Lucky Jim

As I read the first couple of chapters of this dryly, bitterly, funny novel by Kingsley Amis, I was afraid it was going to be too much like a Barbara Pym novel:  some sly observational humor that's crushed under the weight of a little too much depressing postwar English ennui.  But around the third chapter I began to enjoy myself.  Jim Dixon, a newly hired history lecturer in a small provincial university, hates his job and his colleagues so much that he is unable to resist sabotaging his career prospects at every turn.  This makes for lots of comic fun.  The cynicism never overpowers, though, as it's balanced by Jim's occasional fits of self-honesty which keep him trying, for instance, to do right by the two women with whom he becomes involved.  Great fun.

The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer

The Whole Woman, published in 2000, is Germaine Greer's follow-up to her 1970 feminist classic The Female Eunuch.  I had to read The Female Eunuch in college during the 1980s and remember feeling both put off and impressed.  Put off by frankly explicit language and by the bleak, bleak picture Greer painted of men and women.  Impressed by her motif of women unable in a male-dominated society to be real women, forced to make ourselves over as "eunuchs," hairless, hipless, and rail-thin.  I was struck by the truth of that image.

The Whole Woman is a book Greer said she would never write, wanting her original manifesto to stand for her own generation and later generations to speak for themselves, but:

In the last thirty years women have come a long, long way;  our lives are nobler and richer than they were, but they are also fiendishly difficult... when The Female Eunuch was written our daughters were not cutting or starving themselves... it's time to get angry again.

The Whole Woman's governing idea is that women are not understood to be a complete, valid, fully-realized sex on our own;  we are viewed more like lesser or incomplete versions of men.  Our physical, biochemical, emotional, and cognitive differences from men are viewed not as valuable qualities but as problems, as lacks.  The book consists of 32 self-contained chapters, each examining this governing idea and how it plays out in the world today from a different angle. 

Greer's fierce articulateness made every chapter a pleasure for me--even the ones that are painful to read, even the ones I don't agree with.  (I did agree with almost all of them, though.)  Some samples:

On making men into "women" by surgically removing the outward signs of maleness:

No so-called sex change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant;  if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight.

On housework:

Women are still held responsible and hold themselves responsible for what the family eats.  In the matter of nutrition, as in so much else, they are confronted with the typical female dilemma of lack of control combined with total responsibility.

On male abdication of responsibility for all the consequences of sex:

If we ask ourselves whether we would have any hope of imposing upon men the duty to protect women's fertility and their health, and avoid the abortions that occur in their uncounted millions every day, we will see in a blinding light how unfree women are.  

On contempt for mothers and mothering:

"Mother" is not a career option;  the woman who gave her all to mothering has to get in shape, find a job, and keep young and beautiful if she wants to be loved... There are some societies where this (honoring mothers) is understood and women are treated with special respect because of it, but not one of them is Anglo-Saxon.

The Collected Short Stories of Saki

Saki is the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, an English writer I first heard of when my daughter was assigned one of his stories for her high school English class.  She insisted that I'd like this one.  I do like him;  his stories tend to punish the pompous and favor children and other underdogs.  Highly ironic and often humorous, they are very short and generally end with a punchline of sorts.

I haven't (yet) read this entire collection.  It contains around 100 stories, and I'm not inclined to read them all at once.  They're kind of like little snacks--it's nice to read one or two when the mood strikes.  I'm keeping it in the kitchen.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Stories

This collection of horror stories by H. P. Lovecraft has been on my shelf for a year or so, and I've been in a mood for cozy creepiness this winter, so last month I pulled this one down and read it.  That it's taken me so long to post about it, or indeed about anything, is due to an increase in both new activities and in migraines.  Am now attempting to get both under control, with some success.

