The last two books I read created an interesting synergy. As I posted earlier, I got an advance copy of The Zahir by Paulo Coelho from Harper Collins. Contrary to some other people, I like his writing, and his fable-istic approach to situations. This book centers on a writer who is very similiar to Coelho, whose wife vanishes, leaving him to sort out if something devious has occured, or if she’s just gotten tired of their marriage. He goes through much searching and pondering, and through a number of events, ultimately comes to a deeper understanding of love and marriage.

I also read Retreat from Love, the last in the Claudine series by Colette. In it, Claudine pines for her husband, who is away at a sanitorium for a rest cure, and stays with her friend Annie and stepson Marcel. Claudine is deeply dedicated to her ideal of love, while Annie and Marcel both favor a more promiscuous approach to relationships. While they are all together, Claudine ponders the effects of both of these lifestyles.

Reading them back to back created a counterpoint that is fortunate because I think both books were slightly weak on their own. Enjoyable, but not as filled out as they could have been. Both seemed to take shortcuts past difficult situations rather than delve into them, and while I appreciate that those situations are sometimes ignored so as to deal with the main subject at hand, these situations were vital to the core themes of the books.

Now I’m reading Don’t Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford, and loving it so far. I’m glad that I’m back in a reading mood, life is more enjoyable with books in it.

Current total: 46
Just Finished: Retreat from Love by Colette
Currently Reading: Don’t Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford

Every couple of weeks, my sister brings her kids over to my house and one of the possible treats of going to “auntie’s house” is going to the library. My nephews are 2 and a bit, and for them the library is a magical place full of any kind of book they could ever want. As we walk up to the entrance they tell me what kind of book they’re going to get, “zebra book” and “giraffe book” being the most common. Once we get inside, auntie and mommy are at their beck and call to find books with whatever animal comes to mind on the cover. They each get to take one home, and last time we went one of them picked Hola Jalapeno (about Mexican food), and the other one chose a book about Jewish food. They called them “dinner books”. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

I mention this because I went to the library by myself yesterday, and had the same kind of experience that I assume they have. I walked leisurely down the aisles and found books by my favorite authors as if by magic, books that have never been at other libraries I’ve frequented. “Some Colette I haven’t read would be nice,” I thought, and lo and behold, there’s Retreat From Love. How about some Nancy Mitford? Pigeon Pie and Don’t Tell Alfred good enough for you? Yes, thanks! The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark which I’ve been meaning to read forever? There it is! Every title in the Daisy Dalrymple series? Well, I don’t know if all of them were there, but a bunch that I hadn’t read were. It was a beautiful day.

On the bus home I read the book that I’d actually gone to the library to pick up- I had it on reserve- Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeny’s Humor Category. It is as the titles describes, a collection of the best humor pieces from the McSweeney’s literary journal. I finished it last night. It was a quick read, with each piece ranging from super short to a couple of pages long. A decent percentage of the book is made up of silly lists, my favorites being Possible Follow-up songs for One hit Wonders (including “Bust an additional move” and “Seriously, Eileen, Come On”), First Lines to books I won’t write and Names of squash that also make good terms of endearment.

The best pieces were laugh out loud funny, while some didn’t work for me, but I guess that’s the nature of a compilation. Fire: The Next Sharp Stick? by John Hodgman brings corporate-speak to early man as fire is introduced to the world. I Know What You Did Two Moons Ago (The Revenge) by Brian Kennedy takes the teen horror movie and makes all the characters Native Americans, who ultimately discover they’re being tormented because they built their burial ground on top of … an ancient Native American burial ground. Unused Audio Comentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002 for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD (Platinum Series Extended Editon) Part One by Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell is bitingly funny as Zinn and Chomsky present their suprising political and sociological reading of the film. Overall it was a very entertaining read.

I have so much great stuff to read, I don’t know where to begin. But I HAVE to finish The Zahir first, because I said I would.

Current total: 44
Just Finished: Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category edited by Dave Eggers and more
Currently Reading: The Zahir by Paulo Coelho

Flannery O’Connor hurts my brain. In a good way, but hurts nonetheless. I just finished Wise Blood, and my thoughts are struggling to connect themselves. There’s so many threads of yearning, struggling for redemption, for identity; trying to free yourself from the pull of your heritage, blood, and past; it’s all blurring together beautifully at the moment. Her words are so carefully chosen, so exact. It’s a very strange book, but I enjoyed it immensely. Maybe I’ll try to write more about it once I’ve had a chance for it to settle in my mind.

I’ve been saying for posts and posts that I’m going to read Misfortune by Wesley Stace next, and I really am going to get to it. It’s just that I signed up for a neato thing where I get to read preview copies of books and then tell the publisher what I thought, and I have to get that book read. Then it’s finally onto Misfortune.

Current total: 43
Just finished: Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Next Up: The Zahir by Paulo Coelho

I just finished Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope All Story collection, a smorgasborg of stories from the Zoetrope All Story journal, never before printed fiction, and original essays on film. From the introduction (and not because I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Coppola, which I don’t), Coppola created the Zoetrope All Story literary journal to encourage short story writing, and to cultivate short stories that could be turned into films. He has the belief, which I have to agree with, that the short story medium is the easiest to translate to film, because it’s all there- the characters, the set up, the resolution; a whole little world. Novels tend to have too much information, but short stories are just about right.

