2012: My year in reading.

Well, bloggers, I've been kind of absent lately -- December was really hectic for me.  It ended well, however, with an incredible week in New York City -- I ate some great food, saw some amazing sights, and, naturally, came home with another stack of books.  But that should be another post.

Anyhow, before this year is officially over, I'm going to post a quick recap of my year in reading (questions and logo borrowed from Jamie at Perpetual Page-Turner).  First of all, I made my goal of 100 books!  I didn't blog nearly as much as I wanted, so some of the books mentioned below don't have reviews posted.  But these are my thoughts on my year of reading in 2012. 

1. Best book(s) I read in 2012: This is a tough one.  I read so many good books this year!  I think Anthony Trollope would win the prize as my favorite author -- I completed three of his books this year, and I've started another.  I just love him and hope to read all 47 of his novels someday.  

However, for my very favorite, number one book, I would have to say Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.  It was a reread for me, but it had been so long since I read it, it was just like reading it all over again.  And I was sorry I'd waited so long!  It was just as wonderful now as when I first read it as a freshman in college.  Just brilliant.  

2.  Book I was excited about and thought I would love but didn't: I'm sorry to say it was A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin -- because his Song of Ice and Fire series was my favorite discovery of 2011, and his books showed up on my 2011 Best of List over and over.  I'm hoping his next book doesn't take five more years -- and that it isn't another disappointment!

Second would be The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen.  Just meh.  

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2012: Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.  Nobody ever reads this book, but it's full of great stuff.  Not the best Dickens, but definitely worth reading.  I thought it would be a complete slog but I loved it.  

4.  Books I recommended most to people in 2012:  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  By far, one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read.  The story is both shocking and sad and heartwarming.  It should be required reading in schools.  Just brilliant. 

5.  Best series I discovered in 2012:  The Gideon Trilogy series by Linda Buckley-Archer.  It's a great historical children's series -- two thirteen-year olds get transported in time to 1763 and have to elude a scary criminal known as the Tar Man, while trying to get back to the 20th century. My daughter recommended it and I finally got around to reading it this year. 

6.  Favorite new authors of 2012:  I thought Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre was just wonderful.  He's written several books about WWII, so I'm looking forward to reading more of them.  

7.  Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2012:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  It wasn't the best book I read in 2012, but I read almost the entire book in one day.  

8.  Book(s) I most anticipated in 2012:  Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles.  I started out reading Doctor Thorne, which I loved, and I'm currently in the midst of the final book in the series, the Last Chronicle of Barset.  I have about 600 pages to go, so there's no way I'll finish it this year -- works by Trollope will be bookends for the year, I suppose!

9.  Favorite cover of a book I read in 2012:  It's a tie:

I love this cover.  I think it's taken from a historical travel poster.  Doesn't it make you want to visit England? 

And I love this classic cover of The Hobbit: 

10.  Most memorable character in 2012:  Cathy Ames from John Steinbeck's East of Eden.  Just creepy, one of the most evil villains in literature.  Amy Dunne from Gone Girl is also particularly memorable.  Just read the book and you'll see. 

11.  Most beautifully written book in 2012:  Probably Of Human Bondage.  I kept putting sticky notes in to save my favorite quotes.  

12.  Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for me:  The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. I hadn't read it since middle school, and decide it was time for a re-read before I saw the movie.  I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it -- I never made it through the Lord of the Rings, though I liked the movies.  All I could remember was Gollum and the ring, so it was fun to reread it. Might tackle The Fellowship of the Ring next year!

13.  Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2012:  Again, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, with Of Human Bondage as a close second.  

14.  Book you can't believe you waited until 2012 to FINALLY read:  A Bell for Adano by John Hersey.  It is by far, the book I have had on my to-read shelves the longest, for, ahem, close to 20 years.  It was wonderful.  Also East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  I love Steinbeck, I don't know why I took so long to read it!

15.  Book you read in 2012 that would most likely to be reread in 2013:  Probably a classic, most likely a short one.  Maybe Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham, which is really a novella.  Or A Room With a View by E. M. Forster. 

16.  Shortest and longest book of 2012:  Without doing an actual word count, I'm pretty sure the shortest is Up at the Villa -- my edition is 209 pages, but the print is large, double-spaced, and the margins are huge.  Seriously, you can read it in an hour or so.

By the same token, A Dance with Dragons could be considered the longest book at 1017 pages, but the print isn't that small, and there are only about 957 pages of text -- there are a lot of appendices at the back.  I think all the Dickens books I read this year are longer -- I read somewhere that Martin Chuzzlewit has 375,000 words, one of his longest works.  I'm sure it's the longest book I read in 2012.  I'm pretty sure it took me the most time.  

16. Book that had a scene in it that had me reeling and dying to talk to somebody about it?  (A WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc., etc).  No spoilers! 
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  If you haven't read it, go get it.  Buy it, download it, put yourself on the waiting list at your local library (I'm sure there are a LOT of holds).  That's all.  
Just for fun, here are some statistics of my 2012 reading: 

Here's a breakdown of what I read:

Number of books: 100
Approximate number of pages read: 34,758, slightly less than last year.

Nonfiction:  17
Children's:  9
Young Adult:  10
Rereads:  7
Classics: 29
Persephones: 9

Books by male authors:  41
Books by female authors: 59
Books in translation:  3

Repeated authors and number of books per author:

Suzanne Collins - 2
E. M. Delafield - 2
Charles Dickens - 3
Susan Hill - 2
George R. R. Martin - 2
W. Somerset Maugham - 3
Barbara Pym - 2
John Steinbeck - 2
Anthony Trollope - 3
Emile Zola - 2

And my favorite statistic. . .

Books from my own shelves:  50!!  (Okay, 7 were rereads, but it's a vast improvement over 2011 -- only 29 reads last year were from my TBR shelf.)

I also completed a bunch of challenges, details of which you can see here.

So how about you, bloggers?  Was 2012 a good reading year for you?  Which books were your favorites?

