Teaser Tuesdays: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Posted on January 31, 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!

Still working on Anna Karenina (and I will be for a little while longer!). Today I had to give you this noteworthy teaser…

…she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question…

From Part 2, chapter 23. Anybody else a little offended?

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book beginnings on Friday: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Posted on January 20, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 have begun listening to Anna Karenina on audio! Am I crazy? It’s almost 40 hours long! But I enjoy it so far.

I wanted to share the beginning with you. It’s a famous line, and one I recognized, but I didn’t know where from.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Lovely, no?

It is likely to be a while before you see a review of this one. 🙂 With my usual listening time, I figure I can finish this within a month. Stay tuned! Anybody out there have anything wonderful (or not) to say about Tolstoy? This is my first experience with him.

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The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck (audio)

Posted on January 19, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I don’t remember where I got the recommendation for Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down. As far as I can tell, it’s not one of his better-known works; I know and love his Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Travels with Charley, saw the movie East of Eden though I haven’t read it (yet!), also have The Grapes of Wrath on my radar. But this one I hadn’t heard much of. It was recommended to me (by someone) and I found the audio, and it’s just a short little thing on three cds, so it was easy to make time for. I do love Steinbeck’s style and subject matter, and this one is worthy of his high reputation.

Published in 1942, it handles the occupation of a small town in northern Europe by an army that has a lot in common with Hitler’s Germany, though it’s never named. There are references to “The Leader” and a war twenty years past that bears a resemblance to WWI.

This small coastal town is conquered with very little fanfare; 6 of the town’s 12 soldiers are killed, and it takes the people and the mayor a little while to realize what’s happened. The town is a center for coal production, which makes it an important possession, and the occupying force lodges its officers in the mayor’s house while managing coal production. Colonel Lancer has seen war before, and is weary of the tragic consequences of the orders he must carry out; he’d rather rule in peace and order, but the occupation quickly turns ugly. The local people learn to resist, and the occupiers live in fear. One memorable line occurs when one of the occupying officers – lonely for his homeland, friendly faces, and female attentions – wails at the senselessness and unpleasantness of their situation. “Flies conquer the flypaper!” he bitterly says of the occupation.

It’s been a while since I’ve read any Steinbeck, but I recognized his style. The prose is simple, yet moving. This is both a straightforward story of one fictional town’s experience, and an allegory and statement about the futility of war. I’m sure this short novel would make for extended discussion in an educational setting, and I wish I had a professor to help me pick it apart! But as a quick read for entertainment’s sake, too, it’s satisfying, if not happy.

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The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue by P.G. Wodehouse

Posted on January 15, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Here we are again with Bertram Wooster and his unrivaled valet, Jeeves. This is the third full-length novel in the series (see my reviews of the first two, Thank You, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves). In this installment, Bertie is recovering from a hangover following his old pal Augustus “Gussie” Fink-Nottle’s bachelor party, when his Aunt Dahlia sends him off on an errand to sniff derisively at a silver cow creamer (it only gets weirder from here, stay with me) and thereby hopefully lower the price for his Uncle Tom who desires it. But a rival collector buys it out from under Uncle Tom, and Aunt Dahlia sends him off a step further: to the country home of the cow creamer’s new owner, Sir Watkyn Bassett, to steal it from him. Bertie was already on his way there, at Gussie’s request, to help patch the rift in Gussie’s engagement to the Bassett daughter, Madeline. Upon arrival, he finds the cow creamer extremely well-guarded, suspicious and threatening parties all around, and a second couple on the rocks: the Bassett niece, Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, and the local curate Harold “Stinker” Pinker, another old school chum of Bertie’s. Before he knows it, he’s engaged to steal cow creamers on the behalves of several rival parties, and that’s just the beginning of the mix-ups to come. Bertie (and Gussie, and Stinker) are threatened with incarceration and bodily harm as well as called-off weddings, or Bertie’s enforced marriage to one or the other of the girls, among other frightening fates.

If you haven’t figured it out, funny names are among Wodehouse’s several areas of genius. Husband is still laughing at What-Whatley from Thank You, Jeeves.

This was decidedly another delightfully laugh-out-loud funny and silly Jeeves book. I had a grand time. The antics of Bertie Wooster, his many incompetencies, and the completely deadpan assistance provided by his “man” are incomparable. This series is also incomparably silly, so if you struggle with silliness, beware. If, however, you appreciate silliness, also beware: other drivers think I’m crazy as I laugh out loud while driving around with these audiobooks in my car. I highly recommend Jonathon Cecil’s narration and hope I can listen to him narrate the entire series.

