Literary Ludite: Amazon Kindle, Part I

I got a Kindle Fire HD 7 back in October. It was my birthday and Amazon had just released the latest version of the Kindle at a much lower price, so it was a temptation I couldn't resist, especially as I'd been considering a Kindle even when they were pricier and less fancy. I'd also been interested in an iPad MIni, but the Kindle Fire offered all of the same features for less money, and had better integration with the existing Amazon Prime/Audible apps I'd already been using.

Six months later, I'm in love with my Kindle and I couldn't imagine life without it. Don't get me wrong -- I still love physical books and I still purchase/borrow plenty of them. I had no idea how I would take to the e-reader function on the Kindle, and for the first month or two I mostly used it to read comic books and watch movies (both of which it does excellently -- the comiXology app, which comes pre-installed, is awesome, and it runs Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Go seamlessly). When I found myself on a several month-long wait list at the public library for Station Eleven, I finally decided to use the e-reader, and I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I liked and how quickly I adapted to it. Since then, I've read quite a few books on the Kindle, with absolutely no complaints.

One of my favorite features is a metric that you can choose to have displayed on bottom of the page, which includes a counter of the time left in the chapter or in the whole book. That might sound annoying but it is actually really helpful when you're trying to fit reading into a busy schedule: if you know it will take you 90 minutes to finish Station Eleven, you can set aside 90 minutes.

This weekend I'll be travelling with it for the third time, and it is such a pleasure knowing that it will fit in any purse and carried every form of entertainment I could ever want.

What I'm Reading: 'Notes From Underground' by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Why, oh why, am I doing this to myself? Blame it on War and Peace and the remarkable skills of Richard Pevear and Larissa  Volokhonsky whose translations of prominent Russian fiction have become ubiquitous. Part of my motivation in choosing War and Peace as my first big novel of 2015 was my utter lack of exposure to Russian literature. Thus, my decision to round out my exposure even further with some Dostoevsky, his shortest novel, just to be on the safe side: over-exposure to Russian literature is a very real, dangerous thing. However, I think I would have benefited greatly from choosing a Dostoevsky novel with more of an actual plot, because this is nothing more than 120 pages of rambling monologue that perfectly encapsulates all my pre-conceived notions of the book, based solely on the men I have known who admire it. 

The Bookhive List: 'As I Lay Dying' by William Faulkner

I made several failed attempts at reading William Faulkner before I ended up with As I Lay Dying, which I inhaled in one sitting, and I've since read most of his novels and never looked back. The prose is not easy to understand and it takes some adjustments, which is why As I Lay Dying is the Faulkner novel I will always recommend to anyone new to his writing. And it remains my favorite, even after having read quite a few of his other novels.

James Franco went through an almost embarrassingly public introduction to Faulkner and made two terrible movies as a result. Below is the trailer for his adaptation for As I Lay Dying, which looks terrible and seems to miss any of the novel's ambiguities or subtleties. It also seems to ignore the novel's formal elements, including the highly disjointed and experimental prose, non-linear narrative and any/all moments of surrealism. It makes it seem like a drama whose climax involves a bridge giving out, which is missing the point, entirely. Nevertheless, it is funny to watch, especially if you've already read the novel. I will readily admit, however, that I occasionally develop crushes on fictional characters, and his casting choices really validated my love for Jewel. If you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and skip this undoubtedly terrible adaptation and read it instead. 

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Weeks 10/11

I didn't bother posting last week because I read a pretty negligible amount and had very little insight to share. It's funny how when you're not reading War and Peace, there isn't enough time in the day for all the things you want to do, and when you are reading War and Peace, time couldn't possibly move more slowly. I'm normally a very fast reader, but this text is really testing my patience; obviously, I'm 11 weeks into reading it, which is frustrating enough, but even on a page-by-page level, I get frustrated. Sometimes I catch myself checking the page number multiple times per page, assuming I've read much more than I actually have, and then I find myself in a frustrating cul-de-sac of impatience and boredom mixed with an overwhelming need to finish this damn thing.