Two Alternate Reads from the TBR Challenge List

During the mini-break I took from blogging, I did not stop reading -- frankly, I can't NOT read.  As Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing."

Anyhow, whilst on my break, I was in need of some light entertainment to break up some of my heavier reads, including two books from my TBR shelf that happened to be alternates from my 2012 TBR Challenge.  It's been a few weeks since I read them, but I'm really anxious to post something so I can officially complete the challenge!!

First, I read The Provincial Lady in America by E. M. Delafield back in early October, mostly while waiting in an emergency room for treatment for an ear infection.  (It's a very quick read -- lots of white space on every page, HUGE margins. And charming illustrations!)

If you are not familiar with the Provincial Lady, this is sort of a 1930s version of Bridget Jones' Diary, but if Bridget were older and married, with two children, a husband, and a couple of servants in a small country house.  This is the third book in the series.  The first book is a thinly veiled account of her daily life; in the second, the Provincial Lady has had great success publishing the first book, and is spending more time in London, working on her writing and meeting the literati and all kinds of interesting people.

In this third volume, the Provincial Lady goes on a whirlwind literary tour of America, crossing the Atlantic in rough weather, meeting all kinds of people -- some pushy, some fawning, but mostly very nice.  It's fun to read her impressions of America, especially when she visits the Midwest, from which I hail.  However, this having been published in 1934, it's somewhat racist, and I found myself cringing when she refers to Negro porters and makes some very un-PC comments.  It wasn't quite as fresh and funny as the first book, but I definitely enjoyed it overall.  There are two more volumes about the PL, in which she visits the Soviets, and then the final volume, during WWII, which do sound interesting.  My library doesn't have a copy of the fourth book, but they do have the last one, which is good because it's out of print and used copies are horribly expensive.

The final book on my TBR Challenge Pile (well, excepting a book of short stories, on which I've given up) is another alternate read, Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford.  I had three unread Mitfords on the TBR shelf, purchased and received after I read Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love with great delight.  However, it had been several years since I read the first pair of Mitfords, and that made it harder -- I remembered Fanny, the narrator, who's now older, but I'd almost completely forgotten all the rest of the characters.  Also, quite a bit of time has passed -- Fanny's now middle aged, (though naturally she hasn't changed a bit and can still fit into the same dress size); and two of her three sons are all grown up now.  The third is at prep school with her adopted son, child of her late cousin, the scandalous Linda Radlett.

Set in the late 1950s, Fanny's been leading a quiet life as the wife of an Oxford don when her life is turned upside down by the news that her husband Alfred has been appointed the Ambassador to France!!   Suddenly, she finds her self embroiled in diplomatic tangles, a clash of cultures with the French, government upheavals, a twittering social secretary, and relatives that are driving her up a wall. Hilarity ensues -- it's sort of like a low-key late 1950s screwball comedy, set in an Embassy.  Fanny is the voice of reason throughout, it's all the surrounding people that are constantly causing trouble.

I did like it, though I had a hard time relating to what was going on -- I suppose it would help if I knew more about late 1950s French politics;  apparently, there were constant changes in government and votes of no-confidence and that sort of thing.  Also, since it had been a few years since I'd read the first two books, I had a hard time remembering who all the other characters were.  One side character, Grace Allingham, is actually the subject of a different Mitford book, The Blessing, and when I chose Don't Tell Alfred I didn't realize there was another book in between -- I wondered if I'd skipped a book.  Also, it ended really abruptly, and felt almost unfinished, like Mitford had run out of things to say.

Anyway, this was a funny, light read, though I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.  I will have to go back and read The Blessing, and another Mitford novel, Wigs on the Green, which is on the TBR shelf.  I also have a biography of the Mitfords, The Sisters by Mary S. Lovell; plus I picked up Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford on a bookstore sale table last year.  The Mitfords were such an interesting family and I want to learn more about them.

So that's it!!  I've finished my TBR Challenge for 2012.  Time to make my list for 2013!  Is anyone else still participating in this challenge?  How is your progress?

Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

Well -- I'm winding my way down through the TBR Challenge.  Finally, I have completed Saplings by Noel Streatfeild, a Persephone Classic, and one that's been on my shelves for a couple of years.  Normally, I love Persephones, and I don't know why I took so long to pick this one up.  I did try it a couple of months ago and it didn't grab me right away.  I finally gave it another shot and I'm so glad I did, because it was really good.

Here's the setup:  on the eve of WWII, the Wiltshires are an upper-middle or upperclass family, and from the outside, they seem perfect.  Alex Wiltshire is working for the family business, engineering something for the war effort; his beautiful wife Lena is gorgeous and devoted to him; and they have four beautiful children, two boys and two girls, ages ranging from about 12 to five years old.  The war hasn't started, but there are rumblings afoot, and the family is taking a seaside holiday with the children's governess and nanny.

At first, all seems idyllic, but Streatfeild quickly cuts to the heart of what makes this family tick:  Alex is a devoted husband and father, but his wife is more interested in her husband than her children.  The author makes insightful and fascinating psychological observations about the family dynamic and the personalities of each of the children, more so than I've ever read in any book about a family before.  Streatfeild has the amazing ability to get into the essence of these people, especially the children, and examine their personalities and foibles.

Of course, with the onset of the war, this "perfect" family begins to fall apart.  The children are separated from their parents, sent off to the country to stay with their grandparents; the eldest go off to boarding school.  Later, a tragedy strikes that upsets the whole balance of the family, and things start to unravel.  The characters aren't necessarily likable, but they're so realistic, I couldn't wait to find out what happened to them.

Apparently, Streatfeild was one of the first authors to really examine the psychological impact of the trauma of the war on children.  Of course I knew that millions of children were evacuated and separated from their families because of the war, and I'd heard that psychologically, it was probably more damaging for the children to be separated from their families than for them to be together.  I can't imagine having to make a choice like that!

