Reading Update

This is not going to be a very thrilling or detailed analysis of my reading material for the past month, or however long it has been, because I am really not in the mood to rhapsodise about any of the things I have been reading (bar one or two things).

Well, I have just finished reading the last book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. SPOILER ALERT for those of you who haven't got around to reading this one yet - there's been such a fuss about this book it seems unlikely, but then, I only just finished it.



I must admit, I enjoyed this one much more than I did the rest of the series. Maybe because a large chunk of it was in Jacob's voice, instead of Bella's (I find Bella whinging and self-deprecating and an affront to feminists everywhere, as you may remember from the last blog about my Twilight readings) - and once it switched back to Bella's perspective, she was a vampire, and therefore more confidant and less whingy. She has finally matured, got her priorities in order and her head on straight. Also, I'm sure being invincible boosts one's ego somewhat. As is typical of Meyer's novels it was a dead easy read - I find myself having sat there and read for hours straight without having noticed, because her narrators all have very natural voices (even if I find them annoying sometimes). It's 754 pages and I finshed it in under 24 hours.

Anyway, as entertaining as it was for the time being, I would like to move on. Other things I have read since I last updated my reviews include:



which was a perfect example of how librarians are the same type of annoying people the world over. I picked this book up because I have been working in libraries for the past 5 or 6 years, and because it was written by a contributor to McSweeney's, which is always a good recommendation, or so I thought. (I should have remembered how much Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius annoyed me...) But reading this book was too much like going to work, and I ultimately found the narrator/author too irritating - the sychophantic kind of young male librarian who belives every new trend introduced in library circles and thinks he's here to change the way we use libraries and spends a lot of time waxing poetic about the library being a community focal point. Sickening stuff after about 50 pages, let alone 200 odd. Every chapter took a funny anecdote and made it a moralising sermon on the role of libraries. Librarians are both dull and infuriating at the same time. There is rage and apathy in my heart when I read books like these.

The last book on my list for today was Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke.


This was my first encounter with Pullman's writing, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. I've heard so much hype about him that I pessimisstically (?) expected it to be a bit crap. His writing style reminded me a bit of J.K. Rowling's (yes, I know Ruby was published in, like, 1984 or 85, he got there first, bully for him, but I knew Rowling before I knew Phil, so you'll just have to live with that comparison) - lots of adjectives. It was a bit dull to read, but only because I'd already seen the BBC miniseries episode, so I knew how it ended. I intend to seek out the rest of the series, I'll let you know if I enjoy it more when the element of surprise is on the story's side.

I'm sure I've read other things since the last review I wrote, I must have, but maybe I just haven't finished them yet. There have been a few books I've started and given up on - World War Z: The Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, for example. I liked the idea but all his characters had the same voice and came to the same conclusion as the last, and after reading 20 stories about how this one person evaded having his brains sucked out and the "plot" (such as it was) going nowhere, I gave up. Could have been such a good book too.

Anyway, I hope my reviews are interesting or useful to someone, even if just to Future-Me, looking back and trying to remember what I read last year.

Toodles. xoxox

Self's Punishment and Niggling Doubts

Just finished another book so I though I'd best come and blog-out my review ASAP, before I forget I've read it. I keep having these niggling doubts that I've missed at least a couple of books in between Twilight and Breakfast at Tiffany's - I must have! I can't possibly have read that little. Unfortunately, racking my brains is turning out to be a fairly short-lived line of enquiry. All I can think is that it's possibly I've been too distracted with uni reading to do much else (I do intend to write reviews on some of the novels I study as part of my coursework, but so far this semester we've been doing a lot of poetry - Whitman, Dickinson etc - or I haven't finished reading the novels set - like The Scarlet Letter. Which I thought was actually quite good but had trouble getting into, and trouble with my time management skills as well - essays being due at the same time and whatnot).

Anyway, enough excuses, on to the book review - these past few weeks I've been delving into the literary world of German crime fiction - specifically, a collaboration between Bernhard Schlink (of 'The Reader' fame) and Walter Popp, who collectively published 'Self's Punishment' under the psuedonym Thomas Richter.



