The Day of Reckoning

And so we have arrived. It is New Year's Eve, the end of the year, and time to be weighed in the balances. Last January, dismayed that I had fallen off the literary wagon and become recreationally illiterate, I resolved to take it one day at a time and read 50 books in 365 days. I admitted that I was powerless over Recreational Illiteracy and that my life had become unmanageable; I came to believe that a Power/Bookstore/Library greater than myself could restore me to sanity; I made a decision to turn off my TV and turn my life over to the care of Amazon. I did not fully succeed. With 7 hours of reading time left in 2010, I have read 48 books--2 shy of my goal. They are:

1. And Only to Deceive - Tasha Alexander
2. A Poisoned Season - Tasha Alexander
3. A Fatal Waltz - Tasha Alexander
4. Tears of Pearl - Tasha Alexander
5. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
6. Possession - A.S. Byatt
7. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
8. The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
9. Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
10. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
11. Diary of a Provincial Lady - E.M. Delafield
12. Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
13. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
14. A Beautiful Blue Death - Charles Finch
15. The Magicians - Lev Grossman
16. What Angels Fear - C.S. Harris
17. The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
18. Ripley Under Ground - Patricia Highsmith
19. Ripley's Game - Patricia Highsmith
20. The Mist in the Mirror - Susan Hill
21. The Small Hand - Susan Hill
22. Never Let Me Go - Katsuo Ishiguro
23. The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova
24. Dressed for Death - Donna Leon
25. Through a Glass Darkly - Donna Leon
26. A Sea of Troubles - Donna Leon
27. Willful Behavior - Donna Leon
28. Doctored Evidence - Donna Leon
29. About Face - Donna Leon
30. Death in a Strange Country - Donna Leon
31. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
32. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
33. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
34. The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
35. Mademoiselle Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
36. Evening - Susan Minot
37. The Night Bookmobile - Audrey Niffenegger
38. An Instance of the Fingerpost -Iain Pears
39. Lush Life -Richard Price
40. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
41. A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym
42. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
43. The Dead Travel Fast - Deanna Raybourn
44. Silent in the Grave - Deanna Raybourn
45. Silent in the Sanctuary - Deanna Raybourn
46. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
47. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
48. The Mischief of the Mistletoe - Lauren Willig

Though I would have liked to have the "full set," as it were, with 50, I'm proud of this accomplishment. It's certainly leagues beyond my normal yearly "book count." These 48 include authors I wasn't familiar with before and now adore (Barbara Pym, Deanna Raybourn, Charles Finch, Katsuo Ishiguro), books I'd been meaning to read but hadn't gotten around to (Possession, The Name of the Rose), books I hadn't planned on reading and found greatly disappointing (The Power of One, Lush Life). I've discovered new genres--gothic/horrid novels, Victorian mysteries--that will now be mainstays. And I look forward to trying again in 2011 and continuing to expand my horizons.

Maybe putting a number--50--on reading isn't really the answer. I don't want to start rushing through books or picking "easy" ones just to meet a quota. Maybe a better attitude/approach is to always be reading something. Before this year I could go months at a time without an answer to "so, what are you reading now?" or even "read any good books lately?" I love that I've changed this. I love that I always have a novel in my bag and on the bedside table. I love being able to update my status pretty much every single day on Goodreads. I have loved almost every minute of this year of reading "dangerously," and I know that 2011 will be no different.

In light of this overwhelmingly maudlin positivity, I will close out my last post of the year with the top 10 best of the 48, in no particular order:

1. Possession - A.S. Byatt
2. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
3. Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
4. The Magicians - Lev Grossman
5. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
6. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
7. Never Let Me Go - Katsuo Ishiguro
8. The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
9. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
10. A toss-up between The Dead Travel Fast and Silent in the Grave - Deanna Raybourn

2010, it's been real.

Review: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

In 1327, Sean Connery--I mean Brother William of Baskerville--arrives at a remote monastery in northern Italy ostensibly to facilitate a meeting between a delegation from Pope John XXII and the Franciscan Michael of Cesena, whose cause (monastic poverty) has the backing of the Holy Roman Emperor. The Church is on the brink of schism (yes, the Great Western one), as hostilities between the papacy and the Empire reach a boiling point, and the meeting's success is of critical importance. Tensions are high as William and his assistant, our narrator Adso, arrive, and not just because of the impending talks. A monk has died suspiciously and, fearing for the talks' success and his monastery's reputation, the abbot asks William to investigate. At first Adelmo's death appears to be a private matter, but then another monk is gruesomely murdered, and another and another, the manner of their deaths seeming to deliberately evoke the Book of Revelation. William, a follower of Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Thomas Aquinas, applies cool Aristotelian logic to sort through the clues, which seem increasingly to point to the abbey's mysterious, labyrinthine, and closely-guarded library. What is the secret that it contains? Heresy, political intrigue, murder, or all three?

I had high hopes for this book. My doctorate is in the religious art (and history) of Renaissance Italy; I took multiple graduate and undergraduate courses in Medieval apocalyptic and Eucharistic art and theology; I studied and loved Latin to the point of embarrassment. Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics, which I find interesting. In short, all signs pointed to me sitting up all night feverishly clutching this book in my grubby little paws (unwashed because showering would take time away from reading) completely enraptured.

What went wrong?

