Read, Think, Enjoy

Our September-October bookclub pick is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And me being the keener that I am, have already finished the book even though it's only the third day of September.

I know I ranted about this book previously (or at least the marketing of this book), and I understand that there are a number of people who absolutely hate and despise this book, but I actually rather enjoyed it. It's not a perfect book and I do have some quibbles with a few things, but overall, it's an enjoyable read.

The book is about one Liz Gilbert who spends a year on a voyage of self-discovery, traveling to Italy, India, and Indonesia to discover pleasure, devotion, and balance. Along the way, she meets a lot of interesting people and recovers after her terrible divorce and break-up of her subsequent bounce-back relationship.

A number of people have commented that Liz (I have to call her Liz - her writing voice is so warm, friendly and confessional that you think you know her instantly) seems to have a feeling of entitlement. Maybe so. I know we're not all as lucky as she is to get an advance from a publisher to travel the world and write about it. I do know that Liz was a terribly unhappy woman at the opening of the book. Shouldn't we all be celebrating someone's return to health and happiness - even if it does require an envy-inducing journey across the globe? It's nice, for once, to read a book about someone being happy, instead of people who are sad and have sad things happen to them.

That said, I do have some quibbles (I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some quibbles). I understand the decision not to discuss the painful details of her divorce, but that deprives the book of some needed weight. I understood that Liz needed the yearlong journey to recover, but it isn't all that clear what she is recovering from. From the brief discussion of the divorce, it just sounds like she's getting divorced because she doesn't want children. And that's fine. Plenty of people don't want kids. Where it gets sticky is when one person really wants them and the other doesn't. However, there's no sense in the book that her husband desperately wanted children, or that they tried hard to keep their marriage together before it fell apart - no suggestion of couples' counseling. That doesn't mean they didn't try those things, or that her husband was so focused on having a child that there was no other way out but divorce, but there's no sense of that in the book. More discussion of that would have grounded the book and helped us feel even more a sense of joy and relief for Liz as she finds herself and rediscovers her equilibrium throughout the course of the book.

Also, regarding children. Liz indicates that she felt trapped by conventional society's expectation that she have a child (leading to the divorce and journey) but later seems to say that women who don't have or don't want children are unconventional. Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't be mad that you are feeling trapped by society's conventions on childbearing, and then breathlessly declare non-childbearing women as some type of rebel. I'm sure there are plenty of women who do not want nor have children. I don't think it's that rebellious anymore. Maybe 50 years ago, but not today.

I would be interested to read a follow-up from Liz; no, not the book she published about marriage (Committed), but a book detailing how she managed to keep up the pleasure, devotion, and balance she gained on the journey, and how she worked the feelings from her travels into her everyday life. It's pretty easy to be balanced when you're renting a beautiful house in Bali and you have no more demands on your time than meeting with the medicine man, riding your bike through the rice paddies, and cavorting with your Brazilian lover. Would that we all had such troubles! No, how does the typical North American woman achieve pleasure/devotion/balance while living a typical North American lifestyle which may or may not include one or more of the following: job, friends, pets, husband, children, parents, siblings, hobbies, etc.? How can I achieve pleasure/devotion/balance when my bank account/job/children/husband won't let me run off to Italy/India/Indonesia for a year? That's the follow-up I want from Liz, not a book about marriage.

At any rate, this is an enjoyable read, and sometimes that's all you need. It's notable, at any rate, for now making me want to go to Bali! Italy has long been on the destination list, and I've never really wanted to go to India, but I think I could be persuaded to go to Bali.

Eat, Pray, Love, Rant.

Yes, I know, it’s rich to start posting about the next book on the bookclub list when you haven’t even read it yet! Our September-October pick is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Now, for various reasons, I come into this book with a lot of bias. Why? I’m not exactly sure, but I have a bias towards this book. My friend who recommended this book loves it and it is a book that she feels strongly about and that helped her through a very difficult time in her life. I want to keep an open mind so I can come to the book with no expectations and just let the experience of the book wash over me as I read.

I think my real problem comes from the description on the back of the book. The summary says that the author “…had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want – husband, country home, successful career….” Now, I am not American, but let us, for the purposes of this post, presume that the term is intended to mean North Americans as opposed to merely Americans from the United States of America. At any rate, who decided that this is what I am supposed to want? That this is what is supposed to make me happy? Sure, some women would be happy with those things; others may define success and happiness differently.

