Books on Books: 'The Art of Fielding' by Chad Harbach

The Melville allusions in The Art of Fielding are heavy-handed and very deliberate -- the campus novel is about a baseball short-stop who seeks an NCAA record with his college team, The Harpooners, at a small liberal arts college on the shore of Lake Michigan which re-branded itself around Melville. when a student discovered that Melville had visited the campus as part of a lecture series. Ostensibly its a novel about college baseball, but only in the sense that baseball is about the human condition. Harbach was an English major at Harvard, so a fair amount of literary allusions, some more subtle than others, work their way into the text.

The Art of Fielding received an extraordinary amount of press when it was finally published, after Harbach spent ten long and arduous years perfecting his debut novel (worth every second). If you somehow missed it the first time around, pick it up immediately, as it was one of the best reviewed books of 2011 and absolutely one of my favorite recent reads. I recommend it just about everyone, regardless of their level of interest in baseball. This is a book for those who like good writing and distinctly American fiction.

I'd love to include a photo of my own for this post, but my copy is utterly destroyed from an incident involving a rickety table, a full glass of red wine, and two excitable dogs.

#ReadWomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith

Musical memoirs and biographies are not my cup of tea, in part because so many of them celebrate eras in music that are of greater interest to Baby Boomers than to me. When someone publishes a 1,000 page unauthorized biography of Destiny's Child, I'll change my tune (no pun intended).

What I really love about Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids, however, is the way she is able to completely transcend the specifics of her life and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in order to write a memoir that is simultaneously revealing and universal. It feels like you are getting glimpses into the otherwise private, closed-off lives of two extraordinary artists, but at the same time you really don't need to be a huge fan in order to find the story compelling. There is very little of the usual post-revisionist memoir life "moments," i.e. the events that in the opinion of the writer, were significant in their lives and coincidentally, can be concisely and effectively described in prose. What Just Kids manages to accomplish is a really intimate portrait of the life of an artist and writer, and in no way does it come across as the memoir of a famous person who is conscious of their image or brand.

I've really fallen in love with the audio book version of this, which is read by Patti Smith herself. Her gravelly voice and Jersey accent enhance every line and something about it has felt so perfect as the days are getting shorter and colder. Maybe it's that I'm wearing black jeans and boots again, so hearing her voice in my head just enhances the mood I'm already in.

What I'm Reading: 'Agnes Grey' by Anne Bronte

Anne Bronte is the least famous of the three literary sisters, and I would never claim that she has written anything that comes close to Jane Eyre. But that said, if Jane Eyre is your cup of tea, then Anne Bronte should be on your radar, because it is more of the same. Agnes Grey shares not only its family of authorship, but also its plot following the sober and austere trials of a poor governess. I will admit, Agnes can become tiresome. She insists on being a governess to help her family, even though they consistently remind her that it isn't necessary, so I had many moments of eye-rolling at her trials.  She's a bit preachy too, as so many heroines of her era are wont to be, but she isn't able to strike that important Jane Austen heroine balance of wit and morality. I prefer heroines who intend to do the right thing, and sometimes fail, but Agnes just keeps doing the right thing, over and over, and funnily enough, to her own detriment. I have a strong feeling she's going to marry a vicar in the end, but we'll see.

Also, yes, I've used that photo before. I recommended the Bronte sisters back in August and now I"m taking my own advice and I didn't feel the need to take a new photo of the same old book.

This Week in Books Alison Bechdel on Harriet the Spy

The MacArthur Fellowship 'Genius' Grants were awarded this week, and cartoonist/writer Alison Bechdel was among the recipients. NPR did a quick interview with her, following the announcement.

Speaking of cartoonists and major awards, the National Book Award Longlsit was announced this week as well, with cartoonists and frequent New Yorker contributor Roz Chast among the nominees for nonfiction (and the only woman on the nonfiction list). Alexander Chee wrote a nice piece on both Chast and Bechdel over at Salon, and why comics don't usually get the accolades they probably deserve. 

Finally, Roxane Gay wrote a little something for Buzzfeed about her love of books and which books specifically shaped her into the writer she is today. I really appreciated this because at her reading I asked her to name her favorite books/writers of the moment, and didn't think to take notes when she responded, so the final few paragraphs align pretty closely with that response.