Another of my favorite Persephone books, Doreen, also deals with the story of an evacuated child, but in that situation, both the child's mother and the country family who host her love her and want to keep her.  It's interesting to compare the two.  I reviewed that book as well, and if you're interested, you can read my thoughts here.

This is my 42nd Persephone -- I haven't read that many lately and I've been hoping to read more, especially since they recently published their 100th book!  So congratulations to Persephone, I look forward to completing the other 58 on my list.

Has anyone else read Saplings?  Any other books by Noel Streatfeild?  Or any other Persephones that you love?

The Univited Guests by Sadie Jones

I am way behind on my historical fiction challenge, and since this is a book I think I've checked out from the library two or maybe three times and never had time to read, I thought it would be a fun break from from the classics I've been immersed in lately.  And of course, Downton Abbey is all over the blogosphere, even though I won't get to watch it on this side of the Atlantic until January.  So, a fairly short book about a country house party set in 1912 seemed like just the thing.

I thought this book would be like Downton Abbey, but as if Cora hadn't had any money to save the estate.  In one respect this is right, because the eldest daughter, Emerald, is the hope of the Torrington family -- if she can snare a wealthy husband, they'll be able to save the family home.  However, any resemblance to DA ends right there.  

I'll back up and give a better synopsis -- it's the weekend of Emerald Torrington's ninteenth birthday, but her stepfather is missing the party, since has to go off and try to borrow money to save the family's estate, Sterne.  It's to be a small party, just a couple of old friends, Patience Someone-or-Other, and her mother, and at the last minute, a handsome young landowner, John Buchanan, is given an invitation as well (since he has a LOT of money and is fond of Emerald).  It's a small shindig because the family can barely afford to pay for servants and coal, much less updating the house with electricity and modern plumbing.  

However, things begin to unravel.  Patience's mother begs off with influenza and sends her son Ernest instead, and meanwhile, a railway accident has sent dozens of survivors up to the estate with nowhere else to go until things are sorted out.  What started out as a quiet weekend party for six or seven people quickly spirals out of control, especially when one of the railway refugees turns out to be someone from  the family's past. 

This book had a lot of potential -- a historical book about a country house in England, one of my favorite settings, and some interesting and quirky characters.  Unfortunately, I thought the story itself began to spiral out of control.  I could spot some plot developments right away, and I thought the author got carried away with the quirkiness, bordering on absurdity.  One of my favorite blogs, Books as Food, described it as "Downton Abbey meets the Addams family," but to me the story just got silly, and towards the end I just started skimming pages to get through it.  And I thought the ending was just odd.

I still want to read more historicals this year -- I have quite a few on the TBR shelves and even though I've made barely any progress on my historicals challenge, I've nearly finished all the other so I might make of a go of it anyway. 

What about you, bloggers?  Read any good historical fiction lately?  Or is everyone sick of the Downton Abbey hype?  

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Well.  It's been more than a month since I posted anything -- I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been busy, work and travel and the Jane Austen Society Annual General Meeting, which was fabulous.  I've really been wondering if I need to give up blogging for awhile.  But fear not, I have been reading!

Before I give up on blogging, I need to make a case for Barnaby Rudge, probably Dickens' most least-popular work -- yes, less popular even than Martin Chuzzlewit or Dombey and Son, both of which I've read in the past two years.  It's a shame really, because after I finally gave it my full attention, I actually liked BR better than the other two.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Barnaby Rudge was published in 1841, just after The Old Curiosity Shop (one of the most popular) and before Chuzzlewit, one of the least popular.  Dickens was inspired by the works of Sir Walter Scott to write a sweeping historical story -- his only other historical work is A Tale of Two Cities, and I can definitely see in BR glimmers of the great writing to come.  Barnaby Rudge is "A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," but it's not just a historical novel.  It's about fathers and sons, a double murder, two feuding families, divided lovers, an abduction, even a talking raven -- tons of great stuff, right?

The real Grip the Raven, Dickens' pet, now on view at the Free Library of Philadelphia

It starts out in 1775, in a small village about ten miles or so from London, and much of the action centers around a inn called The Maypole.  John Willet is the proprietor and his son Joe is much-maligned and dissatisfied; there's also another unhappy father and son, the rich and sleazy Mr. Chester and his noble son Edward.  Edward is in love with the local beauty, Emma Haredale, but a long-time feud between the Chesters and the Haredales threatens to separate them forever.  Also, Emma's father was murdered years before under mysterious circumstances, along with his faithful steward Mr. Rudge, father of the eponymous Barnaby, the local village simpleton with a heart of gold, who owns a talking raven, Grip.  We also meet another family, the Vardens.  Gabriel Varden is a locksmith with a shrewish wife, a beautiful, coquettish daughter Dolly; a scheming apprentice, Simon Tappertit; and a shrieking maidservant, Miggs, who provides most of the comic relief.

The first half of the book sets up all these different characters and gives some back story, along with a mysterious stranger.  Then, about halfway through the novel, the action jumps forward in time five years, to the beginning of the "No Popery" riots of 1780, also known as the Gordon Riots, which I'm sorry to say I knew nothing about.  My sincere apologies to any British readers, but is this a subject that anyone ever learned in school?  My shoddy Yank education regarding the 18th century was much more centered on the American Revolution.

If you didn't know either, the Gordon Riots were a backlash against Catholics, that culminated in anti-Catholic mob violence and riots, including a mob of at least 40,000 that marched on Parliament in June of 1780.  Churches, embassy, and prisons were burned, including Newgate.  (If you want to read more about it, click here).

I really think that's one reason Barnaby Rudge isn't popular -- honestly, a lot of people know enough about the French Revolution and the guillotine to make ATOTC a much more compelling subject.  And Barnaby Rudge is a terrible name, right up there with Martin Chuzzlewit.  I know Dickens has a talent for giving his characters goofy names to reflect their personalities, but surely he could have come up with something better!  Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and even Edwin Drood have mystery, romance, or some other interesting qualities to entice readers.

