Sunday Salon: the High Gear Post

My reading has really taken off in the last week! I’ve actually read 14 books since my last Sunday Salon. I know that this uber-reading won’t last; it’s just a phase, but it sure is nice after last month’s on-and-off feel. Don’t worry; I won’t be trying to talk about all the books today! Two I’ve already reviewed (The Fellowship of the Ring and The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, two I’ve read for ‘tours’ (Classics Circuit and Spotlight Tours), and one I already know I’ll be devoting a post to. That leaves nine, and just to warn you now, while I’ve been reading a lot, they haven’t all been gush-worthy. It breaks down to about half and half!

I finished my first Art History Challenge read: The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick. This is a nonfiction book, mainly about one detective with Scotland Yard and the various art crimes he’s helped solved, with the book centering on the 1994 theft of The Scream. I found parts of this book quite interesting, especially how museums tend to be a bit lax with security and insurance, and the short stories of different heists sprinkled throughout. Also, there were colour plates in the middle with many of the paintings Dolnick discusses, which was nice. However, there was a serious case of hero-worship going on! The way that Dolnick discusses the detective, Charley, you’d think a little boy was telling you about his favourite superhero. I’m not a fan of super-adulatory biographies, and in many cases it seems like Dolnick just takes Charley’s word as absolute fact. Even though it seems like Charley’s the kind of guy who would embellish just about any story. Reading this often felt like when you’ve been cornered in a cafe or at a bar, by some guy who’s a bit full of himself, and keeps telling you all these things about himself that you don’t really believe, but you’re stuck there, so rather than roll your eyes you just look around for an exit. Unless I’m the only one that that’s happened to?* I’m sure there must be better books on art crime than this, although I couldn’t tell you what they are.

I was originally supposed to read The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson for the Classics Circuit’s Harlem Renaissance tour (which pretty much added something to my TBR list with each post!) as well as the Black Classics Challenge. I’m sad that my illness made me miss my date, because this book was so good! It’s a novel, but it’s told in the style of a memoir, and it’s so convincing that I had to pause and check on the internet to confirm that it really was fiction. Johnson’s writing style is incredibly readable; I could have swallowed this in one sitting if I wasn’t trying to stretch it out. I know some people get nervous by the idea of a classic, but honestly this felt like it could have been written last year. Instead, it was first published in 1912, and it was apparently the first novel that used a first-person black narrator. Our narrator has a really neat life, from his earliest years in the South to his schoolboy years in Connecticut to rolling cigars in Florida to being a musician in the heart of Harlem (at ‘The Club,’ which sounds like the Cotton Club) to going on a tour of Europe, every page was packed with interest. While ultimately, the narrator must decide whether to embrace his black heritage or pass as white, the race issues central to the book are more subtle and psychological that I expected.* All of this is my way of telling you that I loved reading this book, I think you all would too, and I really want to find out more about Johnson!

Then I picked up The God who Begat a Jackal by Nega Mezlekia for the Reading the World Challenge. Oh readers. I was so excited about this one. I adored Mezlekia’s memoir (Notes From a Hyena’s Belly), and it was written in such a literary style, I was sure his hand at fiction would be excellent as well. And when I found it was historical fiction in Ethiopia, I probably squealed out loud. But, um, let’s just say that Mezlekia needs a bit more practice at fiction. I could see what he was trying to achieve, and often it felt like he was going for a Shalimar the Clown* kind of feel, but it just didn’t. quite. work. It started out strong, with this daughter of Duke and her mystical ways (when she’s five, she walks through a wall, because no one’s told her that humans can’t do that)…but then it just went downhill. And I kept reading, thinking it had to get better, but it got even more convoluted. It’s almost like Mezlekia decided to cram as much into his book as possible, and his editor was too afraid to tell him: “You’re not that good at juggling yet. Let’s remove a few of those balls.” Are y’all sick of metaphors yet? I really wish I could tell you this book was amazing, but I can’t. Go read his memoir instead, and let’s cross our fingers that in his next book he learns from his mistakes!

