So I’m through with the book paralysis- I think. I read 2 books yesterday, so thats a pretty good indicator. The first was The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan, which was incredibly interesting. Its a collection of her essays, talks, etc., and I found it absorbing. A number of her essays deal with the intersection of Chinese and American culture in her life, and the influence that language played in that. They also either directly described or alluded to the story of her life, and her mother’s- both of them had horrific things happen to them, it amazes me what people can survive in their lives.
The second book was The Crooked House by Agatha Christie, which lived up to my expectations, cleverly written and I didn’t figure out who did it until close to the end. There was a good bit of distraction and misleading, I quite enjoyed it.
More on them later.

Current Count: 6
Just Finished: The Crooked House by Agatha Christie
Next Up: The Years Best Fantasy and Horror 9th Annual Collection

I just finished Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger- breaking with the habit I wrote of a couple of posts ago, I picked it up to read in the bath and actually continued reading it when I got out. I’ve read it a number of times before, but not recently, so I figured I’d finish it again. I love these characters- all of the Glass family. I first picked this book up after seeing The Royal Tenenbaums, I reread all the previous Glass family books and read this one for the first time. They’re just such fully formed characters that I have trouble remembering that they haven’t always existed.
This read through I was struck again by the discussion of Christ- and specifically Zooey’s protestations that Franny sees him as a combination of St. Francis of Assisi, Seymour, and someone else all rolled into one. I think this happens often- we read that He was perfect, so our view of Him is our version of perfection- (in Franny’s case, St. Francis and Seymour), which is not neccesarily what He was. As long as we stick with that view we can’t see what He was trying to teach us about what perfection actually is.
That and that Franny wanted her experience with God to be trancendent, taking her away from all the morons, when Zooey knew that to experience God means continuing life with a “Christ-conciousness” ( I think that was his term)- seeing all the morons as God sees them.
Thats all my thoughts for now.
Book Count: 4
Just Finished: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Next Up: Oh who knows?

I started reading the book my friend loaned me and was a page in when I got distracted by Valley of the Dolls on TV. I’d had minimal interest in reading the book or seeing the movie until I saw a probably made for TV movie about the life of Jaqueline Susann, and was enthralled. Very interesting woman. Anyway, I watched the movie and decided that I really needed to read the book instead of the one was reading. We went down to the bookstore at about 5, I started reading it about 6, and finished at around 12:30. By the time I realized I should go to bed I was so close to finishing I just had to stay up. 6 1/2 hours for 442 pages- slightly less than a page a minute- not bad.
I can see why it stayed on the best seller list for the insane amount of time it did- it’s trashy, but not too trashy, sexy, but not too sexy. You feel for these characters, get to know them, experience life with them, and Jaqueline Susann doesn’t pull her punches. At the same time, theres not the intimidation factor- its a long book but you know you’re not going to be overwhlemed with symbolism; anyone could pick it up and enjoy it without feeling like they were missing something.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I liked the ending of the movie better than the book, more empowering I think.

Book Count: 3
Just Finished: Valley of the Dolls by Jaqueline Susann
Next Up: Sarah by Orson Scott Card, Paths of the Dead by Stephen Brust, or Tokyo Suckerpunch by Issac Adamson – I haven’t decided.

So when I started reading Tommy’s Tale, it was in the bathtub. In general, my bathtub books are only books that I’ve read before, that I know so well that I can start reading at any point and stop reading when I get out of the tub, not worrying that I need to finish them. Even if I’m in the middle of reading a book, if it doesn’t fit that criteria when I get in the bath, I take a different one with me. Therefore, new or potentially controversial books don’t usually make it into the bath. But for some reason, Tommy’s Tale made it, and suffered the same fate as the other bath books- when I got out I put it down and haven’t picked it back up to finish it. I started reading An Invisible Sign of My Own instead, and finished that, and now I’m onto Hell Hath No Fury, a collection of women’s breakup letters. Hopefully I’ll get back to Tommy’s Tale, but it’s almost like I’m procrastinating it. I have a book on loan from a friend thats slated for after this one, and then two books from the library… Maybe now just isn’t the right time for Tommy, I’m not sure. I like the writing, I like the character, so I’m not sure why I’m hesitant to dive back into it. Ah well. I’m sure he’ll wait.