In a nutshell, this book is too smart for its own good. Though called a murder mystery, the mystery is incidental. The Name of the Rose is a philosophical meditation that just happens to contain a murder mystery and these two plotlines don't come together until the very end (and there only loosely). The result is that each distracts from the other. Eco's knowledge of Medieval history is dizzying, literally: the long excursuses on the various religious factions were hard to follow without constantly looking up names, dates, summaries, and definitions nor was their relevance always clear. When the mystery resumed, I'd often forgotten key events or characters (and vice versa). To navigate through these portions without sacrificing the pace of the novel requires a comparable fluency in the events surrounding the Investiture Controversy, the Avignon Papacy, the Dulcinian heresy, the Inquisition, and the debates about Apostolic poverty, etc., that I just don't have. The solution to this doesn't have to be removing the history or dumbing down its presentation. To guide her readers through the labyrinthine world of Tudor politics and its players in the Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel employs a deceptively simple solution: a dramatis personae. Had Eco inserted a few pages in the beginning, glossing the key characters, religious groups, and historical figures/events, I think the history would have complemented his storytelling rather than impeding it.

But perhaps we are meant to be impeded?

Umberto Eco is a declared proponent of the "open text," (reader response theory, which incidentally I also studied in college), which emphasizes the role of the reader in creating the meaning and experience of a text. The murder mystery, therefore, is not so much a story as a device, a metaphor for our experience of textual interpretation. The meaning of The Name of the Rose, therefore, is neither absolute nor transparently laid out; it is up to the reader to generate it. Such a challenge can be liberating and exciting, but here I felt overwhelmed. Whether it was the constant looking up of references or the flipping back to recall details, I felt like Eco was just asking too much of me and giving me very little in return. I am grateful that this was the opposite of the puffed up, reductive, and just plain wrong pseudo-"history" of that atrocity The Da Vinci Code. But there's a fine line between a book that feels like a challenge (Possession for example) and one that just feels like work. In an interview, Eco reportedly said that he made the first several hundred pages deliberately opaque to weed out "unworthy" readers. I hope that isn't true--by all means don't dumb down your content but don't deliberately alienate your audience either.

This may be a simple case of reality/expectation disconnect. I hope it is. When I first saw Gosford Park, I hated it. Reviews compared it to Agatha Christie, so I went in expecting a neat, tidy, cozy whodunit and was, of course, disappointed when it turned out to be social commentary/domestic drama couched in a murder mystery. Viewing it a second time without expecting it to be something different, I loved it. I bought the dvd and I watch it every time I get sick. I began The Name of the Rose expecting more of a page-turning historical mystery and that's just not what this book is. Perhaps, if I hadn't brought misinformed expectations to the table, I would have enjoyed it for what it was? When I read Ulysses in college, in that class on the open text, my professor described is a book that was meant not to be read but to be re-read. So that we might better understand and appreciate it, she had us read it out of order so that we were exploring a text rather than trying to follow a story.

Perhaps the same is true for The Name of the Rose? After all, there were many parts of the book that I liked (I'd probably give it 3 out of 5 stars). I wonder, now that I've got the "story," what would happen were I to go back and try again.

Reading Rituals

At exactly 8pm every night Margaret Lea, the bibliophile heroine of The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield), begins her elaborate ritual of literary retreat:

"It was nearly time. I moved swiftly. In the bathroom I soaped my face and brushed my teeth. By three minutes to eight I was in my nightdress and slippers, waiting for the kettle to boil. Quickly, quickly. A minute to eight. My hot water bottle was ready, and I filled a glass with water from the tap. Time was of the essence. For at eight o'clock, the world came to an end. It was reading time.

"The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world."

I have lately found myself thinking more and more of Margaret's nocturnal ceremony (for lack of a better word). For Christmas, my parents got me Audrey Niffenegger's graphic novel The Night Bookmobile, in which a young woman discovers a mysterious mobile library containing each and every book she has ever read over the course of her life. When reading it I got to thinking about my own literary memories--where I read certain books, what I was doing, what para-textual associations they conjure up, etc.--which, in turn, led to my thinking about how and where I read. I envy Margaret's cozy description of halting everything at eight on the dot, settling down with her hot water bottle, and vanishing into "the white pages of [her] open book." For me, reading is usually accomplished in snatched moments--during the 10 minute bus ride to campus and back, while scarfing my lunch in the basement lounge of my department, waiting for my therapist to show up. Even reading before I go to sleep seems somehow stolen or temporary. Perhaps this is because, unlike Margaret, my bed isn't really mine but shared with someone else whose idea of lights-out-time might differ from my own. Perhaps this is because, now back at school and working hard, I am tired at the end of the day and often preoccupied with the tasks that remain to be accomplished. Margaret's ritual, like her life, is a solitary one with few responsibilities and my life, thankfully, is not. While the ideal of her monastic retreat is attractive, it is not altogether feasible. (And I suspect that Setterfield herself, a former harried academic with a family, imagined Margaret's ritual with a wistful "if only...")

In resolving to read more in 2010 I had to find a place for reading. Once upon a time, subway, bus, and plane rides meant headphones and music; lunch time meant scarfing something quickly, often at my desk; bedtime meant lights out right away; free time (haha) meant television. Now commutes are spent with books, lunch is an hour's break away from work (also with said books), bedtime is eased into, and free time (hahaha) is something I seek out and try to use thoughtfully. But surely I can do more than this?

