The Prestige by Christopher Priest (audio)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I felt confident in choosing this audiobook because – while I can’t remember who recommended it – I recall that two sources I respected (book blogs, I think) both praised it around the same time. Safe, I thought. Well, I am reminded again: we cannot all like the same things.

The Prestige opens with a first-person narrator named Andrew, embarking on a trip to cover a story for his newspaper job which he finds generally uninteresting. Andrew is adopted, and cares nothing for the truth of his birth family except for the all-consuming feeling he has that he has a twin. What he has managed to learn about his birth parents indicates that there was no twin, but he feels the presence of that other person too strongly to entertain any other explanation. So he arrives in search of the newspaper story – and if this already sounds disjointed, then right ho, that’s how I found it too – and what do you know, the story he’s pursuing turns out to be related to the mystery of his family’s past. Apparently Andrew’s great-grandfather was a magician, one of the very best in Britain and in the world, and his nemesis – the other greatest magician in Britain and in the world – was the great-grandfather of this young woman from whom he finds himself sitting across a table. In pursuit of, um, a newspaper story. But there is no story, really it’s about getting these two together.

And then the story of Andrew (and Kate, the young lady descended from the other magician) breaks off, and we are treated to the diary of Alfred Borden, Andrew’s predecessor. Now the story of Borden’s life, magical career, and lifelong enmity with the Great Danton is presented from Borden’s point of view; after which we break off and view the corresponding histories from the Great Danton’s perspective, via his own diaries. Finally we come back around to Andrew’s narrative.

The overarching mystery of the book is the question of how each of these magicians performs his great iconic stage act. The two illusions are similar, but apparently are performed in different ways, which are not made clear to us until the final few chapters. It is an interesting mystery, and frankly it is that that kept me going until the end of this book. Andrew, and his desire to discover the truth about the mysterious twin, interested me. But the flashback stories (in diary form) of the rival magicians really failed to compel me, and dragged on too slowly. The mysteries of the magic trick, and of the questionable twin, I must confess were so engrossing that I wanted to continue and learn the truth. But the path there was more frustrating in its pace than enjoyably anticipatory, and I cannot give this book much of an endorsement. I was interested enough in the overall story to finish the book, but almost constantly impatient to get to the big reveal. And, worse, I was disappointed in the big reveal; but no more should be said about that in case you check it out yourself. I suppose you’re unlikely to do so on my recommendation! But I assure you there are positive reviews out there.

I wonder if it wasn’t the frame element of stage magic that failed to grab me. I don’t find myself particularly interested. (Despite all the excitement over The Night Circus, I am unlikely to pick that one up.) The pacing was a lot of what did this one in for me, and the personalities of the two magicians, Borden and Danton: they weren’t terribly sympathetic or likeable. I was frustrated and exasperated with them for most of the book. What can I say, this review has descended into a litany of complaints. Sometimes they don’t work for us. Better luck in the next book, yes?

Rating: 3 magic tricks.

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The Raven by Edgard Allen Poe

Posted on June 13, 2012 by pagesofjulia

(No, not the movie.)
Continuing on a theme (see yesterday’s teaser), I looked up Poe’s famous poem, The Raven. Boy, oh boy. It’s just a short thing, but sooo wonderful – go look it up immediately! I found it online here.

This is the tale of the raven who quoth ‘Nevermore.’ It’s Poe, so you know it’s creepy. It is a short, effective story in its creepiness; but perhaps the most remarkable quality of this poem is linguistic. The rhyme, the rhythm, the cadence, the alliteration makes it positively musical – and to this end there is never a sacrifice in word choice. I can only imagine the time its composer must have spent laboring to create such a piece of poetry that is also such an efficient evocation of mood, and that communicates such a brief but successful story. It pulses (not unlike a tell-tale heart, ha. sorry, couldn’t resist). I recommend it.

Rating: 7 rhyming schemes.

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Teaser Tuesdays: City of Ravens by Boria Sax

Posted on June 12, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!


