Three Generations of Reading Women

My daughter M., whose demanding job keeps her working long hours, recently told me that it felt like such a luxury, almost a mini-vacation, to very occasionally take an hour or two to sit on the couch and read. She is currently reading and enjoying Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth.” (Lahiri is one of my favorite current American authors as well.) In addition, my mother often tells me of how much she enjoys reading even more than in the past, now that she lives in a retirement home and has more time than ever before. I have written here (3/30/10) of how it gives me pleasure to select, gather and give my mom piles of books I think she will enjoy. She just finished, and absolutely loved, one of the books I gave her, Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible” (also a favorite of mine). She told me she got so involved in it that she would rush back to her apartment after meals to continue reading it. I know that feeling! And you all know -- since you are reading this blog -- how much I -- the middle generation -- love to read. I am currently re-re-reading (it is one of the novels I go back to over and over again) “Middlemarch,” which I will post about here soon. So I just flashed on this lovely mental picture of the three of us, three generations of women, each curled up on her respective couch or chair, eagerly and with pleasure reading our various novels, and then sharing with each other what we are reading and how we are feeling about those books. This vision makes me very happy!

Why Don't Boys Read More?

Are there “Girl Books and Boy Books?” as I asked when I wrote here on 4/22/10 about how some of my female and male students responded differently to a novel they read for my class? As I said then, the topic of whether and why females and males, on average, have overlapping but different tastes in books is too large and too fraught to summarize here. But I wondered about the gender question and books again recently when I read Robert Lipsyte’s essay, “The Lost Boys,” in the 8/21/11 New York Times Book Review. Lipsyte states that “boys’ aversion to reading, let alone to novels, has been worsening for years.” He discusses several possible reasons, but posits that one of the main ones is that most Y.A. (Young Adult) fiction is aimed toward girls. “At least three-quarters of the target audience [is] girls, and they [want] to read about mean girls, gossip girls, frenemies and vampires.” He goes on to say about current Y.A. titles that “books with story lines about disease, divorce, death and dysfunction [sell] better for girls than…for boys.” Whatever the reasons, it is unfortunate that boys read less than girls, and if publishing more high quality Y.A. titles that appeal to boys is the answer, or part of the answer, I hope that publishers will respond to Lipsyte’s essay by trying to do this.

Memorable Novels about War

Another in my "memorable" series: Memorable Novels about War

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
From Here to Eternity, by James Jones
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Regeneration, by Pat Barker
Three Soldiers, by John Dos Passos
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

There have also been many novels about, or including material on, the aftereffects of war. To me, one of the most memorable of these is Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," in which the character Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked World War I veteran; his pain and suffering are visceral and powerfully portrayed by Woolf.

"One Day": The Film

A year ago, I posted a positive review of English writer David Nicholls’ novel “One Day” (8/16/10), a wonderful take on the theme of two friends who over the years sometimes veer into the territory of romance, but no matter what, always provide staunch support for each other through thick and thin. The suspense of the story is in wondering “will they or won’t they” get together as romantic partners, but there is so much more to the story. I recently saw the film version of “One Day.” Although the screenplay was written by the author, Nicholls, and stayed fairly close to the novel’s story, certain elements were left out or smoothed over, as is common in film versions. The result is that the movie is still absorbing, but less so than the novel. However, once again I got caught up in Emma’s and Dexter’s stories; it is fascinating to watch their lives develop over a period of twenty years. Each year we “check in” on them on July 15, St. Swithin’s Day. We watch their bright hopes for their futures, their stumbles, their confusions, their successes, their failures, their need for each other, their other romances, their relationships with their families, and the way they always lean on each other, and keep connecting and reconnecting. It is an absorbing observation of young adults growing and (unevenly!) maturing, trying to figure out this thing called grown-up life. We also learn much -- indirectly -- about British society, the class system in England, and gender roles. Jim Sturgess is wonderful as Emma; Anne Hathaway is appealing but less convincing as Emma; unfortunately, her struggles with the accent are a bit distracting. Patricia Clarkson is perfect, as always, as Dexter’s mother. Overall I recommend the film, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the novel.

