicole Krauss' Great House. For my review of Ann Patchett's State of Wonder from the Raleigh News and Observer, check this link.

Road Reads

Art Voyeur

Anybody who knows me well knows that while I would never consider myself an artist, I love the visual arts. On a trip to New York, I choose MOMA over shopping. In Paris, I went to the d'Orsay when most of our group went somewhere else. For several summers, I've tagged along to Chicago when my husband had a trade show, and I spent hours each time at the Art Institute. I must give some credit to Mrs. Evans and Mr. Flowers, team teachers of the Humanities class I took in high school. If that class didn't get us ready for Jeopardy, nothing would.

I just finished An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin--yes, that Steve Martin. The comedian, the guy with the arrow through his head, one of the newer members of Steep Canyon Rangers. This book immerses readers in the art world--New York City's art world (with an assumption that there is no other). Daniel, the narrator is an art writer and friend of Lacey Yeager, a larger-than-life character determined to rise to the top of the art field by any means necessary. She starts in the catacombs of Sotheby's and uses her wits more than her scruples to succeed.

Martin has created exciting, believable characters that draw a reader through his story, but he impressively fleshes out the details of the changing art climate and the effects of politics and economics, moving through 9/11 and the more recent banking crisis. The narrator is endearing and ingenuous. I could imagine a young Steve Martin playing him. He maintains a cautiously affectionate relationship with Lacey, while maintaining shrewd objectivity.

I seem to remember that after the success of The DaVinci Code, I saw an illustrated edition, including the works of art that play a role in the story. I could imagine the same with this book. Martin includes enough about real artists, living and dead, that I wondered which were actually fictional. Somehow I can imagine art collectors and gallery owners reading and trying to identify themselves--with Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" playing softly in the background.

Art Voyeur

Something for Everyone

This seems to be my year for sequels and series. Earlier this year one of my sisters kept recommending Glenn Cooper's Book of Souls. Then before I got to it, she advised that it was actually the second book, so she turned me toward Secret of the Seventh Sign first. As I wrote earlier, this book, set in 777AD, post-WWII, and present time, between the Isle of Wight, New York City, and Nevada, was a cross between the typical suspense-driven airplane book and historical fiction like Pillars of the Earth.

Book of Souls follows the same character, recently retired FBI agent Will Piper as he finds himself drawn into danger and intrigue surrounding a book going to auction in London dated 1527. This time Cooper manages to bring in threads of Shakespeare, John Calvin, and Nostradamus.

The novel addresses some serious questions related to God, fate, predestination, and such without purporting to present a solid answers. The question readers may take away, though, is whether or not they would want to know exactly when their own lives will end. Along the way, the story is entertaining and clever, a good summer read.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Hickory, NC

Something for Everyone

Third Time's a Charm

In all my years book clubbing, I think I've only failed to finish the book before the meeting twice, and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, which won the Pulitzer prize was one of those. The fact that I began it during my busy season (research paper grading, exams, final report cards) didn't help. The book, too, is so firmly researched that it often felt more like a text book reading that escape, which doesn't always hinder me.

I started with my electronic reader version, spinning away at the stationary bike or walking on the treadmill, and I got stuck. Then I borrowed a hardback copy from a friend and ventured a little further before stopping and moving on to more plot-driven books.

But I couldn't abandon the book altogether, so when I found the audio version at the library, I knew I was meant to finish, and so I did. Now admittedly, I was at a disadvantage in some parts listening, since the characters' names and many of the places in those parts of the world--from Rome to Egypt and all in between--aren't standard fare. On the other hand, I had at least passing familiarity with the stories involved via Hollywood and Mr. Shakespeare, as well as the many legends and myths floating around.

I also knew not to expect a happy ending, although I wasn't sure about the asp. Having visited Turkey, and Ephesus in particular, last summer, I was drawn in by the parts of the story that took place there. My familiarity with Herod, the Caesars, and even Caligula from Biblical accounts and from history lessons also drew me into the story.

By the time I reached the end, I realized that not only was I glad to have made my way through the sometimes dense text, but I had more threads I wanted to follow: What did happen to the library at Alexandria? When exactly did Latin become a dead language? How do writers such as Schiff have the stamina to pursue their research so completely and relentlessly?

I am ready to move on to fiction again (and already have), but for now, I'm glad to have spent this sojourn in that ancient world. I feel ready to travel now.

Third Time's a Charm