I am currently reading City of Ravens: London, the Tower and Its Famous Birds. Part history, part deconstruction of myth, part bird study, this is a whimsical and highly readable little book. I have picked you out especially a beer-related teaser for today:

Since the seventeenth century, breweries in England had occasionally kept ravens as mascots out of a belief that ‘Where there are ravens there will be good beer.’ If we interpret this saying a little broadly, as one generally does with proverbs, the ‘good beer’ could mean ‘good fortune.’

This makes me want a raven for our garage brewery.

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics by Neil Faulkner

Posted on June 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

What an odd mix of genres this book is. It sets itself up as a travel guide: eat here, sleep here, don’t forget to pack this – but to a destination that would require time travel. As Faulkner says in his introduction, this is necessarily (by its fantastical nature!) not an entirely academic book; but he does have an academic background, and rather than wildly making things up, he does follow history & research. He just uses his imagination where it makes sense to do so, and in a way that makes sense: he makes educated guesses. (As he points out in the intro, again, he has to pick a day for each event; it is unrealistic that a guide to an Olympic festival would be unable to say when the footraces would be held.) So, note my tags for this post: travel guide; sports; historical fiction; nonfiction. It is a puzzle. A uniquely styled book.

And an enjoyable one, too. At just under 250 pages, it’s an easy read. The sections are short. There is an emphasis for most of the book on ancient Greek culture in general, and on what the Olympic Games represent in that culture (in a nutshell: this is a religious festival; sport is merely a form of religious ritual). The sport itself comes in only late in the book, and I confess that this was a slight disappointment to me: that section of the book that describes the athletic contests was very interesting to me and I wanted more of the same. But the detail on ancient Greece was intriguing, too; I have an interest in ancient Greek mythology & literature, and there were plenty of references that I was pleased to connect.

This book is probably most successful as a travel guide, which is a little awkward since as much as one might wish to, it is in fact impossible to attend the Olympic Games of 388 BC. Faulkner does a good job of elucidating the issues a person would face in attending these Games if she could. Again in a nutshell: there is no lodging, transport is difficult to arrange and expensive, food is odd and limited, and the Olympic Village would be teeming with refuse, stink, and insect activity. It would be hard to see the events on display as there are no stands; spectators 100,000 strong merely shove each other around for a view. In other words, he might have talked me out of the trip if I were planning on it. As a view into the life of ancient Greeks and especially the role of professional athletes in their society, this book was informative and fascinating. Its unique format, too, added special interest. I am bemused and intrigued. Recommended, but probably for a fairly distinct audience. I was well entertained, with my intersecting interests in sport and ancient Greece, and my tolerance for an odd format.

I read an uncorrected advance proof.
Rating: 6 events.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez

Posted on June 8, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.


The Boy Kings of Texas is a memoir by a man who grew up in the barrios of the Texas-Mexico border. It begins:

They were children themselves, my mother and father, when they started having children in 1967 on the border of South Texas. Dad had just graduated from high school and in a panic asked my mother to marry him because he wanted to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Mom had eagerly agreed, in order to escape something even worse.

And so we get right into it. While not necessarily a comfortable book, it feels authentic to me, and I’m enjoying it.

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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movie: Hemingway and Gellhorn (2012)

Posted on June 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Many thanks to my gracious in-laws for DVR-ing this HBO special so that I could watch it later on. You know this was a high priority for me! We had a lovely evening, the four of us, enjoying this newly released film about Hemingway’s time with his third wife (the shortest of his marriages), Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn met Papa in Key West while he was married to Pauline; their romance developed as they shared a common career as war correspondents. His marriage to Pauline ended just a few weeks before he married Gellhorn. While married to Martha, Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. During their barely four years of marriage, professional rivalry posed one of the couple’s greatest difficulties. Hem was not accustomed to having a woman challenge him in his area of expertise, and he handled it badly. They parted less than amicably, with Gellhorn doing the leaving (an unusual experience for the famous writer).

This film did an admirable job of covering this relationship. With just a few qualifying remarks, I can say I really enjoyed it.