This book was published in Germany in 1987, but wasn't translated into English until 2004, or so says the little flap on the inside of the jacket. We probably only got the translation because Schlink had such a great success with 'The Reader'. It's about a private investigator and former Nazi prosecutor, Gerhard Self, who is assigned to a case at a large chemical works plant thingy, where someone has been messing with the computer system and generally causing havoc - giving the lower-level employees extra holiday time, cutting the executives' salaries and messing with the automated tennis court booking system. Things get hairier when tampering with the computer-controlled gas sensing system leads to an explosion at the plant.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I'm a really big fan of 'The Reader', and another of Schlink's more recent novels, 'Homecoming'. Unfortunately, I think Walter Popp is a bad influence on Schlink. You could see touches of Schlink's brilliance in certain character descriptions, but mostly his flair was obscured by what I assume was a really low-grade translation (does being bitchy hurt less if I suffix that with a "no offence"?). And, clearly, the collaboration was less than cohesive - parts of this seem like each writer was writing in a separate room, and neither of them bothered to double-check if the various sections fitted together. I've given group presentations with similar problems, so I understand. But it does seem a bit shameful that this kind of disorganisation would occur within an international publication, rather than just in a first year history course.

In some places, the scenes just seemed like a really detailed synopsis. A publication of the author's notes, if you will. Despite this, it was a good plot - and an interesting look into post-WW2 German culture - and I have hope that the sequel, Self's Deception, will be better.

The "Little Blue Books" & Breakfast at Tiffany's

Years ago, my mum worked at the library. I was a nerdy little kid who didn't like being left home alone, so when Mum went to work I would often tag along, especially during school holidays. Almost every day you would find me sitting under the stairs, in the staff area, on a pile of pillows, nose buried deep inside a book. Sometimes it would be actual library books, sometimes I would bring something from home, but a lot of the time I would pick something from the donations bin. (I use the term "donations" very loosely - even though the library took in books they very rarely passed them on to any charity or added them in to the collection - they would mostly just sit in this giant bin for years on end - I was saving them from a life of neglect, really...) One day I got the best haul I've ever had - someone dumped a whole collection of these tiny blue editions of Oxford Classics. Jane Austen's entire collected works, a few Tolstoys, Trollopes, some Dickens, and some miscellaneous poetry collections too - stuff that, if I were to buy brand new editions today, would cost me $30+ each. So I stuffed two library bags full and hauled my treasure home.

This has to have been more than 7 years ago, and I still haven't any of these pretty little blue treasures - so, new resolution, I am going to read all of them, and I am going to tell you what I think of them when I do.

I'm partway through reading one (just the one) of my little blue books - a collection of short stories by Tolstoy. I do like Tolstoy. Russians literature is just so fantastically depressing - it's particularly funny to read his stories for children. People get captured and held prisoner and nearly starve to death, and he matter of factly blurts out at the end, that they got away, but the other guy nearly died. That's his version of a kids book.

Speaking of books, here's something I read recently that has completely changed my life:



Before I read this, I was a Capote-virgin (wow, that sounds dirtier than it should, doesn't it? No, just me? I poke my tongue out at you if you don't find that as weird as I do...), but now I am a convert. It's times like these that I remember why I gave up being religious in favour of just reading a shitload of books. Breakfast at Tiffany's is perfect - you know when reviewers use that cliche, "a gem of a novel"? This is not only an accurate way to describe Breakfast at Tiffany's, reading it makes you feel like the phrase was invented just to describe Capote's story.
I will admit, I was biased when going in to reading this, because I saw the movie first, and loved it, and part of the charm was being able to ignore descriptions of Holly Golightly as a blonde and picture Audrey Hepburn in my head instead. I couldn't imagine Holly any other way, and I wouldn't want to. The ending is (thankfully) a lot less Hollywood/romantic comedy than the film, but most of the events are the same. There's something so much more wonderful about reading it though, and I would whole-heartedly recommend reading it first if you can. Every single word Capote writes seems to fit snugly into place, like puzzle-pieces - the words were invented just to be strung together in those very sentences. The tone is like having someone tell you a story, like the narrator is real - he never once slips out of being the narrator into being the author, like so many things (frustratingly) do. Out of five stars, I would give this a read-this-book-or-you-haven't-lived rating. I am a Capote convert, and I am planning to buy everything else he's ever written as soon as funds allow.

On a side note, the other thing I loved about this book was that it was $10, and is part of a Penguin re-release of paperbakcs in the old orange covers - I am a very tactile person, and I really loved how the pages were all smooth and the covers were soft to hold. I barely opened the pages properly because I didn't want to crack the spine. To regurgitate another reviewer's cliche, everything about this book was a delight.

Well, that is me up-to-date for the moment. Hopefully I will be blogging more regularly now - I got my own baby laptop for my birthday, so I will be able to blog in those long breaks between classes, when I am at uni. Always connected now. God bless wireless internet.