The stories in this collection are excellent. Standouts include Step Men by Lucia Nevai, a quiet meditation on family and how death brings us together that reminded me of Judd Winick’s beautiful Road Trip; Her New Life by Emily Perkins, which read so much like a film that I could swear I’ve actually seen it; and Fair Warning by Robert Olen Butler, about an auctioneer who finds herself being bid on.

The essays are equally good, David Mamet’s on how the summer blockbuster is like a state fair is especially enlightening.

I’d like to see almost any of the stories in this collection made into films, I’d go see them. And now I’m going to have to start getting Zoetrope All Story. Curse you Francis Ford Coppola!

Current total: 42
Just Finished: Francis Ford Coppola’s Zopetrope All Story edited by Adrienne Broedeur and Samantha Schnee
Next Up: Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

I finished The Vagabond by Colette days ago and have moved on to Zoetrope All Story, a collection of short stories that appeared in Francis Ford Copalla’s magazine of the same name. I’m enjoying it muchly and will write about it when I finish it. But it has to wait its turn.

The Vagabond is one of my favorite of Colette’s works. It centers on an ex-writer/ now dancer named Renee, who avoids love after she leaves a bad relationship. She’s courted by a rich man who waits patiently for her to return his affection, which she finally does. Her work calls her away to go on tour, however, and the distance provides space to see that their differences could be surmounted, she just doesn’t want to do it anymore. It’s an interesting look at how we choose both to fall in love and climb out of it, and how past relationships affect current ones, and while some of the sections are extremely cynical, I identify (or have identified) with them.

What was interesting about my reading this time is having the background. Knowing about the people and the relationships that Colette was writing about gave the story more depth, although, from what I’ve read, the narrative of the story is only loosly based on real life. The relationship of Renee and her ex was most likely exaggerated for effect, not necessarily for spite as the tabloidists of the day claimed. But I haven’t read anything she herself wrote about the book, so I could be wrong.

I also read her short story Gigi, which I love, but I’m not counting it as an extra book.

Current total: 41
Just Finished: The Vagabond by Colette
Next Up: Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope All Story

Distraction has struck again. Well, not completely. I’m in the middle of reading The Vagabond, which I fully intend to finish, I just got an unexpected Amazon shipment containing Ruddy Gore, the most recently reprinted Phryne Fisher mystery by Kerry Greenwood, and almost any book gets put down for a Phryne Fisher book.

Ruddy Gore is one of the earlier Phryne Fisher books, wherein she takes on solving a dual poisoning that takes place during a production of Ruddigore by Gilbert and Sullivan. (The play is by them, not the production.) It’s a great read, with plenty of Gilbert and Sillivanesque twists and turns. I saw a couple of the twists coming, but that didn’t make them less enjoyable.

Since the books are being reprinted out of order, some characters are introduced here that I’d met in the later books, including my favorite, Phryne’s Chinese lover Lin. He’s a fantastic character, well developed where the author could have resorted to stereotype. But she doesn’t, and that’s why I love these books. I can’t wait for the rest to be reprinted; if anyone knows where to find previous editions for less than the $50 people are selling them for on Amazon, let me know!

Back to The Vagabond!

Current total:40
Just Finished: Ruddy Gore by Phryne Fisher
Currently Reading: The Vagabond by Colette

I just finished Creating Colette Vol. 1 by Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, the first in a two volume biography of the French writer Colette. Colette is one of my favorite writers, her short stories are targeted and precise, and her clarity of description has few competititors. She had an eye for human relationships and mentalities that was piercing and unblinking. I knew that some of her writing was based on her life, but I hadn’t realized quite how much she drew from her experiences.

Colette lived a crazy life. She was flagrantly bisexual and completely non-monogamous, despite being married (her husband wasn’t into monogamy either), and was both mentally and physically intimate with many of the “huge names” of her day, from Marquises to Counts to famous courtesans. When she writes in Gigi about the life of women who “do not marry”, she was speaking from the experience of one who managed to be kept by numerous suitors without being subject to any of them. She was a celebrity of Parisan society in the way that celebrities are famous today- everyone knew the details of her life and loves, and much of that information came from her books. She co-wrote her early books with her husband Willy (although they would both later contest how much was written by whom), and they were based on their lives. They went to great lengths to create the image of Colette, so that readers felt that they knew her. Willy wrote his own series of books which also pulled from their lives, and even later in their careers they couldn’t seem to stop using their own lives and friends and lovers as fodder for their work.

Colette and Willy’s relationship is fascinating; even after a seperation and divorce during which they declared war on one another and tore each other apart in the papers and in their novels, they remained fiercely devoted to each other. I realize that makes no sense, but their whole relationship didn’t make a lot of sense.

This biography is written beautifully, it’s easy to get into and insightful without jumping to conclusions. I can’t wait to read the second volume, but I think I’ll revisit some of Colette’s work first, now that I know who she’s referring to.