The movie opens with Hem & Martha’s meeting in the famous Key West bar, Sloppy Joe’s. I was concerned, early on, because of the overly dramatic dialogue; Hemingway, I kept thinking, would never write dialogue like this. It was theatrical; every line could have ended a chapter (or served for a movie trailer clip). It was overwrought. But as soon as we met Pauline, I started to feel more at home. Pauline was exactly as I picture her. She played the hypocritical righteousness of the spurned wife perfectly. (Keep in mind, as Pauline demands that Hem be a faithful husband, that she stole him from his first wife, arguably in an even more shameful manner than Martha’s, since Pauline befriended Hadley en route to the husband-thievery.)

And it got better from there. I have to give Nicole Kidman credit: I wasn’t sure I could stomach her, not being a big fan; but she was great. Her acting was good and she communicated the Martha Gellhorn I know from the history books: spunky, competitive, impatient with Papa’s neediness and intolerant of his philandering (yes, there’s some hypocrisy again), an inexperienced journalist early in their relationship but later a real professional, and later still, dismissive of history’s desire to relegate her to (a famous quotation, used in the movie) “a footnote to someone else’s life.” (Hint: Hemingway is “someone else.”)

Clive Owen was acceptable as Hemingway, but I couldn’t feel him as Papa. Hey, I’m willing to allow that perhaps my own attachment to the character is strong enough to have created impossibly high standards. (Owens’s acting was perfectly fine, though. My father-in-law commented that Hemingway was a real drunken braggart asshole! To which I say, yes! He was authentically portrayed, as well!) I will say that I think Hemingway himself was handsomer than Owens, where Kidman has the opposite problem: she was, if anything, too beautiful, too glamorous, to be Gellhorn. Gellhorn was a lovely lady, don’t get me wrong, but Kidman is a knockout. See for yourself:

Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway & Nicole Kidman as Martha Gellhorn

the real Hemingway & Gellhorn


While we’re discussing actors, I thought Parker Posey made a surprisingly perfect Mary Welsh. Who’d have thought? If you had told me who would play her role, I would never have believe she could pull it off – for one thing, look old enough! – but she was actually exactly the right person for that role. Casting director, I apologize for my skepticism.

I think the film’s strongest moments were definitely in Spain. The chronology goes: couple meets in Key West (overwrought dialogue abounds); they travel to Spain (lovely cinematography as well as great acting, great images, and – take note – fairly graphic sex); couple moves to Cuba and purchases the Finca Vigia, relationship starts falling apart; Gellhorn continues to pursue wars around the world, and the film loses just a little bit of its magic. Particularly when she visits Dachau and then Auschwitz and comments on the effect of those horrors on her psyche, I felt that it was handled too cursorily. Perhaps a film should not enter Dachau without investing the time, energy, and emotion that it deserves? That was a strange 30-second sideplot; it felt a little disjointed to me. By all means tell us about Dachau if it belongs in your story; but in that case take a minute to do it right. …This is really just a quibble, though.

Final scenes included Hemingway’s great descent into depression and craziness, and finally, his suicide. I had mixed feelings. If this is the story of Hemingway and Gellhorn, I’m not sure his demise really plays into it. But it was necessary, I suppose, to make sense of Gellhorn’s final remarks about his death 30 years past. Hemingway and Gellhorn’s deteriorating relationship felt accurately portrayed, and I liked the frame of an elder Gellhorn reminiscing the rest of the story for us, then going off back into battle. That part was accurate, too.

I wondered many times whether I was seeing real, authentic, historic footage of various scenes from the various wars depicted. I feel confident that at least *some* were authentic; but I doubt my own ability to draw the line. This is high praise.

I think one of the things it is easy to misunderstand, when watching a movie about Hemingway (this is true of Gellhorn, too), is that his life really was that wild, adventurous, exciting, dangerous, and filled with big names. He really did bully John Dos Passos that unrelentingly, and they really were friends (sort of, in the way men could be friends with Hemingway) through it all. The most outrageous parts of this film were perhaps the truest parts.

Recommended!

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La Roja: How Soccer Conquered Spain and How Spanish Soccer Conquered the World by Jimmy Burns

Posted on June 6, 2012 by pagesofjulia

An examination of Spanish history through the filter of a beautiful game.