A few more stray thoughts on Tolstoy, War and Peace, and long books:

- I absolutely hate it when heroines experience some form of heartbreak and then become physically ill. That's not a real thing, and it's especially not a real thing if the person who broke your heart was practically a stranger to begin with

- This novel is exquisitely foot-noted, but there is an utter lack of footnotes regarding social conventions of Moscow in the early 1800s, so I really struggle to figure out what behavior is unusual or immoral. Some of the roguish male characters don't seem that bad to me, but I think that's because I'm missing the subtext re: gambling/drinking/racing carriages/dueling/prostitutes?

- Speaking of dueling, it rarely ends with one dead guy and one living guy, so what exactly is the point? If 90% of duels end in weird accidents, for example, why continue dueling?

- Must we constantly be reading characters' first and last names over and over and over again? Last night I was reading a scene in which a doctor's wife was entertaining some soldiers (once again with the moral ambiguities -- is she supposed to be slutty in this case?) and her full name was dropped in every reference, and in one particular sentence it was used something like five or six times. I cannot with that. I also can't tell if this is a deliberate stylistic choice (the implied irony being the formality of her name paired with the impropriety of her behavior), or is it just to help us keep track of the 200 or so characters in this thing?

What I'm Reading: 'Girl in a Band' by Kim Gordon

My inability to connect with the music of Sonic Youth is one of my life's greatest embarrassments. When I think about it now, it conjures up a lot of "missed connection"-type feelings, as if I just barely missed out on being a huge fan. On paper, they were the perfect band for me -- I worshipped Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola and Chloe Sevigny as a teen and any band fronted by a woman was of interest to me. I got really into a lot of bands peripheral to and clearly inspired by Sonic Youth, and even listened to Hole. But somehow I missed the boat, and as an adult I have always had a hard time listening to their music, which is so dissonant, and tends to conjure up memories and emotions from adolescence that I'd rather not indulge in.

I'm really hopeful that reading Kim Gordon's exceptional memoir Girl in a Band will change that for me. This has always been my experience with music memoirs -- when I lack an entry-point into the band's catalog, I have used literary connections to forge my own path, which comes so much more naturally. Kim Gordon is someone I greatly admire and even though I didn't listen to her music, she served as a major style and feminist icon in my coming-of-age. Her memoir is really great, with just enough dirt on the 90s music scene, and a really intense description of her Joan Didion-era California upbringing.

The Bookhive List: 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck

I read East of Eden in the midst of a very tough semester of college. I was neck-deep in art history, which meant endlessly memorizing and regurgitating artwork identifications for slide exams, and although it was hardly the most responsible use of my free time, I decided to start reading for pure pleasure, and East of Eden was the perfect escape because it had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was studying.

Everyone reads The Grapes of Wrath at some point, and East of Eden shares plenty in common with Steinbeck's other big novel, but I found it to be a much more enjoyable reading experience. It certainly benefits from not being foisted on anyone in high school, but also it seemed to me to be the more mature of the two novels. Both novels play around with morality but East of Eden has truly sympathetic characters. The Grapes of Wrath presents morally ambiguous characters that are difficult to love or admire, and that is the whole point; East of Eden, however, deals more in archetypes, in this case Biblical archetypes, and the results are clearly-drawn divisions between "good" characters and "bad" characters. But this never veers in an oversimplification of human morality, and the results are emotionally compelling and endlessly readable. I definitely had a reading phase of enjoying epic familial/generational novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Middlesex, and East of Eden fits very comfortably in that group. If you haven't yet, do yourself the favor of checking out Steinbeck's lesser-read novels.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Date Night: 'Sister Carrie' by Theodore Dreiser

I can't exactly remember when or why I first encountered Sister Carrie, but I absolutely cherished it. I was a girl who grew up in the post-Backlash era (which wave of feminism is that?) so I had no trouble immediately accepting Carrie as a heroine after my own heart, and the thought never occurred to me that there was anything remarkable about the fact that she has her cake and eats it too. Theodore Dreiser's heroine is presented to us with no judgement and nor moralizing ending; unlike Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, Carrie has affairs and a career and she ends up as a successful stage actress, quite independent of the men who frankly have mostly held her back.

