The Sunday Salon - Girlishness (and Giveaways)

 

 Oh, to be a girl again and be preoccupied with girlish things … the right shade of lipgloss, the perfect pair of platform shoes, a special date for the dance and a sparkly new dress to wear, the heady anticipation of that first kiss, and the second or third….

Alas, the ravenous reader is no longer a girl- far from it - but through the magic of books I’ve spent this week recapturing some of the splendid anticipation and excitement that is girlhood.  Come on over - I have the house to myself, we can turn the hi-fi up as loud as we want, sneak some rum into our cokes, and I’ll tell you all about it.  Welcome to Sunday Salon.

Dedication, the new novel by the authors of The Nanny Diaries, Emma McLaughling and Nicola Strauss, is about as girlish as it gets.  Kate Hollis, a 30-something environmentalist, has been yearning to forget her high school boyfriend ever since he stood her up for the prom.  It’s been quite impossible, though, since he’s a mega singing star who used her and her family as material for the lyrics of his hit records.  Now, he’s back in her life, complete with entourage and paparazzi, begging her for a second chance.

The book see-saws between Kate’s formative years, from middle school through college, and the present day.  The reader gets to watch Jake and Kate’s relationship develop from gawky adolescent crush into steamy teenage romance.  McLaughlin and Strauss (and how cute it that, anyway, two girlfriends writing a book together?) do a great job of capturing the feel of middle school and high school relationships and friendships, for no matter what the actual era, the boy-girl dance doesn’t change all that much.  I was catapulted right back to my first romantic experiences, especially with scenes like this, where the smallest physical connection becomes heightened with meaning and sensation.

Jake grins, his green eyes glittering as he slides his flip-flop across the stair next to my sandal, the tip of his toe touching mine.  “What’s your deal, Katie Hollis?”

My breath quickens.  “I don’t know…I guess I just think people should say what’s on their minds.”

He lies back on the landing, his face in shadow, his shirt riding up, revealing the ivory contours of his hip bone, the muscular indentation, the downy hairs running from his belly button into his shorts.  Our toes touching. “So?”

“Yes?” I ask.

“What’s on yours?”

“Like, what specifically?”

“Like you and me, ” he says into the darkness.

Oh my, is it getting warm in here?

As much fun as it was, reading Kate’s story and reliving all that teenage angst, I admit to identifying more with Kate’s mother, particularly when she tries to warn her daughter about the danger of living your life based on your obsession with another person.  “We want to send you off on an amazing adventure somewhere wonderful and new that you can make all your own,” she tells Kate on the eve of her high school graduation.  “Instead, every single discussion we have about what’s next for you is a ringing chorus of JakeJakeJake.  He can’t be the core criteria for your life planning…you can’t plan your life with a man as the primary building block.”

While my older and wiser self pumps her fist in solidarity with Mrs. Hollis, my teenage self remembers only too well the giddy sense of a love so deep that being near your one special person seemed the only thing that could ever matter.   The big question is, will an older and wiser Kate allow her dreams of Jake and all his celebrity glory to engulf her once again. 

I’m not telling - you’ll have to read the book and find out. 

Now I’ve left Kate’s story behind and moved on to Rules for Saying Goodbye, a debut novel by Katherine Taylor.  It’s the story of (another!) girl named Kate who meanders through a rather melancholy girlhood in a chilly New England boarding school, and on to a somewhat dissipated, aimless life as a single girl in Manhattan.  This is a much less plot driven novel than Dedication, a more thoughtful look into the inner psyche of Kate’s character.  Kate and her entourage of friends, along with her wealthy, yet bitter family, seem on a perpetual quest for contentment, like restless dogs pacing in a kennel.  “I was careful, no matter where I was,” Kate thinks, “never to refer to home as anywhere specific…home became less and less of a place, and more a general sense of wherever I felt most comfortable at the moment.”

Taylor’s writing strikes the perfect balance between wit and acerbity, allowing us to smile as we trail along with Kate down the road to maturity. 