Jimmy Burns has an emotional relationship to the soccer teams and the legacy of his native Spain. He’s written several books on the sport, culminating in La Roja, which sets out to tell the story of Spanish soccer, from the moment when the British introduced the nation to the sport in the 1880s to the present day, when the sport has become ubiquitous. Soccer acted as a major propaganda tool in the Spanish Civil War; Franco used it to maintain control of local populations, installing loyal political figures as club presidents and managers. During his rule, Spanish club teams fought fiercely amongst themselves, with regional politics playing a heavy role; in international play, Franco’s politics were at the forefront of every interaction. These were underachieving, frustrating years for Spanish soccer. Only in the late 20th century did Spain begin to come into its own, winning Olympic gold in 1992 and, finally, the pinnacle of a World Cup championship in 2010.

Burns relates nearly 150 years of Spanish soccer history, capturing its roots, the regionalism, the racism, the politics, the bullfighting connections and even a cultural reminiscence of Don Quixote. He portrays personalities, rivalries, strong emotions–including his own–and moments of shining success for a much-beset nation. Often heavier on history than on sport, La Roja is a window into Spain and its component cultures, regions and histories as well as a celebration of soccer and its most recent champions.

This review originally ran in the June 1, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 5 soccer balls.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Racing Through the Dark by David Millar

Posted on June 5, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

David Millar is a veteran professional bike racer who has raced in all the biggest events – the Vuelta, the Giro, the Olympics, and the Tour de France where he’s worn the yellow leader’s jersey. This memoir tells the story of his childhood discovery of the sport he loves, his journey upwards through the professional ranks, and his eventual bust for doping – and then his comeback to the sport, as a “clean” racer. It’s an emotional and unfortunately relevant topic for any fan of professional road racing. Here’s a teaser for you.

After winning Denmark, it would have been reasonable for me to think that I didn’t have to go to Italy, that if I worked hard and put my head down and believed in myself, I could win the Vuelta prologue – clean.

Perhaps if I’d had people – somebody – around me whom I could have talked to about it, then that might have been the conclusion I’d have come to and I’d have canceled the trip to Tuscany.

This is an example of the problem Millar describes as a lack of support for those racers trying to stay clean. He stops short of blaming his decision to dope on pressure from the sport or his team; in fact, he receives very little direct pressure. But the culture surrounding him, so nonchalantly accepting of doping, as he portrays it, makes it difficult for him to resist at a certain point, and no one supports his attempt to stay clean. There is definitely a discussion point here about the meaning and power of peer pressure, alongside the ever-looming question of “clean” competition vs. doping in sports and cycling in particular… I will say for now that Millar never struck me as making excuses. Review to come after this book’s US publication date. [Note: this book has been out in the UK for almost a year. US pub is this June.]

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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Critical Wit Podcast interview: Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles

Posted on June 4, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Here’s the latest installment! Check out my interview of Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles (which you know I loved), over at Critical Wit Podcast today. I really enjoyed talking with Madeline and discussing the Greek myths that we both love so much – and she was able to educate me on several points. Don’t forget to check out her website here. And now the interview!

Madeline (photo credit Nina Subin)

me

Breaking news:

Just last week the winner of the prestigious Orange Prize was announced, and the winner is… my gracious interviewee, Madeline Miller, for her debut novel The Song of Achilles! The Orange Prize “celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world” (quoted from their website). Congratulations, Madeline!

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book beginnings on Friday: The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Posted on June 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I am listening to The Prestige based on the recommendations of (I think) multiple fellow book bloggers. I am fairly sure that one of them was The Boston Bibliophile, but I am only fairly sure of that, and the other recommender(s) escape me. At any rate… I know the book involves magicians, stage magic, and I know little else, so here we are:

It began on a train, heading north through England, although I was soon to discover that the story had really begun more than a hundred years earlier. I had no sense of any of this at the time: I was on company time, following up a report of an incident at a religious sect.

I like that, “it began on a train…” reminds me actually of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and there are worse things than evoking the Queen of Crime! Although she’s a hard act to follow… I’ll keep you posted.

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