More of last year

A few things:

Republic of Wine is weird. Good, but surreal. I think it might make more sense if I were a least as partly drunk as the characters. Of couse, that worked so well when I played "Keeping up with Dmitry" when I read The Brothers Karamazov. (To my defense, that was my *professor's* idea.)

I am an utterly shallow person. This can be witnessed by the fact that I will wait patiently until Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten and Louise Rennison's Away Laughing on a Fast Camel come out in paperback before I buy and read them. Why? You ask. Because, I want all the books in a series to physically match on my bookshelf. I am denying myself pleasure so my shelves look bettter. I told you I was shallow.


See, not writing reviews after reading the book, I can't remember enough, so...

Short and Sweet things:

Of the two David Lodge books I read, Thinks... was vastly superior to Therapy. Therapy, overall, was just meh. Thinks... was pure Lodge-tastic.

The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde is phemonal. (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, and The Well of Lost Plots) One big inside joke for those of us who read a lot, but still enjoyable to someone, like me, who is low on classics education. These books, did, of course, inspire me to pick up more classics. Yay for that. Yay for Thursday Next! Smart and absurd and light quick reading.

Out of the contemporary lit. by women pile I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, The Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and The Red Tent by Anita Diamont.

The Red Tent was one of my favorite books last year, definetely the best out of this trio.
Bel Canto comes next and The Time-Traveler's Wife was last.

The Red Tent was the first work of fiction I've read by Diamont, but her Choosing a Jewish Life impacted me in different ways. But, oh, The Red Tent is phenomanal and fantastic. It is the story of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob of Biblical fame, told in her voice. As she is only barely briefly dealt with in the Bible, it is largely imagined, and how! Beautifully written and moving and outstanding and astonishing and superb. You should read it. Now.

I like all of them, but I thought ...Wife could have dealt with some issues better. The main character had some extremely violent episodes, but we never get to explore the darker side. We never explore how the wife's complete lack of other romanitc involvment has stunted her. We never explore the ramifications of growing up with an adult version of your husband and knowing early on that he will be your husband. It's like an arranged marriage almost and we never explore the greater impact... I just wish it would have done more. It could have done more but wanted to be a sweet love story. So it was. Nothing more.

Bel Canto was nice and I recomend it.

Booze Nation!

Mo Yan is my favorite author. I discovered this when I had to read Red Sorghum for a Chinese lit. class in school. I was only auditing the class and you know how these things go... I never finished the book for class, but I liked it so much that I read it over Christmas break.

His prose is so visceral in a way you rarely ever get, especially with Chinese lit. The smells and tastes and colors just permeate through everything.

Also, he always works with the same translator, Howard Goldblatt and it's obvious they have a really close working relationship, so the translation is faithful to Mo Yan's intent and artistry.

I'm suprised at Mo Yan's guts. I don't know HOW he gets away with publishing what he does, especially as one who works for the army! It's crazy.

Right now I'm reading his Republic of Wine. What I love is that Jiu Guo, the title of the book, is translated two different ways: Republic of Wine in the title, and Liquor Land in the actual text. I also like my own translation of Booze Nation. All are accurate.

jiu means alcohol and is modified to refer to a certain type of alcohol:
pu tang jiu is grape + alcohol= wine

guo mean country or nation (much to the fascination of my history advisor, the Chinese language does not really differentiate between these two concepts.)

Anyway, I'm not really far enough into the text to really comment on it besides that Mo Yan is AWESOME.

I thought I'd instead comment on a book of his that I read last year, in my continuing series of Books I read last year... (creative titling, I know)

Anyway...

Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh

Is a collection of short stories. The title story is a hilarious look at modern Chinese treatment of workers and lovers. I was very excited to read that the film Happy Times was an adaptation of this story, but was dissapointed. I really liked the film, but something kinda similair to the plot of the story occurs in the first 15 minutes of the film. The rest of the film is about something else entirely.

The collection also has a story that is a sequel of sorts to Red Sorghum, which was exciting.

Changing Places

Oh, David Lodge, may I please bear your children?

Seriously, this man rocks.

I just laid in bed all weekend reading. Well, not all weekend, the book isn't that long!

So, two English professors change places through a professorial exchange program in the 70s. The British prof ends up at a thinly disguised Berkeley and the American prof ends up at what I've been told is a thinly disguised Birmingham. I wouldn't know.

Of course, they end up emeshed with each other's wives and department politics.