Procrastination

This is one of those days where I feel like blogging, but I don't really have a topic in mind when I start out, so bear with me, or stop reading now, one of the two. You are in for a bumpy (ie very dull) ride.

At the moment, I am thinking about procrastination, mainly because I am doing an awful lot of it. I have an essay due tomorrow, 1500 words on Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself', and I haven't started it. I printed out a few articles and I've read about half of one, but that is as much progress as I've made. Slept in till 3pm, I think because my body was unconsciously helping me procrastinate, and knew I would do nothing more productive with my day than watch bad tv and eat chocolate cake.

I have a quote pinned to the corkboard in my room that says "Procrastination is just fear of self". I can't remember where I got it from, but it was really to encourage myself to write more creatively, and more often. (It's underneath a Jane Smiley quote that says "Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist".) When I wrote it down and pinned it up, I didn't really consider it in relation to my academic stuff, but it applies, just as much as it does to the creative stuff. I am afraid of failing, afraid that what I will write will be garbage and that my lecturer will pass it around the staff room while all of my lecturers and tutors and everyone I've ever had contact with in the department laughs their arse off. Well, ok, I'm not afraid of that quite so literally, because I know everyone at my uni is a professional, but still, I'm not good with criticism. I'm not good with trying unless I know I'm going to succeed. Which really defeats the point of trying, because if you know it's going to work out, then trying is really just a pointless exercise, isn't it? You have to try in the face of adversity. Or so I would say if I was a motivational calender.



I sometimes wonder why I procrastinate so much. I feel so much more on top of things if I actually do them in advance, the crippling fear is not there, I actually feel intelligent and capable when I budget my time properly. Why do it to myself this way - where I have 24 hours in which to research and write a brilliant essay, and in between that I have to go to work for 8 hours. Procrastination is the most illogical beast.

Anyway, at this point I'm procrastinating finding a point to this blog, so I'm going to go and read some pompous articles on Walt Whitman and at least feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Twilight

Time for another one of my fabulously incisive books reviews. I'll try not to go on as much as I did in the last one.





Well, Twilight**. What can I say about you.

I heard a lot of hype about these books - I heard someone say they were the best books since Harry Potter. I think it was even the blurb on the cover of New Moon.

Which is why, sadly, I was a little disappointed. (It's always the way with high expectations - they naturally lead to let downs, I think). The idea was fantastic - it's hard to go wrong with vampires, because they are always such an exciting idea - immortal, beautiful, violent, just that little bit erotic - what could go wrong? And I did like a lot of the ways in which Stephanie Meyer portayed them - the little quirks she added, the highschool setting (how could I not enjoy the situational humour springing from vampire boyfriends, werewolf friends, and the pressures of highschool and parents? I'm a Buffy fan after all). Her invented histories she threw into Eclipse - the origin of the werewolf clan, Jasper's dark and violent past - were also great. My problem was one particular character.

Bella Swan - ugh. I'm so torn about her. Some of the time I find myself relating to her, other times I was shaking the book(s) and yelling at her not to be such a stupid bint. She was so FRUSTRATING. Utterly thick - what it took her a hundred pages to figure out I had picked as soon as the first doubt surfaced in her mind. Sometimes before that. You'd think the problem would be the predictable plot but really, I think it's how utterly dim and self-deprecating Bella is. That's another thing - these books really enraged my inner feminist (she's been somewhat sleepy of late, but these books really woke my inner Germaine up!) Everything is her fault - even the problems that arise just because she hangs out with territorial boys all the time. She's so drippy she can't take care of herself - she relies on Edward or Jacob to save her all the time, and make her feel bad about anything that happens - both of them manipulate her in an attempt to make them love her. She sees no problem in any of this, and just falls in love with both of them. Way to go, girl power. Meyer was obviously inspired by a very sappy reading list - Romeo & Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Austen's entire back-catalogue are all texts mentioned throughout the series.

Maybe I shouldn't have had such high expectations for something billed unashamedly as "vampire romance", but I still expected a modern female author to deal with love and romance without completely selling out the sisterhood. Maybe I just need to go and read The Female Eunuch quietly in the corner and stop annoying everybody with my ranting. Whatever.

BUT (and this is a big qualifier), despite all these things, all the frustration Bella caused me and tiny Germaine, I was completely addicted to this book. I'm dying to read Breaking Dawn and I can't believe it's not out yet. I'm suddenly really excited for the film. I spent all of today lying on my couch racing to the end of Eclipse. It really is addictive - can't think of a better word for it.