Hell Hath No Fury, Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair, edited by Anna Holmes, is an interesting idea. Take a bunch of break-up letters, catagorize them, and give some context-especially historical reference for the really old ones. It’s mostly enjoyable in a voyeuristic sense, none of the letters so far (204 pgs in) has been simply “I hate you, we’re breaking up”, most go into lush detail about the relationship, the way they were wronged, their feelings… it’s a crystal clear window into a dramatic time in someone’s life.
Sometimes they’re enjoyable in a literary sense, with beautiful language and perfect wording. Thats far more rare, the best so far being by Virgina Stephens (later Woolf), Charlotte Bronte, and Queen Elizabeth I, who arguably had reason for theirs to be the best worded. Those are the letters that resonate because they perfectly phrase feelings experienced by probably everyone- but they say what we only wish we did while we were fumbling around with “It’s not you, it’s me”.
Some of the letters don’t really fit into either category, and to me, are boring. They’re just straight forward, to the point, and not poorly written, but not beautiful by any means. I assume they were included to give a complete overview of the genre, but I want entertainment, and thus, skip over them. Maybe I’ll have reason to look at them again on a later reading.

Current Reading: Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair ed. Anna Holmes

A follow up to my comments about Namedropper – I was right about the language of the book being specific to the main character of the book. I picked up Emma Forrest’s next book Thin Skin – the language is completely different. Still enjoyable, but not with the magical quality of Vida’s voice. While I was kind of disappointed since I wanted more of that voice, I’m impressed that Forrest has another style, that her characters speak for themselves- it just makes me love Vida more for her uniqueness. Ruby, the main character of Thin Skin isn’t overly loveable and doesn’t want to be, so having her speak the same way as Vida, who is secure in her individuality would just be wrong.

I finished An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender yesterday, and enjoyed it- but ended it feeling disconcerted. I think it was a combination of things- the first being that I’ve been having strange dreams lately that I wake up in the middle of feeling disconcerted because they were so real, and this was a similar feeling. The story is just odd enough, and the writing such that when I finished it I felt like I was waking up from one of those dreams, and the transition back to “waking” life was weird. Thats a positive though- it thoroughly sucked me in.
The second is a difficulty I have with the ending of the novel. One of the themes of the book is family members taking on suffering because one family member hurts or is sick. If one is sick, all must be sick, in order (as is told in a fairy story) that none of them have to die. Because of this philosophy, the main character Mona has taken up various superstitions and self punishments, as has a little girl in her math class. At the end of the book Mona decides that she can’t continue to do it, that her suffering doesn’t help her father at all, or have any impact on whether or not he lives or dies of his mysterious disease. One of her self punishments-eating soap- is overcome with a bit of struggle, and that gives her the strength to realize that she needs to move past her other hangups as well, but theres no indication of how she’s gonna do that, just the impression that she already has somehow. That just doesn’t work for me. You don’t go through however many years of compulsively knocking on wood to keep everyone you know safe and alive and then just stop one day. And thats what seems to happen. Maybe thats not the way it was intended. Maybe I need to reread it. But it left me a little off.
That said however, I did enjoy it. Well written, very convincing if very odd characters, but odd in a completely believable way. And it made me look at math differently, and slightly begin to understand those people who depend on math to order the world rather than stories. But only slightly- math is still evil.

Current Reading: Tommy’s Tale by Alan Cumming

This is the final list of books I read in 2003- a total of 105. Books from January and February are bunched together as I didn’t decide to keep track of them until the middle of Feb., and I didn’t start keeping track of the dates I finished a book until March. And these are only the books I finished, not the ones I dabbled in and then put down for something else. Here we go:

January/February
Taltos