Tag: book lust ii

Second Sex – Failed

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Second sexde Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.

Okay, I admit it. I got two paragraphs into the translator’s preface then skipped to the author’s introduction. There, I got as far as page v . Mind you, the introduction starts on page v. Then, I skipped to chapter one, got as far as paragraph three where I promptly fell asleep. I couldn’t get a single page entirely read. Not a one. Here and now I’m evoking the BookLust 50 page rule and admiting defeat with The Second Sex (see Book Lust Rules). Women everywhere hate me now for what I’m about to say.

I am not a diehard feminist. I have strong beliefs in what a woman can and can’t do. I’ve said before that women are more cerebral than men. They frequently change their minds, then change them back again. This makes them flighty, indecisive. Not exactly the type of person I would want in combat. The ability to drive a car? Please, don’t even get me started! I could go on, but I don’t think I can take the hate mail.
My second reason for not wanting to finish (or even properly start) Second Sex is the fact that it was written in 1952 (from a treatise written three years earlier, in 1949). Much has changed for women since that time. We’re more accepted in the corporate world, the political realm & even the far reaches of outer space. It’s becoming more acceptable for women to be the bread winners while their husbands stay at home with the kids. One might argue that reading Second Sex would be good from a historical standpoint. True, but I’m just not that interested in standing in that light.
My third reason for not reading Second Sex is purely a selfish one. The book is long – over 750 pages! I just don’t see myself devoting my entire summer vacation to something that reads like a textbook.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “I Am Woman – Hear Me Roar” (p 120). Pearl calls de Beauvoir a pioneer  of the women’s movement. I’ll take her word for it.

Note: This makes the seventh book I have given up on since starting the Book Lust Challenge.

Abbreviating Ernie

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Abbreviating ErnieLefcourt, Peter. Abbreviating Ernie. New York: Villard, 1997.

At first glance this humorous book is just plain cut and dried funny. Okay, bad pun. Read on and you’ll see why. Here’s the surface premise, the tip of the iceburg, of Abbreviating Ernie. Ernie and his wife are having sex. He drops dead of a heart attack. She’s blamed for his death. Here’s the just under the surface details: Ernie likes to dress in his wife clothes while having sex. He also likes to handcuff his wife and he can’t seem to “do the deed” anywhere normal. Long story cut short (there’s that pun again): Wife is found holding an electric carving knife, chained in the kitchen while hubby lies dead on the floor missing his “tommyhawk” as one character put it. All of this happens within the first twenty pages of the book so I found myself wondering what in the world Lefcourt would have say in the remaining 271.
Here’s the rest of the iceburg. Abbreviating Ernie is a commentary on the legal system, mental illness, women’s rights, the sensationalism the media can create, the Hollywoodization of a tragedy (what famous actor will portray the prosecutor?), and the exposure to human nature, often seen as failings. It’s about how warped our society can be when confronted with the dark secrets of suburbia. Yet, it keeps you laughing.

BookLust Twist: Abbreviating Ernie shows up in Pearl’s More Book Lust in the chapter on “Alabama” (p 207). While Abbreviating Ernie doesn’t take place in Alabama Pearl makes mention of Lefcourt’s book because Crazy in Alabama has an electric carving knife in its plot.

Above The Thunder

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Above the ThunderManfredi, Renee. Above the Thunder. San Francisco: MacAdam & Cage, 2004.

Once I started reading Above the Thunder it was like a giant boulder building momentum down a hill. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I like that it’s all about journeys, big and small. Personal and global. On the surface its four people, on the whole it’s humanity. The plot is simple – it’s about the life of Anna. She starts out being a cynical, bitter widow who “doesn’t want to get involved.”‘ She doesn’t want to get involved in living, period. She has all but disowned her daughter whom she hasn’t seen in 12 years. She has one friend. When her son-in-law and granddaughter return to live with her and she reluctantly agrees to help moderate an aids support group she ends up being the center of a collection of people so diverse and wonderful she can’t help but change and, in the process, grow. Sounds predictable and nice, but it isn’t. There is a harsh reality to this coming-into-the-light story: aids, suicide, divorce, miscarriage and sadness all play an important part in the plot.