What really gets me on edge is this creation of an “ideal” by, well, by whom? Who decided to tell me what I am supposed to want? Who died and made this imaginary person boss? How arrogant to lump all women together into one category and to imply that all they need to be happy are a husband, successful career, and home. Happiness is not defined by what you have but by what you are. And I don’t need the summary on a back of a book to tell me that, or to define what I am supposed to want.

That is where my problem lies – the fact that Elizabeth Gilbert is rebelling against an artificial construct. So you feel trapped – because what you have what you’re “supposed” to want. Well, by lumping all women together into this artificial definition, and defining yourself by an imaginary standard, of course you’re going to feel trapped! If anything, Elizabeth Gilbert defines this by “running away” from her supposed “picture-perfect” life to find what she really wants. If she’d only realized before that the standard of what she’s supposed to want is to be set by her, and not by some magical and unseen “them”, she probably wouldn’t have needed to write the book.

So it's not really the book that I'm biased against, it's the marketing of the book that is giving me problems. At any rate, once I finally get to the book, I will try to leave my bias at the inanity of some artificial construct telling me what I’m supposed to want, and just enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s quest for her own personal happiness. I want to give the book a fair chance and I will try really hard to leave my own bias behind while I’m reading it.

A Future Year

Our next pick for bookclub was The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. I picked it up today, intending to start it, but ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. And before you think that's an amazing feat, I will let you know that the book is only 227 pages long.

This book is about a terrible year in Didion's life. Her only child, Quintana was severely ill with pneumonia and in ICU in hospital just after Christmas. On December 30, 2003, Didion's husband, John Dunne, died suddenly in their home of a heart attack. This is Didion's account of her grieving/mourning process during that year. Her daughter recovered, only to fall ill again shortly after the funeral in March 2004. She never fully recovered (I think) and died in August 2005, after this book was published.

Given its subject matter, this is a hard book to critique. Can one say anything bad about it and not appear unfeeling? It is also hard in that I have never experienced an experience like the author went through - losing her husband of 40 years. Who knows how I would feel in such a situation and if it would be like what the author is feeling.

The book is not so much a description of her year as a series of disjointed thoughts and stories about her past with John and Quintana, and the present, in which she struggles to be there for Quintana and maintain a semblance of normalcy after her husband's death. As such, it is random, really without conventional structure. It is one of those books that you awake from it feeling fuzzy and disjointed.

I can't really say that I enjoyed the book, but I'm not sure this is the kind of book you can enjoy. Did it make me feel sad? No, not really. I don't know Joan, John, and Quintana, and even after reading this book I still don't really feel as if I did. I hope it helped the author to write this book - maybe it was cathartic for her. However, I think grief and mourning is such an individualistic process that the book may not be comforting for those who are experiencing such a great loss, and may be distancing for those who haven't experienced a loss of that magnitude. For I did feel, throughout the book, that the author was keeping me at arm's length, to a certain extent, and not really letting me in and letting me get to know her and her family. I couldn't put myself into her shoes to feel what she was feeling.

Perhaps I just don't get it. Perhaps I'm at a stage of my life right now where I can't get it. And that's fine. I can always try again later, if I need to. There are many books I've come back to when I'm older and found something new in. I thought that once I was an adult, that would change, but that is not so. I think this is one I will have to come back to when I'm a little older, a little more experienced. I'll try reading it with fresh eyes in about 10 years or so, and see what my thoughts are on it then.

On slightly more positive note, I am happy to say that the bookclub has decided to keep going into the fall! Instead of a book a month, however, we have decided that (with the increased busy-ness of fall) to read a book every two months. Our September-October pick: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

The Fantastic Mr. Fforde

My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don't mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn't know he had gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at both ends and demanding to know where and when he was.

[The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001) Chapter 1, page 1]

And with these words, I was immediately swept up into Thursday Next's world - a world amazingly realized by Jasper Fforde. It's all there in the first chapter; literary detectives, time travelling, the Crimean War, the government taxes on cheese, Goliath, a dodo.... If you're in my bookclub and haven't read the first novel yet - stop now! In fact, stop now if you've only read the first novel - I intend to discuss all the books in the Thursday Next series with this post. July was my month to pick for bookclub and I wanted something entertaining yet still intellectual. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde (one of my favourite books of all time) was the result. I thought I might as well reread the entire series while I was at it, and did so in a matter of a few weeks.

I will limit myself here to discussing the Thursday Next series. I haven't really read the Nursery Crime series all that much, so will remedy that defect and post on it in the future. Fforde's latest book is Shades of Grey, which I read when it came out, and will have to read again before I think I can post on in adequately. I can't wait for the rest of that series.

