Six Degrees of Separation: Fight Club to The Age of Innocence

I don't post about as many memes as I used to, but I'm in the middle of several different books. Six Degrees of Separation is a challenge to connect six different books in a chain. This month my chain has an underground boxing ring, dystopian fiction, and a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. 

So, the starting point is Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Never read it, never want to, nor seen the movie. But I have read another book by Palahniuk, Diary, about an artist living in a family-run hotel on a island resort. 

It was really weird and I didn't enjoy it much, but I was living in Japan in the time and we didn't have many books to choose from, so when I saw it at the Base Exchange I bought it. I remember reading most of this on various train journeys around Tokyo. Which leads me to my next book, also read while riding the Tokyo trains. 

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I don't remember much about this because it's been more than ten years since I read it, but I do remember it's a story within a story and that I really liked it. I think I bought it for $1 at the library sale, and that I read most of it on a series of train rides from Tokyo to the suburb of Saitama, where I went to see the John Lennon Museum. It closed in 2010 so I'm really glad I made the trip to see it. 

Of course Margaret Atwood's most famous book is The Handmaid's Tale. I remember reading it back in the 1990s, around the time of the original movie adaptation, which I've never seen. I have since watched the first season of the TV adaptation and it's absolutely chilling. I was hoping my book group would read it this year. We only choose about two months ahead so hopefully we'll get to it before we break for the summer. 

My book group leads me to the next book in the chain, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. It's another classic with a timely twist that would be great for discussion. Published in 1935, it's about the rise of fascism and a fictional president who becomes a dictator to " save the nation from welfare cheats, rampant promiscuity, crime, and a liberal press." This is another book I would love to read with a group, though I'm a little scared to read it, it sounds almost too timely. 

Sinclair Lewis leads me to Main Street, which I finally got around to reading in 2016, just after I moved here. I can't imagine why it took me so long to read it, as it's about a young librarian in the Midwest which is right up my alley. I don't know why I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I just read somewhere that this book was favored to win the Pulitzer Prize but narrowly lost to Edith Wharton for the next book in the chain.

Edith Wharton, one of my favorite authors, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for The Age of Innocence (the first woman to be awarded the prize). It's her most famous novel, about a wealthy man named Newland Archer, and his love for a scandalous divorcee. It was the first novel I read by Wharton, and I liked it but I didn't become a fan until I read The House of Mirth, which got me completely hooked on Wharton. I've since read nearly all her novels, plus her novellas and many of her short stories. I'm currently reading The Children and will most likely tackle her biography next. The Age of Innocence isn't my favorite of her books but I should probably give it another read. 

So -- from Fight Club to The Age of Innocence. Not what I was expecting at all when I started this post, but sometimes that's how reading leads you, right? 

Six Degrees of Separation: From Atonement to Persuasion

I have not participated in this particular meme (hosted by Books Are My Favorite And Best) before, but I was inspired by all the great posts I've been seeing the past week! I've decided to play along.

This month it's Ian McEwan's Atonement, which ticks off a lot of boxes for me: WWII, English country houses, class struggles, etc. 

I do love books set in English country houses. A recent favorite set between the wars is Pomfret Towers by Angela Thikell, though of course it's much more lighthearted than Atonement. 

Angela Thirkell's novels are set in fictional Barsetshire county, originally created by my beloved Anthony Trollope. One of his popular Pallisers series is The Prime Minister, in which the social climbing Lady Glencora Palliser hosts some house parties at her husband's country estate, Gatherum Castle.  

One of Anthony Trollope's Victorian contemporaries was Charles Dickens, probably the most popular  Victorian author of all time. Bleak House is considered his masterpiece and is one of my particular favorites. And it has at least two country houses, the titular Bleak House and the home of Lady Dedlock, Chesney Wold. 

Reading Dickens and Trollope made me fall in love with the Victorian era (though I'd never want to have lived back then!). There are a lot of wonderful modern novels set in the Victorian era. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters is one of the finest and is probably my favorite neo-Victorian novel.

Another very popular neo-Victorian novel is The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. It's a metafiction novel set in Lyme Regis about a love triangle. It was famously adapted into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.