These stories were mostly a pleasure, which is not surprising since I've never met a ghost story I didn't like.  And the straightforward ghost stories were the most successful for me, probably because they gave me what I love:  not-too-disturbing creepiness and graceful prose.  The fantasies interested me less--why do I often find fantasy disappointing?  "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," for instance, just seems overblown. "Into the Mountains of Madness," starts off with a great premise:  that Antarctica, the last uncharted continent, contains a dreadful mystery.  But when the mystery is revealed, it's disappointingly, clunkily, silly.  "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," on the other hand, if a bit too long, scared me nicely with its undead ancestors and raised demons.  The classic "The Dunwich Horror" didn't disappoint either.  Atmospherically set in 1920s New England, and building up layers of mystery, its first half was everything I love.  And the final part was well-handled, the "horror" itself not shown except through the reactions of the few who saw it and lived. 

What I didn't know but probably should have, is how much Stephen King owes to H. P. Lovecraft.  It's obvious that King was heavily influenced by Lovecraft, he borrows so much--isolated New England towns with secretive inhabitants, Indian burial grounds as tainted places, foolish humans calling up ancient evils.  Some imagery and the name of a demon from "The Dunwich Horror,"  I'm pretty sure, appear in King's novels The Tommyknockers and Needful Things. 

After reading these stories, I googled Lovecraft and found a terrific website for fans of Victorian horror called Gaslight.  The site has archived hundreds of gothic/horror/mystery stories as well as essays and criticism written by both famous and unknown authors between 1800 and 1919. 

Classics Club

Eugene Onegin, Chapters 5-8

I've been awol the last few weeks, for a lot of little non-serious reasons, and I'm here to catch up.  So glad I haven't missed the entire second half of the readalong. 

This final half of the poem begins with a shocking event:  Eugene, in a fit of irritation with Lensky, dances and flirts with Olga (Lensky's fiancee).  Neither Eugene nor Olga sees this as anything serious, but Lensky does.  Quite uncharacteristically, it seems to me, he challenges Onegin to a duel.  Eugene haughtily agrees, and Lensky is killed.  Stricken with remorse, Eugene leaves his estate and spends several years traveling.  Shallow Olga recovers quickly from her loss and marries a soldier. Lensky is forgotten and his grave neglected. Tatiana, feeling that life no longer holds any joy for her, agrees to marry an elderly general, and enters St. Petersburg's social elite.  On his return to society, Eugene sees her at a ball, is struck by her grave beauty, and (at last) falls in love with her.  He writes her a letter that is a wonderful counterpart to the one she originally wrote him, in which he recognizes that he turned her away in the past only because of "my tedious taste for feeling free."  Though she still loves Eugene, Tatiana refuses to betray her husband, and Eugene is left standing thunderstruck.

Question from Marion, our readalong host:  Chapter 6 finds us in the middle of sudden disputes and high drama.  What might be the characters' motivations for such extreme actions?  Is it substance, or superficiality?  Is anybody right or wrong - and if so, who?

I want to respond to this because it's what struck me also--what on earth got into Lensky and Onegin?  I just cannot see sweet-natured, easygoing Lensky even noticing Onegin's flirtation with Olga, much less assuming on no evidence at all that a seduction was attempted, much less demanding a duel!  Likewise with Onegin--he's just too bored and can't-be-bothered-about-it-all to agree to anything as real and dangerous as a duel.  Not to mention his genuine love for his friend, the only sincere emotion he appeared to have up until that point.  I would expect him to laugh at Lensky's challenge, and tell him not to be ridiculous.  Honestly, I can't account for this part of the plot.

Eugene Onegin: Chapters 3 and 4

We've now met  Eugene's neighbor, Victor Lensky, Victor's fiancee Olga, and Olga's sister Tatiana.  Tatiana, having conceived a passion for Onegin, rashly writes him a letter telling him of her feeling.  Onegin somewhat detachedly tells her he does not return her feeling, and suggests she not write anyone such a letter again, for other men may not be so gentle with her.

Impressions of Tatyana and Olga?  Olga is a simple, friendly, pretty girl;  ideal for good-natured and romantic (and possibly undemanding) Victor.  Tatiana is deeper--reserved but passionate, a dreamer and reader of romances. 