As 2010 draws to a close I must ruefully admit that my goal of 50 books in 52 weeks has not been met. I got close, though, at 47, and will renew my resolution/challenge for 2011. But more than that, my hope for 2011 is to carve out a truer and more permanent space for reading in my life. This may not be easy: I don't even know if I'll be on the same side of the Atlantic in 2011, much less what my routines will be like. But if my year of reading has taught me anything it has been that dedicating time to reading for fun has given me a much richer existence than I had before. The books I have read have not only been my companions, enlivening dull commutes or dreary days home sick, my refuge, distracting me when I've been sad or stressed, but they have given me new lenses through which to view my life and expanded my conception of the world. Anais Nin said that we do not see things as they are but as we are. What is a book but someone else's worldview couched in a story? And by encountering so many different views and so many different worlds, I like to think that my perspective has become a little more balanced. I feel that I know so many more "people" now. It has also given me a lot more to talk about at cocktail parties.

2010 was a year of getting back on track for me after two years of wandering. I don't know if reading has anything to do with that; I rather think it didn't. Reading is fun and edifying but it isn't magic (unless we're talking about that dreadful Inkheart movie...oh Brendan Fraser, what happened to you). Instead I think that my increased literacy has been a part of my broader push to set and accomplish goals. So if 2010, while not the year of 50 books, was the year of goals and Getting There, I hope that 2011 will be a year of routines. I will hope to develop good work habits--getting up and going to campus every day instead of mooning about the house--to develop a fitness routine, to not get overwhelmed and throw my hands up but to methodically work through whatever tasks I have before me, and to find a place in all that just for reading.

(Image: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl Reading, c. 1770.)

Review: The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn

Theodora Lestrange, mourning the death of her grandfather and guardian, leaves Edinburgh for the wilds of Transylvania. It is the late 19th century and Theodora, at the old age of twenty-three, is veering dangerously close to spinsterhood. She leaves behind a homebody sister and brother-in-law (a vicar, of course!) who are anxious to see her married and an earnest but bland suitor, Charles, who is eager to step up to the plate. But Theodora eyes domesticity with great horror: she is a writer and wants to make her own way and her own name by penning a full-length novel.

Seeking inspiration (and escape), she journeys to Romania to visit her old school friend Cosmina, niece of the recently deceased Count Bogdan Dragulescu. The Dragulescu family castle is a gothic fantasy with crumbling walls, moldering tapestries, and a darkly alluring rising count, Andrei, whose betrothal to Cosmina has inspired not joy but dread. Predictably, Theodora finds herself increasingly drawn to the mysterious Andrei, and he to her, but their romance is not the only thread in Raybourn's masterfully woven story. A rash of eerie occurrences and the suspicious death of a young servant girl threaten to consume the sanity, if not the very lives, of the castle's inhabitants, leaving Theodora (and the reader) wondering if she was not too quick to dismiss the tales of vampires and werewolves that echo from the Carpathian peaks.

With a title culled from Dracula, a properly straining bodice on the cover, and a glowing endorsement from one of my favorite authors, this was a book I was eager to start. (It seemed an appropriately seasonal read.) I started it last night and I just could not put it down! The story itself is pretty straight-forward gothic: a drafty castle in the Carpathians, inhabited by a mysterious, handsome, brooding young count, his ailing mother, and his pretty cousin, is visited by the pretty cousin's pretty and precocious friend, whereupon mysterious and creepy things start happening. But it's complicated by a much more human and complex story of the weaving and unraveling of human relationships.

True, much of the book's horror revolves around the supernatural: vampires (the feared strigoi), werewolves, ghostly occurrences, and peasant superstitions. At the heart of these terrors, however, lies something more mundane. Theodora is right to note the folklorist's interpretation of these tales as myths used to explain the unknowable parts of our lives and ourselves. What is to be feared is not so much the unnatural monster that stalks the forests as the monsters in our own bodies and minds: envy, anger, madness, passion, and love. I was put in mind of a scene in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey in which Henry Tilney (swoon...) tells Catherine Morland that the "evil" in his family home is a kind of vampirism: "Perhaps it was stupid to express it so but we did watch him drain the life out of her with his coldness and his cruelty...No vampires, no blood. But worse crimes, crimes of the heart." Ultimately it is left to the reader of The Dead Travel Fast to decide whether the crimes perpetuated in the novel were committed by a vampire or by a human hand, or if, after all, the two are so very different.

Part gothic romance and part murder mystery, the book was enjoyable from start to finish. Raybourn's sense of atmosphere is terrific, her writing supremely evocative, and her characters varied and vivid. The rakish, glamorous, tortured Andrei is particularly wonderful. I think I've found a new author to binge on! Loved this!

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Quentin Coldwater, math genius, card/coin trickster, and general malcontent (like any NYC high school senior) never got over his first great love: the series of (fictional) children's fantasy novels Fillory and Further, which chronicle the adventures of a set of British siblings who discover a Narnia-esque magical world. If only, Quentin thinks, he, too, could escape from the prison of reality and live forever in blissful fantasy. When Quentin discovers that magic is real and is accepted into an elite, secret college of magic, he thinks all his dreams have come true. And indeed, for a while, they do. Breakbills is a Hogwarts for the young adult, full of enchantment and alcohol, and as he rapidly acquires astonishing new powers, Quentin starts to believe that he has found a true home and a true family. But like all good things, the dream doesn't last and, once he and his comrades graduate, Quentin must finally come to grips with the world, with the limits of magic, and with himself. Ultimately Quentin's journey leads him to Fillory itself and he learns the dark secret behind its story, and that is is not the idyllic, Edenic escape that he once believed it to be.