I appreceiated the way the story was told in different styles. Sometimes straight on prose, a chapter told in newspaper clippings, a chapter told in correspondance, a chapter told in script form.

Some interesting insights to the culture at the time. The book was written in the 70s, so it does date itself. But all in all was excellent.

Even better than a plane full of fallen women!

Oh, after this morning's rant on Bebe Moore Campbell, a love song for David Lodge...

I think I needed his character's next. I'm only 40 pages into Changing Places and I wanted to do a little piroette when I stopped reading after lunch today... mmmm...

I mean, here's an author who can write characters! Such a contrast!

Just take Morris Zapp, a man who wanted to write the definitive commentary on every piece of the Jane Austen cannon not to enlighten readers, but so there would be nothing more to say, so all the drivel that gets published about Austen could just stop. And yet, the names of his children are Elizabeth and Darcy.

Yum.

Is my time back to read something else

Ok, so Moore Campbell's What you Owe Me...

So, Hosanna (a black woman) and Gilda (a Holocaust survivor) meet in an LA hotel where they're both maids. Hosanna's suprised to see a white woman with troubles similair to her own (such as thee fact that Hosanna's family's land in Texas was taken by some white guys in a fairly sketchy way. They have the deed and proof that the land is rightfully theirs, but can't get it back. Gilda has the bankbook for her family's Swiss Bank Account, but the authorities won't let her get the money that her murdered parents set aside when they saw the writing on the wall)... they start a cosmetics company together and then one day, poof! Gilda and the money are gone. Hosanna is bitter bitter bitter (understandably) then Gilda reappears with her own costmetics company that is much more successful than Hosanna's. Hosanna is bitter bitter bitter (understandably) and passes this bitterness onto her children, mainly Matriece, who wants to own her own cosmetics empire one day and forsakes everything else for this dream and ends up working for Gilda bum bum bum! Which sets the stage for "a tale of classic revenge"


But instead of "classic revenge" you just really get shallow characters not learning anything and bumbling along and knifing each other in the back haphazardly and it magically turns out all right in the end. Ugh.

I did not enjoy it. I don't think the characters learned much. Well, maybe the *dead* ones did, but fat lot of good that does 'em.

It also really rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like the message of the book was "All a white person wants to do is screw over the black man, and Jews are the worst of all".

I also got the feeling that the book was trying to say that black people have suffered more than Jewish people, but the Jewish people get all the "credit". Maybe in the US, but there's a broader picture here.

I think it might have tried to tackle issues that were bigger than it and then didn't fully address them.

On the other hand, it's a little over 500 pages and many of the reviews on Amazon (both published and reader-generated) have comments in the vein of "don't let the length scare you!". It's a little over 500 pages in mass market paperback. Maybe I'm not the intended audience.

A more detailed review. (Warning! I will give away the ending here!)

Hmmmm

I've realized that my current reading habits (ie where I read and for how long) no longer lend themselves to non-fiction...

This does not bode well for my hope of 20 nonfiction books this year...

British Tales of Teenage Angst!

Next up on my "books I read last year" tour, we bring you tales of teenage angst all the way from Merry Ole England!

We have:
Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants Louise Rennison
Knocked out by my Nunga-Nungas Louise Rennison
On the Bright Side, I'm now the Girlfriend of a Sex God Louise Rennison
Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging Louise Rennison
Adrian Mole from Minor to Major Sue Townsend

All the Louise Rennison's will be taken first. I had already read Angus... and On the Bright Side... but it had been over a year, so I decided to reread them before I tackled the other two, so I could remember the subleties of the plot. (This is a joke, there's nothing really subtle in these books.) I read all four in a weekend. Maybe a day. They're really quick and pretty funny. I had thrown out my back and was a bit loopy on pain killers and these were the perfect books for such a time!

So, this is a series about a teenage girl named Georgia Nicholson who lives somewhere in England. I don't think we ever find out where, but I secretely think it's Eccles or Sale. Ok, not really, but I do think she lives somewhere around Manchester. It could very well be Eccles or Sale or even Macclesfield or one of the other bajillion towns and communities that have grown over the years to smoosh together and become the greater Manchester area. She doesn't live in Manchester, but close enough that the bad girls can go into Manchester to go clubbing.

Except they go to Fifth Avenue (I think). What a waste of a club. Except it's the perfect place for people like the Bummer Twins to go to. Just saying.