So here's my recommendation - if you're looking for something deep and meaningful, with stellar prose and a completely original plot - don't go anywhere near these books. These are not for the pretentious readers among us (and I say that with no judgment - sometimes you're in the mood for something that makes you think, sometimes you're not). These books are things you read when you don't want anything serious. When you want happy endings and romance and a little bit of Gothic style - read Twilight. It's good, trashy fun.

** Don't read this review if you haven't read the books. I don't think there are many spoilers, but I haven't bothered to stop and explain who any of the characters are or what happens. This is all about assumed knowledge. Basically, because it's such a big seller, I assume everyone is going to know what I'm talking about. If you don't, go read the damn synopsis off Stephanie Meyer's website - I'm not going to waste time regurgitating what you can find on a hundred other sites, and much more accurately.

So, had my rant for tonight.

Sweet dreams.

Suite Francaise

Just finished reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovksy (apologies for the lack of accents, but I don't know how to do anything that fancy with my keyboard) and I thought I would share my thoughts with the blogosphere.

The review is way past the point when anyone would care to hear it - the book has been out since 2004, the rest of the media has had their fanfare about the fact that Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz - and I will admit, is probably not going to be very detailed or unbiased. But you're getting it anyway.

I will admit, I have a sick fascination with novels or films about the Nazis, and I am a bit of a Francophile, so combine those two things and you've got something I am bound to enjoy on at least one level. Reading Suite Francaise, I often felt like I was reading a first draft, or something the author was not quite finished with yet. I have the barest knowledge of Suite Francaise's discovery - only that is was found in the possesion of one of Nemirovsky distant relatives, and still in notebooks and handwritten (her handwritten draft is reproduced in the endpapers of the edition I read, and let me tell you, I have a lot of respect for the translator - it's mighty difficult to read!) so I don't know if she got a chance to edit anything, or what it would have looked like at the end of the whole process. But I employed the usual tact one does when reading something published by a dead author, and I pity them, I cut them slack, and I overlooked any of the bits I didn't like as something she would have obviously had the good sense to cut out of a later draft, had only she had the time. Stupid Nazis.

Despite a few rough moments, I loved reading this work - it reminded me strongly of another of my favourite authors, Louis de Bernieres. If you've ever read Birds Without Wings you will know what I'm talking about - the series of character vignettes strung together to provide a complete picture of what it was like for a town to be occupied. Birds Without Wings deals with the Germans occupying Italy in World War One, Suite Francaise deals with the German occupation of France in World War Two, but the similarites are nonetheless striking. Suite Francaise has an ensemble cast and a hundred different perspectives to examine the French (and German) experience of the war from, and does it with style and grace.

The saddest part was reading the Appendices - the author's notes on her plans for a further three books in the series, and her correspondence with her husband and her various friends and publishers; trying to get money, trying to get back to her appartment in Paris, trying to get along without anyone discovering she's a Jew. The records of her last two letters to her husband were sadly naive - thinking it's only temporary, she'll be back soon, could you please send her glasses, she thinks she left them in one of her suitcases. We all know it doesn't matter, and it's heartbreaking to read. After her last two letters, there's a flurry of telegrams from her husband to various people that might help him find where she is, if she's left France and been sent to another camp. The collection of correspondence ends when her husband was taken to a camp, and with a sad note in response to a publisher who had attempted to contact Nemirovsky about some work.

"Albin Michel's reply to W. Tideman (29 December 1945): I have seen the letter sent to my offices addressed to I. Nemirovsky and am alas! unable to pass it on to her.
Mme I. Nemirovsky was, in fact, arrested in July 1942 then deported to Poland, we think. Since the date of her arrest, no one has heard anything from her."

I think that has been the basic selling-point of Suite Francaise - an insider's perspective on the German occupation of France, the terrible tragedy of her death in Auschwitz (a name everybody knows), the loss of such a talent. While Suite Francaise is a fine work, I don't know if it deserves the title of "classic" or "masterpiece" as the blurbs on the back cover cry, but I still think it's worthwhile reading.

