On Being a Book Reviewer

One of the pleasures of reading widely is recommending books to others. I have always done this informally, but in my adult life, I have also occasionally done it more formally, through published book reviews. My first taste of such reviewing came perhaps thirty years ago, when for several years, I had a column in the alumni bulletin of the boarding school I attended in India; my column was titled "Books about India." Later I was the book review editor for, and reviewed several books myself for, the journal "Peace Review"; those reviews were of books related to peace and social justice topics. Since then, I have fairly frequently published book reviews in various professional journals in my field and related fields. One of the reasons I so much enjoy writing this blog is that I can informally "review" books of various types that I read for my own enjoyment.

"The Gin Closet"

I have just finished reading, in one big draught (I started it last night and finished it this morning), the novel "The Gin Closet" (Free Press, 2010), by Leslie Jamison. In brief, the plot involves Stella, a young woman unsure about what to do with her life, going to find her long lost aunt, Tilly, who left home after being raped and has spent the past 30 years as an alcoholic and prostitute. This novel is mostly about women: Tilly, Stella, Stella's mother Dora and grandmother Lucy, and Tilly's friends Fiona and Winnie. All are sympathetic characters, despite their frightening weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The men are mostly absent, dangerous, or useless, with a few exceptions, the most important one being Abe, Tilly's grown son, who truly cares about her and tries to save her. The main subjects of the novel are alcoholism and family. Readers are ineluctably confronted with the hard truths of alcoholism, and even when we are given brief reprieves and signs of hope, we are always jarringly and painfully forced back to the reality of the world of the alcoholic. The same dynamic plays out regarding family: the tangles, deep misunderstandings and longlasting resentments, fears, and love are all heartbreakingly portrayed, yet we are granted reprieves and hope as characters reach out and try to help each other. Even when they fail in their efforts, as they usually do, there is a residue of hope and possibility, and of belief in the family connections that are never completely severed. Although my description of "The Gin Closet" may discourage readers, I recommend the novel for its honesty and for the human kindness that leavens the bleakness of the main characters' lives. The author of this novel, amazingly, is only 26 years old, but exhibits the control and mastery of a much older writer.

My 1992 List for Women Students

In 1992, when I gave an invited talk,"Books by and about Women: How They Teach, Nurture, Sustain and Delight Us," in a women's dormitory at the university where I teach, I gave the students a list of women writers of fiction. I recently ran across that list in an old file, and decided to post it here. Although I am less impressed by a few of the listed authors (e.g., Alice Hoffman, Whitney Otto, Marge Piercy, Robb Forman Dew, Diane Johnson, Alice McDermott) now than I was in 1992, I still think it is a pretty good list. If I were to make such a list today, I would include more writers of more varying ethnicities and national backgrounds, as we are fortunate to have more diversity in published authors now than we did back then. Below is the list:

Adams, Alice
Allende, Isabel
Atwood, Margaret
Austen, Jane
Bowen, Elizabeth
Bradley, Marion Zimmer
Bronte, Charlotte
Brookner, Anita
Cather, Willa
Chopin, Kate
Colette
Desai, Anita
Dew, Robb Forman
Drabble, Margaret
Eliot, George
Erdrich, Louise
French, Marilyn
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Gibbons, Kaye
Godwin, Gail
Gordimer, Nadine
Gordon, Mary
Hoffman, Alice
Humphreys, Josephine
Hurston, Zora Neale
Johnson, Diane
Kingsolver, Barbara
Lessing, Doris
Marshall, Paule
Mason, Bobbie Ann
McCorkle, Jill
McDermott, Alice
Miller, Sue
Morrison, Toni
Mukherjee, Bharati
Munro, Alice
Naylor, Gloria
Otto, Whitney
Piercy, Marge
Pym, Barbara
Rhys, Jean
Robinson, Marilynne
Settle, Mary Lee
Simpson, Mona
Tan, Amy
Tyler, Anne
Walker, Alice
Welty, Eudora
Wharton, Edith
Woolf, Virginia

On Not Finishing "Lit"

Mary Karr's first memoir, the searing, raw, and devastating story of her childhood with alcoholic parents, "The Liars' Club" (Viking, 1995), is considered by many to have precipitated the flood of memoirs since then. After "Liars' Club," Karr published another memoir, "Cherry" (Viking, 2000), and now her third memoir "Lit" (Harper, 2009) has appeared. I resisted "Liars' Club" for quite a while, but finally read it at the urging of several friends, and was glad I did. I skipped "Cherry," but good reviews of "Lit" led me to check it out of the library and begin reading. I acknowledge that Karr is a gifted writer, and that her sad, defiant, honest, courageous, and even sometimes funny story is often compelling. But the book also started to feel repetitive and dreary, and although I suppose that is part of the point of a memoir that focuses on alcoholism (this time hers) and its sometimes horrific consequences, I just didn't feel like trudging any further into the story. So I didn't. I stopped reading at page 175, just under halfway through the book. In the past ten years or so, I have increasingly given myself permission to stop reading books that I am not enjoying or am tired of reading or just don't feel like reading more of. I didn't expect "Lit" to be one of those books, but there it is.