What do you make of Onegin's reaction to Tatyana?  It seems in character.  Onegin is not cruel, but he is far too jaded and self-centered to appreciate a heartfelt gift of love.  It wouldn't occur to him to give of himself, and he is not interested in the offering of another's heart. 

How does the story, thus far, compare or contrast with another classic romantic novel (of your choice)?  Anna Karenina comes to mind;  I read it last fall.  I'm reminded of Kitty and Levin--his offering of marriage, heart full of passion, and her initial thoughtless rejection.  Will Eugene come to his senses as Kitty did?  He did notice Tatiana when he first met the sisters...

Eugene Onegin: Chapters 1 and 2

My first reaction, as I haven't read many (any?) novels in verse, is that it's almost making me read faster than I want to--the rhythm is carrying me along with it, and I'm having to go back, sometimes, and reread some lines to clarify.  Not that it's difficult at all;  but the rhythm gives it a rather lighthearted feel, as if even things like Eugene's coldness about his uncle's death aren't supposed to really get us down.  I wonder how the tragic events later in the story will come across?

First impressions of Eugene?  A rake; a young, wealthy, jaded, man-about-town. 

What do you make of the narrator's commentary?  An old man looking back on his youth, reminiscing about this Eugene with fondness.

Thoughts on the characters sketched out in Chapter 2?  I'm very interested in Tatiana.  I know from the back cover of the book, lol, that Eugene will seduce her.  But rather than a young innocent girl who will be easy pickings for Eugene the jaded rake, she looks like one who has had a lot of life experience and learned from it. 

Eugene Onegin Readalong 2014

Marian at Tanglewood Classic Lit Book Reviews is hosting a readalong of Alexander Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin.  I've had this on my shelves for a while now, and have been a little intimidated to start it.  So hearing other people's thoughts as we go should be very helpful and enjoyable.  I will be posting after every two chapters, about every 10 days or so, per the schedule.  Reading starts tomorrow!

Classics Club

2nd Annual Classics Club Readathon

Well, here goes my first readathon!  Adam at the Classics Club is our host today, and he has given us the following questions to start the day with: 

Name and blog:  Amy, book musings
Snacks and Beverages of Choice:  Tea, tea, tea, and probably some toast.
Where are you reading from today?  Houston, Texas
What are your goals for the Readathon?   My tentative plan is to spend the entire day reading The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  It's been on my shelves a long time, and it's longish, and I wonder if I can finish it today.  Also, it's a nice gothic-ish type of thing to read by the fire on a cold day.  I treasure the very few cold days we get here on the Gulf Coast.
Are you excited?  To be honest, right now my main emotion is worry that I won't really be able to just read all day--it's Saturday, a pretty busy day around here.  But my ever-understanding husband has graciously agreed to handle all the kids' needs to be taken places today, so that I can undertake this geeky enterprise, lol.

I'll check in with progress once or twice during the day, and be checking some other blogs to see how they're going, too.  Happy reading...

2:15 pm CST:  I'm 75 pages into The House of the Seven Gables and enjoying it very much.  I probably won't finish it today, but will likely get a considerable part of it done.  Having lunch now.  

9:00 pm CST:  200 pages in now, out of 312--I may finish this thing tonight!  And it's a great read. 

12:20 am CST:  Finished The House of the Seven Gables!  Starting The Nortorious Jumping Frog of Calveras County and Other Stories by Mark Twain.  I pulled this off my shelf because it's so short, lol.  Maybe I can finish it, too, although I'm pretty tired now. 

