Nonsuch Book

sunday salon: trollope, the mona lisa, & how to buy a love of reading

As Eva at A Striped Armchair yearned for a regency beau this week, I was reminded that I've been thinking about a Trollope re-read this summer. Have complete sets of both the Palliser novels and the Barsetshire novels but which to read? Or should I sink into the unread Trollope? Went looking about for some inspiration. The Trollope Society and the Trollope Society USA always have excellent events, info and links, but the sites are a little - hmmm, how to say this? - staid. But then I found anthonytrollope.com. Images above come from that site. Quotes, quizzes, contest plus the usual links to useful info including everything from the Trollope Society. Just a whole lot more visually appealing and fun. Go take a look if the spirit moves you.

A review copy of The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler came my way a little while ago, and I have been curious to read it. So has Danielle at A Work in Progress. But (sigh) when does it leave the pile and sit in my hands? Had a little shove from a Washington Post book review this morning. Synopsis:

"Turn-of-the-century Paris was the beating heart of a rapidly changing world. Painters, scientists, revolutionaries, poets--all were there. But so, too, were the shadows: Paris was a violent, criminal place, its sinister alleyways the haunts of Apache gangsters and its cafes the gathering places of murderous anarchists. In 1911, it fell victim to perhaps the greatest theft of all time--the taking of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Immediately, Alphonse Bertillon, a detective world-renowned for pioneering crime-scene investigation techniques, was called upon to solve the crime. And quickly the Paris police had a suspect: a young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso...." (from the publisher)

Interested?

How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson is another recently received review copy that has me intrigued. The marketing effort on this one is huge. Not due out for a few more weeks but there is a very attractive website, the whole spectrum of social networking sites, email campaign to book bloggers, etc. Look at that cover. Read the synopsis below. Sounds like it might appeal to us book lovers, but also looks and sounds a little like chick lit. Hybrid? Escapist reading for the smart woman? I'm wondering. Just going to have to read it to see. Heard anything?

To Carley Wells, words are the enemy. Her tutor’s innumerable SAT flashcards. Her personal trainer’s “fifty-seven pounds overweight” assessment. And the endless reading assignments from her English teacher, Mr. Nagel. When Nagel reports to her parents that she has answered “What is your favorite book” with “Never met one I liked,” they decide to fix what he calls her “intellectual impoverishment.” They will commission a book to be written just for her—one she’ll have to love—that will impress her teacher and the whole town of Fox Glen with their family’s devotion to the arts. They will be patrons— the Medicis of Long Island. They will buy their daughter The Love Of Reading. 

Impossible though it is for Carley to imagine loving books, she is in love with a young bibliophile who cares about them more than anything. Anything, that is, but a good bottle of scotch. Hunter Cay, Carley’s best friend and Fox Glen’s resident golden boy, is becoming a stranger to her lately as he drowns himself in F. Scott Fitzgerald, booze, and Vicodin. 

When the Wellses move writer Bree McEnroy—author of a failed meta-novel about Odysseus’ failed journey home through the Internet—into their mansion to write Carley’s book, Carley’s sole interest in the project is to distract Hunter from drinking and give them something to share. But as Hunter’s behavior becomes erratic and dangerous, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the fictional world Bree has created, and begins to understand for the first time the power of stories—those we read, those we want to believe in, and most of all, those we tell ourselves about ourselves. Stories powerful enough to destroy a person. Or save her." (from the publisher)

So this is what I am poring over today for the Sunday Salon in addition to trying to finish Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. What are you reading?

weekly geeks: quoth the raven, "nevermore"

This week you are asked to share books (fiction or nonfiction) and/or movies which center around an animal or animals.

When I was a kid, I memorized Poe's "The Raven." Just loved it. The rhyme and rhythm, the vague eeriness, and some romanticized picture I had in my head of the "rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore." I wrote her whole story in my head. And I love birds, especially ravens. For a moment today, I considered writing about owls (love them too), but felt sure someone else would take up that lovely, someone else who experienced the same sharp intake of breath at Hedwig's demise perhaps. But ravens it is.

Mind of the Raven by biologist Bernd Heinrich was published a couple of years to ago to well-deserved glowing reviews. The author's scientific observations reveal a startling intelligence in ravens as well as playfulness, the ability to plan, and a whole host of other characteristics that illustrate the complexity of this bird. A complexity that rivals that of humanity in some instances. The author obviously loves this bird, and it is that personal affection that makes this book of science as easy and enjoyable a read as most novels. Well, for me at least. Love this book.

In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell is a beauty piece for raven lovers. Am always tempted to rip the book apart and start framing it for the walls. But I don't. The science here from biologist Marzluff is as compelling and detailed as Heinrich's, but I am so distracted by Angell's gorgeous artwork that I occasionally lose the thread of the text while reading it. Just look at the elegance of that cover image. Ooo, and check out this one below also.

Finally, Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Magpies, Ravens, and Jays is a wonderful addition to the library of a raven lover looking for "dramatic images from the world's top nature photographers." Exactly what one would expect from a Sierra Club publication.

saturday morning cleaning: want a copy of rocket boys?