This book was thrust into my hands by my brother, who said that I "had to read it Right Now," and I devoured it in three days. Grossman is, forgive the pun, a magical writer. The Magicians combines the alluring fantasy of Harry Potter with the dark complexities of The Secret History. Grossman's prose is alternately lush and austere and always evocative and heartrending. Despite all the spells and sparkles, The Magicians is at the core a poignant coming of age story. Quentin is an imperfect hero (actually he's kind of a shit) and much of the book centers on his misguided search for happiness and escape. Like a small child, he indulges in the sort of magical thinking that dictates that Something Else will just Happen and instantly solve all his problems for him and he consistently refuses to realize his own agency and responsibility. As the Dean of Breakbills pointedly asks, "can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?"

Whether or not Quentin ever does fully grow up is debatable, but over the course of the book, as Quentin journeys through college, across the globe, and ultimately through Fillory itself, he outgrows his childish wish to escape forever and learns to start living. In this way, Fillory functions as a powerful metaphor for childhood and The Magicians as an allegorical account of adolescence--human adolescence. There are all kinds of magic, as Quentin himself says: "In a way fighting was like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse." We may not learn the kind of sorcery that Quentin learns at Breakbills--to levitate a marble, to transform into a fox--but as we grow up we learn an equally powerful magic: the magic of words and thoughts, the magic of belief, the magic of love.

When I turned the last page, I felt conflicted; I wasn't sure if I really loved it as much as I had in the beginning. I wasn't fully happy with the inevitable reality of the conclusion with all its complications and imperfections. Why couldn't everything have just continued to be blissful and beautiful? (This probably has something to do with why The Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite Harry Potter book.) Why must there be mistakes? Why must there by heartbreak? I wished that the dream of magic, of Breakbills, and of Fillory could have lasted forever and not been marred by the harsh realities of love, loss, and regret that exist in all worlds, magical or not. But, of course, that is precisely the point of the book: nothing is perfect nor can wishing make it so, and, in the end, even Peter Pan has to grow up. A truly magical and beautiful book in every regard.

Is Redemption in Sight?

I read two full (ok they were short) books this week! I feel that this somehow/somewhat makes up for the fact that the last two books I read took up almost two months. This week I read A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym and The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield. Both authors are darlings of Virago Modern Classics and their books are centered around parochial life in 1950s London and 1930s English Countryside respectively. Lots of wry British humor and unfulfilled women. Reviews to follow.

Why is it that all newly on-the-wagon former (?) slackers feel the need to advertise their every accomplishment? LOOK AT ME, I used to spend hours watching Miss Marple on Netflix play-instantly, but Today I did my laundry, read a real Book, and wore matching socks because I am now a Responsible Adult. This attitude is never wise and will inevitably lead to Falling Off The Reading/Accomplishment Wagon, more Miss Marple, and Tears.

In fact, the effort of putting my Completed Book back on the shelf and selecting a new one and, in the process, contemplating the staggering enormity of my literary accomplishments has left me in desperate need of a nap...

(Note: must seek to acquire less self-congratulatory sense of discipline like Saint Jerome, who you can tell got a lot of reading done. Also I want a lion friend. Painting by Jan van Eyck ca. 1435.)

Covergate 2010, or, Should You Judge a Book by Its Cover?

One of my new favorite authors, Lauren Willig, has a new book coming out in January. The giddy excitement I feel when I think about this is actually kind of embarrassing. Will Eloise and Colin continue to exist in a state of romantic bliss? Will the Pink Carnation and her League of Awesome Spy People continue to thwart the Evil Frenchies? Will Eloise be able to give her adviser a finished chapter complete with footnotes? Will Dear Reader survive until January without turning into Veruca Salt and screaming "I want it NOW!" in the middle of Borders?

But I digress. The big excitement today was that the cover art for the new book, The Orchid Affair, was unveiled on Willig's website. Previous Pink book covers were comprised of painted portraits from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, giving the books a romantic but distinctly historical feel. Imagine my shock when I saw that the cover for The Orchid Affair not only sports a new, Romance Novel curlicue font but has replaced the fine arts portrait with a contemporary (original) photo-realistic drawing of a bare shouldered, headless woman:



Sure, it's pretty, but, as a friend remarked, all that's missing is Fabio and his flowing locks. To me, this doesn't say historical novel featuring espionage, quizzing glasses, and a dash of romance, it says Generic Trashy Bodice-Ripper featuring either a weak-willed, wilting flower or an overly-pugnacious firebrand and the requisite rugged, brutish male. Without, I hope, being flippant or overly critical, this cover looks cheap and down-market. (A scan of the comments on her site showed that I was not alone in these sentiments.) It also looks a bit...how to say this correctly...unsophisticated? Unintelligent? It's the kind of cover I wouldn't want people on the subway to see me reading.

And that's just not who Lauren Willig is, nor is it what her books are. (Let me be clear: this is not meant to be a critique of Willig, who stated on her site that the makeover decision was made by her publisher. She is fabulous.)

More to the point, several commentors on Willig's site said that if they did not already know her work and saw this cover in the store, they would pass right by it. Would I do the same? Probably. Would you? To borrow from Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn't help but wonder to what extent we judge a book by its cover. What kind of assumptions do we make about a book's content based on its outward appearance? If, for example, the heroine's shoulders were covered, would I assume the content was more "elevated?"