I find myself sympathizing with this Kate, too, yet in an altogether different way, for I sense her dissatisfaction with all that life has on offer, as if nothing can be good enough for her, and she not good enough for anything.  It’s part of the territory of being 20-ish, perhaps, because even though at her age I was married and raising a baby, I was often consumed with thoughts of what might have been.  And, much like Kate, I lacked the initiative to go in search of any other possibilities.  Will Kate stop wandering around waiting for things to happen and actively take control of her life?

You’ll have to read this one and find out, too.

 Which brings me to the giveaway part.  Way back when I was a girl, I started sharing books with my girlfriends, who were all readers, of course.  Part of the fun of reading is passing along good reads to others, isn’t it?  So, the first person to comment with a request for Dedication or Rules for Saying Goodbye will receive a copy.  (One book per person, since that way two friends get to win!)

And now it’s back to the reality of life as a 50-something, which means getting my rather creaky bones up from the chair and going off in search of warm milk. <smiles>

Happy reading.

 

 

Booking Through Thursday - Flavor

Booking Through Thursday asks:

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

Ravenous Readers Favorite Book Recipe

Complex characters dealing with real life situations

Beautifully crafted prose

Descriptive writing style

Attention to detail

A dash of humor

Mix in some romance

and

Enjoy!

 

 

It’s Raining Books

Oh, I’ve been so lucky lately, for books have been raining down upon me! 

Last week I received two books to review, a perfect pairing actually - Dedication, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicoal Kraus, and Rules for Saying Goodbye, by Katherine Taylor, both tales of the lives and loves of women in their twenties and thirties.  I’m not completely sure I’ll be able to relate (I’m a bit far removed from those age ranges, you see) but I hopeful they’ll at least spark some good memories <smiles>

In my mailbox on Satuday was my first “mooched” book - a (virtually brand new) copy of Mrs. Dalloway - oddly enough, I don’t own this one, and I’ve been wanting to read it in combination with The Hours (which is next on my mooch list).

And then today, wonder of wonders, I came home to find a box containing four books from Lauren, editor of BiblioBuffet (my favorite online book journal)  - Housekeeping, by Marianne Robinson; An Outrageous Affair, by Penny Vinceni; Exit Music, by Ian Rankin; and Acedia & Me, by Karen Armstrong.  Lauren is recently returned from a huge booksellers convention in L.A., and was so kind to offer some of the literary spoils of her journey to BiblioBuffet readers (see, another reason you should read this journal!)

My summer reading menu is growing by leaps and bounds, and I couldn’t be more delighted.  So I’m sharing some of my book bounty with you, and giving away a copy of Heavier Than Air, a beautifully crafted collection of short stories by Nona Caspers.  Leave a comment on this post, and a recipient will be chosen on Saturday, June 21, 2008.

And now I’m off to dive into my latest bookstack.

Happy reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sunday Salon - In Good Hands

I’ve been sitting here in my comfy chair for perhaps an hour or more, the windows thrown wide allowing cool evening breezes to sweep through the room,  ceiling fan whirring overhead circulating the air.  Dusk has given way to darkness, and thunder has been rumbling sulkily in the distance for some time.  Come in quickly before the storm breaks.  I’ve just opened a bottle of wine, and sliced a good smoky gouda cheese.  It’s late Sunday evening - welcome to the Salon.

Heavier Than Air, a collection of short stories by Nona Caspers, was on my reading list this week, and it’s title was more than apt, for her characters are suspended in a thick atmosphere of regret and unease.  A palpable yearning to escape from the prison of their lives, be it the family dairy farm, a bad marriage, a slow death from AIDS, or the mental hospital, is handled with sensitivity and compassion. 

Caspers writes about the lives of ordinary Minnesota farm people, young and not so young, people yearning to make something else of their lives, yearning to make dreams come true.  Yet it seems they are destined to be disappointed - like Mr. Hellerman (Mr. Hellerman’s Vacation), who “always wanted a set of trained snow dogs and sled; instead he got a series of farm dogs, pleasant, rangy mutts that followed him in and out of the barn and got run over in the driveway.”   Like Ruth Marie Hinnencamp (Alfalfa), who marries John Kolster even though her true love is her best friend Margaret. 