The thing I liked best about Above the Thunder are the characters. They are believable. Anna is introduced to us as closed off and inflexible. In time she changes, but when faced with a new tragedy she reverts back her old self and craves solitude where she can grieve in private. In shrugging off the comfort of others she is still the same person we meet in chapter one. Even Jack, a homosexual with problems with fidelity, doesn’t change his desire for sexual freedom once he discovers he is hiv positive. All the characters go through a period of growth and acceptance, but at the core are all still the same unique individuals.
Some favorite lines:

  • “She doubted it was possible to understand someone else’s suffering. Even her beloved husband whose pain had become a private geography on which she couldn’t trespass.” (p 21)
  • “Holy God, man, how long does it take to cook a hot dog? I’ve been in line long enough to break a habit, backslide, and recommit.” (p 183)

And a favorite scene: two homosexual men trying to teach a pubescent girl how to use a tampon for the first time. It’s hysterical and poignant all at once.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Maiden Voyages” (p 159). I have always loved discovering someone’s very first novel. Katherine Weber’s maiden voyage is one of my favorite, but Above the Thunder rates right up there, too.

Twenty-One Balloons

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21 BalloonsDu Bois, William Pene. The Twenty-One Balloons. New York: Viking Press, 1947.

I like coincidences. I was nearly finished with Zelda Fitzgerald’s biography when I picked up Twenty-One Balloons. I’ve gotten into the habit of reading prefaces and author’s notes before diving into a story. In the past I would skip over them but now I like the little tidbits if information before getting to the heart of the plot. It was a huge surprise to read that Du Bois’ publisher noted “a strong resemblance” to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story called, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” Du Bois states in his note, “The fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald and I apparently would spend our billions in like ways right down to being dumped from bed into a bathtub is altogether, quite frankly, beyond my explanation. William Pene Du Bois January 16th, 1947.” I find this compelling and made it impossible for me to delay reading Twenty-One Balloons!

Twenty-One Balloons is the clever children’s story of Professor William Waterman Sherman. He taught arithmetic for 40 years and decided he was in need of a vacation of solitude. He decided ballooning would be just the thing and masterminded the invention of a balloon that could take him around the world. Except he doesn’t make it and the adventures that follow are more exciting than had he actually made it around the world. This book is delightfully illustrated by William Pene Du Bois as well.

Some of my favorite moments are when first, when Sherman first crashes (on Krakatao) he is told, “you may think that your landing on this island was all by accident…” setting the scene for something little more ominous. It’s followed up by the escape which is equally fun.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust  and the chapter on Krakatau. Pearl says, “Du Bois’s book is a glorious fantasy…” (p 183). Indeed!

One Morning in Maine

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One Morning in MaineMcCloskey, Robert. One Morning in Maine. New York: Puffin Books, 1989.

Who doesn’t love Robert McCloskey’s books? For starters, all the illustrations are great. For another, I always loved One Morning in Maine because I could compare Sal’s life to my own growing up…She lived on an island in Maine, boat trips were something to get excited about and she had a younger sister…the differences were her family lived close enough to row over to the mainland (when their boat engine died) and her family could go digging for clams right outside their house. Our boat rides took over an hour, full steam ahead and I hunted for periwinkles in tide pools.
Even her parents reminded me of my own – always playing the Big Girl Card. Compared to my sister I was supposed to be more mature, more responsible. They used my elder status to get me to behave, “but you’re growing into a big girl and big girls don’t cry about things like that” (p37).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust. Pearl mentions in the intro (p ix) she started her obsession with reading with books like One Morning in Maine. Me too!

Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

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AutobiographyChaudhuri, Nirad. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.

I admitted defeat with Autobiographyby page 92. Maybe I was spoiled by all the easy reading over the vaca. Maybe I just couldn’t wrap my brain around Chaudhuri’s lengthy descriptions. Maybe it was the subject matter. I don’t know. I do know that I literally fell asleep every time I cracked open this book.
From the very beginning I was confused about the nature of this story. Fiction? Nonfiction? It’s the first hand account of an Indian growing up in Kishorganj, India. A memoir of sorts. It sounds nonfiction because he refers to the Chaudhuri family off and on and he goes to great length to describe everything – the huts his family lived in, the landscape, the weather, the townspeople, the politics, the culture, even the animals. Chaudhuri lost me in the chapter about his mother’s ancestral village. It was more of the same. 
But, the reading wasn’t all dry. Littered in between the descriptive are little stories about childhood and memories. Those little pieces were fun and added color to the overall plot. 