My biggest problem with this novel is how it shifts.  The first half sets up the mystery and the characters -- there are so many, it's confusing and there really isn't that much development of any of them -- and then -- ta-da!!!  The story jumps forward in time five years, to just before the Gordon Riots, and we get very little information about what's happened to most of the characters.

Don't get me wrong, the part about the riots and the mobs are extremely well-written, and I was riveted -- and I'm normally bored by big action scenes.  Dickens is really good at describing the mobs and the violence, and it's pretty scary.  But I really wanted more about the characters, and the story itself was kind of all over the place.  After the riots, things wrap up very quickly, and I just felt it was uneven.  Having read most of the Dickens canon, I can see hints of all the great stuff to follow -- Bleak House is a great murder mystery, and so many of his later novels have complex plots and multiple characters, plus there's all the great history in A Tale of Two Cities.  (Barnaby Rudge even has a little shout-out to Oliver Twist, with mention of a pick-pockets' gang).

Anyway.  I'm really glad I finished Rudge;  I'm nearing the end of my quest to complete all the works of Dickens -- only three left to go of the major works:  The Old Curiosity Shop, The Pickwick Papers, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Has anyone else read Barnaby Rudge?  What did you think?  Am I crazy to want to complete all of Charles Dickens' works?

RIP 2012

Once again, I have signed up for the RIP challenge -- R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril.  Participants read books or watch movies that are ghostly, ghastly, gothic, suspenseful, or sufficiently moody for the season.  Even though it's September, it's not even remotely close to fall weather in Texas, but his will help me pretend we actually have seasons (oh, who am I kidding?  It's going to be 100 degrees today!)

But back to the books.  I've signed up for Peril the First, which is four reads over two months, which is quite manageable.  I have a lot on my TBR plate at the moment, so this year I've really narrowed down my RIP reads.  But I also got smart -- three of my four book group reads for September and October qualify -- probably because I chose all of them for the group.  I wasn't thinking specifically about RIP months ago when I made the schedule, but I did think it would be fun to read something a little creepy.

First, the September read for my afternoon book group:

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris.  Not sure if it fits the challenge exactly, but it has some kind of mysterious element, so I'm including it for now.  Been wanting to read this one for quite awhile

Then, selections for both book groups for for October:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.  This has been on the TBR list for awhile, plus it's on my Classics Club list.  I really liked We Have Always Lived in the Castle which I read for RIP VI.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.  I have selfishly reserved every copy in my library system for our book group.  (Well, if people want to read it, they can join the group, right?) It's short, and I might even work up the nerve to watch the movie adaptation, which looks really creepy.  I just hope it's not too scary for the group members -- oh well, you can't please everyone.

And I'll have to choose at least one more read to complete the challenge.  I have this stack of mysteries, gothic novels, and short stories from my TBR shelves.  (Quite a few of these were on the pile from last year's challenge):

Just in case you can't make out the titles, here's what's in the photo, from top to bottom:

The Doll and Other Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier
The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark
The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow by Margaret Oliphant
The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen by Lindsey Ashford
A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
The Uses of Enchantment by David Liss

Any recommendations from the pile?

Has anyone else signed up this year?  What are you planning on reading?

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

I've been in a bit of a blogging slump lately -- all has been resolved with Blogger and the hijacker, and many thanks to everyone for the encouraging words -- and to the good folks at Blogger for taking care of it so promptly. And hopefully I'll never have to think about it again.

Anyhow. . . . I've been reading a lot but not terribly inspired to blog much lately. But I did manage to finish another of the books from my TBR Challenge list, which pleases me greatly. This one is The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, one of five Cathers on my Classics Club list, and my fifth book by Cather overall.

The Song of the Lark was published in 1915 and is the story of Thea Kronberg, a girl growing up in a very small town in Colorado. Thea is one of about seven children, the daughter of the local minister.  Since she was a small child, she's been mentored by the town doctor and everyone has recognized her musical talent. The reader follows her development, growing up in a rural community and finally going away to study music in Chicago, where her piano teacher realizes her true talent lies in her singing. It's about her struggle to rise from her humble beginnings and become a great artist.

This book is divided into various sections, based on times in Thea's life. By far my favorite sections were set in Colorado, during her childhood. There are a lot of short chapters with vignettes from her life, almost like interrelated short stories about the people that shape her character and her life, from the beloved town doctor to her rivals at the annual music festival, and the railwayman who hopes to marry her when she's old enough. I loved Cather's descriptions of the town, its inhabitants, and its surroundings. I've never been to Colorado though I've seen the Rocky Mountains in Montana as a child, so I can only imagine it. Detailed descriptions of settings sometimes bore me, but Cather does it really well.

I absolutely loved the first half of this book. The beginning really reminded me of two of my previous Cather reads, O Pioneers! and My Antonia, because they're about living in small Western towns. It also had little elements that I remembered from The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes From the Archbishop (1927). Thea takes a break from her singing studies and travels to the canyons of New Mexico, and Cather's love of the southwest really emerges in this book. For me, this is a sort of transitional book between her Midwestern and Southwestern books.

About halfway through the book, Thea goes to Chicago to study music, and I loved that part too, partly because I spent ten years of my life in the Evanston/Chicago area, and for four of those years I lived very close to where Thea lives, in a Swedish neighborhood called Andersonville which is still there (and where you can get the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had). She also goes to the Symphony and the Art Institute, which is one of my favorite places in the world.

However, the last quarter or so of the book kind of went downhill for me. Thea becomes a very successful singer and, honestly, kind of a diva. The focus changes from mostly her point of view to that of Dr. Archie and of Frederick Ottenburg, the man who falls in love with her. There's a lot of talk about The Artist and what makes her so, blah blah. I admit it, I am not an opera fan so I didn't get a lot of it (and I'm looking over my shoulder for lightning as I write this, since I have a sister and brother-in-law who are classically trained singers).  I just found Thea to be really self-centered and unlikeable at this point. Having grown up with a sister who's a performer, I know creative people have to believe in themselves and their talent to survive all that criticism, but I just didn't like Thea anymore.