"Enough about Love," by Herve Le Tellier

In the past few months, I have read, enjoyed, and posted here about several novels and memoirs set in France. The most recent is “Enough About Love” (Other Press, 2009, translation 2010), by Herve Le Tellier, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. This novel is the story of two affairs and the complications that ensue among the four main characters and their families. It is all very modern and French (at least according to our American stereotypes about the French…). I enjoyed reading it, and found the characters well drawn. But it seems to me that there is something hollow at the core of the story, or perhaps of the characters. Although the novel is all about love and passion, it somehow seems that at least some of the characters are on some level playing an intellectual game, standing outside themselves and watching the game with great interest. This is particularly true of Anna, a psychoanalyst having an affair with Yves, a writer. Yves, by the way, ends by writing a book that sounds (intentionally) suspiciously like this book, the one sitting on my desk as I write. Very “meta.” The novel is structured a bit like classical farce; the reader can almost imagine a carefully choreographed dance, or stage play, with various characters entering and exiting through various stage doors. This impression is reinforced by the organization of the book, which consists of dozens of short chapters, each titled with the name or names of certain characters, such as “Thomas,” “Louise and Romain,” and “Anna and Yves.” Something that bothered me about the book, though: At the risk of sounding old-fashioned and prudish (which I don’t think I am), a part of me -- the emotional part, not the intellectual part -- feels that the novel doesn’t represent accurately, or enough, the problems, even devastation, brought about by affairs that threaten and sometimes destroy longtime marriages, especially when there are children. In this novel, the characters briefly talk about difficulties, and about feeling torn by the situation, but the problems don’t feel viscerally real. And the young children of the original marriages seem remarkably and -- it seems to me -- unrealistically unaffected by the affairs, even going on outings with and liking their mothers’ lovers. This novel offers many pleasures, including the Paris setting and the virtuoso writing. I am glad to have read it. But finally it seems to me a bit too much of an intellectual exercise that doesn’t truly engage the heart.

Memorable Comic Writers

One of the joys available from books is great comic writing. Such writing not only makes us laugh, but makes us recognize human foibles and see the world in a new way. The terrific writers listed below do not necessarily always work in a comic vein, but each of them has written at least one wonderful comic work and/or has woven comic characters and situations throughout her/his work. I thank these authors for the great reading pleasure I have experienced over the years from reading their work.

Amis, Kingsley
Austen, Jane
Beerbohm, Max
Bennett, Alan
Benson, E.F.
Dickens, Charles
Delafield, E.M.
Fielding, Henry
Heller, Joseph
Hornby, Nick
Lodge, David
Macaulay, Rose
Mitford, Nancy
Pym, Barbara
Shakespeare, William
Thackeray, William
Thirkell, Angela
Twain, Mark
Vonnegut, Kurt
Waugh, Evelyn
Wodehouse, P. G.

This and That: Mini-Stories

Yesterday’s Sunday (8/21/11) San Francisco Chronicle book section had several interesting mini-stories:
1. A page full of colorful images of book covers illustrates the fact that whenever cover designers want to show that books take place in San Francisco, they almost inevitably use images of the Golden Gate Bridge. Seeing these Bridge-bedecked covers -- some quite lurid -- all together on one page is striking and a bit amusing.
2. Although Charles Dickens wrote in his will “I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatsoever,” the first-ever statue of him in Britain will be erected in Portsmouth next year.
3. Ann Patchett, author of “Bel Canto,” “Run,” and “State of Wonder,” will open a bookstore in Nashville in October; she says “I don’t want to live in a city that doesn’t have an independent bookstore.” Brava, Ann Patchett!
4. The highest earning authors in the world last year were James Patterson ($84 million), Danielle Steel ($35 million), Stephen King ($28 million), Janet Evanovich ($22 million), and Stephenie Meyer ($21 million). No comment.