The Love of Literature

I'm starting a new feature on my Blog.  Beginning this month once a month I will list all the books I purchased and read during that month followed by summaries and other pithy musings and humorous observations.  What a brilliant and intriguing idea you say?  Yes, it is.  I wish I could say it is mine.  But, alas, I never think of anything pithy or intriguing.  This is a blatant ripoff of Nick Hornby’s idea.  Hornby wrote a monthly column for The Believer magazine in 2003 and beyond in which he listed the books he purchased and read during that month.  The difference is the publishers of The Believer didn’t permit Hornby to diss an author or a book — only happy reviews allowed at The Believer.  Yeah, one of those magazines.  Unlike Hornby, I can let loose, and will, so I know you will want to read this.  So, without further ado, here is November 2015’s literature recap.  

Books Purchased November 2015

Violence and the Sacred

— Rene Girard

Girard was (he recently died) a literary critic and philosopher who developed the theory of Mimetics — the idea that people imitate one another which leads to rivalries which are solved by scapegoating.  If someone can identify an enemy, whether they are or not, others will rally around the accuser at the expense of the accused.  Girard believes a lot of wars and confrontations are the result of scapegoating.  Violence and the Sacred, I think, is an examination of Mimetic desire in literature.  I’ll bet Girard mentions the Iliad.  Those Trojans kidnapping Helen and all.  Who the hell gave a damn if a woman was kidnapped and taken to a foreign land 3500 years ago.  If the Mycenaeans (Greeks) weren’t scapegoating the Trojans, then Girard doesn’t understand his own theory and should scrap it; it isn’t worth petunias.  I’ll let you know when and if I read it.  I buy lots of books I never read.

In Times Like These: A Time Travel Adventure

— Nathan Van Coops

Time travelers caught in the past find other time travelers caught in the past, and some of them are dying under mysterious circumstances.  A race against time.  I have no idea about this one, but the price was right: it cost nothing.  I didn’t know you could purchase something for free.  I thought that was called a giveaway or a gift, but the God Emperor of booksellers, Amazon, says otherwise, so I guess I purchased it.  Mind you I’m not complaining, but if everyone offered their products for free, wouldn’t the entire western economic system come crashing down upon us?  So shouldn’t I feel a wee bit guilty?  So why do I have this smile on my face?  For shame, for shame.  I’m contributing to worldwide poverty, starvation, and disease, and I ought to feel a little sad about my lack of moral integrity.  But I don’t.  Maybe I’ll get my just desserts when I read it.  It might be terrible, and if it is I won’t even have a right to feel ripped off.  There.  That explains everything.

City

— Clifford Simak

A well-known author of science fiction, Simak flaunts his stuff in a far future where intelligent dogs preserve the legends and lore of their no longer present masters.  See, this is what happens when you sell things for free.  It corrupts the young, and soon everyone abandons their dogs.  What an awful people we become.

Descent

— Tim Johnson

A young woman is kidnapped while jogging in the mountains on vacation.  Years later her younger sister thinks she sees her sister, or what she believes her sister would look like all grown up, in a photo in a magazine.  Thus begins a journey to locate the woman in the photo.  I think I purchased this one for 99 cents.  The Western World is teetering over the edge.

Mudbound

— Hillary Jordan

This one won the Bellwether Prize, and I got it for 2.99.  The world is doomed when we can purchase prize-winning novels for under $3.  Then again, I’ve never heard of the Bellwether prize.  Maybe Jordan’s parents or friends invented it to give Hillary a little literary panache.  If so, it didn’t work, not at 2.99 it didn’t.

Anyway, this one is about racism in the Mississippi Delta immediately following WWII.  Maybe that’s why it's going for $2.99 — yet another book on racism in America.  How original.  At least it’s not another novel about the horrors of WWII, Miss Orringer (see below).

The Invisible Bridge

— Julie Orringer

This is about a a family separated by the war (WWII) in Bosnia. The book comes highly praised by a number of critics.  Hmmm . . . maybe that’s not the best recommendation, and to think I broke the bank on this one, a whole $14 dollars.