As a librarian, active participant in three different volunteer literacy initiatives, and a bibliophile, I tend to accumulate huge stacks of books around the house (sound like you?). I have decided to temporarily stop my Book Mooch activities not because I think the project is faulty (it is fabulous), but because it just brings more books in. Today, I have been up since early this morning trying to get a handle on this house of mine. It looks clean and organized at first glance, but that is only because I have hidden or put aside tons of stuff in less seen places or the storage room in the basement. Eeeek!

So..... I just found three copies of the former NYT bestseller Rocket Boys.  First book in the Coalwood series and inspiration for the movie October Sky. First three comments below get them. Synopsis below. Happy reading!

"The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir--a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space . . . and who made those dreams come true. 

With the grace of a natural storyteller, NASA engineer Homer Hickam paints a warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive. A story of romance and loss, of growing up and getting out, Homer Hickam's lush, lyrical memoir is a chronicle of triumph--at once exquisitely written and marvelously entertaining." (from the publisher)

2009 big read dc style: the heart is a lonely hunter

When the National Endowment for the Arts discovered some years back that fewer and fewer Americans were reading great works of literary fiction, they launched the fabulously successful Big Read program. Each spring, cities from across the country sign on for a collective read of a book selected from a list provided by NEA. The organization also provides a wide range of support materials for the cities and the individuals participating - reading guides, teaching guides, and granting opportunities to name a few.

Last year, DC read The Great Gatsby, an experience I completely enjoyed as I read with a book group of people I had never met before as well as attending a few events intended to celebrate Fitzgerald's fine novel. This year, beginning today, DC residents will pick up Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and I plan to participate in similar events again this year. Why? Because I truly believe in a collective read for both adults and children. A work to inform our collective knowledge, "creating a nation of readers." People brought together if for only a week by the written word and a shared insight into the American cultural identity.

"With the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for all various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attune to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty." (from the publisher)

So here I go. Have you participated in a Big Read? What was your experience like?

colophons and world digital library

Penguin UK blog today pointed me to this great collection of "colophonic artistry." A-G here and the rest here. Vintage fun. Love the dancing penguin.

The World Digital Library site I discussed here launched today. Awe-inspiring. And did not crash the first day out like Europeana did back in the fall. 

Example of the treasure trove pictured above. "This illuminated page in Javanese script is from a chronicle of a Javanese court in Yogyakarta. Located in central Java, Yogyakarta was one of two main pre-colonial royal cities in Java and a center of Javanese culture. The history of local leaders and royal families was recorded in chronicles such as this one. The document is from the collections of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden."

Armchair scholar fantasy. What will you look for here?

2009 pulitzer for fiction: olive kitteridge

Loved this book. Was the first book I finished in 2009, and I reviewed it here in January. And am happy to see it won the Pulitzer for fiction this afternoon.

"For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to “Olive Kitteridge,” by Elizabeth Strout (Random House), a collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating."  

And the finalists: 

"Also nominated as finalists in this category were: "The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins), a haunting novel that explores racial discord, loss of land and changing fortunes in a corner of North Dakota where Native Americans and whites share a tangled history; and "All Souls" by Christine Schutt (Harcourt), a memorable novel that focuses on the senior class at an exclusive all-girl Manhattan prep school where a beloved student battles a rare cancer, fiercely honest, carefully observed and subtly rendered."

Prizes can be over-rated but if it turns people's attention to a book over some other entertainment then more power to all those accolades in the literary world. I have read neither of the finalists but will do so now. The anxiety of influence or the quest for the next great read?

What book did you think or hoped would wind up with today's fiction prize?

sunday salon: swann's way by marcel proust

Botticelli "The Trials of Moses" (1481-82) Sistine Chapel, Rome 

"Her loosened hair flowing down her cheeks, bending one knee in a slightly balletic pose . . . her head on one side, with those great eyes of hers which seemed so tired and sullen when there was nothing to animate her, she struck Swann by her resemblance to the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's daughter." — Swann's Way

A little while ago, I suggested to fellow bloggers that we take up Proust's In Search of Lost Time as a shared reading experience. Space the seven (or six in some cases) volumes out over the course of a year or so. The ultimate chunkster challenge. Some 4,000 pages or thereabouts depending upon translation and edition you are reading. But as many maintain that Proust's masterpiece is one of the greatest novels ever written, it seems well worth the effort. A few kindred spirits are reading along with me, and I hope, will post on their own blog and/or weigh in here today. Next stop from here? Volume 2 - In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower formerly known as Within a Budding Grove - on Proust's birthday on July 10. Plenty of time to read the next or the first two if you are joining us late.

To read Proust for me is to be enveloped in the language, to surrender to the flow of word upon word that carries me from one time to another, from one memory to another. It is a near sensory experience as the narrative of first the young Proust-like Marcel is rooted in the novel, and then Swann's story is framed by his love of art. Many physical objects that surround the two protagonists inform this Belle Epoque time in France, but none more tellingly than the books that mold Marcel's impressionable young mind and the paintings that replace earthly realities for Swann.