Sister Carrie is the ultimate companion for a date night, because a date night with a good book is all about self-care and living your best life, which is something Carrie does with aplomb. When she finds her life dissatisfying (obnoxious gentleman caller, physically-demanding work in a factory, living in a shabby flat), she changes her circumstances. The proper meal for reveling in your inner-Carrie is a Chicago steakhouse style dinner, preferably including an expensive and well-marbled Sirloin with asparagus. Drink a bottle of really red wine by yourself while you sing along with the 'Chicago' soundtrack and attempt some Catherine Zeta-Jones style leg kicks for good measure. Finally, make a scowl like the one above.

Date Night is a recurring post of my recommendations for a curated evening at home with a good book. Solitude is assumed and preferred. 

Books I Can't Even: 'Siddhartha' by Herman Hesse

Siddhartha is one of those books I blame entirely on Baby Boomers. I blame them for most things, actually (pollution, the recent recession, suburbanization, etc), but New Age fiction is one of their most egregious contributions to popular culture -- Richard Bachmann and so forth. Siddhartha is the novelization of the life of Buddha, and it is widely lauded for its incredibly spare prose. There is something so frustrating about the conceit; I love spare prose and will give credit where it's due, but I refuse to believe that Siddhartha is the revelation it's held up to be; in its case, the spare prose just feels very derivative of so many religious texts that preceded it, making it clever imitation, not any kind of style ingenuity. Maybe I can enjoy being cynical about it because I was born in the 80s and grew up in an era devoid of the obsession with the East. Of course the 90s had its own post-Hippie phase, but that was more about music and looked to the influence of cultural icons like Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin, and wasn't nearly as invested in Buddhist philosophy. And as a proud Millenial, in a constant quest for "authenticity," I hate that the book people most closely associate with Eastern philosophy was written by a German and a Christian.

I managed to finish the book because it's of a length and difficulty-level appropriate for an elementary school student (a recurring theme in New Age fiction, no?) but I hated every second of it.

Books I Can't Even (apologies for the use of Internet cliches) is a recurring post on books I absolutely could not finish, usually after several attempts.

What I'm Reading: 'The First Bad Man' by Miranda July

The First Bad Man was our February book club selection, but I wasn't able to get a copy from the library until it was much too late, short and quick of a read as it is. Instead I got the enjoy the surprisingly delightful experience of hearing my friends discuss it, which only whet my appetite to read it. There were many funny remarks that made me reflect on what my friends think about me, including "I'd recommend you read it -- but I wouldn't recommend most people read it," and "I think you should read it because you'd enjoy thinking about it and writing about it." 

They were all right -- I did really enjoy it and I was really anxious to blog about it. And I, too, would not recommend it to very many people. It is a very contemporary novel that somehow manages to make the normal and the mundane feel so extraordinary and grotesque. It reminded me of Sheila Heti's writing in its frankness about ordinary life. There is a constant tension in the characters, and as a reader you will always be wondering if they are decidedly strange and their actions macabre, of if you are just glimpsing the average internal life of an average human.

Miranda July is such a famous figure in certain circles, so I truly did not expect much from this novel, and I was completely blown away by it. The blurb from Hilton Als on the back cover helped, and I'm really anxious to read her short story collection now.

This Week in Books Kim Gordon Talks to Carrie Brownstein

I haven't done a 'This Week in Books' post in a few weeks; it's one part apathy, one part late-winter depression, but March is here and it's 50 degrees out and my snowdrop bulbs started popping up, so I'm back and ready to round up.

The folks working on the Joan Didion document 'We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live' have made a nice pseudo-trailer/fundraiser video. If you've already donated, it gives you a better idea of what the finished product will look like.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards were handed out this week, with top prizes going to Marilynne Robinson and Roz Chast. I don't know why, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when a book or author I've read wins a major award. It's validating of how I spent that time, I guess.

My post on Kim Gordon's memoir Girl in a Band is forthcoming, but in the meantime you can watch this terrific interview between Kim Gordon and Sleater Kinney/Portlandia's Carrie Brownstein.

