Too Great a Lady

I'm done with Too Great a Lady: The Notorious, Glorious Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton. I got about a third of the way through but I just wasn't grabbed. The narrator was engaging and I love that time period, but I found myself dragging through it. Who knows why. Possibly only b/c there are so many books waiting in the wings that I couldn't focus.

Basically, I wanted to read about her and Nelson and instead I got what felt like acres and acres of her at age 15, scampering aorund London, misbehaving. Yawn.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

I know everyone's read it at this point so I'll just say I loved it and raced through it in a day. Probably missed a lot by reading it that fast but I was so absorbed I couldn't stop. I'll certainly keep an eye out for Mark Haddon's next one, A Spot of Bother. Random House has done a really good-looking website for it, by the way.

The White Rhino Hotel

Started it but gave up about 30 pages in. Thought I'd love it but found it too aggressively colorful for my taste. Sorry, Bartle Bull. Maybe I'd like his non-fiction, called Safari, also apparently about the Kenyan highlands right after WWI.

Too Much to Read

I have about 7 books on deck right now and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with wonderful possibilities. I'm putting aside a perfectly fine Christopher Buckley (Wet Work) just because it isn't wonderful, which normally I wouldn't do, but I've got all of these other things going. There's a fictional bio of Emma Hamilton (which reads as a trashier Phillipa Gregory -- of The Other Boleyn Girl), a few mysteries I'd like to sample, Freddy and Fredricka, by one of my favorite writers, Mark Helprin -- whom I love for A Winter's Tale, rather than his Republican speech-writing ways. Side note: I'm always stunned that intelligent, sensitive people can be Republicans with a straight face. Still? After Bush? I mean, who voted for Bush A SECOND TIME???

That's really not my topic, though, so let's leave it. Anyway, I have the Helprin, plus a new Jodi Picoult. I'm not a Picoult fanatic as many seem to be, but I did like the one book by her that I read, My Sister's Keeper, about a collision between Amish people, the American legal system, and teen pregnancy. And there's The Curious Incident... that everyone except for me has read and loved, and a Graham Greene, can't remember which one.

Plus there are comics to review, and two or three recorded books to listen to. I should take a few days off of work to catch up on my leisure activities.

No, I Don't Want to Join a Book Club

By Virginia Ironside. Ridiculous title, wonderful book. Sort of a Bridget Jones for the 60-and-over set, our heroine, Marie Sharp, chronicles the wonders of becoming an official "oldie", as she calls it. No more pressure to look or behave in particular ways, no more pressure to learn Italian or become a photographer, freedom to give up sex entirely and just stop worrying about it. That all could be rather one note, but there is a plot here, and Marie is such a delightful narrator -- with her portraits of her down-market home in Shepherd's Bush, her shock at how incredible it is to become a grandmother, and her quiet bewilderment and acceptance of a friend's death -- the whole thing flies along. Plus, it's all so English. Loved it.

His Majesty's Dragon

There's another woman out there who loves Nelson's navy and dragons as much as I do, and she wrote a book about it. Naomi Novik imagines the Napoleonic wars as fought with ships and dragons. Actually, there are three books in the trilogy. I have to find the others. The first was lent to me by a kind friend who just showed up and handed me the book. I finished it in two days.

Of course if you don't like fantasy, this book isn't going to work for you. But if you fall into that part of the Venn diagram where the navy and dragons intersect -- as do I and Naomi and Misha, Naomi's friend who lent me the book -- you'll probably love it.

Chinese Lessons

Amazing book about China in the 1980s from an American, John Pomfret, who went to college there as part of the first foreign class allowed in the country. He traces the lives of eight of his classmates, exposing what life was really like in Mao's China. Not pretty. Everything you've heard about corrupt Communist party bosses and grinding poverty and public shaming and friends ratting out friends ratting out family members, and once-respected elders being crippled by hysterical rabble and the total gutting of the agricultural system and the countless unpredictable reverses of official philosophy so nobody ever knew exactly whom they were supposed to denounce or praise -- it all seems to be true.

I'd heard of all of these things, but they remained mostly abstract for me. It was hard for me to imagine a world as cruelly absurd as China of the 1960s and '70s, but Pomfret breathes life into it with the specifics of his friends's stories. Many are from the country, where showing the intellect one would need to get into college was precisely the kind of thing that could get you denounced. Saving books to read pegged you as a corrupt intellectual. And these labels had real repercussions, on how much food you got, what kind of jobs you could do, when you could leave your village or see your family or really do anything at all. There's lots more, but the book's across the room and I'm too lazy to get up and get it.

A really valuable work, utterly fascinating and highly readable.

Spent

A Joe Matt graphic novel collects three of his Peepshow comic books.

I like Joe, despite how enormously unlikeable he tries to make himself, what with his tight-wadness, and his truly pathetic addiction to porn that keeps him from being able to form a bond with any kind of real female human being.