Book Trailers: 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My round-up of Back to School reading materials included quite a few movie trailers, mostly because I was too lazy to photograph each and every book, but also because the stuff I was recommending happened to have been adapted into some pretty terrific movies. This got me thinking about just how frequently I see a movie trailer and make the decision to read the book its based upon; the answer is constantly. I love movie trailers and I love books, but I feel very meh about movies themselves. It's actually the perfect solution because a movie trailer should give you enough information to make an informed decision about whether or not a book is worth your time. Thus, Book Trailers, a recurring post on great movie trailers and the excellent books they inspired me to read.

The movie trailer for the recent adaptation of The Great Gatsby inspired a lot of discussion and enthusiasm in my book club, although we never got around to reading the book officially. I was inspired to re-read the very short novel, and managed to squeeze it into a weekend before I saw the movie in theaters. The movie is okay, but really long and certainly flawed, so do yourself a favor and watch the trailer, which is short and pretty perfect, and then read the book, which is also coincidentally, short and perfect. Most people read it in high school and then forget about it but it's short enough and important enough that it deserves to be read again and again.

I was already planning on discussing Maureen Corrigan's So We Read On in a Books on Books post, but I might as well plug it here. It's a compelling look at the novel and its author in historical context, as well as an informed analysis of significance, written by someone who has read it more than 50 times. 

What I'm Reading: 'Code Name Verity' by Elizabeth Wein

Every time I write about a YA book, I begin with the caveat that I don't often read YA. Generally speaking, I still think this is true, because in the grand scheme of all my reading material, YA probably makes up less than 5%. However, I feel the need to write disproportionately about YA books for the blog because its a genre that sees far more female success than literary fiction, and I suspect that Bookhive readers, like myself, don't read much YA fiction, and thus would appreciate thoughtful recommendations from the genre.

Thus, Code Name Verity, a YA novel that greatly benefits from its context in WWII, because it avoids one of my greatest YA pet peeves, which is an inundation of pop culture references that say more about the author than about the characters (Rainbow Rowell, I'm talking to you). The novel is told through a really tightly structured narrative of written confessions by 'Verity' a British spy captured by the Nazis in France. To describe it in more detail would be to give away far too much, because it is a serious page-turner with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. This is one of those examples of a YA book seeming like more of a marketing choice than anything else, because the characters are young, but more like young adults than teens; with the strong female-driven action adventure elements though, I can see why a publisher would see it as a natural inheritor of all that Hunger Games enthusiasm, and the fact that it's historically grounded rather than dystopian makes it a refreshing addition to a blockbuster genre of the moment. I read it fully expecting to dislike it, because the premise seemed so implausible and contrived, but I was really quickly disarmed by it.

There really is something enchanting about girls  in this context, subverting all the gender expectations they were raised with, because of a national crisis. It operates in the same space as Rosie the Riveter or Agent Peggy Carter or the truly delightful Manhattan TV series, which I cannot recommend enough.

This Week in Books Adulthood Dies and Margaret Atwood Lives Forever.

The shortlist for the 2014 Booker Prize has been announced; it's particularly significant because this is the first year the prize is open to non-Commonwealth writers (i.e., it used to be exclusive to Britain, Ireland, Canada, and a few other former British colonies, like India). The books still must be written in English and published in the UK, but it's possible for Americans (Karen Joy Fowler and Joshua Ferris made the cut) to win now, which actually seems kinda lame.

Flavorwire has a nice interview with the ladies behind Women in Clothes, which I'm still obsessed with.

After the initial flurry of interest in the YA genre bashing back in early summer, I was very over it, and I don't even really read YA books anyway. But Emily Nussbaum and A.O. Scott, two of my absolute favorite cultural critics (neither of whom writes about books) got into the mix this week, and I enjoyed the results. Plus, Nussbaum gives some attention to Outlander, which only further secures her place in my heart.

Finally, some frustratingly awesome news out of Canada. Margaret Atwood is the first author to participate in the Future Library project; a forest in Norway has been planted with the intention of one day supplying paper to publish a Margaret Atwood book that has been written but will not be read and distributed for 100 years. That's pretty cool, but also kind of non-news.

#ReadWomen2014: Antonia Fraser

In my recap of Wolf Hall, I alluded to a phase of Tudor dynasty obsession in which I devoured many biographies, the vast majority of which were written by Antonia Fraser, including her The Six Wives of Henry VIII.  I found them at the Ann Arbor Public Library and knew very little about the author when I pulled them off the shelves, but that chance encounter sparked an Antonia Fraser devotion in which I regularly engage.