I like the American prints of these books over the British for the sole reason that there's a glossery in the back of each one that's fabbity-fab-fab and full of hilariousity (as Georgia would say). The British versions, on the other hand, have most excellent titles, such as It's OK, I'm wearing really big knickers (On the Bright Side...) and the new one Away Laughing on a Fast Camel (which I haven't read... I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback) in England is And that's when it Fell off in my Hand. Apparently And that's when it fell off... is too rude for American audiences and well, we don't refer to our underpants as knickers, so the other one didn't make much sense...

Of couse, On the Bright Side... as a title did have its own problems! (For any worried parents out there-- there isn't any sex in these books. "Sex God" is British for "really hot".)

Anyway... back to Georgia. She's really shallow and her whole diary is full of boys, makeup, and getting into trouble at school. High brow, it is not. Hilarious and absolutely silly, it definetely is. Read them order. Angus... is still the longest, but Away laughing... looks promising... and I hate to admit it, but man, I hope she ends up with Dave the Laugh. It will never happen though, because she's too shallow. *sigh*

Oh! They're also available in adult editions! They include 2 books in one and have tamer covers and really boring names (The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson).

Moving on to Adrian Mole. Also a diary. Also British. Also funny, but in a darker way. And Adrian's a boy, whereas Georgia's a girl. Adrian's humor comes from Townsend's hilarious characters. This is still light reading, but not the complete fluff of Georgia. From Major to Minor is a four-book collection. The first book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4, is the best. After he goes off to college, eh. However, there are more books not in this book, such as The Cappucino Years that my sister highly recomends. I'll try and check them out sometime!

Also, I think that the Adrian books were written more for adults, and Georgia was written for 13-year-olds.

Reviews!

So, I read 50 books in 2004. Here's the first of a series of reviews...

I'm not going to go in order that I read them, but rather group them into catagories...

So, here are THE CLASSICS

Emma by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Suprisingly, I've never had to read any of these books. I took all advanced English classes and hold a degree from a good college, and the only one of these I had read before 2004 was Wuthering Heights, which I read for fun one Christmas break during college. (And it's not just these books, but I've never had to read any books by these authors!)

So, I liked Emma a lot, but I'm an Austen sucker. I also really enjoyed Jane Eyre, which I only read because everyone kept telling me to read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair and I thought I should read Jane first, or else it would be cheating. The thing that struck me though was the fact that I never had a sense of Jane and Rochester falling in love. But, all of a sudden they were! I knew it was coming because who doesn't know that? But I was still suprised when it happened.

After I read Jane, I read The Eyre Affair which made me realize that I really didn't remember much about Wuthering Heights so I re-read that. It's a good book, but I've never understood the obsession with it. It's not that good. But, I'm obsessed with Pride and Prejudice so I really shouldn't say anything.

Then in spring I read Tale of Two Cities. I never really got into it. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law's S.O. were absolutely horrified that I didn't cry at the end. Horrified in a way that I'm sure they still think I am an absolutely awful person (as I'm sure you're thinking now as well). I think it was because I had to read it in short bursts. So, I'd read 10 pages, put it down, in a few days read another 10 pages... so I never really bonded with the characters. Or maybe I really am a heartless creature. Hmmm... I really do need to read Great Expectations though. It's on the list for this year.

The book is always better...

Finished Persausion and it made me all girly, like only a Jane Austen novel can...

However, I am now even more pissed off that they so drastically changed Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason when they made the movie. Because now it's not the same story.

What does it say that the original and best chick-lit books are Bridget and they don't have original plots?

Still, I will never argue with an opportunity to drool over Colin Firth. Just sayin'.

Guy Stuff

So, this past week I read Guy Stuff by a guy named Dan.

It's an interesting publishing premise, as it's a blog, but each entry is a chapter. I don't know whether or not I'm sorry I came across it after it was finished. On one hand, I ripped through it pretty quickly, and would have been really impatient to wait for a new chapter every week. On the other hand, if it was only a chapter a week (they're pretty short chapters) then I probably would have wasted a lot less time at work!

The book, in itself, is pretty good. Nothing too deep or earth-shattering, but a pleasant read. Funny in parts. No great insights on life, but some fun jabs at the evilness of Starbucks.

It does, however, need a good edit. And not just in the occasional typo, but you can tell it wasn't edited as a whole, as certain turns of phrase are reused chapters later, and really shouldn't be. (For instance, the narrator twice makes the observation that his roommate was the only person who could lose weight by going out to eat. For the sake of good writing, it only should have been made once. The same is true for the comment "if it were an apartment, it would be called garden style". A good description once, but shouldn't be reused.)