I have heard that this is one of the more autobiographical of Cather's works. I'm sure she's making a point about how hard it is to be An Artist, but I just didn't get it. However, I am going to send this to my sister, the professional singer, and hopefully she'll like it and maybe she'll get more out of it that I did. I do have several more by Cather on the TBR shelf, including a 1931 edition of Shadows on the Rock, a historical novel set in 17th century Quebec.

I've now finished nine of the twelve reads on my TBR Challenge list, so I'm averaging one a month and I'm on track to finish by the end of the year. I'm getting really gung-ho about reading books off my own shelves -- my goal this year is choose 50% of my reading material from my own shelves, and I'm pretty close. The shelves still seem to be just as full but I am making progress, however slow.

How are you doing with your Classics Club challenges, bloggers? And how about that TBR Challenge?Anyone finish it yet? And what other books do you recommend by Willa Cather?

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

Of all the books I've read this year, I think this one is the most satisfying.  Partly because I really enjoyed reading it, but mostly because this is one of the books that has been on my shelves, unread, for the longest.  I know where I bought it, though not exactly when.  However, I can tell you that this book has been packed and unpacked at least ten times.  It's been in three different houses in Florida, three in Texas, one in Nebraska, an apartment in Chicago, and in storage with the rest of our household goods while we were stationed overseas in Japan.  Does that give you an idea of how long I've owned this book?

I am delighted to report, also, that it was a really good book.  A Bell for Adano is a Pulitzer Prize winner, which doesn't necessarily guarantee I'll like it, but I think that's the reason I never chucked it into the donation bin during any of my moves.  I finally started it the other day when I was looking for a good audiobook and realized that the library owned it -- I could listen to it on my commute to work, which would speed things along.  But after a few minutes, I really didn't like the narrator, so I picked up my own print copy and gave it a try.

Happily, I was rewarded for all my tenacity.  This book is really a charming story.  Major Victor Joppolo, the American child of Italian immigrant parents, is put in charge of an Italian town called Adano after the Italian surrender during WWII.   Major Joppolo has to deal with military bureaucracy, cultural differences, and the looming threat of the Germans as he tries to get the town running smoothly again after years of wartime shortages, fascism, and corruption.  One of his goals is to replace the town's treasured bell, a 700-year-old relic that had been taken by the Fascists and melted down for bullets.  

Honestly, I don't know why I put off reading it for so long.  It's not a very long book, and it's not a difficult read.  I'm not a huge fan of war stories, though I do enjoy reading about how everyday people deal with wartime on the home front.  A Bell For Adano isn't exactly a war story, since the war is mostly over when it starts, so in essence it is about the war at home for the Italians.  Parts of it did remind me a little of Catch-22, because it does poke fun somewhat at military bureaucracy.  It's not making of fun of the military per se, though it does satirize all the ego-massaging that has to go on in a big organization, which I'm sure isn't exclusive to the military.  

I did really like the characters and the story, though I did find the ending a little abrupt -- it really left me wishing I knew what happened to all the people.  Parts of it are very funny, and parts were sad and made me tear up.  I did end up reading most of it in one day because I got so engrossed in it.  It was quite uplifting after some of the terribly depressing books I've read recently.  

I am thankful for Roofbeam Reader's TBR Pile Challenge for inspiring me to finally get around to reading this book -- it was one of a dozen books I promised myself I'd read this year, and I've now completed eight of them -- one a month, right on schedule.   It's really inspired me to keep reading the books from my own shelves, and I've already started my list for the 2013 TBR Challenge.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Wow.  

East of Eden is one of the books I've had on my to-read list the longest, ever since I started on my quest to read more classics back in 2005.  Somehow, I managed to graduate from high school and college without reading a single word of Steinbeck.  When I started to read classics as an adult, I knew I'd finally have to read his books, and at first I was very apprehensive -- Grapes of Wrath sounded so dire.  But I joined an online classics group and one of the first books I read with the group was Travels with Charley, which I absolutely loved, so I became a Steinbeck convert.

I bought my copy of East of Eden at a library sale about four years ago, and I've packed and unpacked it in three different houses.  For about three years now, it's been the book I most wanted to read off my TBR shelves.  It was my daughter's assigned summer reading for her high school English class next year, so I decided to read it along with her.  And it was really worth it.  Why did I wait so long??  Was I saving the best Steinbeck for last?   

It's kind of hard to describe this book.  It's long and sprawling, and spans about 50 years, from just after the Civil War to World War I, and the story is covers American coast to coast  from New England to California.  Inspired by the Genesis stories of Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve, it's the story of the Trask family, about sibling rivalry and fathers and sons.  It also contains some of Steinbeck's best characters, including what is probably one of the most evil characters in American literature.  

Though it's Steinbeck's longest work at 600 pages long, I raced through it in just a few days.  The plot and the characters are really compelling.  It starts out with two half-brothers in New England, Adam and Charles Trask, who are competing for their father's love, living on a farm after the Civil War.  Just like Cain and Abel, their father favors one son over the other, and the less-beloved son takes his jealousy out on his brother.  

In this story, there are two sets of brothers, and love for a woman also fuels the rivalry.  I don't want to give too much away, but Steinbeck weaves together Biblical allusions and California history in a masterful way.  He also incorporates characters based on his own ancestors.  Adam Trask moves out to the Salinas Valley, where Steinbeck grew up.  There's a lot of local color with a delightful Irish family, the Hamiltons, and a faithful family servant, Mr. Lee, who starts out as a cook but becomes much more to the family, a tutor, nanny, and he's basically the one holding the family together after things start to fall apart.