12:45 am CST:  Know what?  I'm beat.  Reading all day was lovely, but I'm tired now and don't feel up to any more.  See you all in the morning... :)

Adam at the Classics Club has some wrap-up questions this morning:


What book(s) did you read during the event?   I read The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in its entirety.
What did you like about our event?  I loved giving the day over to reading--I never do that.  And I loved being able to check a book off my massive TBR list.
Do you have suggestions for future Readathons through The Classics Club?  Nope.
Would you participate in future Readathons?  Yes, schedule permitting.
Anything else you’d like to share?   Here's a quote that shows the humor that sometimes lightened this book, which I had not expected to find in a work by Hawthorne:

Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts, Hepzibah searched about the house for the means of more exhilarating pastime.  At one time, her eyes chanced to rest on Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.  It was a moment of great peril; for--despite the traditionary awe that had gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges which spiritual fingers were said to play on it--the devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford's benefit, and accompanying the performance with her voice.  Poor Clifford!  Poor Hepzibah!  Poor Harpsichord!  All three would have been miserable together.  

 Thanks Adam and Classics Club for hosting this fun event!

Wrap-Up: Mount TBR Challenge 2013

The Mount TBR Challenge attracted me this year as a way to chip away at my massive TBR list--the books I own but haven't read.  I attempted to read 12 of those books this year, and alas, it looks like I only read eight, while continuing to purchase new books.  So much for whittling the list!  The books I read were:

The Assault by Harry Mulisch
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The favorite?  Austerlitz--lovely and wistful and sad, and so very unusual in the way it is told, as a slowly meandering unfolding of memories.  I've just made it sound boring and depressing, and it's anything but.  It actually gets more suspenseful as it goes on, and I couldn't put it down once I saw where the narrative was going.  I read most of it on a train through Germany and the Czech Republic last summer, which adds to the specialness.

Thank you Bev at My Reader's Block for hosting this challenge.

Wrap-Up: Chunkster Challenge 2013

For the Chunkster Challenge, I committed to reading four chunksters (books of 450 pages or longer) this year.  But it turns out I read six!  These were:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Middlemarch by George Eliot


The favorite (and the biggest surprise) was Les Miserables.  It is so very long, and I had always heard it described as near-torture, that I had some trepidations going in.  But this book hooked me immediately by starting off with the life of the good Bishop of Digne, with whom I am now in love.  

There is no least favorite;  there were no disappointments;  I enjoyed them all.  Actually, in this blog you will rarely read of disappointments, because I rarely continue reading a book I dislike.  I'm not in school, haha.  

Thanks Wendy and Vasilly, for this enjoyable challenge!

2nd Annual Classics Club Readathon

I've been a member of the Classics Club for two years now, and I've been reading away, but I've never participated in a Classics Club event.  I've never joined in on a readathon, because I never seemed to be free all day on the day.  But the stars seem to have aligned, and this year's Classics Club Readathon will be on January 4, 2014, and I have nothing planned!  No travel and no visitors expected--yay!  Now I just have to decide what to read...

Classics Club

The Wine of Solitude

In finishing The Wine of Solitude, I have read all the Nemirovsky in my collection.  I can't overstate how much pleasure this writer gives me.  In this, her most autobiographical book, she evokes the Kiev of her childhood, which she hated, but which with its air full of summer dust and the scent of lime trees sounds lovely to me.  She convincingly recreates a childhood that leaves her unable to trust or to form attachments, and her choice of the high road at the end of the book feels well-earned. 

The Remains of the Day

Add Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to the long list of books-I-was-exposed-to-in-my-youth-and-failed-to-appreciate.  Not that I read the book back then, but I saw the movie in college and found it rather dull.  I wonder now how this book could ever be filmed without being dull;  it's mainly one man's mental suppressions.  I must see it again and find out.

But I now know, having also read Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World a couple of years ago, that reminiscence is a powerful tool in this author's hands.  In both books, the narrator tells the story of his life in flashback.  The narrator in The Remains of the Day is a butler looking back on his years of service to a disastrously foolish nobleman. The narration starts out in a very self-satisfied tone, and as it goes on, the narrator can't help revealing more and more of the reality of events, which is less and less flattering to himself.  At the end, we feel that we finally understand the the man's life and choices, and we feel him facing it at last.  The revelations are so subtle, so carefully and elegantly revealing, that it's like listening to him mentally unfolding his memories.