The Bookhive List: 'A High Wind in Jamaica' by Richard Hughes

There is absolutely nothing about this book I didn't like -- a gang of very whimsical and somewhat feral children from a British colony in Jamaica find themselves aboard a Dutch pirate ship. What further description is necessary?

There is no Victorian era romanticism of childhood and in many ways A High Wind in Jamaica is a precursor for The Lord of the Flies, although it delves into its subject matter with much more humor. Children being kidnapped should not be fun, and yet it is, even as they endure incredible trauma. Although the children give as much as they take, so there are many moments of sympathy for the unfortunate pirates. As grisly as it is, it remains one of my absolute favorite novels of British colonialism, something of a favorite sub-genre, which will only become more obvious as I roll out for Bookhive List posts, week by week.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Big Fat Book : 'War and Peace' Week 9

And just like that, I'm beyond the halfway point and on what feels suddenly and distinctly like the downward slope toward the end of this enormous book (despite the fact that I still have another 500-600 pages left). 

The titular 'peace' is over, and we're back into the 'war;' a more accurate title would probably be "War and Peace and War," but I'll let it slide. Natasha remains a single girl in Moscow, so this war is going to be particularly rough on her. I also sense some impending duels, which is always exciting.

Literary Ludite: Goodreads

This will be a very short post because I have nothing positive to say about Goodreads, which is an obnoxiously popular website for basics. Goodreads is the kind of thing that exists for that person you know (or knew, or only kinda know) who writes a Facebook update about how they really need a good book to read. This is an example of delicious irony and a demonstration of why I had to stop using Facebook, because the type of person who would put that on Facebook is also the person who probably never reads an actual book. 

Thus-- Goodreads. The interface is based entirely around user-created profiles, which allow one to list books read, books being read, or books waiting to be read. Then algorithms generate recommendations for you, and ads from publishers for the latest romance novels are embedded in your recommendations. Ta-da!

I suppose I'm not exactly the target demo because I've never needed a book recommendation in my life; I have quite the opposite problem, which is why 25% of the books on my shelves haven't been read yet. But even so, I tried using it with an open-mind, and I found the recommendations to be incredibly generic and unsophisticated, and in general the whole tone was low-brow. Lots of recommendations for John Green books, etc.

I would recommend skipping Goodreads altogether; if you want to socialize about a shared interest in books, join or start a book club. If you want sophisticated book recommendations based on what you've already enjoyed, visit a local library or an independent bookstore. Also, if you're not boycotting Amazon, they have user profiles and recommendations and socializing and basically everything you can get from Goodreads, but also HBO and free shipping.

What I'm Reading: 'My Brilliant Friend' by Elena Ferrante

I almost hate posting the above photo of the English edition cover of the first volume in the Neapolitan novels trilogy, because it motivated me to start reading e-books on my Kindle. It is a truly hideous book and proof of the adage that you cannot judge a book by the cover (but as an aside -- there is nothing wrong with a beautiful book, and whenever possible, isn't is preferable?).

My Brilliant Friend has the dubious honor of having re-energized my reading and getting me out of a bit of a slump, along with preventing my reading War and Peace very quickly. Elena Ferrante's trilogy about a lifelong friendship between two women has been on my radar for quite some time -- James Wood at The New Yorker is a huge advocate and the author has gotten a lot of buzz lately for being famously reclusive. Her identify is somewhat shrouded, causing the Italian press to speculate that 'Elena Ferrante' is the pen-name of a more established (male) Italian author. This is unfair and seems almost certainly untrue.

I've never read a better characterization of female friendship and more and more I'm realizing how much I enjoy books that explore this relationship. Maybe it's because I've been happily married for five years, but generally books that focus on romantic relationship don't do much for me -- they either focus on passionate and tempestuous relationships that are doomed, or on the numbness of prolonged monogamy, neither of which mean anything to me. But at this point in my life, relationships between women seem like the most dynamic and engaging, and as a reader it's what I'm drawn to.