A cover is a book's calling card. Like an actor's headshot or a job applicant's resume, it is the first thing we see and what we use to form a first impression. We expect a headshot/resume/cover to tell us something about who or what the person/book represented is and what they're about. My thespian brother recently told me about a friend of his whose choice of clothing in his headshot had typecast him in the stereotypical "Asian" roles--doctor, scientist, lab tech (thanks, America...). This friend is actually a very fine actor with a tremendous dramatic range, but the way in which he presented himself on his calling card meant that directors formed a very narrow, rigid picture of him, with the result that they never saw his other talents.

So what does The Orchid Affair's cover say to me? The fountain in the background, writing in the sky, and blue palette suggest that the overall mood of the book will be contemplative, sentimental, and chick-lit-y (but not as much as pastels/pink). Let's assume the woman depicted is the main character. The lack of face shifts the focus away from her psyche and onto her body. That her dress appears to be slipping from her shoulders further emphasizes her sexuality and promises the reader lots of seduction but, probably, not much plot, certainly not a complex one. In addition to presenting the main character as a Body rather than as a Person, the lack of a face also allows her to function as an avatar for the reader, who can insert herself in her place and, through her, live out the romantic fantasies that cannot be fulfilled in her real life. The flower she holds promises romance (so not just ravishing) and probably a happy, matrimonial ending.

Now, if you know Lauren Willig's books, you know that they are so much more than that. This heroine, for example, happens to be a smart, educated girl--a governess and a trained spy--and the plot goes beyond heaving bosoms to include espionage, double agents, and a Royalist conspiracy. But, based on this cover, who could tell?

Being the photoshop wiz (read: total novice) that I am, I decided to try my hand at cover designing and see what I could come up with in the fine arts genre. These are my two best:



Compare these two to the official cover: which one would you be more likely to pick up? Why? What different conjectures would you make about the plot? What kind of book would you think it was?

It is frustrating that the good people at Dutton decided that Willig's books need to appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to be successful. This kind of thing happens a lot: much has been made recently, for example, about the Brooklyn Museum's unsuccessful attempt to boost attendance through making themselves more "popular." Guess what? It doesn't work. When you don't trust your audience, when you say "oh, you couldn't possibly like or understand all this stuffy Art and Literature--it's so dry and complicated and you have to Think. Look at this picture of Mick Jagger or watch Twilight instead," when you say that, you not only alienate the part of your audience that wants art and literature, you ensure that the other part of your audience won't even give it a chance. By dumbing down your content, you dumb down your audience. Why should anyone even buy a book if reading is just So Hard?

I also think it's frustrating and sad that, in today's publishing world, the author--the generator of the product--has so little say in how that product is presented. As I noted above, Willig says on her site that she would have preferred to stick with the fine art covers. An earlier news post reveals that the change in the title format (the original title was The Intrigue of the Silver Orchid, mirroring the other titles in the series) was instigated by her editors as well. Now, I grew up with two parents who were book editors, so I know how tricky the world of book publishing is. But surely the creator of the work should have more say in what it's called and what it looks like? And why the sudden need to "makeover" a series that regularly appears on the bestseller list? That, however, is a subject for another entry.

Of course I will buy, read, and love The Orchid Affair and all the other books that Willig puts out. But I'm still really disappointed that my beloved Advanced Escape Reading (bodices AND bibliographies, bitches) has been re-branded as trashy romance.

Your thoughts?

Procrastination is the Greatest Nation

Well, this hasn't gone so well, has it? Some weekend soon I'll sit down with the stack of books I've read and actually write the reviews I said I was going to write, thus escaping from the cloud of ignominy and disgrace that my procrastination has cast over my lazy head.

Shortly after the beginning of the new year (when I blithely resolved to read 50 books and review them for the Masses), I did both a very good and very foolish thing: I resumed work on my dissertation. Good because it's important to have a career and spark your passion; foolish because it significantly cuts down on blogging time. It is probably also decimating my self-esteem and giving me carpal tunnel/a hunchback, but that's another story.

My days now look like this:

1. I get up and procrastinate with the internet and NPR
2. I go down to the library to expand my mind/footnotes; I manically refresh my favorite gossip blog to see if Lindsay Lohan/Miley Cyrus/Mel Gibson has done anything shocking
3. I eat a sandwich in the park with brazen and predatory pigeons and read a novel (see, I'm trying!)
4. Repeat library
5. I go to the gym in an attempt to make my clothes fit
6. I negate good works at the gym by eating dinner
7. I put lotion on my feet, watch one of the several Masterpiece Theater/BBC dvds that I have checked out from the public library, and marvel at the fact that my long-distance relationship has turned me into a total spinster. At least I do not crochet and have only one cat.
8. Exhausted with Library and Spinster-ing, I read a chapter or two of the above novel and think despondently about my lack of blogging before drifting off into fitful slumber.

So there you have it. And I'll let you in on a little secret: this is not the first time I've had a blog and not the first time I abandoned a blog after just a few posts. But this time is different, this time I will not walk away, this time I will finish. It will happen!! (That nifty little rhetorical device of pairing three parallel statements is called a tricolon, by the way, and Cicero thought they were totally sweet.)

Here's a list of the books I've read so far this year. It's a poor substitute for reviews, I know, but I hope it will satisfy for now.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
Mademoiselle Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
Lush Life - Richard Price
The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
An Instance of the Fingerpost -Iain Pears
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown (yes, I know...I am heartily ashamed)
Through a Glass Darkly - Donna Leon
Willful Behavior - Donna Leon
Dressed for Death - Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles - Donna Leon
Possession - A.S. Byatt

I also read about 6 issues of Real Simple but I don't think that counts.