I have one more book by Kazuo Ishiguro on my shelves--A Pale View of Hills, which also features a narrator recounting memories.  I'm very interested to see how like these other two it will turn out to be.  Ishiguro is obviously very interested in the phenomenon of memory and how we use it to rewrite our lives.  I'm strongly reminded of W. G. Sebald, another writer obsessed with memory.  I read his Austerlitz last summer and fell heavily for Mr. Sebald, more of whose work I also want to read.

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Mount TBR Challenge

Selected Stories by Stefan Zweig

I read this collection of novellas over the last two days.  I seldom read anything that quickly, giving myself up to reading for hours at a sitting, rather than just over meals or while my younger kids swim or attend scout meetings.  These kinds of stories are such  pure pleasure for me--set in the early 1900s, in European cities, and delving deeply into people's passions, heartbreaks, and life-altering decisions with clear-eyed sympathy.  Reminiscent of Dinesen's atmospheric, mysterious, heartbreaking, multi-layered tales within tales. 

Middlemarch

George Eliot's Middlemarch examines the busy life of a manufacturing town in the north of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  A great number of characters, storylines, happy and unhappy marriages, births, deaths, hidden sins, financial struggles, political movements, and societal changes fill its 838 pages.  I generally enjoy these massive, complicated stories of societies seen through the eyes of several families when they are told with humor and insight, as Middlemarch is. 

Two characters' stories get the most thorough treatment, and they seem almost to be male and female foils of each other.  Dorothea Brooke is an idealistic but naive young woman of good family, and Tertius Lydgate is Middlemarch's new doctor, ambitious to break new scientific ground in a research hospital.  They share some obvious similarities--both are careless of others' opinion of them, and filled with a desire to improve the world.  Both also make disastrous marriages which thwart their ambitions to do great good.  But one ultimately finds a satisfying outlet for those ambitions, while the other settles for a severely limited horizon.

What I couldn't quite get a handle on with Middlemarch, was the book's attitude toward women.  The author/narrator frequently makes asides on the weakness of women and the submissiveness of ideal wives.  I read these as tongue-in-cheek, coming from a female author.  And Dorothea has an interest in architecture--she draws plans herself for cottages for the poor.  But no positively portrayed female character, even Dorothea, seems to have, or want to have, opinions or interests or desires other than their husbands'.  They regard it as their highest good to subordinate their very thoughts to his, and their duty to suppress any thoughts or desires which conflict with his.  The only character to not only think, but act, contrary to her husband's wishes is the monstrously selfish Rosamond. 

But perhaps we shouldn't expect perfect consistency from authors.  Certainly the psychological insights of this author toward her characters in general are wonderful and one of the great pleasures of reading Middlemarch. 

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The Small Hand and Dolly

These two novellas by Susan Hill, The Small Hand and Dolly, come packaged in one volume by Vintage Books.  Susan Hill is the author of The Woman in Black, and also of a series of police procedurals.  I generally enjoy her ghost stories,  but I think I prefer The Woman in Black, which is a full-length novel, to these two.  All are the type of ghost story I love:  English setting and not extremely shocking or gory.  These two, while nicely atmospheric, are perhaps a little too tame even for me.  Worth a read, though, if you like the type. 

Anna Karenina

I loved War and Peace, so I brought high expectations to Anna Karenina, and I wasn't disappointed.  Reading Tolstoy, more than anything, leaves me with a warm feeling toward Tolstoy.  I do try, when reading, not to assume too much about the author, but again and again found myself mentally nodding:  yes--he understands, about this or that character's thoughts, fears, frustrations, spiritual struggles.

Anna Karenina tells parallel stories about two couples, or rather, a triangle and a couple:  Anna, her husband, and her lover;  and Kitty (Anna's sister-in-law), and her husband Levin.  Anna's sterile marriage and disastrous adulterous relationship are contrasted with Kitty and Levin's marital and spiritual growth.

