May 2010

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2010.

Recommended Reading for Memorial Day – Owen’s “Parable of the Old Man and the Young”

May 29, 2010 in holiday, poetry, recommended reading by Kim | No comments

Memorial Day started to honor the fallen of the Civil War, but after World War I was expanded to honor the dead of any war and became a national holiday.  My son spent the last several weeks studying World War I poetry, so I asked him if there was one poem he would recommend for this Memorial Day.  He said Wilfred Owen’s “Parable of the Old Men and the Young” was the best of the era, here it is and some of his thoughts:

Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him.  Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the see of Europe, one by one.

Taking the Biblical story  of Abraham and Issac  and twisting the ending gives the poem a powerful ending on the theme of the horror of war.  Owen’s use of Abram vs. Abraham (God had ‘renamed’ Abram by the time of the sacrifice) is an early indicator of the tragic ending of the poem.  Under the name Abram, he doubted God and his promise and had a son with Hagar, his wife’s slave.  His life as Abram signified the time when he was not a righteous man.  When God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, it signals his righteousness and obedience to God.  Owen’s use of Abram signals that the correct action will be shunned for the sake of pride and instead a great evil is committed.

For those who are like me and would rather hear poetry than read it, few are better than Kenneth Branagh:

Owen Wilfred died a week before the end of World War I.  His mother received the telegram notifying her of his death as the church bells were ringing for the Armistice.


Share

Tags: , , , ,

The Biblioracle Opened His Doors for a Few Hours Today

May 27, 2010 in Literary Event by Kim | 2 comments

Followers of the Tournament of Books this year experienced a special treat.  One of the commentators, John Warner, offered to suggest a book to anyone who named the last five books they read.  The response was overwhelming.  I don’t remember which five books I gave John, but his recommendation was Blue Angel by Francine Prose.  I’d never heard of the writer, what a fun way to discover a new author.  I knew the day started off right when The Morning News (where the Tournament of Books exists) announced that the Biblioracle, AKA John Warner, would make an appearance today from 8AM to 1PM PST.  The requests stacked up as fast as American Idol votes and he had to shut down an hour early.

I got in and so did three friends.  We are in book groups together so there is some cross over in our lists (although I skipped over most of the classics I’ve read when I made my list, I wanted a current fiction response), here’s what the Biblioracle suggested:

Kim:  Mister Pip by Llyod Jones, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes, On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins – Biblioracle recommended Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Leslie:  Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Mister Pip by Llyod Jones, 39 Clues (Leslie is a good Mom!), and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Biblioracle recommended Silas Marner by George Eliot

Jen:  Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Colllins, Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones, Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, and Lush Life:  A Novel by Richard Price - Biblioracle recommended The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Gab: Tess of the D’urbevilles by Thomas Hardy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley, and The Children’s Book by AS Byatt – Biblioracle recommened The Life of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Didn’t get a chance to play?  No worries, he will return this summer “sooner than you think,” and you can get some ideas just from scanning his responses.  Both times I searched the books he recommended for ones I like, then looked back at the five book list to see if contained anything I’d like to learn more about.  Two books that I kept seeing in lists that prompted the Biblioracle to name a book I liked, The Ask: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte and Next:  A Novel by James Hynes (what’s with ‘:  A Novel,’ can’t readers figure that out by finding the book in the fiction section?).

I love what makes John Warner qualified to make recommendations, something about teaching at the university, writing his own books, blah, blah, blah.  The core of his power is spending a childhood in his mother’s independent bookstore listening to her recommend books.  He is the Biblioracle because of 1) his mother and 2) growing up in an independent bookstore, both sources for superhuman powers.

Share

Tags: , ,

The Girl Who Played with the Hornet’s Dragon

May 25, 2010 in book review, international, Uncategorized by Claire | 3 comments

Stieg Larsson’s third and final book in the Lisbeth Salander series has just been published and is, predictably, #1 on Amazon’s bestselling list (I just checked: you get only the most current news on bookstorepeople.com).  The New York Times just ran an amazing piece on the late author and the battle over his estate, which I recommend you read if you’re interested in his back story or you just like to see lots of photos of healthy looking Swedes in little round glasses.  (Are little round glasses a requirement for Swedish citizenship?  I’m just wondering.)

Anyway, all the real life intrigue you could want is in that piece: the mystery of whether Larsson’s girlfriend really ghost-wrote the book (she was a better writer than he was, according to some of those interviewed), whether his death was an assassination because he was a well-known journalist with a crusade against the right wing, and whether a fourth book is forthcoming (a large part of it supposedly has been written–but whether by Stieg or his girlfriend is up for debate).

Me, I’m just going to talk about the books, all of which I’ve read.  I think I mentioned in my post about Italy that my husband scored a copy of the European edition of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest over our vacation there.  (Side note: it’s “hornet’s nest” in the American edition.  Anyone care to debate where the apostrophe should go?)  I grabbed it and read it before he could (which gives you a fair amount of insight into our relationship and, yes, he is long-suffering), for one reason and one reason only:

Those three books are pretty much the best vacation reading ever.