And a book set in Lyme Regis naturally leads me back to Jane Austen's Persuasion, one of my absolute favorites. There is a key plot point in which several of the characters take a stroll at the famous Cobb along the waterfront, with disastrous results. 

I was lucky enough to visit England in June and made a detour all the way down to the coast, just so I could walk along the Cobb (much to the chagrin of my mother!) I took lots of photos and just realized that it's also time for Austen in August so I need to write another post about my trip!

Thanks again to Books Are My Favorite and Best for hosting this meme! It was really fun and I'll definitely be participating again. 

My Blog's Name in Books

This meme's been going around the blogosphere, I'll play. All of these are books from my TBR shelves. I did not realize until I wrote this post that my blog name has 18 letters.

B: Bella Poldark by Winston Graham. The twelfth and final book in the series, I still have two left to go. I was a little disappointed by the third season of Poldark so I haven't really been inspired to pick up the eleventh book, The Twisted Sword. Which is also on the TBR shelves, naturally.

O: One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens. Bought at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, from the used book table out front. My edition has an inscription "Wishing you a very happy Christmas and to visit England in the New Year, with love from Arch, Joan & the children -- Christmas 1952." I love it when old books have names and dates of the people who previously owned them.

O: Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain by Simon Garfield. I'm fascinated by this period of history.

K: Kept in the Dark by Anthony Trollope. That's a terrible cover (her face is so white compared to her ears which are really pink!) but I only have two books on the TBR shelf that fit for the letter K, and the other one is also by Trollope (The Kellys and the O'Kellys).

S: Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard. I still haven't read any of her books other than the Cazalet series, which I loved. It sounds like she had a fascinating life.

A: At the Still Point by Mary Benson. I know nothing about this book other than it's a green-spined VMC and it's about South Africa under apartheid. Bought at the wonderful John King Books in Detroit.

N: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I love this retro pulp-fiction inspired cover. It's one the last of the books I won in the Penguin Classics drawing a few years ago that are still unread (I've pretty much given up on The Metamorphosis as I cannot bring myself to read a book about a giant bug).

D: La Debacle by Emile Zola. Still working my way through the Rougon-Macquart series. This is supposed to one of the best war novels ever and was his bestselling novel during his lifetime, but I keep putting it off. It's really long and it looks rather dire, I feel like it's going to be full of extended battle scenes which are NOT my favorite.

C: The Caravaners by Elizabeth Von Arnim. It's supposed to be very funny so I'm saving it for next year when I include Classic Humor as one of the categories for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

H: The Hireling by L. P. Hartley. I've only read The Go-Between by Hartley but it was really good. I found this at Shakespeare and Company a couple of years ago and still haven't read it.

O: An Old Man's Love by Anthony Trollope. Probably my next Trollope, simply because there's an audio for free digital download at my library.

C: The Children by Edith Wharton. One of the books that's been on the TBR pile the longest. I would love to cross this off my to-read list.

O: The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple. Bought after hearing about it on the wonderful Tea or Books? podcast hosted by Simon and Rachel. It was a little pricy, and I suspect Persephone may reprint it now that they've published all her novels and most of her short stories.

L: Love Among the Ruins by Angela Thirkell. I have about a dozen Thirkells unread on my shelves. This is #17 in the series so it'll be a while before I get to this one, I've only read four so far.

A: Antidote to Venom by Freeman Willis Crofts. I bought four of these beautiful British Crime Classics on a trip to London last year and still haven't read any of them. I think I chose this one because the main character is a zoo director.

T: Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy. A Virago I found in a Charing Cross bookshop last year. Historical fiction written in 1953, about a Victorian man researching a scandalous Regency-era ancestor. Midcentury, Victorian, AND Regency, all in one book!

E: East Wind, West Wind by Pearl S. Buck. I love the covers of these Moyer-Bell editions.

Looking over these selections I realized how many of them are British authors so I did a quick count -- less than 25% of my unread books are by non-Brits! I suspect I bought them all because I tend not to buy books anymore unless I can't get them in the library.

I wouldn't mind reading any or all of these in the next couple of months -- bloggers, which of these books should I read first?

The Classics Book Tag

Robert Carlyle is pretty much perfect as Rumplestiltskin.