Tolstoy really does do a remarkable job of getting inside characters' minds--men, women, and children.  I caught myself wondering if he had asked his wife, for instance, exactly what it's like, physically and emotionally, to struggle with breastfeeding.  He seems to understand the mental exhaustion of a mother with many young children and an irresponsible husband.  And this is a man, writing in the 1870s!  He captures the stress and frustration of an introvert forced to spend large amounts of time with argumentative people.  He takes us inside the minds of all three members of the triangle--and I couldn't imagine any of them acting in any other way than they did.  Their choices all seemed inevitable outcomes of their personalities.  Even Anna's young son, the victim and onlooker, is fully realized.

Spiritual struggle is a major theme in Anna, as it was in War and Peace.  From this angle, too, I felt the skill of the characterization.  Levin is the character I would have expected to wrestle with questions such as the meaning of life and the existence of God.  His development from agnostic to believing Christian is treated in depth, and doesn't feel like prosletyzing.  Again, I wondered if Tolstoy was remembering his own experience, as it seemed to unfold so naturally.

Was Leo Tolstoy a warm, wise, and understanding man?  There's no way to know for sure, of course, but that's how I think of him now. 

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The Grapes of Wrath

Reading Of Mice And Men in high school pretty much killed any interest I might have had in reading any more Steinbeck.  "Boring and depressing" was my teenage reaction to that novel.  But the older I get, the more often I discover the beauty, or the skill, or the power in some work that I didn't appreciate back then.  The Last of the Mohicans is an example--hated that in school, but loved it when I read it again a couple of years ago with my daughter.  Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is one that, being by Steinbeck, I wouldn't have opened, except that James at Following Pulitzer reviewed it so glowingly last year that I was moved to put it on my TBR list.  (And my father loved it, which should have made me give it a chance a long time ago!)

Anyway.  Now I love it too, and better late than never, I suppose.  It's the story of the Joad family of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, whose farm is repossessed during the Depression.  They take to the road, hoping to find work picking fruit in California.  My two strong takeaways from this book are the very moving characterizations, and Steinbeck's apparent desire to get a social message across--the crying need for social safety nets such as unions and government programs.

Surely it's a sign of skillful characterization that I actually grew to love this family and suffered along with them through all their trials.  They were by no means angelic;  they were more interesting than that.  Ma Joad's iron will is tempered occasionally by self doubt.  Tough son Tom's quick temper is balanced by his integrity and passion for justice.  Ex-preacher Casy, who has given up Christianity, eventually performs an act of self-sacrifice that is obviously meant to be Christ-like.  I felt I was on a journey with these complex and interesting human beings, and was sorry to part with them at the end.

It's clear that Steinbeck was pro-union, and it's really hard to dispute, reading this book, the need for migrant workers to have some bargaining power when they faced starvation wages, squalid living conditions, and blacklisting by large farm corporations if they objected.  I think it's easy to forget that within living memory, without government safety nets, Americans sometimes starved to death.  (James, the blogger mentioned above, made this point in his review last year also.  It's such a large theme in the novel that I don't know how anyone reading it could fail to be struck by it, and I certainly was.) 

After finishing The Grapes of Wrath, I watched Ken Burns' documentary Dust Bowl.  I'd highly, highly recommend that as a companion to this book.  It provides a detailed but accessible explanation of the "dust bowl" phenomenon and its origins--a man-made ecological disaster.  And it includes plenty of photographs, which I was constantly mentally matching to characters in the book.  I also watched the 1940 movie starring Henry Fonda.  Although the film is a truncated version of the book, and left out some important but controversial-for-the-time elements, the casting was genius and the acting superb.  Watch it too.

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The Random Number Survey

I saw this meme over at Howling Frog Books (it was originally created by Melissa at Harley Bear Books), and it looks like fun, so I think I'll play.  Here's how it works:

1. Pick a number.  

2. Go to your bookshelf and count that many books until you reach your number. Answer the question with that book.

3. Count the same number of books from where you left off and answer the next question.

4. Repeat until you finish the survey

I chose the number 10, and found every tenth book from my biggest literature bookcase.  (I don't know why the spacing is wonky below, and I can't seem to fix it, sorry!)