But then I feel like a sucker, because that kind of seems like his game -- pre-empt any condemnation you might make but saying it first, and then forcing you to like him anyway. Manipulative, which is what his friends accuse of him of (another way he's self aware). J can't stand him; any time Matt's work surfaces around the house, J is moved to exclaim about what a dick that Joe Matt guy is.

Let's say I like his work -- his drawing style has something very clean and warm and human about it -- but wouldn't want to be friends with him. I'm curious to find out what happens next, but given his production schedule, it'll probably be another 3-4 years unti I find out.

Conquered by Six Frigates

I didn't finish it and I have to take it back to the library. I may actually end up buying this one, now that I've developed such an obsession with that era. What's it called? Empire? I have to look it up.

I guess you could call it Federal, although that really has to do with architecture, I think. It's also Napoleonic, although that wouldn't refer to the U.S. It's also exactly the time of Jane Austen, although the era isn't called Austen-ian. It's also Georgian, in that George was king of England.

So, who knows.

The Ruins of California

GREAT novel by Martha Sherrill. It's the coming-of-age story of Inez Ruin (hence the title), who has two flaky California-in-the-'70s parents, one in San Francisco, and one on the outskirts of L.A. I'd say the punny title is the least subtle thing about it. Mostly, it just exudes a kind of sense memory of the '70s, and shows how the turmoil of
cultural mores could shape two people, one kindly narcissist (dad), one loving-but-absent bent-on-self-development mom. Plus abuelita, who works all the time, and regal grandmother Marguerite, who takes Inez in hand when her parents fail to.

There's all kinds of artifacts of the era, here -- casual drug use, est, a raffish North Beach, an obsession with modern architecture, surfing and Hawaii and communes, tennis, '70s New Wave cinema, and on and on. It all hangs together, though; nothing feels pulled in as set dressing. It's all part of the story.

Gimp

This is the story of Mark Zupan, the quadraplegic guy who was the breakout star of Murderball, the movie. It's pretty much a straightforward What Life Was Like Before I Was Injured, How I Got Injured, How I Dealt With Recovery, How I Live Now story. Zupan has such an electric voice, though (nicely captured by Tim Swanson), that this book entered the class of "un-put-downable" for me. Another one that made the subway ride seem short.

See Delphi and Die

Yet another Marcus Didius Falco mystery from Lindsey Davis, which I listened to rather than read. The plot takes Marcus and Helena and assorted family members, plus Nux the dog, to Greece, as they research a package holiday gone horribly wrong for a couple of Roman girls who were murdered far from home. I love the complexity and authentic (I think, who knows) period details, which take me right back to one of my favorite classes ever, Roman Civ in college. Who know that the guys like Seutonius and Tacitus were such great, gossipy writers? I digress.

So, anyway, I highly enjoy these works -- but only on tape. Whenever I try to read them, the stories just feel a bit too dry, somehow. I'm not sure exactly why. The only time I really got into one of these stories on paper was when I was in China for a month and starved for an escapist story written in English.

I listened to this while walking around the park and puttering around the house, my favorite spots for recorded books. (I used to say "books on tape" but that phrase has become obsolete, I realize. This was on CD, taken out of the library and imported into my iTunes.) The books are now overdue. As soon as I finish ripping Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, I'm going to walk up and return everything and pay my $23(!) fine. At least it supports the library, and would be the cost of one hardback book, new.

The Book of Lost Things

Catching up here on books I read during the first few weeks of January. The Book of Lost Things is by a thriller writer with whom I'm basically unfamiliar, John Connolly. Apparently he wrote Every Dead Thing, something I've also never heard of, but it's how he's cited on Amazon.com. Looks like he likes the word "thing" in a title.

So, anyway, this book is a fantasy and I must admit that what drew me to it was it's cover, which is this very beautiful cut-paper looking thing in deep blue and gold and white. And what it's actually about is a boy in war-torn England who accidentally crosses over to a magic realm where an evil crooked man is trying to do something very evil. Of course, very reminiscent of Narnia, but much darker and certainly more graphically violent, as one might expect from a thriller writer. I enjoyed it enough that I found myself looking forward to the subway ride in the mornings so I could get to it.

Fruit of the Lemon

Finished this over the weekend, on the train ride down to Baltimore. Levy is the author Small Island, a novel about Caribbean immigrants in England during WWII. I thought it was wonderful; so did the Whitbread judges in 2004. Anyways, I just read her latest, Fruit of the Lemon. Actually, I thought it was her latest until just a minute ago, when I visited her website and found that it was published in 1999. I have a review copy that says it's coming out in Feb 2007, but that must be its U.S. publication date.