Current total: 39
Just Finished: Creating Colette by Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier
Next Up: The Vagabond by Colette

I will get to Misfortune, I really will. I mentioned my distracted state of mind in the last post (or so), and that same distraction led me to pick up the first volume of Creating Colette by Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, a book which I started ages ago and never finished. It was a book that got left in a similar state of distraction, and I’m glad I remembered and picked it up again. Colette is one of my absolute favorite writers, and this is a fantastic biography. I’m enjoying it and can’t wait to read the second volume as well.

Another of my favorite writers has just come out with a new book, one that I actually read months ago, but I decided to wait to write about it until now, when the book was actually released. Jamie S. Rich’s I Was Someone Dead is my favorite thing that he’s written to this point, and that’s saying a lot really. It’s the story of Hieronymus Zoo, a man who has left the cares of the world behind to live on his own tropical island. It’s a paradise, except for the monster that rises from the sea to haunt his sleepless nights. If that weren’t enough, his well ordered life of solitude is thrown into disarray when his monthly delivery of books comes with something extra in the crate, a stowaway. The young woman could bring disaster, or she could bring love, but which will it be?

It’s a gorgeous little novella, full of symbols and allegory, written in such a way that it can be read for the straight story, or for the deeper themes. At times it reads like a fairy tale or fable, set out of time but speaking to a larger truth. It really is a great read, and one I know I’ll be reading again and again.

Current total: 38
Just (well a while ago) Finished: I Was Someone Dead by Jamie S. Rich
Currently Reading: Creating Colette by Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier

I know I said I was going to be reading Misfortune by Wesley Stace next, but I forgot that I was actually in the middle of reading Ibid by Mark Dunn. The fact that I forgot that I was reading it shouldn’t be interpreted as a slight against the book, but rather a gauge of my distracted state of mind, because it really is a fun book.

I didn’t notice when I bought the book that it was by Mark Dunn, the author of the awesome Ella Minnow Pea that so freaked me out when I read it last year, but as soon as I noticed that I knew I was in for a treat. The premise of this intriguing little book is that Mark Dunn (a character in his own novel) wrote a book about Jonathan Blashette, a three legged deoderant magnate (previously a circus performer). The only copy of the manuscript is accidentally destroyed, leaving only the footnotes, which were completed seperately from the manuscript and therefore weren’t lost. Since something has to be published, and Dunn doesn’t feel up to reproducing the whole biography again, they decide to just print the footnotes.

What results is a fragmented look at a man’s life, told through the pieces that wouldn’t be deemed important enough to include in the main text of a biography. It’s a fascinating experiment, and one that allows Dunn to jump around in his storytelling, leaving off accounts when the details might get too cumbersome. It’s reminiscent of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life in ways, and was laugh out loud funny in parts.

Dunn says that his intent was to show people how interesting history can be, and that comment puzzles me, as I don’t really see how his book necessarily accomplished that; I think the book illustrated more clearly how we decide that some details of people’s lives are less interesting than others, when perhaps they might be the most important of all. But of course, I didn’t see the destroyed manuscript, so I could be wrong. Whatever the intended or percieved point, the book was a fun read, and a successful attempt at an innovative storytelling technique.

Now I’m really going to read Misfortune.

Current total: 37
Just Finished: Ibid by Mark Dunn
Next Up: Misfortune by Wesley Stace

After reading A Factory of Cunning, I was inspired to pick up the recent French mini-series version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The director made some interesting decisions as far as character motivation, and overall it was a very good adaptation. I mention it because the last couple of books I’ve read have either been adaptions, or been adapted.

I loved The Hours by Michael Cunningham when I read it last year. It’s an homage to Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and I decided it was high time I read the original. And may I say, the original is stunning. It’s the story of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, but through the complex narrative Woolf has created, it’s so much more than that. Her style is an adapted stream of conciousness, which switches from one charachter to the next as people cross paths. As the events of their day spark their memories, they slip into reminiscence. With a few carefully chosen words, the narrative expands wider and wider until a world of history and relationships are captured. Her skill and eloquence truly left me in awe.

I picked up The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler at the airport on the way to a trip. I’m a fan of Jane Austen, although I really haven’t read a lot of her works, and I figured this would be a nice introduction. The book centers on a reading group who forms to read the books of Jane Austen. As the members of the group read each book, the events in their lives and memories echo those in Jane Austen’s books. I said I hadn’t read a lot of Austen’s books, but I know them well enough to recognize the themes and story elements. The book works well in that a thorough knowledge of Austen’s works isn’t in any way necessary to appreciate and understand this one. The stories and characters stand up well enough on their own to be completely enjoyable.

I also reread Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, which, as far as I know has not been adapted, but it’s entirely possible that it has been. Salinger writes short stories the way they should be written. His characters are so vivid, so real. His worlds are complete little worlds, and they’re beautiful.

I’m so far behind my reading count that I really need to catch up.

Current Total: 36
Just Finished: Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
Next Up: Misfortune by Wesley Stace