The first portion of Swann's Way, Combray, is taken up with the young Marcel defining his young self as he struggles with both the possibilities of his life as he perceives them from novels and his own anxious sensibilities. He is defined for us early in the novel by M. Legrandin:

"You have a lovely soul, of a rare quality, an artist's nature, don't ever let it go without what it needs."

Marcel feeds those needs within the pages of his favorite novelist, Bergotte, a fictional author that is most likely an amalgam of author Anatole France and philosopher Henri Bergson. He sees the dramatic components of the life he lives among the well-heeled in the fin de siecle as well as the information he culls from his spying eyes as somehow indistinguishable from the dramas of the novels he reads. All are open to the re-write as well such as when the eyes of Gilberte become blue in his mind rather than black they actually are because the change serves his imagination well. 

"These were the events taking place in the book I was reading; it is true that the people affected by them were not "real," as Francoise said. But all the feelings we are made to experience by the joy or misfortune of a real person are produced in us only through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist consisted in understanding that in the apparatus of our emotions, the image being the only essential element, the simplification that would consist in purely and simply abolishing real people would be a decisive improvement."

The young Marcel seeks not just to write novels, but to revise and script the nature of the real world around him.

Similarly, Swann, the occupation of the second portion of the novel views many of the people around him not as individuals self-defined but as subjects of artistic medium assigned roles within his near encyclopedic knowledge of the art world. As some of us have noted before while lusting after the book Paintings in Proust, In Search of Lost Time is full of references to famous works of art. Unfortunately, Swann's predilection delivers him into an unhappy marriage with Odette as referenced in the quote under the image above.

So difficult to narrow the content of a blog post on such an expansive work, but I chose this focus today because I believe that it is essential to define Proust's view of both novels and art as we begin our read thorough his magnum opus. It is these views that will inform his treatment of time, and distance the autobiographical possibilities from the essence of the text. This first volume of In Search of Lost Time unveils most of the characters that will appear in the complete story, introduces us to Proust's basic philosophical orientations, and bathes us in the most luxurious flood of words imaginable. I could not have wished for more. But still need a little reading breathing room before book two. For me, reading Proust is consuming and difficult to dodge my own anxieties as those of the protagonists emerge.

So tell me, how was this for you?

After as much of the beautiful outside as I can absorb today, on to Unaccustomed Earth (I still think it stands a chance tomorrow for the Pulitzer). What are you reading today for the Sunday Salon?

booking through thursday: windfall book purchase

"Yesterday, April 15th, was Tax Day here in the U.S., which means lots of lucky people will get refunds of over-paid taxes. Whether you’re one of them or not, what would you spend an unexpected windfall on? Say … $50? How about $500? (And, this is a reading meme, so by rights the answer should be book-related, but hey, feel free to go wild and splurge on anything you like.)"

Easy. Signed, first edition of The World According to Garp. Unlike large initial releases of subsequent Irving novels, there were (I think) only 35,000 first editions of Garp. Cost more than a few dollars. My ultimate object of book lust. Long story why. I'll spare you. This image courtesy of Parrish Books where you can pick up this lovely for $900. Ouch.

surprising former librarians: batgirl

 

"Who is this new Batgirl who seems to have taken over my crime fighting territory?" - Batman

Why, she is a librarian, you caped crusader with a dark side. Came across this amusing article about a surprising former librarians on mental_floss today, and was most interested in #10 in the list - Batgirl.

"When the comic wanted to generate female interest, a “grown-up” version of Batgirl appeared in January of 1967 in Detective Comics #359. In this later incarnation (the original, Bat-girl, was created in 1961), Barbara Gordon was the grown daughter of a Police Commissioner and worked as a librarian. She only began her crime-fighting career by accident, breaking up a robbery when she happened to be wearing her Halloween costume. Who was the victim of this crime? Bruce Wayne, of course!"

According to the DC Comics database, she was delivering a rare book to Wayne Manor when she broke up the robbery. A cautionary tale. Don't mess with a bibliophile.

whimsical shelving or low maintenance pet?

Do I aimlessly follow link upon link in my leisure hours until I find something fanciful and wonderful like this pooch shelf or am I stalling for blogger time as I plow through the rest of Swann's Way and notes for Sunday? You be the judge. Whatever the case, this charmer is from Proteak Renewable Forestry and is just one of a set of canine designs. 

"Pack of Dogs is a series of wooden pieces based roughly on the shape of a dog in different sizes and positions. Introduced at the 2007 Salone Satelite in Milan, these pieces are named after famous Mexican wrestlers (Dos Caras Jr., Aguayo, El Santo, Alushe, and Místico) and may work as side tables, stools, benches, bookshelves, magazine racks, newspaper holders, bookends, etc."

Here's another idea. Why don't we all chip in and buy one for CB so that he will have one dog in his house who doesn't eat his books? None of Dakota's charm of course, but he might appreciate one toothless pet.

These shelves were just featured in Wallpaper magazine accompanied by the fetch festival photo below. So cool.