Anyway, that pub date makes much more sense to me, because while it is a very good book, it isn't as transcendent as Small Island. It makes more sense to me that Levy was still working on various ideas relating to her topic -- in very general terms, it's the relationship of Caribbean people to the former Mother England, told through wonderful warm real human characters. And for sure the characters in Fruit were compelling. The problem I thought is that we don't get enough of a lot of them, and some appear and disappear abruptly. And the structure of the story is very First This Part Happened, and Then This Part Happened, and not much relationship between them.

Still, having said all that, I raced through it and would recommend it. I just think if you haven't read any Levy, start with Small Island.

Federalists vs. Republicans

I have got to get this straight.

Federalists:
-John Adams
-Pro-navy, to protect shipping and get out of paying tribute to the Barbary states (including Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco)
-Anti-army, because who needs it?

Republicans:
-Jefferson
-James Madison (seriously, doesn't that sound a lot like "John Adams", just phonetically speaking?)
-Sympathetic to the French revolution (until it became a bloodbath)
-Anti-navy, because of the cost and likelihood of it dragging the country into war
-Very conscious of severely limiting size and reach of federal government
-Anti-tax as much as possible
-Anti-debt

Note on Jefferson: even though he was theoretically anti-navy, when he succeeded Adams as President, he authorized three warships to go to the Mediterranean in order to get out of paying tribute to the various Deys and other Barbary rulers.

Six Frigates, cont.

Still working on Six Frigates. It's pretty dense, and I'm trying to keep track of all of the personalities. I've never really been able to keep straight any kind of detailed information about the various founding fathers, plus I think all of their names sound kind of similar. John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson -- lots of "J"s, short "a"s, and "s"s. But now I find that there was an intense and bitter rivalry between Jefferson and Adams, that the Federalists were totally anti-navy. I think -- this is the kind of thing I have to keep re-reading to cement in my mind, whereas the anecdote about the swampy path between the White House and the Capitol building, and the fact that housing was so scarce in the new capitol city that congressmen were staying in dorm-like boarding houses, that I remember with no effort at all. I do remember the name Truxtun; he was the captain who won the first of the navy's victories, against a French frigate in the Caribbean. And Humphreys is a Quaker shipbuilder who's never been to sea. And the first ships are the United States, the Constitution, and the Constellation.

Anyway, I've made it to part two.

The Hanging Valley

Finished a Peter Robinson thriller, The Hanging Valley, while having my hair colored for the first time in 8 months. I've been coloring my hair for the past 8 years or so -- reddish highlights, not a whole-hog color-changing thing -- and it still feels like an almost sinful extravagance. Except in the past year or so, I've begun to get gray hair that really shows against the dark brown, so it's moved from a total vanity to a vanity that's almost demanded by the NYC job market. (What a rationalization that is. But still, the gray looks sloppy.)(Whither my feminist ideals?)

Anyway, The Hanging Valley features Robinson's Chief Inspector Alan Banks doing his detective thing against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Dales, a landscape that I recently saw a glimpse of in a totally unrelated work, Michael Apted's most excellent 7 Up documentary series in which one of the characters is a farm boy from up north. The Dales appears to be lonely, beautiful country, and that's how Robinson describes it in his mysteries. In this particular installment, a body is discovered in a valley whose geologic designation is a "hanging valley" due to how it was originally formed by a glacier, or so I loosely gather from Robinson's description. Since it's the 2nd murder in five years in the town of Swainsdale, the local police take an interest. Repressive religion, Canada, and the class system all enter into the plot. Banks is an appealing hero, although why detectives so frequently have "loner" and "music lover" and often "smoker" as their default settings, I'm not sure.

After I finished the Robinson, I read a bit more of Six Frigates on the subway ride home -- a good one, on an express train with lots of seating.

First Day of the Year

What a dismal day in New York City, but it certainly kept me from feeling guilty for doing nothing but slop around the house and read. Eventually J and I dragged out to see Volver but then we came straight back home again.

I finished that ridiculous mystery The Main Corpse, read a few pages of Ali and Nino but didn't pay attention long enough to know what was going on (I was waiting for the microwave to ding), and finished Joan Didion's My Year of Magical Thinking, which I've been carrying around for a couple of months. Not the most upbeat work with which to start the year, being an account of dealing with the awful one-two punch of both Didion's husband's death and her daughter's mysterious and possibly terminal illness. But it is a beautiful book, very clear and crystalline in her descriptions of her specific experience of grief and fear. So, that was good.

And I started in on a history of the U.S. Navy called Six Frigates, by Ian W. Toll. Twenty pages in and it's very satisfying. For a Patrick O'Brian junkie -- and I'm an unrepentant one -- this is just catnip. All about how the ships were made, what was going on with American shipping in the late 1700s, how the English dominated the seas, blah blah blah. Obviously you have to be interested in this stuff to make the book at all worth it, but Toll is very readable so far.

So, a genre novel, a historical novel, an excellent memoir, and a taste of popular history: I call it a good kick-off to a year of books.