The thing that occured to me while reading the letters at the end, though, links back to an article I read about Suite Francaise before I started to read the actual novel. If you google Suite Francaise you will quickly be lead to the Wikipedia article on the novels. While we all have our doubts about Wikipedia, it links to an interesting review of Nemirovsky's work that charges her with anti-Semitism. The article by Ruth Franklin, "wittly" titled Scandale Francaise, says this:

"Némirovsky was the very definition of a self-hating Jew. Does that sound too strong? Well, here is a Jewish writer who owed her success in France entre deux guerres in no small measure to her ability to pander to the forces of reaction, to the fascist right. Némirovsky's stories of corrupt Jews-- some of them even have hooked noses, no less!"

Franklin points out the same things that occured to me - that her death in Auschwitz has been the ultimate marketing ploy. The quote above refers to Nemirovsky's first novel, David Golder. Unlike Franklin, I don't think this damns Nemirovsky in the slightest. (And, just quietly, I have the feeling Franklin feels somehow slighted by the success of Suite Francaise - there is an outraged tone in her article that stems only from someone deeply jealous, if you ask me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.)

For one thing, this ridiculous assumption that all writers and public figures and artists and actors have to be model citizens is just that - an utterly ridiculous assumption. Are these people not human? Just because they produce art, in whatever form, they are suddenly role models, we are instructed to look to them to make ourselves better people, and it's an utter scandal when they don't live up to our expectations. It's the same with Irene Nemirovsky as it is with Britney Spears - they do something we don't like, make "bad" choices (ie ones we disagree with) and suddenly we shouldn't read their work or listen to their music - because that would be like approving of what they've done, wouldn't it? I read Suite Francaise and I'm an anti-semite now - don't you know racism is a communicable disease? (Maybe, just maybe, we should all be a little bit more discerning about what we read and listen to... maybe we should learn to think about things before we just believe them? Am I crazy?) Even if Nemirovsky was an anti-Semite, it doesn't matter to me - that just reminds me that she's a person, that she had faults and prejudices just like any other person, and lends a different quality to her writing about World War Two. That's a perspective that money can't buy.

Secondly, in reading the letters from Nemirovsky's husband, Michel Epstein, the frantic letters and countless telegrams he wrote after his wife's arrest, it occurs to the reader that it might not have been particularly safe for a person of Jewish descent to be publically defending the Jews in her written works, either novels or newspaper contributions. Michel Epstein's correspondence shows he was trying to find parts of Nemirovsky's work that would show she was not sympathetic to the Jews, something, anything, to pardon her.

"In France, not a single member of our family has ever been involved in politics... In none of [Nemirovsky's] books... will you find a single word against Germany and, even though my wife is of Jewish descent, she does not speak of the Jews with any affection whatsoever in her works... my wife has always avoided belonging to any political party, ... she has never received special treatment from any government either left-wing or right-wing, and ... the newspaper she contributed to as a novelist, Gringoire,... has certainly never been well-disposed towards either the Jews or the Communists."

Granted, David Golder was published in 1929, when, as far as I know, it wasn't fashionable to be anti-semitic, though that could be an entirely ignorant assertion, I don't know. All I can think is that it seems ridiculous to judge Nemirovsky for having either the attitudes of her time, or attitudes that could potentially save her life.

Read Suite Francaise, even if she was a racist. She wouldn't be the first novelist to have character flaws, and it's a damn fine book, either way.

Introduction...

At the risk of blogging like a 15 year old girl (which, I should say, I'm not), I'm going to tell you a few things about myself. I am a girl, an Australian, I go to university, I have long brown hair and blue eyes and a fear of public speaking, and someday I want to live in a tree house. When I grow up (let's ignore the fact that I'm technically already an adult) I want to be a novelist. A bestselling novelist would be nice, easier to pay the bills if I'm J.K. Rowling, but I'm just going to stick with novelist for the moment. Keep your expectations low and you can't be disappointed.
For breakfast today I ate half a tub of chocolate chocolate-chip icecream, and a cup of frozen peas. I hope never to have to go outside ever again. If I could live any place in the world, I'd live in the south of France. I have never been to the south of France but it always looks nice in movies. If I could be any kind of writer I would be the crazy reclusive type, the kind who only has one photo of themselves in existence, and that one is kind of blurry. So my place in the south of France won't be conveniently located next to a village full of judgmental Frenchmen, it will be out on some overgrown and unkempt farm property somewhere, and every month or so I will appear in the village looking unwashed and trying to avoid conversations with the staff while replenishing my food stores. I dream big. With this blog, I plan to write witty, insightful, and largely ignored books and occasional film reviews.
So this was your introduction, I hope you found it useful. Lead on to Chapter 1, coming next blog...