The Bookhive List: 'His Dark Materials' by Philip Pullman

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman is often classified as YA, but I didn't read it until adulthood, and I remember thinking that any teenager who read it would certainly grow up to be an incredibly emotionally mature adult. Fantasy is not everyone's cup of tea, myself included, but in the case of His Dark Materials, the fictional universe is very elaborately built up to provide a scaffolding upon which Pullman then dismantles the world in which we live -- and he pulls it off so gracefully. There are two points in the trilogy that stick out to me in particular as being the absolute most I have ever cried while reading a book, and this was more than just a few tears -- I finished the series in sobs; it is also one of my favorite love stories.

The series is often compared to The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and there are many obvious similarities, including the use of fantasy elements as a kind of stand-in for Christianity. If you found the morality of Narnia to be too simplistic and prefer your religious allegories with heaping doses of cynicism and darkness, then His Dark Materials is more the series for you. The Catholic Church is deeply critical of the series, in part because the characters set out to destroy God; the fact that the human soul exists outside the body in the form of a small animal companion does not help. It is very difficult to read the novels and then accept that you will never have a little "daemon" otter or goldfinch following you wherever you go, and I felt incredibly melancholy after finishing the series because I was so sad to leave this world behind.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week 8

I'm at the point in War and Peace when all the various character start making sojourns to "the country" and start having their Aha moments in Nature. Many of them are taught lessons by various peasants and farming types and wolves they've hunted. There is much eating of Russian peasant food and listening to Russian peasant songs and dancing of Russian peasant dances. Everyone is either unhappily married or happily engaged, but I suspect there will be a major reversal of fortunes on that front very soon.

On another note, I'm frustrated by the fact that I've felt like I was at the half-way point for at least two weeks now, and unless I somehow manage to find the motivation to power past page 700 this weekend (unlikely given that I have an impending baby shower for a friend and a woefully unfinished knitting gift) I will continue to languish there for at least another week. I'm losing perspective of the fact that I've somehow managed to read 550 pages of War and Peace while simultaneously finishing 15 books since January 1, along with working full-time, getting caught up on 'The Americans' and working on the above-mentioned knitting. I should pat myself on the back, but instead I'm going to continue feeling guilty that I haven't read more.

What I'm Reading: 'Housekeeping' by Marilynne Robinson

This is my first foray into Marilynne Robinson's fiction and I put it off in the same way I put off Joan Didion -- because I knew reading Marilynne Robinson's fiction would mean a multi-volume commitment, and I fully expect to read her four major novels within a relatively short span. Housekeeping was her first novel and is very distinct from the following three, which together make up the Gilead trilogy. It was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize -- yes, her FIRST novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

I often struggle with writing about books because I hate the way most people talk about books -- "What are you reading? Is it any good?" etc. A book's value has nothing to do with whether or not the average reader thinks it's "good," and to say I've enjoyed reading Housekeeping or even that I admire Robinson's prose seems completely pointless. No one should care what I think -- she's one of the most decorate authors in America today, and writing about her is just a reminder of how humbling this experience can be. I was very anxious to read her work and write about it, but when it actually comes down to putting down my thoughts, everything I want to say seems incredibly dumb and insufficient.

Just read her books. This literary blogging identity crisis will probably pass.

 

The Bookhive List: 'Teaching a Stone to Talk' by Annie Dillard

I had to read Teaching a Stone to Talk in high school, and I hated the experience. I guess "hate" is an oversimplification; the book challenged me in a way I hadn't been challenged in school, and I resented Dillard and my teacher for forcing me to struggle through it. As an adult though, reflecting back on the high school reading experience, I really appreciate that my teacher forced us to delve into this version of nature writing, and not the usual suspects.

Now I re-read it regularly, in part because it's rich and complex and difficult and I always take away something new from it, and because it's a very slim book. What I love most about her writing is the way I find myself recalling her imagery in the oddest moments without really being aware of it; I have one distinct image that comes to mind when I think about hotel art, and it's strictly hers (read her first essay on eclipses and you'll know what I'm talking about). Her ability to fuse thoughts on such abstract, lofty concepts as religion and nature with very human, personal details is remarkable and I think it's what separates her writing from so many other essayists.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.