I loved this book although I did find some flaws in it.  Steinbeck is pretty heavy-handed with the Biblical allusions -- not only are there two sets of brothers (with initials beginning with C and A) Steinbeck spends paragraphs with characters philosophizing about the Bible and Cain and Abel, just in case the reader didn't get it.  Also, Lee is sort of an amazing wise Oriental sage, spouting wisdom -- he's just too good to be true. But there is so much great stuff in the novel that I can overlook the parts that bothered me.  

After finishing it, I really wanted to discuss it with someone else who was reading it with me -- my daughter is plodding along with it, but there's so much in it that I don't think she'll understand; in fact, I'm not even sure why this was assigned to high school sophomores!  I really wish I had chosen this instead of Tortilla Flat for my library's book group -- it's longer, but there's so much more in it and it's so much better!  It's more than twice as long but it's a far superior novel.  If you're interested in Steinbeck at all, do yourself a favor and don't bother with the shorter works.  East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath are absolute masterpieces and everyone should read them at least once.  

A Victorian Celebration: Looking Back

First, I want to thank Allie from A Literary Odyssey for hosting this blogging event.  I've had so much fun and read so many great books the past couple of months. Here's what I finished during The Victorian Celebration. 

I posted nine reviews:  

• Our Mutual Friend, my eleventh novel by Charles Dickens, and now one of my favorites; 
• Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, which has been on my TBR shelves for about five years; 
• Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. Jerome, author of one of my favorite books;
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, on my TBR shelves for two years;
• The Odd Women by George Gissing, a Victorian author I'd never read before;
• The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit, a delightful Victorian children's book and one of my favorite reads this year; 
• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, a neo-Victorian which I first read more than 20 years ago; 
• The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles; a neo-Victorian on my TBR Challenge list; 
• L'Assommoir by Emile Zola, a French novel written during the same period (my sixth novel by Zola and my fifth in the Rougon-Macquart series.

I also hosted two giveaways.  I'm really happy with all the books I finished in the last two months -- I'm only sorry that I wasn't able to read more.  I still have a giant stack of books by Anthony Trollope unread!

How about you, bloggers?  Did you get a lot of Victorians read this summer?  Which were your favorites?  

The Odd Women by George Gissing

Before the Victorian Celebration, I wanted to read at least one book by an author that was new to me.   I had two novels by George Gissing on the TBR shelf, and they weren't too long, so I thought one of them would be a good choice.  I chose The Odd Women because it was the shorter of the two, and because I'd seen some interesting reviews on the blogosphere in the last few months.

From the title, I thought it was about strange or unconventional women, but then I thought it was going to be about Victorian spinsters -- i.e., odd as in unattached, unpaired.   The beginning of the book seems this way, with six sisters who are suddenly placed in genteel poverty.  The book then focuses on three of them, Alice, Virginia, and Monica.  Alice and Virginia, the eldest, are eking out an existence working as a paid companion and a teacher; the youngest, Monica, starts working as a drapers shop at 15.  Then the action jumps forward several years when Alice and Virginia get a letter from an old friend, Rhoda Nunn, who is living in London.  She's employed at a business school for young women that teaches them typing and office skills.  She urges the women to invest in a typewriter and try to make a better living for themselves, and to get Monica away from the exhausting hours she's working as a shopgirl.

In the beginning, it seemed that this book was going to be about Alice and Virginia and their desperate lives as Victorian spinsters with few job prospects, but then the focus of the book changed.  The story is really mostly about two different women:  Rhoda Nunn, who's intelligent and unconventional; and the youngest sister Monica, who is tempted by a very traditional (though loveless) Victorian marriage for her security.  Things don't work out exactly as planned for either woman.  

What really surprised me about this book was how unabashedly feminist it was, especially for a book written by a Victorian man in 1893.  Gissing creates some very forceful arguments about the plight of women and marriage during that time.  Some of his characters must have been extremely revolutionary for this time, and I'm sure it was pretty shocking.  

I really liked this book.  The characters end up being quite interesting and I got really invested in how this was going to turn out -- not how I expected at all!  Other than the complete shift in focus, the only minor criticism I have about it was that a few sections got kind of preachy and started to drag.  A couple of the characters really lecturing each other about feminism and women's roles and while I understood the point, it did come off as rather didactic and really slowed the book down for me.

The writing style was also extremely readable -- a lot of the Victorians tend to be slow reading, but this one was actually pretty speedy compared to Dickens and Eliot.  George Gissing doesn't get much attention among Victorian writers but I'm very glad I discovered this book.  I also have another of his books, New Grub Street so I'm looking forward to reading that one too.

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Since I run my library's book discussion group and I have all the power, I chose Tortilla Flat for our July read, because it's on my Classics Club list.  ( If nobody else suggests any titles, then I feel completely justified in being mercenary and picking books I want to read.) It's one of Steinbeck's early works, and it's fairly short, and we hadn't read any classics yet this year, so I thought it would be an interesting choice.  Plus, there were plenty of copies in the library catalog, so I thought it was perfect.

Well, maybe not.  We had a good turnout for the group, but I'm not sure the discussion went very well -- I think this was the most heated debate that I've ever seen in a book group!  Basically, one person hated them book and thought it was a complete waste of time.  The conversation ended up digressing into a debate about what people should or shouldn't read for pleasure.

But I'm digressing.  Here's the setup:  After World War I, a young slacker named Danny comes home to find that his grandfather has died and left him some property with two ramshackle houses in Tortilla Flat, an area in the hills around Monterey.  (Danny's no war hero; he spent the war breaking mules in Oklahoma.)  Danny moves into one house and lets his ne'er-do-well friends move into the other.  Told as series of vignettes, this is the story of Danny and his friends Pilon, Pablo, Jesus Maria, and Pirate, and how they spend their days basically drunk on red wine.  According to the introduction, it's loosely based on Arthurian legend; these guys are supposed to represent the Knights of the Round Table, but I didn't see much chivalrous behavior.  They drink and argue and spend most of their days trying to figure out how to get food and more wine without having to do any more work than is necessary.