I was recently tagged by Jillian with a fun meme about classics. And what is not to like about two of my favorite things, classics books and lists? So, here goes:

1. An over-hyped classic you really didn’t like: 

Without a doubt, Wuthering Heights. I think Heathcliff and Catherine are just awful and deserve each other for all of eternity.  The runner-up is On the Road by Jack Kerouac. 

2. Favorite time period to read about? 
Victorians! It's such a great time period, transitioning to the modern age. And it's such a long period, so there were so many great books written. 

3.  Favorite fairytale? 
Probably Rumplestiltskin. It was my favorite fairytale to tell my kids when they wanted a bedtime story that wasn't from a book.

4. Most embarrassing classics that you haven't read?
I still haven't read Les Miserables! Shocking, I know -- I hope to get to it this year. I'm really scared by the length, and I've never read anything by Victor Hugo.

5. Top 5 classics you want to read: 

1. The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope (I just bought the newly restored version)
2. Jane Austen's juvenilia
3. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
4. The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
5. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

All of these are for challenges, either the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Victorian Reading Challenges, and they've all been on my TBR list for a long time. 

6. Favorite modern book/movie/TV series based on a classic?

I'm not a huge fan of modern adaptations of classics. However, I really do love Clueless which is an adaptation of Emma. Alicia Silverstone is great as Cher Horowitz, and I love Dan Hedaya as her father, who is not clueless (unlike Emma's father). And Paul Rudd! What's not to love about this movie?

"That was way harsh, Tai!" Best teen movie EVER.

7. Favorite movie version/TV series based on a classic? 

That's tough, there have been some really good adaptations! I could only narrow it down to four:

•  the classic 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice; 
• the 1995 Persuasion; 
• Wives and Daughters
•  the 2005 Bleak House, which is an absolute masterpiece. 

In general, I think books are better adapted to mini-series than movies, though I do love watching them on the big screen.

Gillian Anderson was brilliant as Lady Dedlock in Bleak House.

8. Worst classic to movie adaptation?

For movies, I'd have to say the 2011 Jane Eyre with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska. Michael Fassbender was way too good-looking to be Rochester, and they really hacked up the ending. I was also disappointed with House of Mirth -- it's one of my favorites and I was bored to death. 

Gillian again, as the tragic Lily Bart. 
She deserved a better adaptation, but that hat is fabulous.

The worst TV adaptation was a The Paradise which is an adaptation of Zola's The Ladies' Paradise. I couldn't get through the first episode. It probably didn't help that they changed the location from Paris to north England. I think they were trying to compete with Mr. Selfridge.

9. Favorite editions of classics that you'd like to collect:
I really like Oxford World's Classics, and I love the covers of the Penguin Clothbound Classics! It's tempting to buy all of them. 

10. An under hyped classic? La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola -- it's a real page turner and I think it would make a great miniseries!

Bloggers, tell me about your favorite classics -- and your least favorites. I'm tagging anyone who wants to participate!

Six in Six

I found this great meme created by The Book Jotter (via Helen's blog, She Reads Novels).  The idea is to look back at the books you've read in the first six months of the year.  Book Jotter created a lot of great categories.  I've tried to choose different books for each category, though some of my authors repeat.  I've read some great books so far this year, and I'm definitely starting to see which books will make my favorites for the year.

Six Books From Authors I Know Will Never Let Me Down:

1. The Doll: Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier
2. Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
3. The Unrest Cure and Other Stories by Saki
4. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
5. They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
6. The Girl on the Boat by P. G. Wodehouse

Six Trips Abroad:

1. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
2. Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser (France)
3. The Lost City of Z by David Grann (The Amazon)
4. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (India)
5. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston (Italy)
6. Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojurn in Kyoto by Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Japan)

Six Persephone Classics:

1. Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill
2. The Squire by Enid Bagnold
3. The Runaway by Anna Elizabeth Hart
4. Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson, 1940-1945
5. House-Bound by Winifred Peck
6. Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith

Six From the Non-Fiction Shelf:

1. Jane Austen's England by Lesley Atkins
2. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Caine
3. Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson
4. The Sisters: The Story of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell
5. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
6. Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe

Six Authors I Look Forward to Reading More Of:

1. Kate Atkinson (Life After Life)
2. Elizabeth Jane Howard (The Light Years)
3. Nancy Mitford (The Blessing)
4. Irene Nemirovsky (Suite Francaise)
5. Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
6. Stefan Zweig (The Post-Office Girl)

Six Authors I Read Last Year, But Not So Far This Year:

1. Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)
2. Jane Austen (The Annotated Pride and Prejudice)
3. A. S. Byatt (The Children's Book)
4. Charles Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop)
5. Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
6. Penelope Lively (Making it Up)

Bloggers, how were your first six months of reading this year?

Top Ten: I HAD to Have Them

(Okay, it's not Tuesday, but I just posted, so this will have to wait a day or so.)  First, I have to thank The Broke and The Bookish for this meme -- haven't done many memes lately but this one made me laugh. . . especially when I looked back on my postings and I did this list back in 2011!!  And I've only read three books from the first list, one of which I tried and abandoned.

Well, to keep things fresh, here are another ten books I absolutely had to own . . . and still haven't read:

1.  The Love Child by Edith Olivier.  Read about this after many rave reviews, especially by Simon at Stuck in a Book.  Ordered this and had it shipped from England -- from England, I tell you!!!  Still haven't read it, more than two years later.

2.  One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde.  I was terribly disappointed to miss Jasper Fforde at a book signing up in Austin, a mere 80 miles away -- I didn't hear about it until later the same night, and I'd never have made it in time.  I was consoled by one of the signed copies he left behind at BookPeople, the best independent bookstore in Texas -- maybe the whole world!  And yet it is still unread.

3.  The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer.  In December of 2011, my library's Jane Austen book group had a Georgette Heyer discussion -- we didn't have enough copies of any single book, so everyone chose a different book and gave a booktalk.  I read The Grand Sophy and absolutely loved it, and promptly read two more Heyer books in quick succession.  Then I went out and bought The Unknown Ajax, and haven't read any Heyer since.

4.  Millions Like Us:  Women's Lives During the Second World War by Virginia Nicholson.  Another book purchased from the UK after reading rave reviews on the blogosphere.  I love reading about the War at Home, but I still haven't picked this one up.  I'm currently obsessed with nonfiction so maybe I'll be inspired to read this one soon.

5.  To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol Wallace.  I didn't so much buy this one as hand it to my husband in a bookshop (not long after the first season of Downton Abbey) and strongly suggest he purchase it for my upcoming birthday.  (I'm not very subtle about birthday gifts.)  That was two years ago.

6.  A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor.  See #5.  Same trip to the bookstore, same birthday.   I haven't read this one either!!!

7.  Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham.  Not long after reading The Painted Veil (and loving the film adaptation) I drove over to Barnes & Noble one night and couldn't decide if I should buy Theatre or A Christmas Holiday.  So I bought both -- about four years ago!!  I did read A Christmas Holiday and was underwhelmed.  I have higher hopes for Theatre.

8.  The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West.  Bought last year after watching the second season of Downton Abbey.  (Do we see a pattern here?)  This is actually the second copy, the first copy was all warped and I sent it back to Amazon in a fit of pique.

9.  The New York Stories of Edith Wharton.  A lovely NYRB books edition, bought before the Borders liquidation, but I'm sure I bought it at a discount with one of the multitudes of coupons they were forever giving me.  I don't think I ever paid full price for anything at Borders, ever, and I'm sure their demise is partly my fault.  I've put this one on my TBR Pile Challenge list for 2013, as an alternate, so I'm determined to finish it this year.

10.  The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell.  Purchased back in 2006 after I read Love in a Cold Climate (ironically, I was living in Florida at the time.)  I read Don't Tell Alfred as one of the alternates on my 2012 TBR Pile Challenge, so I'd really like to read this one soon.

I still have almost 200 books unread on my shelves.  Still, half the books I read last year came from my own shelves, which is not bad considering I work in the library and am faced with literary temptation more than 40 hours a week.  At least I don't work in a bookstore!

And what about you, bloggers?  Any books on those shelves you couldn't resist. . . and still haven't read?

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?