I never would have known about The Journal of Madam Knight by Sarah Kemble Knight if it weren’t for my Decades Challenge emphasis on the eighteenth century. It’s a journal from 1704, kept by American colonialist Madame Knight of her trip from Boston to New Haven to New York City and back. It’s quite slim, and for the first few pages I felt disoriented, but once I’d gotten into rhythm with Madam Knight, I was delighted. Even though it’s from three hundred years ago, Knight’s focus reminded me of some of the modern-day travelogues I’ve read…the establishments she has to stay at, the sometimes bad food, the character of each town she pauses in, her fellow travellers. She sometimes writes poems, too, which cracked me up. I wasn’t thinking and returned the book to the library without copying one of them out. My favourite came from one night, when some men staying in her inn were being drunk and rowdy. So she wrote a poem to gin, asking it to please help the men fall asleep soon. lol! She’s also strong-minded; her original destination was just New Haven, but when her male relatives fobbed her off (she was trying to settle some business stuff) she went on to New York with them. So for all of these reasons, the book was fascinating. And yet, there was one major problem for me…Knight is incredibly, shockingly racist. When she runs across Native or African-Americans (which, thankfully, doesn’t happen too frequently) she actually discusses them as if they were animals. She uses the phrase ‘black hoof’ at one point, which will always be burned into my memory. I understand that at that time, most white people were horribly racist. But that didn’t make it less upsetting to read…the first instance of it comes about one-third of the way through the book, and after that it was much harder for me to appreciate her humour and strength. So I’m glad that I read this, but I don’t want a copy for my own shelves, you know?

After that, I finished my reread of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I listened to the audio version, read by Gaiman himself, this time. Hearing Gaiman read his own work was as much a treat as always! I didn’t review it the first time I read it (which was the week it was released!), and now that I’ve reread it, I don’t have much else to say except my inner monologue, which was something like:

OMG, this is so good! It’s dramatic and true and bittersweet and exquisite! This is why Gaiman is one of my very favourite authors!

Not that helpful, right? I do think that this would be a great starting point for those new to Gaiman…I usually recommend either this or Anansi Boys depending on the person’s mood. And while it won a Newbery, it’s really a book for all ages…it doesn’t feel ‘childlike’ at all. So just go read it already! I told Aarti to, and she loved it. So you should listen to me.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin wasn’t what I expected. The writing was more straight-forward, less lush, and if it weren’t for the setting, I wouldn’t have thought it was written in 1899. I thought it was set in the Midwest, when it’s set in New Orleans among the Creole. And I thought there was going to be a torrid love affair with, dare I say it, some s-e-x. But really, the awakening Edna goes through isn’t one of sexual discovery so much as realising that she’s a person, who needs to follow her own passions to be fulfilled. The beginning of the book really grabbed me, and I was all excited. Then in the middle, I felt more ‘meh’ and Edna quite annoyed me (it’s one thing to not much enjoy being a wife and mother yourself; it’s another to look condescendingly on anyone who does enjoy that). I began to sympathise less and less with her. Then, the last few chapters perked things back up. Once I finished it, I wasn’t sure what I felt about it. I’m certainly glad that I read it, and I loved certain aspects of the book. But I didn’t love the book as a whole, and I didn’t identify much with Edna. So for me, the book felt more like an academic exercise than a marvelous reading experience.

The Autumn of the Patriarch (for the Reading the Seasons Challenge) was my fifth Gabriel Garcia Marquez book. I’ve loved the other four, and I went into this one expecting to love it too. To put it lightly, that did not happen. To put it more truthfully, almost every page of this book was excruciating, and I dreaded picking it back up, bribing myself to get through it. It started out well enough, with awesome imagery and a dead general-dictator, and the whole first chapter was about this guy who happened to look just like the general, and how his life had been serving as the official double. That immediately caught my imagination, and so I could overlook the problems. But after that first chapter, things just got worse, and the rest of the characters failed to hold my interest. Occasionally, a beautiful image or idea would flare up from the page, and I’d be all “There’s the Marquez I know and love!” But then I’d get dragged back down in the morass. The number one issue with the book is the lack of full stops. Sentences regularly go on for a page and a half. Some writers can pull this off, and since I love Woolf, I’d say that I’m a pretty adventurous reader. It’s not like I’m going to automatically be annoyed at a nontraditional approach. But I don’t know if it was the translation (which wasn’t by Edith Grossman) or if Marquez was just too ambitious for his talents, but the lack of any rest points for the reader made me read faster and faster, skimming half the time, because it was too exhausting to focus. I don’t think the lack of punctuation did anything good either, it just ruined the book. Then, there’s the fact that the General has a lot of ‘non-consensual’ sex. That in and of itself wouldn’t bother me a ton, since I’m sure dictators the world over regularly rape, or to put it more genteelly ‘coerce,’ partners. And the General does a lot of evil stuff, so I’d assume it was just Marquez making him awful. But. At one point, he’s raping a woman, and she suddenly starts pitying him and pitying all men. WTF?!?! That just pissed me off. And I was already pissed off because of the run-on sentences (that regularly change from third to first person in the middle of a phrase). It’s a good thing I’ve read so many other Marquez books, because if I had started with this one, I’d never have picked him up again.