Parts of it were pretty funny, but I didn't get particularly attached to any of the characters until about midway through the book.  In fact, it was pretty much the same story over and over until that point in the book.  I was wondering how I was going to get through it and it's only about 200 or so pages long, one of Steinbeck's shorter works.

Eventually there was one episode that actually got me invested in one of the characters, so I began to enjoy it more and even laughed out loud a few times.  Frankly, for me, a bunch of guys sitting around drinking just isn't that entertaining, and I didn't much see the point of the book.  A few years ago I read Cannery Row, not long after I discovered Steinbeck, and it seemed to have a similar premise, about the lives of ordinary people in California, but I found that one much more interesting and entertaining -- from what I remember, at least the characters did something -- there's one episode about some guys frog hunting for a scientist which is absolutely hilarious.  (Apparently it's some kind of war metaphor, but even if you don't get that part it's still funny).

I'm no literary expert, but I get the definite impression that Steinbeck is kind of uneven -- some of his stuff is great, like The Grapes of Wrath, and some if it is just meh.  I really like his travel writing, like Travels with Charley and A Russian Journal, but I'm really unimpressed with the shorter stuff so far.  I thought Of Mice and Men and The Pearl were both unbelievably depressing, and I couldn't even get through The Red Pony.  I'm probably the only person in America who got through high school without reading any of those.

Tortilla Flat was okay.  I suppose if I knew anything about Arthurian legend I would have gotten more out of it.  I'm just glad it wasn't any longer.  My oldest daughter was assigned East of Eden for her summer reading, so I'm reading it along with her, and already I can tell it's much better.

Anyone else a Steinbeck fan?  Who's read Tortilla Flat?  Is it really a mediocre Steinbeck or am I just missing the point of the book entirely?

The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit

After my recent intense experience reading Zola, a children's classic was just the thing, especially since I'm still obsessed about the Victorian Celebration.  Originally, I'd planned on reading either The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley or At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald.  Neither of them really grabbed me, but then I realized that The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit qualified as a Victorian!  One of Nesbit's earliest children's books, it was published in 1899, and so it still made the cutoff date.  And I just loved it.

I'd never heard of E. Nesbit when I was a child -- of course this was years before blogging and online library catalogs, and though my public library was pretty good, it's nowhere near what libraries are today.  After I started library school, I'd read a couple of Nesbit's fantasy stories and liked them well enough, but something about The Treasure Seekers just spoke to me -- I found it delightfully charming and really funny -- I kept reading bits out loud to my eleven-year-old daughter, and finally I just started reading her entire chapters.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Told from the point of view of one of the children, this is the story of the six Bastable children:  Dora, Oswald, Dicky, the twins, Alice and Noel, and the youngest, Horation Octavius, also known as H. O.  Their mother has died fairly recently, and after her death, their father also fell ill and lost most of his wealth (it's unclear, but it sounds like his business partner made off with most of it)  This once genteel family is now scraping by; they've given up school and summer holidays and all the silver plate has been "sent off to get the dents removed, but never sent back" -- probably pawned or sold.  So, the children are full of plans to restore the family fortunes.  They brainstorm all sorts of ideas, such as digging for treasure, writing poetry for money, becoming bandits, and saving elderly people from danger, who will then reward them.  The book was originally published in serial form, and each chapter details a different adventure as the children try various schemes, (some of them definitely hare-brained) so it's easy to read in small snatches.  

I thought Nesbit did a fantastic job creating the characters of these six children -- they all had personalities, and what's best about them is that they're definitely flawed -- they argue and bicker amongst themselves, like real siblings, and they have flaws.  Some of their schemes are morally and legally questionable, and they usually learn their lessons from their bad behavior, but it's not at all preachy.  The adults were good too.  The children often wind up needing grownups to help them out, including "Albert-next-door's uncle" who never gets an actual name, but seems like a real hoot -- he's a writer, and if he'd been real, I'm sure he would have gotten a lot of good material from the Bastable children.  (Could this be E. Nesbit herself in disguise?)  

I also loved the wry humor -- here's one of my favorite bits:

I have often thought that if people who write books for children knew a little more, it would be better.  I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading this story and you were writing it.  Albert's uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip.  I wonder other authors have never thought of this.  

There are lots of funny little comments like this throughout the book.  The plot's pretty good, and I found the ending particularly satisfying.  I'll say no more since I never want to give anything away.  

I was also happy to read this one because I had an unread copy on the shelves -- I bought it last year at Books of Wonder, the celebrated children's bookstore in New York.  I only wish they'd had a hardcover copy -- it was the recent paperback copy pictured above, but it was on sale for only $5 so I couldn't pass it up.  Of course now I'll have to track down the two sequels, The Wouldbegoods and The Story of the New Treasure Seekers, neither of which are available at my library.  So I'll probably end up adding two more books to my shelves!  Has anyone read either of them?  Are they as good as the first one?  

A Zola Giveaway!

Happy Bastille Day!  Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet!  Today, I'm honoring both France and my favorite French author, Emile Zola.  (And of course, the Paris in July blogging event).  Zola is one of the classic authors I discovered while blogging, and he's become one of my favorite writers.  In fact, I'm so in love with Zola's work, I've decided to share the love and give away a paperback edition of one of his novels.

One winner will receive his or her choice of a Zola novel listed below.  All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment below telling me which Zola novel you'd like to receive, and why.  Make sure you leave a contact email if your comment doesn't link automatically to your blog.

Here's a list of novels of Zola readily available in good, current paperback translations from the Book Depository.  At the moment, I've included all the Oxford World's Classics and Penguin translations, which I know are good.  (If I've missed any, please tell me so in the comments).  I've included links to the Zola novels I've reviewed so far on this blog.