Which isn’t to say I love them.  I don’t actually.  I have huge problems with all three books, the main one being that while Lisbeth Salander is a fantastic, brilliant, fascinating character, no one else in the books is memorable.  Really.  Even the “hero,” Mikael Blomkvist, never came alive for me.  He’s handsome, I guess, because every woman in the books wants to sleep with him, and he’s a player because he goes ahead and sleeps with them all, and he, like Larsson, is a crusader against evil conspiracies . . .  but I never believed in him.  Not the way I did in Lisbeth.  Which, by the way, is why I liked the second book best and the third one least: the second one had the most Lisbeth, the third one the least amount of her.

As for all the other characters . . . I don’t know.  They just didn’t make an impression on me.  Blomkvist’s long term girlfriend is married to a guy who’s bisexual and they all seem okay with the various relationships which is kind of cool (and seems very European to me) but I never got a good feel for her.  She was smart and tough: I know because Larsson basically tells you so.  But I didn’t care about her, or about almost anyone in the book except Lisbeth.  But I LOVED her. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Garrison & Garrison Books – San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

May 23, 2010 in book review, bookstore, essay, international, translation, travel, used books by Kim | 6 comments

San Miguel de  Allende is the Mexico of dreams.  Old world charm without the glitz of the beach resorts or the overwhelming problems of the border towns.  It’s an ex-pat haven, approximately 10% of the population are foreigners, mostly Northern Americans, but the ex-pats seem to adopt the Mexican culture rather than attempt to change it.  It’s a city of culture:  music, art, religious ceremonies, great food, and, of course, literature.  The library serves as place to lend books and a community center.   The week we visited there was a classical guitar concert, a literary lecture and a Tennessee Williams play.

San Miguel is a town to meander around.  The colonial buildings open into court yards containing stores, restaurants and galleries.  And if the door is closed?  So much the better because the doors of San Miguel are beautiful, so much so there is a book, aptly named The Doors of San Miguel de Allende, by Robert De Gast, documenting them.

Wandering through the streets, we stumbled upon Garrison & Garrison Books, an English language used bookstore.  It’s fairly tiny store with about 8 bookshelves, a book table and a few tattered but comfy chairs.  The flyers for ex-pat events showed the store was a bit of a community center itself.  The store offers the traveler a variety of literature, mystery or airplane reads.  There is also a selection of local interest books, among them said Doors book.  Before leaving for Mexico, I looked for Life in Mexico by Frances Calderon De La Barca the Scottish wife the Spanish Ambassador from Mexico from 1839-1845, a book of lively letters, but was told that it was out of print.  It was sitting on the table in Garrison & Garrison, I was thrilled until I noticed the size.  It was a doorstop book that I couldn’t imagine carrying around all day and then home in  my luggage.  Every time I was in a taxi that drove by Garrison  & Garrison, I was tempted to ask the driver to pause just for a minute while I ran in to buy a book the weight of a newborn child.

Recommended Reading for San Miguel de Allende

Not willing to endure an aching back from hauling around Life in Mexico, I did read two books that added flavor to my visit.  To make progress on the Essay Challenge, I chose DH Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico.  Traveling in the San Miguel area while reading Lawrence’s essays created a dialogue between what I was seeing and what I was reading.  The essays were written in the 1920s and described a world that is much changed 80 years later, but there was an essence of the place that Lawrence experienced and I sensed.  The courtyard life Lawrence describes in “Corasmin and the Parrots” as he ponders evolution is very Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Perfectly Compatible – a Classic and a Current Book

May 21, 2010 in classics by Kim | 2 comments

One of the most common desires I hear from readers is “I wish I read more of the classics in school.”  Possibly due to not paying attention in English classes, inadequate teachers, or an emphasis on non-literature subjects, many adults feel that they’ve missed out by not reading the stars of western literature.  Yet, sitting down with War and Peace can feel intimidating.  One of my favorite reading adventures is to pair a classic with a modern literary work can create a dialogue between the two books.

Pairing modern books with classics casts a new light on both works.  I thought of this again after reading The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees. It would be fun to read with Little Woman, it casts the Jo and Laurie story in a new light while also emphasizing the choices Jo, and Louisa had to make.

My favorite recommendation is to read The Great Gatsby, then The Double Bind by Chris Bohjolian and/or Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.  The Double Bind plays with the plot of The Great Gatsby; the main character in Bohjolian’s book meets the Gatsby characters and discusses their post-novel life.  Then, the book ends with a blindsiding kicker.  Netherland is often referred to as the “new” Gatsby because it deals with a similar underlying theme of achieving the American dream, whether it is possible, and at what cost.

Reading a book that updates a classic for a current audience adds meaning to both works.  Philip Roth’s Everyman is a modern re-telling of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.  Both books reflect their authors; the scene with the main character flirting with the woman runner on the beach is pure Roth.  Lovers of Tolstoy would pick up on his style within the first few paragraphs of Ivan Ilyich.  The similarities in the views of two aging writers who are, shall we say extremely self-confident, are thought and discussion provoking.  These books can be read in any order, but I found I understood Tolstoy’s book better having read Roth’s first.

Switching to the other end of the age spectrum, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld gives a 21st century female take on The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.  Many readers are familiar with Salinger’s classic since it is on most Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: , , , ,

« Older entries