On the other hand, I struggled with something in Code of the Woosters that I don’t remember encountering in the first two books: misogyny. This is Bertie’s misogyny as opposed to Wodehouse’s – although of course there is not necessarily or even very often a difference, is there? (This book appears to have been published originally in 1938, partially explaining the issue.) Bertie is afflicted by the women in his life. These are generally his female peers in their relationships with his old school friends, and his aunts (“the aged ancestor” etc.). The first person voice of Bertie, then, laments the difficulty of the female sex. What the reader finds easy to observe, of course, is that it is not just the perversities of the females that accosts him – it is also his own ineptitude, and that of his male friends. (Gussie Fink-Nottle is a hopeless wreck in ways that can be blamed on no female, unless of course one blames his mother.) If this element was present in the first two books I loved, I missed it. Here, it came up repeatedly, until I got a little exasperated with hearing about how obnoxious, trying, immoral, and difficult Bertie finds women. I wonder if he ever becomes attached to one throughout the series? I’m not put off enough to give up, so I’ll let you know in our next installment of the comic Bertie & Jeeves duo.

My final (and minor) quibble with The Code of the Woosters is in the final fate of Constable Oates. I won’t give the finish away, but suffice it to say: when we first meet Oates he is assaulted by a vicious Aberdeen terrier while riding his bicycle, resulting in a crash, and he earned my sympathy (obviously) immediately. He does nothing more offensive in the rest of the story than want his personal property returned to him; he doesn’t even appear to share in Sir Watkyn Bassett’s ambition to throw the thief in the “chokey.” For him to come up for Bertie’s hostility seems unfair to me; I felt for Oates, myself. But that’s the final quibble.

I enjoyed this hilarious book far more than I was bothered by it, and highly recommend Wodehouse for giggles aloud. Audiobook lovers, please look out for Jonathon Cecil; he has come to embody Bertie, Jeeves, and the rest to me. Laugh on.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

Posted on January 13, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 always delighted to jump into another Jeeves episode by Wodehouse; they are just too darned funny! And I’ve been hooked on Jonathon Cecil’s narration of them from the start. I definitely recommend his versions on audio. Here’s our beginning of The Code of the Woosters:

I reached a hand from under the blankets, and rang the bell for Jeeves.
‘Good evening, Jeeves.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
This surprised me.

Review to come soon. Please keep your eyes open for Wodehouse; I don’t think you’ll regret it!

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Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland (audio)

Posted on January 8, 2012 by pagesofjulia

This was a lovely little audiobook. The writing beautifully, lyrically evokes the setting. At the start of the book, I recognized the tone and I’m sure there’s a literary term for it, although it escapes me; it actually reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Gray (which, however, I didn’t like). There was that same tone of desperate passion for a work of art; there was a similar element of a painting dominating a man. It was emotional, emotive. But it seemed to calm down as the book progressed, getting more contemplative, quieter, more introspective. And that was really nice, too.

The book is about a painting of a girl in a blue smock, taking a moment’s break from sewing buttons onto a shirt to look out a window. It is variously named by different characters in the story; the title is one name for it. The book opens in a present-day setting: a teacher invites a colleague back to his house to show him a painting he’s kept secret until now. He claims it is a long-lost Vermeer. (Vermeer is the real-life Dutch master who painted The Girl with a Pearl Earring.) From there, we trace the painting’s history backwards through time, through its various owners and caretakers, back to its painter and the moment of inspiration, visiting the girl who sat for it.

An obvious comparison to this book presented itself immediately: Tracy Chevalier’s very successful Girl With a Pearl Earring, which was made into a movie starring Scarlett Johansson. I thought both the book and the movie were lovely, and for others who enjoyed either, I highly recommend Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Not only is the subject matter very like (a fictionalized explanation of the history and inspiration of a Vermeer – or a questionable Vermeer), I found the tone to be reminiscent, as well. It’s interesting to think of these two as companion pieces. It’s been a few years since I read Pearl Earring (maybe that was 2004 or thereabouts?), so maybe my memory is warped, but they struck me as very alike. And for the record, it looks like both were originally published in 1999, so I don’t think anyone copy-catted anyone else!

The portraits of life painted (no pun intended – really she’s an artist) by Vreeland are remarkable. They’re very clear and realistic and whimsical, lovely vignettes into a nice selection of times and places. We meet Dutch, German, and American characters spanning several centuries, and each is neatly portrayed and very enjoyable even as brief snippets – meaning, each might stand alone nicely even without being part of a larger story. In fact, they stand alone so well that in the audio format, with a different reader for each, I kept thinking the book had ended! A person might even say each brief portrayal of a person or family’s life resembles a Vermeer painting, particularly when we get to the middle-class Dutch folks of his own period.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue is an effortless read with beautiful characterizations and scenes of life from a number of times and places, presenting the engaging puzzle of a beautiful painting and its questionable provenance. I highly recommend it.