Caspers writing is deceptively simple, yet she perfectly captures each characters language and cadence of thought.   In Country Girls, 14 year old Nora faces the consequence of the deep feelings she has discovered for her cousin Cynthia.

The night before I moved back to St. Cloud to live with friends of my parents, I stood uner the bare light bulb in the bathroom and stared at my dark hair and tanned face in the mirror.  It wasn’t the fact that I was in love with Cynthia that bothered them most, that they couldn’t accept, not really.  It was that I was so forwardly in love, so passionately in love, so innocently in love.  It made them anxious, as it would me today if someone I knew were to behave so strongly and foolishly about another human being.”

I’ve only recently come to appreciate the short story, and this debut collection, which won the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, proves the short story genre is in good hands.  These are beautifully written stories, each one clearly illustrating an understanding of the human situation that is as vast as the landscape in which they’re set. 

In completing this collection, I’ve also completed The Short Story Challenge, at least according to the terms I set for myself.  This challenge was the first I’d taken on, as a newcomer to the world of book blogging and challenge setting.  I’m eternally grateful to Kate, for starting it, for I have developed an appreciation for the short story form which I would never have believed possible.  No longer will I immediately shy away from short story collections, dismissing them out of hand as was my habit.  I will now embrace them, even take them up with eagerness, and enjoy them for the delicious literary gems they can be.

Next week is to be a fluff and fun week of reading, for I’m picking up Dedication and Rules for Saying Goodbye, both tales of the lives and loves of women in their twenties and thirties.  We’ll see if I can still relate to any of that in any meaningful way!

I think the storm has passed, for as I’ve been writing, the thunder has grumbled off to bed, along with my two little dogs who are stretched languorously underneath the fan’s cool breeze, snoring away in the depths of their doggy dreams.

I do believe it’s time for me to join them.

G’night, all.

 

I’ve Created A Monster

My husband has become a ravenous reader.  I’m not quite sure how it happened, either, because for the majority of our lives together, he’s never read more than the occasional action novel.  I could buy him a book for his birthday in October, and one for Father’s Day in June, and he could live off those two for an entire year, occasionally reading a page or two before bed or on a Sunday afternoon.

Not anymore.  He’s devouring books nearly as quickly as I am, making emergency trips to the library, spending inordinate amounts of time searching the internet for books and then placing them on hold at various libraries all across town. ( I’m certainly thankful he’s using the library, for if he were buying all these books, I’m afraid our basement bookshelves would simply sink the house.)

With the usual fervor of a convert, he simply can’t spend enough time reading.  This morning, for instance, I knew he had a meeting on the other side of town, and I- clock watcher that I am -could see he was running seriously short of time.  Yet, there he was, still propped against his pillows, happily engrossed in the final pages of his novel.  Meanwhile, I was completely distracted from my short story, hyper aware of the minute hand moving ever closer to the time he needed to be on the road.

“It’s getting quite late, you know,” I ventured, not wanting our first words of the day to be too negatively charged. 

He glanced quickly at the clock radio and flipped the last few pages of the paperback.  “I don’t care, ” he said, with an all too familiar tone of defiant finality, “I’m three pages from the end, and I’m finishing this book.”

Perhaps I could take a lesson from him, for I rarely allow myself the luxury of putting reading at the head of my list.  On the contrary, I consider reading time my reward for completing all the tasks on my daily “to do” sheet, which sometimes means my reading time is truncated quite severely. Isn’t that odd?  After all, I’m the one who’s supposed to be the reader in the family.  But  I was cursed with a very strong Puritan work ethic, which comes with a compulsion to put duty before pleasure. 

Could I be jealous of this new ravenous reader in the house? Perhaps the reason that, instead of being pleased he’s taken up a pastime that’s dear to my heart, I find myself annoyed that he’s spending the entire morning in his chair, lost in the pages of his book, is that I’d rather be doing that too, but I won’t allow myself the luxury.