Books Read (or reading) November 2015

Bleak House

— Charles Dickens

Finished

I read this one with the members of The Pickwick Club over at Goodreads.  The novel was originally serialized in one of the magazines published in 19th century England, and we, The illustrious Pickwickans, read it as if it were serialized — 3 or 4 chapters a week, just as published in the magazine.  It took forever.  I think I started back in the first week in June.  I don’t remember the name of the magazine, and I’m too lazy to look it up, even though I’m sitting at my computer as I write this and all I need do is google it.  So there.  Look it up yourself.  If you are interested in Dickens or Victorian era novels, you should take a look at the Pickwick Club.  The facilitators are great, and the discussions and analysis were better than in any college level literature course I had taken, which totals 3, and two of them were composition.  

Oh, I have no intention of reviewing Bleak House here because I can't do it justice. It’s huge and filled with many characters and all kinds of cool subplots and symbolism.  Yes, that’s right, Dickens uses symbolism.  Take that you no-nothing critics.  You all missed it.  Suffice it to say that the book is great, and that I think Dickens is the greatest writer in the English language.  He can satirize people and institutions, and he has great command of the language.  His descriptions of cities, towns, and countryside are wonderful too.  We are sorely missing a Dickens in our time.  Read Dickens, all of him.  I command you.

Life at the Bottom

— Theodore Dalrymple

Paused

Dalrymple is a doctor and psychiatrist — that’s a bit redundant but only a little because sometimes I think psychiatrists are drug pushers and not doctors — who worked in Africa and then a hospital in England.  His thesis is that Western Civilization is doomed because everyone is a victim and no one is responsible for their actions anymore.  He has some interesting and politically incorrect things to say about our (English) youth and multiculturalism.  The problem is every essay is about the same thing and that gets boring after awhile.  I’m determined to finish this, but for now I’m taking a hiatus.

The Shell Seekers

— Rosamunde Pilcher

Paused

Yup, I’m pausing again.  If you think you detect a pattern, you are correct.  I pause all the time, mostly because I find something I just have to read right now and, so, I put off what I’m currently reading until I finish my newest best book.  So get used to it.  This isn’t some magazine, and I’m not getting paid to keep continuity of thought.  I have no intention of changing.  I like confusion and disruption.  One could say I thrive in its midst.

This is Pilcher’s most famous novel, and it has sold millions, so I will finish it.  Promise.  I really, really want to read it.  Really!  But I’ll save a summary for when I finish.  That sounds wise, doesn’t it?

The Gollum and the Jinni

— Helene Wecker

Reading

This is the culprit.  This is the evil book I placed The Shell Seekers on hold to read.  I’ve been wanting to read this one ever since it first came out, and I’m more than a quarter the way through.  At first I feared the narrative was too singsongy and too much like a kid’s fairly tale, but Wecker soon settles down, and now I’m loving it.  What Wecker is first and foremost is a storyteller.  There are big stories, small stories, stories within stories, all of them moving the big story along inexorably towards the end.  The pacing is consistent even if it dawdles a bit.  But that’s okay.  Who wants a book to end when the stories are so engrossing.  This is what happens when a really good storyteller takes over.  You get into the stories and don’t care so much about where its heading, nor are you in a rush to finish because you don’t want it to end.

The Black Lamb and Gray Falcon

— Rebecca West

Reading

I should finish this one in the year 2017.  It’s West’s 1,100-page tome, a travelogue about her journey through Yugoslavia immediately prior to WWII.  What a writer West is.  I wish I could write like this.  I just finished the prologue and have begun the train ride to Zagreb.  On the trip we meet two German couples who take a liking to West and her husband.  They are a strange and neurotic group of Germans whose favorite pastime seems to be worrying and complaining about everything.  West loves Yugoslavia and its people — Slavs, Croats, Bosnians, etc — and you can feel her love in her writing.  This is considered a classic, but at 1,100+ pages, I wonder how many critics recommending it have read it.  You know how it goes.  Everyone has read the classics, even when they haven't.  Actually reading them seems to not be a requirement.  Perhaps they are relying on their friends’ recommendations.  But maybe their friends are relying on their friends’ recommendation and so on and so on.  Maybe no one has read this.  Maybe I will be the first.  Then again, maybe I should just say I read it too and be done with it.  Then I can say, "Wow!  Did I just blow through 1,100 pages in no time.  I can read a thousand words a minute."

More next month.