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book beginnings on Friday: Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland

Posted on January 6, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 enjoyed Vreeland’s Clara and Mr. Tiffany so much that I was happy to find this audiobook at my local public library. So far it’s beautiful. We’re just meeting the eponymous Girl, in a painting that may or may not be an undiscovered Vermeer – evoking another lovely Girl, Girl With a Pearl Earring. But first, let’s meet Cornelius. Here’s your beginning.

Cornelius Engelbrecht invented himself. Let me emphasize, straight away, that he isn’t what I would call a friend, but I know him enough to say that he did purposely design himself: single, modest dresser in receding colors, mathematics teacher, sponsor of the chess club, mild-mannered acquaintance to all rather than a friend to any, a person anxious to become invisible.

Haven’t we learned a lot in just a few lines, and aren’t they well done? I’m liking this so far. How does your weekend reading look?

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Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (audio)

Posted on December 31, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Left Neglected evoked strong reactions from me, which I think is always a recommendation.

Sarah Nickerson is in her late 30’s, happily married to Bob, with three children (Charlie, Lucy and Linus), and a successful career in a male-dominated hectic corporate world of 80-hour work weeks. She is accustomed to using every odd moment to send emails, make phone calls, or read up on work; she would be lost without her nanny Abby; a slight traffic delay costs her the chance to read to her daughter before bed. In other words, she likes her life, but it’s jam-packed-full with no room for error.

The error comes one rainy day on the freeway; a traffic accident leaves Sarah with a unique sort of brain injury called “left neglect.” She’s missing the left side of her consciousness of the world. She can’t find or use her left arm, her left hand, her left leg; she can’t see things or people on the left side of the room, her dinner plate, her world. She can’t conceive of left. Sarah wakes up in a hospital and has to laboriously relearn everything. Juggling international corporate intrigue with a staff of 1000’s is no longer her primary concern; she can’t even dress herself.

Sometimes post-accident Sarah’s whining and frustration with her condition annoyed me, and sometimes pre-accident Sarah irritated me with her material and work-related priorities. But overall, she was definitely a sympathetic character; and if I was sometimes mad at her, that only made our relationship stronger in the end. As in a real friendship, we had our ups and downs, and our bond increased through those trials.

I sometimes felt that Genova tried to maximize the angst. Sarah’s flashbacks to the childhood death of her brother Nate, and its repercussions for her present-day relationship with her mother, might have been pushing the psych-drama angle a little bit. But overall, it worked.

I was reminded of another book, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. I read that one pre-blog so no review here, but it touched me very deeply. Taylor’s book is nonfiction, and deals with a different brain injury; but the two are similar in that they describe a brain injury from the patient’s perspective, along with the recovery. I suffered a brain injury in a bicycle accident in 2007, and while I was lucky to suffer less severe injury than either of these protagonists, I still found myself identifying. My own recovery was fascinating to me and made me think about things I’d never considered before; when I read My Stroke of Insight a year or so later, it helped me look at my own experience and learn from it. Left Neglected held a similar self-referential interest for me. (To go even further out on a limb: I’m now doing physical therapy following my knee surgery, and trying to get back to mountain bike racing. The connection is vague and yet I can’t help but compare my frustrations to the fictional Sarah’s. Again, my injury is very minor by comparison. But the cycle of optimism and pessimism, frustration and success, crosses over.) All of this means that when Sarah gets annoying – failing to recognize how lucky she’s been; refusing to work hard with her therapists; wanting to give up and cry – I’m annoyed, and yet I understand, too.

The massive change in the way Sarah views her world – and not just in terms of right and left – may seem ambitious, even unrealistic, to some readers. This might be said too of Taylor’s change in philosophy in My Stroke of Insight. But in both cases it rang very true for me. I felt that I had traveled so far with the protagonists, both fictional and non, that I was right there with them at the end of their stories. Is my outlook unique? Possibly, but I doubt it. I think we’ve probably all had some life-changing experience (hopefully less painful than the ones detailed here) that allows us to get inside Sarah Nickerson’s head a little bit.

Maybe it’s odd that I’m drawing such a strong parallel between two books that are really rather different, but they both affected me strongly. In the end I give Left Neglected very high marks, and I’m interested in Genova’s earlier novel, Still Alice. For those who are curious, she does have credibility in this subject matter: she has a PhD in neuroscience. Check it out. And if/when you have/do, please let me know if this book touches you as it’s touched me. Here’s to being thankful for our health!