What to Keep and What to Let Go

On 3/28/10, I wrote about various ways that books are recycled. I acknowledge, though, that for an individual who is a great reader, it is hard to decide which books to borrow from a library, which to buy and keep, and which to buy and pass on to friends or charities or used bookstores. Even with many bookshelves at home and in my office, I have to regularly and severely control and trim the number of books I keep; there just isn't enough room to keep everything. My general guideline for deciding is that if I think I will only read a book once, I borrow it, or buy it - generally in paperback - and then pass it along. If it is a book that I think I will re-read, or will be useful for my teaching or my writing, or is a reference book, or is a book by one of my very most treasured authors (Austen, most prominently, but also Woolf, Wharton, and Cather), I will buy and keep it. Even with the books I keep, I execute regular "purgings" every year or two, and more extreme purgings every decade or so, and/or when I move to a different house or office. Not only do I give away individual books, but also sometimes whole categories of books, such as books relating to a class I don't plan to teach again. My biggest giveaway took place perhaps 25 years ago, when my parents needed me to take or give away the boxes of books -- many from college days -- that I was still storing with them, years after I had moved away. Doing so was hard, and sad, but in a way exhilarating, as I gave away books to family members, friends, and the beautiful little library in the Northern Michigan community where my parents had a summer cottage. I have to admit that after this event, I felt lighter, freer. This feeling of lightness is -- besides the practical, physical advantage of freeing up bookshelf and storage space, and the knowledge that other readers will enjoy your books -- the main benefit of giving away books. I came to realize that as much as I love books, I actually don't want thousands of them in my possession; they would weigh me down. What I want is to enjoy books, keep some special ones, and pass the rest on. As I mentioned in earlier blog entries (1/24/10 and 1/25/10), I keep a list of what I read; perhaps, among other things, this list is a sort of surrogate for keeping the actual books.

"The Privileges"

Reading "The Privileges" (Random House, 2010), by Jonathan Dee, made me feel a little soiled, a little sad, and a little mad. Dee portrays amoral, materialistic, unlikeable characters: Adam, a financier (doing something obscure, complicated, secret, and illegal with hedge funds, insider trading, and the like), his wife Cynthia, their children, and their friends. The fact that the couple eventually become philanthropists doesn't erase their essential negative characteristics: from the opening scenes before, during, and after their wedding, they think of themselves as special, invincible, and above the normal rules. I know that Dee is giving us insight into a very wealthy stratum of American families, and a substratum of those families who achieve their wealth through Wall Street misdeeds; I know too that, as Tom Perotta's back cover blurb says, the novel is "an indictment of an entire social class and historical moment, while also providing a window onto some recent, and peculiarly American, forms of decadence." It is of course good to reveal and critique these dangerous and selfish excesses, and the topic is certainly timely, given our current economic situation and the role of Wall Street in bringing us to this destructive place. But the book itself is disturbing. The sense of entitlement shown by the characters is astonishing. At one point Adam, in a rare moment of introspection, justifies his illegal practices to himself, thinking "he had done what he'd had to do...to get them all...to that place of limitlessness that she [his wife] so deserved and that he had always had faith they would occupy" (p. 170). I am actually very interested in the topic of privilege; I have addressed the subject myself in my academic writing. I admit that I started reading "The Privileges" partly because of the topic, and partly because I have a predilection for novels taking place in the affluent sections of Manhattan -- a sort of guilty pleasure. I must admit that the novel is well written. But still, I had a visceral negative reaction to it, and I can't recommend it to others.

Books for my Mom

My wonderful mother was widowed six years ago, and moved to a retirement home last year. After a lifetime of working, raising four children, and running households in three countries, she no longer needs to cook meals or do housework in her new apartment. One delightful result is that she has more time to read than she has ever had before, which she is enjoying. One of my great pleasures is supplying her with books. Of course she has, buys, and borrows books on her own, but because I read so many reviews and go to bookstores and libraries more often than she does, I have more opportunities to find books for her. One of my best sources is the monthly Friends of the Library book sale at my beautiful local library. The sale is filled with huge quantities of books, all donated and only very slightly used, nicely organized and shelved, the vast majority of them for sale at only a dollar or two per book. I often leave with a pile of 10 or 20 books, a few for myself but mostly for my mom. The next time I see her, I deliver a bag or two full of carefully chosen books. I know her taste fairly well. And even if I mistakenly choose a book that she has already read, or doesn't care for, at a dollar or so, she can simply pass it along to a friend or to the small library in her retirement complex. I have always given my mother books for Christmas and her birthday, but this new, more regular choosing and giving of books is a happy experience for both of us.