Reviews to come I swear!!

(Image: Caravaggio, The Penitent Magdalene, ca. 1597, oil on canvas)

Review: The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, Lauren Willig

My very first book review! I haven't written a book review since elementary school. Now I'm nervous.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is the sixth installment in Lauren Willig's delightful Pink Carnation series, which chronicles the romantic adventures of Napoleonic era British spies and the romantic misadventures of modern-day Harvard doctoral student Eloise Kelly, who is researching said spies for her dissertation.

At the very beginning of the series, Eloise is struggling to find sources--any sources--for her dissertation on super-spies the Scarlet Pimpernel (in the series, a real person), his successor the Purple Gentian (Willig's own invention) and the elusive Pink Carnation (ditto), whom Eloise hopes to finally unmask. Eloise is about to throw in the towel and write about espionage and constructs of masculinity (ugh...) when the academic equivalent of manna from Heaven appears: a previously unseen archive in the home of a fairy godmother-esque descendant of the Purple Gentian. What Eloise finds in these archives, and those that follow, are the plots of Willig's novels. Did I mention that there is also a Prince Not-So-Charming? Eloise's benefactor's surly but strapping great-nephew, Colin, makes his entrance in the first book as a foil to our heroine, and their inevitable courtship forms the basis of the series's secondary plotline.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is a departure from the other books in the series in that its heroine is already married at the beginning. If you have read the other Pink books (recommended but not required) then you have already made the acquaintance of Penelope Deveraux, bosom friend to the Purple Gentian's younger sister and one of the most incorrigible flirts of the ton. Penelope has finally succeeded in ruining her own reputation. "Compromised" after being caught canoodling with the loutish Lord Freddy Staines, Penelope finds herself rushed to the altar before the book begins. Blood Lily also departs, quite literally, from the series's familiar setting of Franco-British courts, assembly halls, and country estates for the wilds of colonial India, where Freddy and Penelope are packed off to allow the scandal surrounding their marriage time to die down. Several of her friends express optimism that exile could be the making of their relationship...

It isn't.

This revelation should not be news to anyone who has read the book jacket. Penelope does not find marital bliss in India. What she does find is a decidedly extra-marital romance in the shape of the dashing Alex Reid, a captain in the British colonial forces charged with escorting Penelope and Freddy to Hyderabad, where Freddy is to assume a diplomatic post at the court of the Nizam. Their romance is one of Willig's finest yet, hard-won, even-handed, and utterly believable. It helps that Penelope is no wilting flower. Like Mary Alsworthy, Penelope is a "difficult" heroine--willful, world-weary, but whose hard-armored coquettishness hides a desperate desire to be loved and understood. Penelope shoots cobras, dives into rivers, and matches words with politicians. She is also horribly lonely, having been sent away from all her friends to a strange country with a husband who treats her with utter disregard. Her romance with Alex, who hasn't had the easiest time of it either, is very much a meeting of the minds. That they are first friends before they become lovers is a testament to the deep respect and regard that they have for one another. I'm a believer!

As for the rest of the plot, this is a Lauren Willig novel so naturally, spies are involved. Our villain, a French spy called the Marigold, was introduced in the last installment, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. While the Marigold's political treachery isn't fully realized until late in the book, his (or her) personal threat to Penelope, Freddy, and Alex is keenly felt from the first broken girth. Willig does a good job with the suspense and we spend as much time looking over our shoulders as we do straining our bodices. She also does a superb job rendering the elaborate world of colonial India and its intrigues. Many of Blood Lily's juicier elements--the mad Nizam, the leprosy-ridden Prime Minister--are culled straight from history and rendered in perfect detail.

But the plot itself, I'm sorry to say, is at times not quite up to her usual standard. I did keep guessing until the end who the Marigold was (a first for me), but the reveal was something of a letdown. I can't say much more without spoiling it, but we do not get the sense here, as we do in her other books, of the villain's drive. Instead of the mastermind behind a great conspiracy, we find someone who seems to have merely stumbled into a great conspiracy. She also leaves several very blatant loose ends. Chekov famously said that one should not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. In other words, objects introduced in a story must be used later on or else not included. There are two loaded guns here--big ones--that are never fired, and whose lack of use definitely contributed to my feeling not quite satisfied when I turned the last page. A debt that is never repaid? An enemy who never strikes? To say more would reveal too much so I'll just say that a red herring is one thing, a dead end is another.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book. It's actually a testament to how far Willig has come as a novelist that I'm nit-picking and griping about the spy plot, which in her first few books served more as a backdrop to the romance than a principal player. As accomplished a writer as she now is, I can't help but feel that she should know better.

In terms of the writing itself, however, Blood Lily is Willig's best yet. Her prose, which I'll admit I found charming but light when I read her first book, has become nuanced, rich, and elegant. Her characters are vibrant and pointedly realized, her atmospheres are lush, and her descriptions--one in particular of a bloated corpse--at times approach the poetic. Her dialogue, always a strong point, is pitch-perfect and sparkles with echoes of Waugh and Wodehouse. And like Waugh (and occasionally Wodehouse) her writing is also earnest and poignant when called for. We may laugh when Penelope lays into Freddy but we cringe when he sets her down and betrays her trust. There is style, but there is also real emotional substance.