All in all though, a good ladlit read, and you can't beat the price (though you should flip Dan a few bucks).

Hi-sterical

Things my Girlfriend and I... was the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

Kinda like David Lodge on crack? I don't know if I like that analogy, but he captures relationships well and academia (but this time the support staff side) well, as does Lodge.

But there's more to it. More slapstick. More crazy. I mean, Lodge's people/situations are all totally believable everyday observations.

Millington's world is crazy, and yet, you do believe it anyway. I mean, Lodge would never have his university pay Chinese mobsters to recruit Asian students.

Don't read it if you're a librarain who is easily offended, though. He hits them pretty hard. But, on the other hand, I've known several librarians like the one in his book.

Pop

Currently Reading: Things My Girlfriend and I have Argued About Mil Millington

Longitude by Dava Sobel was suprisingly good. I'm not always the biggest fan of pop history. I think one of the reasons that I appreciated this book is that, unlike a lot of pop history, it didn't make grand claims without evidence or explanation.

Or maybe it was the pop science of it. Which I don't mind, because I don't know a lot about science.

Opposite of Fate Recap

Currently Reading Longitude Dava Sobel

Ok, I finished up Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan yesterday. I liked it. It's a bunch of essays by Amy Tan, not all of them new. She's fairly neurotic and it's a bunch of essays about herself so it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

If you've ever wanted an (auto)biography of Tan, then you'll like it. If you like Amy Tan and want to seperate fact from fiction (for instance, her mom's life story plays out in Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God's Wife fairly heavily) then, hey read this book. If you want to feel better about your relationship with your mother, read it, because to say Tan and her mom have issues is putting it mildly.

It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if it is, it's pretty good.

I've moved onto Longitude. I'm not that far into it, but so far, so good, except for one glaring omission. How can you write a book about the history of LONGITUDE for chrissakes and not include a map. I mean really. These navigation stories would be a lot more interesting if I could remember my Age-of-the-Explorers geography. Which I can't, because I'm no longer in 8th grade.

Qing ni fanyi ma?

Currently Reading The Opposite of Fate Amy Tan

Major pet peeve time:
I have noticed that Chinese-American authors, whom I assume haven't studied Chinese on an academic level, but picked up bits and pieces from their Chinese-speaking relatives, make up their own transliteration system, so those of us who actually speak Chinese need to translate the transliteration. Grrrrrrr.

I can understand that the author hasn't studied Chinese, so how would they know proper transliteration methods, but surely, someone in the editing department can figure it out! If not, they should hire me.

Examples:
In her essay arrival banquet Amy Tan talks about her mother teaching her cousin English.

" 'Bu-shr har!" my mother says to him. 'Don't say "har." How. How, how, how--like hau, hau, hau.' Good, good, good."

Except in the pinyin system, the first word (which translates as a general negative, in this case, "no" or "wrong") is bu-shi if you want to put a Beijing accent onto it (which you don't, because Tan's mother is Shanghainese) you can write bu-shir. And good is hao.

Further on in the essay:
"Meigwo-ren... Jyou jin-shan" (American... San Francisco)

Should be Meiguo ren... jiu jin-shan and it wasn't until she directly translated the Chinese name for San Francisco as "old gold mountain" that I realized what she meant by jyou.

The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Wong Keltner did the same thing. A lot.

I know it's stupid, but it gets to me, which is why it's a pet peeve, no?

Pride and Prejudice 4-Evah

Currently Reading: The Opposite of Fate Amy Tan

So, according to the listeners of Women's Hour, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the book that has most transformed women's lives.

Hmmmm. Now, I love P&P, even to the point where I pretentiosly abbriviate it as such, because doesn't everyone know what I'm talking about? But it didn't really transform my life. No more than Bridget Jones's Diary did. (We all know it's the same story, right?) Except for making me feel slightly more normal than I did before reading it.

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, however, did. I read it last winter and it scared me because it just feels so immenantly possible. It made me start acting up.

In the beginning...

Currently Reading: The Opposite of Fate Amy Tan

Yep, so here's my new website to talk about the books I'm reading/have read etc. etc. Soon, there will also be a spoiler site, so there will often be links to the spoiler site where I will continue my train of thought, but give away crucial details, so I won't ruin the book for other people on this site. I'm not really going to start posting right now, just get things set up.