Skipping over a couple reads brings me to Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber. This is another book that defied my expectations, but in a good way this time! I went in thinking it would be a pretty straightforward thriller; a lab tech on the trail of a mysterious baby killer. But, while the investigation is completely central to the book, it takes backseat to Lena (the lab tech)’s personal issues. The girl is a bit unbalanced and completely socially awkward. If I just told you about her, you’d probably scoff and decide not to read the book. But here’s the thing…Abu-Jaber is so good at characterisation, that I went along with Lena. She certainly never behaves like myself, but I’ve known some people in my life who were a bit ‘off,’ and Lena is so consistent in her own universe, that it works. I guessed the killer pretty early on, but I almost always do that (for some reason, I’m just good at foreseeing twists), and the case itself was handled quite well. The escalating tension was perfect, and at a few points my heart was definitely thumping. The setting is pretty much another character in the book; it’s in Syracuse during the winter, and the cold is a constant factor. I’ve never lived in so cold of a place*, but Abu-Jaber brought it alive, to the point that I liked to drinking something warm while reading the book. :) Origin isn’t a traditional thriller by any means, although I wouldn’t exactly call it literary either. Really, it’s just its own book, and it rather defies categorisation. I definitely want to read more of Abu!-Jaber in the future

Down to the last book! A Journey of One’s Own by Thalia Zepatos is aimed at women who want to travel independently. It’s full of marvelous advice, both for travelling solo and travelling as a partner, and there are also wonderful stories both from Zepatos’ own travels and from other women that she interviewed. I love this; it was inspiring and informative and everything I could have asked for. The section on sexual harassment and how to deal with it was especially helpful, since I’ve found that in the travel advice books written by men, this tends to be downplayed. Not only does she encourage everyone to ‘get off the beaten track,’ she suggests a number of concrete ways to actually do so. All of the suggestions made sense and many of them were new to me! Zepatos also references different travel authors throughout, and I want to look up a lot of these women now, to follow their footsteps. :) In a sense, Zepatos was preaching to the choir with me reading this book; one of my major life goals is to go on an 18-24 month around the world backpacking trip. But even if I hadn’t already felt that way, I think this book would have convinced me! I want a copy for my own shelves, and if you’re at all interested in travelling, I highly suggest picking this up.

Whew! As you can tell, this week has had its ups and downs. I wonder sometimes if it’d be better to always go into books without any expectations; most of my pre-reading impressions of the novels I’ve picked up lately were completely off. Of course, I know that I can’t actually get rid of all of those expectations, but in an ideal world it would be nice. :) How do you keep your expectations for a book in check?

-*-

Footnote One: I can’t be the only one, right? Y’all have imaginary Marine boyfriends that you have to bring up on occasion too?

Footnote Two: I hope that doesn’t come off as condescending. What I mean is, considering it was the early 20th century, I was prepared for a book that focused on lynchings and beatings and that sort of evil.

Footnote Three: My favourite Rushdie. I have the audiobook, and it’s like a billion CDs long, and I’ve still listened to it at least six times. Lurve it!

Footnote Four: Although the Midwest can get cold in the winter when it feels like it! My senior year of college, we had a super-cold winter…one day, schools were cancelled despite there being so snow, because it was so cold they didn’t want the kids outside waiting for the buses. Of course, my college still had class.