As if it's not enough that she's a terrific biographer and writer, she is also the widow of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter; as the daughter of an Earl, is officially referred to with the honorific "Lady Antonia," and she once survived an IRA bombing with Caroline Kennedy. She has won a significant number of awards for her non-fiction writing, and has penned a series of detective novels. Likely of greatest interest to Bookhive readers is her biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey, which was the primary basis for the Sofia Coppola film 'Marie Antoinette.'

Books on Books: 'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen

There are probably no readers of Bookhive who haven't read something by Jane Austen in their lives, but most people skip over Northanger Abbey in favor of the more popular novels. It's certainly not my favorite, but it has its own unique charms, which for me have been recently enhanced by my enjoyment of the audio book version of The Mysteries of Udolpho, a novel that Catherine, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, reads with breathless enthusiasm. (I will take a brief moment to acknowledge that a post on audio books is long overdue; the whole reason I was listening to this particular one was because I wanted to write about the medium as a way of "reading"). 

The naive Catherine reads The Mysteries of Udolpho, a very popular gothic novel in Jane Austen's lifetime, written by fellow female author Ann Radcliffe, and it sparks a kind of paranoid fantasy in her own life, as she sees parallels to the novel in everything, much to her detriment. As to be expected, Catherine learns her lesson and ends the novel happily, but the real pleasure of the novel is in the meditations on the art of fiction and the nature of reading. Jane Austen's genius lies partially in her ability to sneak up on the reader with profundity hidden in what feel like very minute details, so a novel about an 18 year old bookworm is really a startlingly self-aware novel about storytelling, fiction, narrative, and readership. It deserves more credit than it usually gets, and Ann Radcliffe's novel warrants a reading, if only for its own significance in context.

#ReadWomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Women in Clothes'

I have an enormous crush on this book. I got excited when I heard there was a new Sheila Heti book being released, without knowing anything about it. I knew there were lots of other women involved (the cover reads "Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton & 639 others") but Sheila Heti's presence was enough to motivate me to pre-order it. In the weeks before the book was released, I came across it in all my usual book-related blogs and Twitter feeds, where I found out that among those 639 contributors were many other women I whose writing I admire and adore. Plus it's beautiful and weighty and lush in a very satisfying way; everything about it feels so modern and so...designerly. Lots of books are beautiful, but in this case it takes nothing away from the quality of the contents.

Ostensibly, it's a book about clothes, based largely on a survey written by Heti, Julavits and Shapton and sent to hundreds of women, some stylish, some not so stylish, some famous, some not famous, asking about their wardrobes and their habits and attitudes about dressing. Heti's introduction is really literal in that she went to the bookstore to find a nice volume on style and dress and found nothing that met her needs, which is understandable. Tim Gunn is great, but his advice doesn't necessarily apply to a writer living in Toronto who can probably get away with wearing pajamas most of the time; nor, in a sense, do style books really apply to the average women today. What I have loved about Sheila Heti's writing in the past is her ability to somehow put into words the experience of being a twentysomething woman that is chillingly accurate, unflinchingly honest and critical, and never condescending. I hate the generational terms that get thrown around, and I especially hate all the baggage that necessarily comes to mind when anyone mentions "Generation Y" or "Millenials," but it is a realm of experience that Heti knows well, and she applies the same principles and contemporary sensibilities of her fiction to essays on clothing and style. The result is so refreshing and startling and still somehow very comforting. 

This Week in Books

First, you can now get e-mail alerts every time there is a new Bookhive post, care of friend of the blog, Reilly. As always, you can also follow Bookhive on Twitter for alerts as well as tidbits of wisdom and (occasional) Outlander live-tweets.

September is the biggest and busiest month of the year in the publishing world, so here's a round-up of 10 notable September releases from Flavorwire. These are the blockbusters from all the major publishers, and likely will be the books that everyone is reading and talking about.

Only a few weeks after the publication of his latest NYT best-selling novel, Knopf announced the release of a new Murakami book, this one a trim 96-pager, called The Strange Library.

Finally, this week we celebrated B-Day and and she decided to grace us all with a poem, co-written with Pulitzer Prize finalist Forrest Gander. 

This Week in Books 'Infinite Jest' gets the Lego treatement

Sonya Chung wrote a nice essay over at the Millions about the elaborate process of picking your next book. I can relate to this quite a bit, especially since I have an enormous stack of books on the floor next to my bed right now.

Did you want to read more about Jennifer Weiner? The answer is probably 'no' but just in case, here's a follow-up.

An 11-year old made Infinite Jest out of Legos. Sure, why not?