While I’ve been thinking I’d created a monster, getting my husband hooked on books, perhaps I should allow the book monster in myself to surface once in a while, defiantly put aside those tasks I set each day and immerse myself between the covers for as long as I like.

The question is, will our household survive two ravenous readers and two book monsters? 

I’ll keep you posted. <smiles>

 

 

Booking Through Thursday - Clubbing

Booking Through Thursday asks: A combo of two suggestions by: Heidi and by litlove

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

I love the idea of book clubs, much as I love the idea of getting up every morning at 6 am and working out at the health club, or the idea of putting aside 10% of my income in a retirement savings plan.  Book clubs sound appealing, and sensible, and something so very bookish to do - yet I somehow can’t make myself participate.

Lots of my friends are in book clubs, so I’m asked to join on a regular basis - that’s after I’ve heard them complain about the books their club has chosen to read, or that one member who insists on monopolizing the discussion.  “Thanks so much for asking me,” I reply in my sweetest voice, “but I’m so very busy just now I’m afraid I could never do justice to the group.”

My friend Lynda has been in the same book club since her college days, which were more than 30 years ago.  Certainly some of the members have come and gone, but there is a core group of three or four who were schoolmates and have managed to keep the club going.  Their plan for choosing books is this:  each spring, every member submits two books they feel are worthy of the club’s time.  A master list is compiled, and a vote taken, ultimately choosing the 12 books the club will read over the course of the year.  I don’t believe they have a designated leader - they’ve been together so long, they likely don’t need one. 

Another friend belongs to a library book club, and they choose their books in much the same way.  If a book you’ve submitted is chosen, then you become the discussion leader.  In their group, the discussion leader is also to prepare a short talk about the book prior to beginning the discussion.  (That sounds quite intimidating to me!)

And then there’s my friend Debbie’s club.  If I were to belong to a book club, I might belong to this one.  They meet once each month at a local restaurant, enjoy a good meal, and “talk about the books they’ve been reading.”  Everyone brings their favorite “read” of the month to share.  And while I’ve never been to one of these “meetings,” I’m willing to bet the conversation isn’t all bookish. <smiles>

Those of us who blog about books have our own version of the book club, don’t we?  With the challenges, and group blogs, and Sunday Salon, I believe I’ve finally found the book club that suits me to a tee.

 

The Sunday Salon - Settling In For Summer

 

Summer has definitely arrived here in southeastern Michigan.  Sitting on my back porch this morning is akin to taking a Swedish sauna, without the benefit of snow and ice to thrash about in afterward.   And so, bitterly disappointed,  I’ve taken my bookstack inside for the day, and encamped on the sofa with coffee, laptops, and dogs.  Welcome to The Sunday Salon.

I have such fond memories of reading outdoors.  As a youngster, I spent many a summer afternoon lounging in my lawn chair with a stack of books nestled in the grass beside me, while the other children in the neighborhood splashed in pools or rode their bikes in endless loops around the subdivision.  I’m sure they thought me quite strange, but they were always kind and never teased.  For a few summers, my friend Raine joined me in my summer reading quests, appearing on my doorstep each day with a paper grocery sack carrying her reading material.  She introduced me to Agatha Christie mysteries and Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time.  At age 12, Raine had taken the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Course, and she would devour three or four books in one afternoon, while I read furiously in a futile effort to keep up.

The weather has allowed some outside reading this week, and in one afternoon I completed The Finishing School, a novella (for the Novella Challege) by Muriel Spark.  It was quite satisfying to be able to take in an entire novel in one sitting…as Ian McEwan remarked about On Chesil Beach(in his interview recorded on the audiobook) a novella allows the reader to have a complete experience all at once, rather like seeing a play film.

The Finishing School, which turned out be Spark’s final novel, is set at College Sunrise, a rather vague institution administered quite loosely by Rowland and Nina Mahler, a young couple in their late 20’s who have established the school as a means of supporting themselves while Rowland writes a novel.  Chris Wiley, a 17 year old literary prodigy, has enrolled in Rowland’s creative writing class, his own novel-in-progress having already caught the attention of not a few publishers and agents.  Rowland becomes consumed with jealousy, crazed with it actually, and the more jealous he becomes of Chris’ progress, the more stunted he becomes in his own, not only in his novel, but also in terms of dealing with his life.