This series is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. It's light without being too light--the intellectual's answer to the dime-store romance. Perhaps it won't come as a surprise that the series came about as an escape for Willig from her own dissertation research. It is by definition escapist literature, the perfect getaway for those of us who want to take a break from the real world and fall blissfully into the past where the men are swashbuckling and the women run the show.

Pierre de Ronsard, the French Ariosto, wrote in the preface to his epic, the Franciade: "History only recounts things the way they are, or were, without disguise or ornament,...the Poet contents himself with the plausible, to that which could be." This is what I see Willig doing. She loves history, really loves it, to the point where she has to make it come alive and imagine what these people could have said, could have thought, could have done. Her books are impeccably researched down to the type of knee-breeches Lord Freddy would have worn and impeccably imagined down to what Lord Freddy would have said at breakfast. You can't help but feel that these characters must have lived and, what's more, you wish that they did. And that is what historical fiction is all about.

A merry romp and a surprisingly evocative and accomplished book. Grad students past and present especially ought to dive in, as here at last is a heroine (and author) who Understands. I can't believe I have to wait another year for the next one. Highly recommended!

"Danger" Is My Middle Name...

If anybody besides my mother is actually reading this, you're probably wondering what is so "dangerous" about reading a bunch of books over the course of a year. What could be safer than sitting inside, alone, away from harmful UV rays, bad drivers, and loaded firearms reading inanimate words on a page? The Year of Running Across Subway Tracks--that's dangerous. The Year of Reading is for agoraphobics, invalids, and unathletic nerds (although, for the record, I played sports. Take that, stereotypes).

Nor could "dangerous" really refer to what I'm reading; with a very few exceptions, none of the books I've chosen are particularly subversive. I did find, when I googled "the year of reading dangerously" to see if this blog popped up (yes, I am that lame), a blog/online book club called "My Year of Reading Dangerously" dedicated exclusively to "dangerous" (i.e. subversive, banned, challenging, etc.) works. Imagine my horror and chagrin when I realized my blog title was not at all original! I thought I had been so clever.

No, the "danger" in reading a book a week for fun is purely ironic. And that's classical, actual irony, not Alanis Morissette irony. I dare myself to be a rebel, to live a little and put down The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este and pick up In The Company of the Courtesan. And I dare you, whoever you are, if you're out there, to do the same: put down the Blackberry, the laptop, the stack of exams, pick up a good book, and take a few moments out of your day for yourself. Thrill-seekers might also pour themselves a glass of wine or have a second piece of cake. Oh, the humanity!

When it comes down to it, the danger is not really picking up a book. The danger is that in a world where we are more and more expected to be working round the clock, to be available 24/7, and to always be on top of the Dow report or proceedings of the latest RSA meeting, we run the risk of losing ourselves and losing what makes us human. We lose art, we lose music, we lose poetry, we lose beauty. And what's the point of living in a world without beauty? The danger is not picking up a book.

Of course, if you asked Dick Valentine of Electric Six, he'd tell you that danger is caressing your beloved. That's why you keep starting fires.


Go figure.

Entering The Lists

In medieval tournaments, the "lists" or "list field" was the arena in which jousting (or other tournament fighting) took place. To enter the lists, therefore, meant to accept a challenge or engage in a contest. In more general and contemporary usage, a list is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "catalogue or roll consisting of a row or series of names, figures, words, or the like."

In this case, both definitions strike me as fitting. I am accepting a challenge, although perhaps not one that comes with a risk of losing my eye to a splintered lance. My prize upon my successful completion of this feat will not be gold or the favors of the fair princess, only a handful more books on the shelf and a somewhat depleted checking account (and possibly a mild case of eye strain). But I am, with this "catalogue or roll," entering the lists, ready to bravely combat my notorious procrastination and the occasional dragon of obtuse prose. I can do this!

I think.

Incidentally, "list" can also refer to "the flank (of pork); a long piece cut from the gammon." Who knew? The OED never ceases to amaze.

Before we engage in mortal combat, the rules of engagement: Books, even with The Strand, Amazon, and Powells, are expensive. The library is amazing but sometimes unreliable and those overdue fines will get you every time. So, I will be sticking primarily with books I already own but have not yet read. This will not be difficult, as I cannot walk away from any used bookstore or "bargain" table and always feel the need to spend $25+ on Amazon to get the free shipping. My shelves are like a Russian orphanage, overflowing with wonderful, unexplored tomes begging me to take them down and love them.

Of course, all rules have exceptions. Book club selections (when not my pick) will be outside of my control. Likewise, the parameters of the Tournament of Reading dictate that I complete two new volumes each of history and medieval literature, emphasis on new. I own many medieval books (thanks to school), but being the good little student I was, I've read them already. So those will be new, too.

Enough with the definitions and details. To the tiltyard!