1.  Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen:   What do you think of the cover?    

I love this cover.  Many of my classic literature covers have paintings from the relevant period, and this one is well chosen.  The slimmer, more erect girl on the left is obviously sober Elinor, and the lounging, plumper, tousle-curled girl on the right is emotional Marianne. 

2.  The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges:  Write a review in 140 characters or less.

Two dreamy, hypnotic, fascinating, inventive story collections from late in Borges' life. 

3.  The Lady With the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov:  How or where did you get this book?                                                                                                                                                                                                               I got it from Amazon, because I wanted to read "The Black Monk," which is one of the stories in this collection.  I was a little disappointed because I thought it would be a creepy/gothic type of thing, but it was more about madness, which I should have known given the author. 

  



4.  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens:  Who's your favorite character in this book, and why?

Joe Gargery.  He has such sweetness and dignity, and no pride or resentment. 







 

5.  The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:  Recommend this book to a fellow blogger you think would like it. 

Actually, this kind of stumps me.  I've never seen Sherlock Holmes books reviewed on a blog,  nor detective fiction, on the blogs I mostly frequent. 

6.  The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman:  How long ago did you read this book? 

Probably three or four years ago, I don't remember exactly.  It was a used-bookstore find, a thriller with a postwar Sarajevo setting that appealed to me.  

7.  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway:  Name a favorite scene from this book (NO SPOILERS).

I read this book in high school (!) which is so long ago that I barely remember it.  Only one scene remains in my memory, so it must be my favorite--the childbirth scene, with Catherine having dreadful pains and sucking on the "gas" that they gave to laboring women at the time.  It terrified me. 

8.  The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill:  Open to page 87 and pick a random quote to share (NO SPOILERS).

"She had--an expression.  Happy.  You don't see people look happy, just plain happy, do you?  They look worried, they look worn down, they're frowning, or maybe laughing out loud... but this was--just happy.  I remember it."

9.  An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro:  How did you hear about or discover this book? 

The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has a book club of sorts.  They announce a book on their website, you read it, and then go in for a tour, which they have tailored to the book.  This book is about a painter in postwar Japan, and the tour included a lot of Japanese art, with a docent-led discussion of both the art and the book. 

10.  Strange Tales by Rudyard Kipling:  If you could redesign the cover, what would you do?


I'd make it more like the cover of the book that I have, which is not the one shown.  The one I have is a Wordsworth Edition, Strange Tales series.  it has what looks like a pencil drawing called "Death shakes the dead leaves" by Robert Mathias.  A skeleton is hanging on to a tree, a wind is blowing, leaves are flying, and both tree and skeleton are bowed.  It's eerie and fabulous.

11.  To Build a Fire and Other Stories by Jack London:  Name your least favorite character in this book and why.

The title story in this collection is the only one I've read, and it has two characters--a man and a dog.  I'd have to say the man is my least favorite character, because he makes some really bad decisions. 

12.  Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:  If you like (fill in the blank), then you should try (your book).

If you like magical realism, Spanish literature, or explorations of the dark side of human nature, you should try this book.

13.  David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky:  Name one cool thing about this book (under the dust jacket, map, font, photograph, etc.). 

What I like about the edition I have (pictured) is that it's one of the set of Nemirovsky's books published in Britain by Vintage.  The US-published ones look different.  I found this one in a used bookstore.  They all have the title in that swirly font, and a swoony period photo.  I love them. 

14.  1984 by George Orwell:  Where is it set, and would you ever want to visit that world/place?

The dystopian future, and good Lord, no. 

15.  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque:  Who is it dedicated to?

It's not specifically dedicated to anyone, but it has this rather moving paragraph before page one:  "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure for those who stand face to face with it.  It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."