If only, thought Rowland, I could know what Chris is composing, there alone in his room from which he emerges with that sly and cheerful smile.  People would read that book if it ever came to light, imbecile as it might be…Chris might, might certainly, might almost surely, succeed in some way.  Rowland had an urge to tip a bucket of green pain over Chris’s red hair.  Green paint, and it all running over his face, and obliterating his book.  Or perhaps to wreck the computer with the whole work in it.  Switch it off, wreck, terminate it.

Nina now perceived that Rowland’s jealousy was an obsession.  It was a real sickness, and Rowland would be paralyzed as a writer and perhaps as a teacher unless he could get over it.

 Spark’s trademark wit is clearly in play throughout this novel, which is populated by a cast of odd and quirky characters.  The rather omniscient voice of Spark herself is also heard, at one point delineating the entire theme in one brief pronouncement.  Jealously, she tells us, ”unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure. It is a miserable emotion for the jealous one with equally miserable effects on others.”

All in all, an amusing afternoon’s entertainment, whether read indoors or out.

And I see that afternoon is creeping upon me.  The rest of my reading today will take me further and deeper into Iris Murdoch’s The Nice and The Good, my first Murdoch novel since college (why ever have I waited so long?)  This is a complex and fascinating tale which starts out with the apparent suicide of a government official, but leads us into the murky waters of several human relationships, odd “magic” rituals, as well as blackmail and possibly murder.   TJ, a new blog friend and lover of all things Iris, has piqued my interest in this novelist, and I’m quickly catching on to her appeal.  This novel, published in 1968, has a certain je ne sais quoi - something about the writing style of that time which I can’t describe, but which seems part and parcel of that era, a feeling of smoking cigarettes and drinking gin and tonic.  If any of you more learned literary scholars know what I mean, perhaps you can define it for me.

At any rate, good stuff, and I’m anxious to get back to it (minus the cigarettes and GT’s…)

 

Booking Through Thursday-Reading Down the Years

Booking Through Thursday asks~

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?

The Ravenous Reader has been reading for many, many years~nearly 50 to be exact.  As I reflect on all the thousands of books I’ve so happily devoured,  I realize my tastes have not fundamentally changed.   I crave fiction with complex characters and great big story lines, people whose lives I can enter in and lose myself.  I love multi-faceted mysteries with a strong psychological dimension, again with well developed characters.  My mouth waters when I pick up a new biography or memoir, particulary if the subject is one of my favorite authors.  Recently, I’ve developed a taste for the short story, and enjoy nibbling away at these savory little gems.

So, I suppose you could say my reading tastes have remained quite steadfast…how about yours?

 

The Sunday Salon - The March of Time

It seems the older one gets, the more one becomes aware of that intrepid march of time, the way hours, days, years, suddenly seem to be rushing by with a whir of intensity.  And so I can awake on a Sunday morning, feeling as if I have all the time in the world to sip coffee and listen to the chorus of birds raising their anthems to the day, when all of a sudden the noon hour is upon me.

Similarly, society faces that same dilemma, with events of a much larger magnitude piling upon themselves.  It’s a mark of my age once again, I think, the way change seems to be happening faster and more furiously with each passing year, and while I once considered many of these advances good things, now I’m beginning to wonder if we aren’t outpacing ourselves with change for the sake of change, bringing our nation to the brink of possibly devastating consequences.

My thoughts have turned in this direction because of March, the novel I’m reading.  Many of you have read it, but in case you aren’t familiar with it, author Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of Mr. March, (the father of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women), and expanded his story, filling us in on what happened to him during the time he was away from Marmee, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.  Alcott tells us he had gone to serve as Chaplain to Union soldiers during the Civil War.  What Brooks gives us is the fleshed out portrait of man with deeply held, forward thinking convictions about civil rights, the enviornment, and education.