The first book in the series is The Eyre Affair. It was fun to re-read it for the bookclub - I approached it with fresh eyes and tried to read it as if it were the first time I had read it. It really does draw you in with the opening chapter. You really just have to go with it - to dive in completely to Fforde's world and be completely immersed in his reality. I found Thursday's world amazing and intriguing and was interested in her work with Special Operations as a Literary Detective. However, then she jumped into books and really blew my mind. I had never thought of books and characters like that - as being like actors in a play who act the scenes they're given, but then offstage/offpage have this whole rich and varied life needing to be policed by Jurisfiction! This notion has affected the way I read all fiction books now - I can't help wondering what the characters are doing offpage and what else is going on behind the story.

Basically, the premise for book-jumping is this. All characters in a book are technically "alive". They act out the story as they're being read, but if they are not being read, they are free to act however they wish. There is a whole world inside fiction - the Bookworld. It is policed by characters from books under the auspices of an agency called Jurisfiction. Has anyone ever read a book and then been disoriented and surprised to still be at home once they have finished the book? Well, book-jumping takes that to the next extreme and allows you to cross the barrier between reality and fiction.

The next two books, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots deal with Thursday's life inside books and her training as a Jurisfiction agent. Of the two, my favourite (and I think my favourite book of the whole series) is The Well of Lost Plots. I love seeing inside the world of fiction, and The Well of Lost Plots takes place almost entirely inside the Bookworld. For someone who is as big a reader as I am, the notion that you could travel inside books is immensely appealing. I also appreciate how Fforde pulls together the villain from Lost in a Good Book and continues that plot arc into a satisfying conclusion.

Something Rotten jumps forward a couple of years after The Well of Lost Plots, which is kind of too bad. I would have liked to have read about Thursday's adventures inside the Bookworld during that time. However, her return to real-life and the Literatecs is entertaining too. Fforde has really created two interesting worlds here - the Bookworld and Thursday's everyday world. Both are fascinating, and it would have been interesting to have explored more of Thursday's world before jumping into the Bookworld (which is slightly more fascinating to me). But it's good to be back out in the "real" world and have Thursday interact with all the characters we've been missing since the first two books.

The last book, First Among Sequels, takes place 14 years after Something Rotten, which is almost a mistake. 14 years brings about a lot of changes - especially after the final events in Something Rotten - and those changes almost aren't acknowledged in First Among Sequels. It's almost as if the author wanted to set the book further ahead in time to catch up on technological advances, but didn't necessarily advance the story 14 years on (other than making everyone 14 years older). Too much of the story seems like it would have taken place immediately after the events in Something Rotten, and not 14 years later. It is still better than most non-Fforde fiction, but is probably my least favourite of the series so far.

And, of course, just a quick note on the editions of the book. I love the paperback edition that I have in the first three books (I've lent The Eyre Affair to a friend, which is why it isn't in this photo):

These are the Hodder and Stoughton paperback editions. I like the colours and the nice clean lines of the font and illustration. They are eye-catching without being annoying. Plus, they are a nice smaller size of book.

Sadly, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels are completely different....

I bought Something Rotten as soon as it came out, so this is not the paperback Hodder and Stoughton edition; I believe it is the "hardcover" edition. (Although my copy is a soft cover) So I suppose that's my fault for jumping too early and not waiting for the paperback. However, I don't think I can get the nice paperbacks anymore as Hodder and Stoughton seems to be re-releasing the books with new covers similar to First Among Sequels, above. I don't like the art on the cover and the scuffed-up book look. I like the more abstract nature of the paperbacks. Plus, both Something Rotten and First Among Sequels are taller than my other 3 books, which makes them hard to keep all together on a shelf and look nice.

All griping about looks aside, the Thursday Next series is a great series for people who love books, reading, mysteries, time-travel, and dodos. I hope I've made you curious to go pick up the book and read it for yourself. Finally, if one day I quit posting, you'll know I've succeeded in my quest to bookjump. Keep an eye out for me in Austen!

Dragon Tattoo

I have finally finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I am ready to share my thoughts with the world! Note to those in the world who have not yet finished the book, I will be discussing all of it, so if you want the mystery to remain a mystery, stop here!

This book is about many things. It really consists of two separate stories: the mystery of who killed Harriet Vanger, and the journalist Blomkvist's vendetta against Wennerstrom. (Yes, I know some of these names have umlauts and no, I don't know how to make my computer produce umlauts so there won't be any on those names that should have them.) I'm not sure I can say that I enjoyed the book, given the level and type of violence in it (and see below for further comments), but it was interesting reading. Will I read the rest in the series? Probably not, actually. Yes, I do want to know more about Salander and her background, but I want to know without having to read another book about the characters. It is not that they weren't compelling, or that the book was uninteresting, it's just not my type of book.