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did not finish: Upgunned by David J. Schow and Cosmopolis by Don Delillo (audio)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Just very briefly here, because I didn’t get very far into either…

David J. Schow was the screenwriter of The Crow and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. These credentials are not terribly meaningful to me, not being a fan of horror movies, but they did give me some hope. Upgunned begins with the perspective of a semi-celebrity photographer of the scuzzy, scummy upper crust – drug-addled anorexics and the like. He is kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to take blackmail photos of a local politician. And then the perspective shifts to the man behind the gun.

The plot premise was mildly interesting to me – I can get into a good thriller regardless of framing elements if it’s done right – but the writing and characters didn’t hold up. I found both early characters a little bit cartoonish and overdone, the society in question was just a little too sickening for my taste, and the writing did nothing to redeem it. Nancy Pearl would be disappointed as I quit just 48 pages in, but I couldn’t motivate any further than that.

This DNF review is based on a galley sent to me by the publisher. Many thanks!

I have fond memories of Don Delillo from his amazing White Noise (and also my buddy Jerko is a big fan and I value his opinions). But Cosmopolis didn’t hold up. (And to be fair, Jerko specifically did not recommend it.) I made it maybe an hour in, which I think should count as 50 pages, if only just. 🙂 The story of Eric Packer’s billionaire troubles while wending his way through the city in his limousine (as pictured on the cover) failed to make me feel anything deep. Delillo’s trademark tone of detached despair is there, but the writing feels a little stilted, a little overdeveloped. Mostly though, I just couldn’t get interested in Packer’s fate.

Am I a little disenchanted and difficult-to-please these days? Hey, it’s possible. We all go through those phases. I will point out, though, that I attempted these two DNFs within a week of reading my two most recent additions to the Best of 2011 list: 11/22/63 and The Home-Maker. So maybe everything else pales in comparison. 🙂 At any rate, I’m sure there’s more outstanding reading right around the corner, and I hope the same for you as well!

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Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (audio), trans. by Sandra Smith

Posted on December 26, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Pagesofjulia earlier published a guest review of this audiobook by my father. He did an excellent job of telling the backstory, so I’m just going to quote him here.

Much of the impact derives from knowing the author’s own story and how the book came to life. Born 1903, she was a Russian Jewish immigrant to France (1918), converted to the Catholic Church (1939), published numerous works of renown before the war (including one brought to film), was denied French citizenship in 1938 due to Jewish heritage, and has since been criticized for being a self-hating Jew. She was in the course of writing this work as events unfolded, expecting to create a novel in 5 parts. She finished two parts, was denounced by French collaborators and deported to Auschwitz where she died within a month. Many more of her writings were published since the war. But her daughters retained this notebook manuscript, keeping it unread until 1990 due to anxiety over the expected pain of reading her wartime “journal” – only then, before donating the pages to an archive, did they realize what powerful words those pages held. Written 1940-42, it was published in 2004, acclaimed, translated and read internationally.

(I don’t know where he gets his info from, but his write-up appears to agree with what the rest of the interwebs tells me.)

The backstory does indeed increase the impact of this story for me. For one thing, knowing that she wrote without knowledge of how the story ended makes some of her predictions and judgments especially poignant.

I think the most remarkable aspects of this book for me were the beautiful writing, and the tone of dry humor. See my Teaser Tuesday and Book Beginnings posts featuring this book for a few snippets I appreciated. The poetry flowed so naturally and yet painted such lovely pictures, without ever feeling forced. And as for the tone – Némirovsky does not spare the French, particularly the upper classes. While they are “victims” of the Nazis, they don’t read as sympathetic characters most of the time; see again that teaser post above for some of her cutting satire (and it goes on from there). The Germans sometimes come across more sympathetically, which I found interesting and not entirely expected. It’s easy to denigrate the Nazis, right? But Némirovsky gives us a truth: these were all just people, elementally.

Perhaps the point that drove Némirovsky’s story home for me the most – that is, both Suite Française and her own real-life story – was the ending of the book. Némirovsky’s daughter chose to publish as one book the first two in an intended series of five novels (so says Wikipedia). She also left behind the outlines of the third part. But in effect, this book ends very abruptly to me, leaving many threads unresolved. The abruptness of the ending was of course made more stark for me in audio format – I’m walking along, listening to the book on my earbuds, and then, nothing. What? Is that the END? I had gotten so engrossed in the story – worried about Bruno, wondering what Lucile would do next – that I’d forgotten the similar plight of the author herself (in that her future was being torn apart and eventually her life ended by the same forces at work in the book). So the cutting off of her work in progress ended up telling the same story for me that her book tells within its pages. I found that very powerful.

Suite Française has an interesting story to tell, both between its covers and without. It is beautifully written, humbling, stark and poignant. The same Wikipedia page (above) calls it “possibly the earliest work of literary fiction about World War II.” It’s really something, and you should check it out. But beware unintended cliffhangers.

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