I’m only half way through the book, but one thing that strikes me is how chaotic American society is at this point, nearing the end of the war.  The Southern way of life (gentility and leisure, bought from the hard labor of slavery) has all but vanished, leaving in it’s place devastation and destruction of property and people.  Newly freed slaves have no idea how to live or make a living, and few citizens of the north feel moved to assist them. 

Most of these boys aren’t down here fighting for the slaves,” March’s Colonel tells him frankly.  “Why, they’re about as many genuine abolitionists in Lincoln’s army as there are in Jeff Davis’s.  When the boys in this unit listen to you preach emancipation, all they hear is a pack of ragged baboons is going to be heading north to take their jobs away…”

So when I look around America today and start to worry about the myriad problems we face - unemployment, inflated gasoline prices, losses of homes and businesses, the crisis in health care, plus the decline of American interests on the international scene - reading March reminds me that this country has weathered hard times before during it’s brief life as a nation. 

Last week a photograph appeared in the New York Times of Barack Obama carrying a copy of The Post American World, by  Fareed Zakaria.  Much has been made of Obama’s choice of reading material, pundits taking it as a sign of his forward thinking and his gathering of stategies for change.  Zakaria once wrote (in 2003) that “America’s power was unprecedented” in what could “only be called a unipolar world.”   In the five ensuing years, years that have sped like lightening across the face of this country, Zakaria now maintains “the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.”  Moving, as he puts it, from “the West, to the rest.”

“America has become suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration and technological change,” Zarkaria writes.  As the nation moves forward, he advises we should become a kind of “global broker,” forging close relationships with other countries, exchanging the role of didadtic superpower for one of “consultation, cooperation, and even compromise.” 

The character of March was based (by Alcott and Brooks alike) on the real life character of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father, a transcendentalist philosopher, educator, and abolititionist, who traveled in the same circles as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Alcott, though a learned man, was willing to “put his money where is mouth is,” establishing the first integrated classrooms, as well as a commune we would today classify as vegan, where no animals or animal products were eaten or used. 

During every crucial period in the history of a society and its people, survival requires men and women with innovative ideas as well as the wisdom to express them and the bravery to enact them.

Challenges and changes are inevitable results of the march of time.  It’s how we respond to them that determines how time will march forward into the future.

Now tell me, what have you read lately that’s affected your outlook on the world?

 

 March

by Geraldine Brooks

pub. 2005, by Penguin Books

273 pages

The Post American World

by Fareed Zakaria

pub. 2008, Norton & Co.

292 pages

Small Pleasures

It’s a typical summer day in southwest Florida, the sun playing keep away from those dark thunderclouds which roll overheard every so often.  You learn never to leave the house unless you’re prepared for a deluge, because one can happen at any moment!

To escape the threat of being soaked, I’ve opted to stay in today, which is really no hardship.  It’s quiet and cool inside, the ceiling fan whirs gently overhead, and I’ve spent the entire day reading and writing.  What a luxury and a joy for this ravenous reader. 

As predicted, I finished the novel I was reading before we left, but not until this morning.  It was a marvelous book -  I have much to tell you about it, but will save it for another time as it’s still all whirling about in my head and heart.

Naturally I brought another book with me - Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon, the first in her mystery series starring Commissario Guido Brunetti - but I thought to wander around the house and see if, perchance, there might be something else to tempt me.

Because we don’t live here all the time, I sometimes purchase books and leave them behind, thinking I might need a book on some future trip.  Too, I usually leave behind the books I’ve brought from home and finished, so there are a number of old friends here who might bear a re-visit.

And we occasionally have guests who are kind enough to donate their finished books to my Florida library. In that collection I discovered two small treasures today - books I have never read, but have head mentioned quite highly.

March, by Geraldine Brooks and A Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell.  Both authors are strangers to me, but I know they have good friends among my bookish compatriots. 

Any thoughts on which of these small treasures to enjoy first?

Better make it quick, though, because I have a trip to the bookstore planned for after dinner - as long as the rain holds off. *smiles*

~I have a small pleasure to offer as well~ the copy of Hungry Hill I offered in this post is going to Seachanges ~enjoy!