The Mystery
My taste in mysteries usually runs to Agatha Christie - emphasizing psychology and deductive reasoning. I'm not really a "thriller" type of person. Therefore, I was very excited when the premise of the mystery was revealed. A young girl disappears, only a certain number of people could have committed the crime, and the detective has to go back into the past to solve the case. Paging Hercule Poirot!

I was almost disappointed to find out that the murderer was a serial killer. None of Agatha Christie's killers are serial killers, per se. Yes, they might have killed a number of people, but they are not characterized as serial killers. Instead, they are relatively normal people who turn to murder to solve a problem, whereas a serial killer murders as a matter of fact and as part of that person's everyday life. For example, the Agatha Christie killer kills because they are threatened, for money, for love, etc. A serial killer kills because he is a serial killer. End of story. Less interesting, in my opinion.

(The killers' actions are still horrible, by the way, no matter who is doing the killing.)

Salander
Lisbeth Salander was a very interesting character. From the beginning, I decided that despite what the courts in Sweden might say, she was not mentally deficient and could take care of herself. So why does she act the way she does? She is refusing to play the game. The game of politeness that everyone, to a certain extent, plays to fit in and get along with society. But Lisbeth doesn't play the game. She doesn't follow the rules. Sometimes I just wanted to yell at her to follow the rules, take the tests and you can prove you don't need a trustee. But sometimes I wanted to admire her stubbornness. Of course, she also may act the way she does due to some kind of syndrome (Asbergers, as Blomkvist theorized) in which case she does not have a choice as to the way she acts and cannot play the game at all, even if she wanted to.

Journalistic Ethics
I thought there were some very interesting ideas in the book about journalistic ethics. Blomkvist wanted to report the crimes of the killer despite the effect it would have on the sister, but had no qualms about using stolen (hacked) computer data to write a story to bring down Wennerstrom. I think the police needed to know about the crimes, but Blomkvist did not need to publish a story about them. Sometimes the media is a little too intrusive in their quest for "free speech". Where there are rights, there are responsibilities. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you should. Writing the story would have a big effect on the sister and cause her further torment and pain. Yet writing it is an exercise of free speech, right? Not everything needs to be made public. But the police should be told, to privately work on the case and help the families of the victims.

While I did applaud that Wennerstrom's empire was taken down at the end, I deplored the methods. Evidence from someone's hacked computer would never stand up in court! I'm not sure I can justify stealing from someone's computer, even if that person is a jerk.

Violence
I was somewhat put off by all of the violence in the book. Frankly, there is enough violence happening in the world without having to read about fictional violence too. Also, I'm not sure what purpose the scenes with Bjurman were designed to serve. Lisbeth could just have easily done research on sexual sadism without having been subject to such.

Further, I was disgusted when I read about the cat. Or, rather, didn't read. I have a bad habit of scanning ahead and just barely caught the paragraphs before I made myself stop reading and turn the page to start the next chapter. Reading or hearing about violence against animals is an especially touchy subject for me. It makes me very upset. We have domesticated these animals (cats and dogs especially) and had them give up their wild behaviours in exchange for food and shelter and protection with humans. When a human injures or hurts an animal, they are breaking this "contract" we have with the domesticated animals. We are the ones who have bred them to become dependant on us, therefore the responsibility is on us to take care of the animals. Hearing about any kind of animal abuse makes me mad and upset whether fictional or (sadly) non-fictional.


In summary, while I did not hate the book, I'm not entirely sure I really liked it either. I would recommend it as an interesting and fast-paced read (toward the end) (and despite the author's tendency to explain a lot about things), but with a strong caveat as to the nature of the violence in the book.

Keeping on the subject of mysteries, my next book is by Ngaio Marsh - New Zealand's answer to Agatha Christie!

Tiny Landmass

The second selection in May for our book club was Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Sadly, this was not my favourite book. It was a bit of a push to finish it off for the book club.

Essentially, this book is about racism in post-WWII Britain. It deals with four main characters: Queenie, a white woman who runs a boarding house; Bernard, her white soldier husband; Hortense, a black woman from Jamaica; and Gilbert, also black and from Jamaica, who is Hortense's husband. Gilbert and Hortense board in Queenie's house.