• Therese Raquin:  One of Zola's earliest novels and his big break, the book that first made him famous. 
• The Fortunes of the Rougons (*Available August 9, 2012 from Oxford World's Classics):  The first in his famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels.
• The Kill : Second in the Rougon-Maquart series, about a couple made rich by frantic real estate speculation in Paris.  
• The Belly of Paris: Third in the series, this one is set in the famous Les Halles food markets.  Lots of great food descriptions! 
• L'Assommoir (The Drinking Den): The story of a working-class laundress and her downward spiral into poverty and alcoholism. 
• Nana: One of Zola's most famous works, the story of a prostitute who rises from humble beginnings to become a high-class "cocotte."
• Pot-Bouille (Pot Luck): An acerbic satire about the bourgeoise, hypocritical residents of a Paris apartment building.  
•  The Ladies' Paradise:  The original sex-and-shopping novel, about the rise of a department store and consumerism in late 19th century Paris.  
• Germinal: Probably Zola's most famous work, the story of a coal-miner's strike in northwestern France.  Considered by many to be his masterpiece, and one of my favorite novels of all time.
• The Masterpiece:  Inspired by Zola's childhood friend, the Impressionist Paul Cezanne, this is the story of a talented young artist who comes to Paris from the provinces.  It's the most autobiographical of Zola's works and gives insight into his life as a writer and into the lives of the Impressionists. 
• The Earth:  Similar to King Lear, this is the story of a a family's divisive struggle after the patriarch divides his land between three children, portraying the destructiveness of greed and ignorance. 
• La Bete Humaine (The Beast Within):  One of Zola's most violent and explicit works, this novel is set against a backdrop of railways and examines what drives people to murder.  
• The Debacle:   Set during the Franco-Prussian war, this was the best-selling of Zola's novels during his lifetime.  It's well regarded for its historical detail and epic sweep. 

The drawing will be open until Thursday, July 18, at 5 p.m. U. S. Central Standard Time.  The contest is open to residents of any country to which The Book Depository ships.  (If you're not sure if your country is included, click here).  I'll post the winner on my blog and contact him or her via email; the winner will have three days to reply or I'll choose another winner.  

*If the winner selects The Fortunes of the Rougons, it won't ship out until August, as this the publication date of the new paperback translation.

Good luck and happy reading!

L'Assommoir by Emile Zola

Well.  I have really been out of the blogging loop the past week or so, as I have been on vacation in beautiful California.  First, I was visiting my baby nephew in San Diego and then a side trip with my youngest child to Disneyland.  Believe it or not, I actually got some reading done.

So what did I read on vacation?  Light, fluffy beach reads?  Murder mysteries?  Something by a California author, at least?  Well, I did bring one book by John Steinbeck, but I never even cracked a page of it.  Instead, I spent my vacation reading a book about poor French people who drink themselves to death! Yes, dear readers, my choice for a light vacation read was L'Assommoir by Emile Zola, also known as The Drinking Den.  Fun stuff!

What happened was this.  I had a big stack of French books and Victorians to choose from for vacation reads, lighter stuff mostly -- including The Ladies' Paradise by Zola, an ode to shopping and consumerism (perfect for Disneyland, right?)  Well, on a whim, I grabbed L'Assommoir off the shelf to read a few pages while I had my lunch.  I'd been putting this Zola off because it sounded absolutely dreary, but during lunch,  I read the first chapter and I was completely hooked, so I HAD to bring the book on vacation, because I had to know what happened next.  

Here's the setup:  Set in the mid-19th century, Gervaise Macquart is a young woman of twenty-two, living in seedy hotel in Paris.  In the book's first pages, she's anxiously waiting up all night for her lover, Auguste Lantier, the father of her two young sons.  He finally arrives home at the crack of dawn after drinking and carousing all night; meanwhile, she's pawning all her possessions so they can eat.  She goes out to do some laundry and meanwhile Lantier skips town with practically everything she owns.  (Her reaction to this news while doing laundry is pretty priceless; the book is worth reading for this chapter alone).

Gervaise is no quitter, and pulls herself up by her bootstraps and works hard as a laundress.  Eventually, she marries a roofer named Coupeau, who seems like an upstanding, non-drinking guy.  After a rather rocky wedding day (another great chapter!), things are going pretty well for her.  She and Coupeau are both working, he's a good father figure, and she's ready to go into business on her own.  Sadly, she's surrounded by jealous gossips who take advantage of her and stab her in the back at a moment's notice -- and then her old lover Lantier shows up and worms his way back into her life.  She and Coupeau start on a downward spiral that is horribly depressing yet so engrossing I could not stop reading it.

I've read a lot of books with characters that I like to call fascinating train wrecks, but Gervaise has to be one of the worst -- but Zola writes her and her situation so well.  The characters seem so real that sometimes I just want to jump into the book and give them a good shaking.  Her life is hard but things are looking up until she makes one stupid decision after another.  I wanted to slap her upside the head like Cher slaps Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck (one of my favorite movies of all time):

If you've read any Zola before, this book combines the train wreck aspects of La Bete Humaine with the nasty backbiting characters of Pot-Bouille, in a Paris apartment complex in a working-class neighborhood.  It's the seventh in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, and though the characters are related to others in the series, it's fine to read as a stand-alone book -- Gervaise is the mother of Nana, the eponymous main character in book #9; and also of Claude, the artist in The Masterpiece (#14); Jacques,  the engine driver in La Bete Humaine; and Etienne, the mine worker in Germinal (#13).  Of those, I've only read La Bete Humaine and Germinal, both of which I loved, so it was interesting to read about their childhoods and how Zola was setting up these characters for the later books.

Based on the title, I thought this book was going to be incredibly depressing and dreary, and this is somewhat true --there are some scenes of people drinking that are pretty awful and even nauseating, but they're only a small part of the book; from the title, I thought the entire 400+ pages was going to be about people sitting around a bar getting soused.  Also, the ending is pretty sad, but that didn't surprise me -- I've read seven novels by Zola so far and not a single one has a happy ending!   However, Zola is so good at weaving these tales I can't stop reading them.

Has anyone else read this novel?   Did you find it incredibly depressing?  And is it strange that Zola writes these amazing books about such wretched people?  And does anyone else take classics on vacation?