*****

The List (alphabetical by author):

1. Lucrezia Borgia - Maria Bellonci
2. The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio*
3. Possession - A.S. Byatt
4. The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier*
5. Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
7. In the Company of the Courtesan - Sarah Dunant
8. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco*
9. Leonardo's Swans - Karen Essex*
10. Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and Times - Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally*
11. Howard's End - E.M. Forster
12. Incarnadine: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula - R.H. Greene
13. The Weight of Silence - Heather Gudenkauf
14. 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
15. Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
16. The Aviary Gate - Katie Hickman
17. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century - Ibn Battuta*
18. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery - Eric Ives
19. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
20. The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova
21. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
22. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
23. The Lais of Marie de France - Marie de France*
24. Mademoiselle Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
25. The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
26. The House at Riverton - Kate Morton
27. Cluny: In Search of God's Lost Empire - Edwin Mullins*
28. Going Rogue: An American Life - Sarah Palin (thanks, gag xmas gift!)
29. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
30. The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
31. Lush Life - Richard Price
32. A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym
33. Crampton Hodnet - Barbara Pym
34. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
35. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
36. Immortal - Traci Slatton*
37. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
38. Tales out of School - Benjamin Taylor
39. Affinity - Sarah Waters
40. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
41. The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Alison Weir
42. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
43. Book Club TBA
44. Book Club TBA
45. Book Club TBA
46. Book Club TBA
47. Book Club TBA
48. Book Club TBA
49. Book Club TBA
50. Book Club TBA

(* denotes a Tournament of Reading selection. The rules of the challenge define the medieal period as anything from 500 to 1500 A.D. Several of my picks are really more Early Renaissance than Medieval, but they are set before 1500... Am I cheating? Maybe just a little.)

The gauntlet is laid. Let us begin.

"Miss Eliza Bennet," said Miss Bingley, "despises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that those who read for a living will never pick up a book on their own if they can possibly help it. Diane Setterfield, one of my new favorite academics-turned-authors, lists the erosion of her private reading time as her primary motivator for leaving the ivory tower. "I was plagued," she said, "by the feeling that by some absurd mistake I was leading someone else's life." Imagine my horror when I realized that, three years into my graduate degree, I could list the books that I had read for fun on one hand! (Harry Potter doesn't count.) It would not do. I had gone from being the type of insanely bookish child that teachers and librarians dream about (and other children think is Weird) to being recreationally illiterate.

How had this happened? Anyone who is or has been a student or an academic will understand: you arrive home in the evening, tired from hunching over some very large, thick book (with inevitably tiny type) at your library carrel only to remember that you still have to read over an article to prepare for your section the next day and make a handout for your students. You eat some depressing dinner that likely came out of a box, wishing desperately that you could just watch some CSI or Law and Order instead of making vocabulary lists. You finally finish just as bedtime approaches and fall gratefully into your pillows. The light goes out instantly. The stack of books you have hopefully placed on your bedside table will only move in the morning when you knock them over trying to get to your alarm clock. Pathetic.

It isn't that you don't want to read--the horrible part is that you do want to read--but that you simply can't bear to look at any more words on a page than you have to. The worst sufferers of Academic Illiteracy go beyond mere aversion to guilt: how can you justify spending a half an hour of consciousness (and brain power) on a novel? You should be working! Any time not spent sleeping, eating, showering (occasionally), teaching, learning, meeting, or studying should be spent reading Art Bulletin, not The Portrait of a Lady.

I returned to reading completely by accident two years ago when I started seeing a guy we'll just call A. A is not an academic, so he reads. He reads voraciously, every night before he goes to sleep he'll knock out fifty pages. When bedtime arrived, the light did not go out instantly. Instead, I lay awake, bored to tears, for at least twenty minutes while he happily read Graham Greene. One day, as we were getting ready to decamp to his house for the evening and I was stuffing the usual next day's clothes and research book in my backpack, I grabbed a novel from my bookshelf and stuffed it in there too. It was The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which my brother had given me years before and had lain gathering dust ever since (although I'd loved the film). Later that night, when we got ready for bed, again the light did not go out instantly. But this time I did not lie awake resentfully wishing for something to do; I read about Virginia, Laura, and Clarissa and I was happy. Maybe one day I will write and post a review of The Hours. All I'll say for now is that it's one of those books that is so good it's unfair.

Two years later, I still don't have my Ph. D. and I still read for fun. Shortly after my Hours Revelation, I left school for a while to rethink my dissertation topic, get some real world experience, and sort some things out for myself (why am I on the planet, is my self-worth wholly reliant on footnotes, etc.). Sound familiar to anyone? One of the first things I did when I arrived back in my hometown to take a teaching job was join a book club. A book a month, I could handle that. A book a month and some new friends--I was desperately lonely with A and my school friends 500 miles away. My rehabilitation was slow and I'll admit that I didn't finish several of the first books we read. (Old habits are hard to break--what was I doing reading for fun when I had powerpoints to make and papers to grade? Bad! Lazy!) I got better, though, and now I'm proud to say that I not only do I finish each book club book, I read extra books on the side! Lots of books. In fact, I can't stop. I am like Amy Winehouse with a library card (and no crack). It's awesome.

Which brings me to the point, if you're still reading. Are you? One of my favorite book review blogs, Medieval Bookworm, announced a challenge for 2010: A Tournament of Reading. The challenge is to read nine (at the 'king' level) books about the Middle Ages, at least two each in historical fiction, medieval literature, and history. In the spirit of the New Year, I have decided to expand the challenge: fifty books this year, about one book a week. Some of them will be medieval, most will not.

Before you write me off, this is not a Julie & Julia thing (though that movie is wonderful, I love you, Nora Ephron!). I don't expect this "project" to change my life, I don't expect to wind up in the New York Times, and I sure as hell don't expect to get a book contract or be played by Amy Adams on the silver screen. This is just me, fifty-two weeks and fifty books, reading and reviewing in the hopes that somewhere out there--a grad student, teacher, or anyone else suffering from Academic Illiteracy (or any other kind of Acquired Adult-Onset Illiteracy)--will want to pick up a Fun Book and join the party.

So here's to a year of reading dangerously!