The book had important things to say about racism and colonialism. The Jamaicans were taught everything about Britain - so much so that the Jamaicans thought of themselves as British, as every bit a citizen of the Empire as any other Brit. However, the Jamaicans were not thought of as British by the people who lived in Britain. To the British, they were foreigners, and black foreigners at that, despite the ties to the Empire. The Jamaicans faced the prejudice of the British with surprise, considering the Jamaicans felt they themselves were British. The book also discussed briefly the American feelings towards black people and the segregation imposed on the American soldiers, even in Britain.

So, if this book deals with important themes, why didn't I like it? Perhaps because I didn't really like any of the characters. None of the main characters were really likeable at all, so I didn't get into the story. If I don't care about the characters, I'm not interested in where their lives are going and then don't want to read the book because I have no interest in the story. I didn't feel like I could identify with the characters. It became a little better by the end of the book, but by then it was almost too late. Perhaps I disliked the characters because they were not real people but symbols, each with something to represent. It is difficult to identify with a symbol.

I also did not like the set-up of the book. Each main character told a portion of the story from his or her perspective. That did work when different characters described the same event. However, the book then jumps forward and backward in time. The reader is jumping between voices and time periods. I would have preferred a more chronological order for the book. If I don't care about the character in the present day, why would I care about them in the past? Maybe a linear structure would have assisted in developing the reader's relationship with the characters.

Those are my feelings on Small Island. Fortunately, I did not buy the book, only borrowed it. I will probably never read it again and would think twice about picking up another work by this author. The book wasn't terrible. I just didn't like it. However, those are my thoughts. If anyone liked it, you are welcome to post a spirited defence in the comments and we can have a civilized debate.

Next book up for book club is The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo. I am borrowing a copy from a friend and should start reading it this week! Stay tuned for updates.

Book Clubbing

Like so many people in this day and age, I have joined a book club. I used to laugh at the directed reading book club questions in the back of novels, thinking them suited only to 8th grade English classes and not the reading public demanding only entertainment from its fiction. However, I was wrong. People want to talk about books. Indeed, if I didn't want to talk about books, why do I have this blog?

And, you don't have to use the questions in the back of the book. In fact, most of my favourite books don't have reading questions in the back at all. And those that do, well, I won't hold it against them.

I joined the book club to expand my reading horizon. I was tending to read the same books over and over again: historical fiction, mystery, historical mystery, non-fiction historical and wanted to try something new. However, I was a little cautious. I was excited about sharing my book with the world, but hesitant about trying new books. What if I didn't like them? But reading anything is never a waste of time.

Our book club is limited in nature: 4 of us, 4 months, 4 books. We've already discussed the book for May and are getting ready to move on to June. My month is July. I'm looking forward to discussing my pick!

We had two picks for May: Reading Lolita in Tehran and Small Island. Neither were books I would pick off the shelf to read at the library, nevermind to own at the bookstore. Although neither book was my favourite, they were interesting to read and the first book (all we've had time to discuss so far!) promoted an interesting discussion about the role of women and religion in the world.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is about one Iranian woman's struggle during the Islamic Revolution. The author, Azar Nafisi, lived and taught literature at University in Iran before leaving her country to move to the United States. She frames her book in four sections, each structured around a different author or novel: Lolita, Henry James, The Great Gatsby, and Jane Austen. I have never read Lolita in Tehran or elsewhere, nor The Great Gatsby, nor Henry James. However, a little Wikipedia research helped.

For a book club, this was a good choice in that the book presented a wide forum of other literature to discuss in addition to the book itself - that is, if one has read the other books. I also found that the front jacket blurb about the book was misleading. The book discusses the author's entire teaching life in Iran: including the time she resigned from the university and started her own book club/literature class with some of her female students at her home. This portion of the author's life does not encompass the whole book. However, to read the blurb, it would seem like the entire book revolves around the author and her at-home literature class. It does not; it is one factor in the author's interesting life. I felt like the book had been mislabelled and wondered why her story seemed to be straying "off track" as it discussed other aspects of the author's life instead of focusing on her private reading class. I also would have liked to learn more about the women in her class.

The book is an interesting read. However, I would recommend that you brush up on your Henry James, Lolita, Great Gatsby and Jane Austen before reading! It is not a comfortable read, but the struggles faced by the women in Iran are gripping. Not my usual choice of book, but I'm glad I read it.

My thoughts on Small Island will be in my next post. And what is our pick for June? The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. I'm currently 396th in line on hold for the book at the library! Stay tuned for a post discussing this book after I've read it and discussed it with the club. And my pick in July? You'll have to wait and see.