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: A Readers Itinerary.” Nancy puts Autobiography under fiction but it reads as dry as non. What cracked a smile on my face is when Nancy described it as an “exceptionally informative.” She wasn’t kidding.

The Awakening (w/ spoiler)

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AwakeningChopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: New American Library, 1976.

If I had a tag for “feminism” this book would be under it. Actually, it’s more of a long short story than a book. Only 125 pages long Kate Chopin tells the story of discontented, tragic Edna Pontellier. A wife and a mother she is dutiful as both until a younger man awakens her inner rebel and sex goddess. You can see it start slowly when she states, “I feel this summer as if I were walking thrugh the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided” (p. 17). It grows stronger when she disobeys her husband, “Another time she would have gone in at his request” (p. 33). Finally, the ultimate of rebellion reaches its peak when she is seduced by another man, Arobin. “He did not say goodnight until she had become supple to his gentle, seductive entreaties” (p. 100).

BookLust Twist: While Pearl doesn’t think anything really happened with Edna (” …poor Edna Pontellier…who doesn’t actually do anything but suffers the consequences anyway.” More Book Lust, Wayward Wives p 232), I strongly disagree. What Edna doesn’t do is be a good mother to her kids (they’re shipped off while she pretends to be an artist), or a good wife. She moved out of their home while hubby’s away. He’s left making excuses to save face (said the house was being renovated and that’s why his wife took up another residence).

In the end Edna commits suicide. She knows she’s not a good mother. She knows she isn’t a faithful wife. She can’t have the man who truly awakened her sexuality. Trapped in a life she cannot conform to she walks into the sea never to emerge.

About a Boy

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About a boyHornby, Nick. About a Boy.New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.

I have heard so much about this book. Maybe it’s because I’ve liked other Hornby books that have been made into movies~ Fever Pitch & High Fidelity. Will is a pretty interesting character. He’s a single guy, bound and determined to never work a day in his life. He spends his time watching movies, listening to music and trolling for women. His newest tactic is to join SPAT (Single Parents Alone – Together). Needless to say, he’s not a single parent. In reality he hates kids. He’s callous and shallow but you can’t help but like him, especially when he gets involved with Fiona and her 12 year old son Marcus.

“There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by 15-20 of them” (p147).

One of the things that struck me about this story is the philosophical ending. Marcus is a boy who acts too old for his age, too serious for his youth while Will acts too young for his years, too immature for the adulthood he is in. In the end they learn to swap maturities – growing down and up. Now I want to see the movie.

BookLust Twist: From both Book Lust and More Book Lust. In More Book Lust About a Boy is in the Chapter, “Dick Lit” (p.79). If you are scratching your head, think chick lit. Get it?

Above Suspicion

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Above SuspicionMacInnes, Helen. Above Suspicion. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Inc., 1969.

This book smells of stale cigarette smoke when it got to me, like it had been hanging out in a 1980’s bar until closing time. The library issued plastic cover is falling off, the tape is yellowing, too. This is not a book that feels good to hold and that really matters to me. I don’t know how many other readers feel this way, but a book has to look a certain way, feel a certain way… in addition to read a certain way.
Nevertheless, the story was intriguing. It’s the story of a young couple recruited to check out a chain of spies (suspected nazi sympathizers) during World War II. The plan is elaborate and dashing. As the story picked up pace I could barely turn the pages fast enough to keep up with my growing interest. Here are some of my favorite quotes (as usual):

“The party in Frame’s rooms had just reached the right temperature when Frances and Richard Myles arrived” (p 17).

“It was strange how her mind, as well as her stomach, rebelled when the choice was sausage or sausage or sausage” (p. 86).

“At first, Richard would only take her on a short ten-mile walk” (p.111). Yikes! I’m lucky if I get in five miles a day!

One of the things I loved about this novel was the interaction between Frances and Richard as man and wife (only married four years). They took cues from each other, nonverbal signs, and acted accordingly. Their intimate knowledge of one another bordered on parapsychology.

BookLust Twist: Nancy Pearl has some great things to say about Above Suspicion in her second Book Lust book, More Book Lust. She calls it “pure fun” something she “rereads regularly” (p 162). For a person who reads a lot that’s a pretty big compliment.

The Paperboy (with Spoiler)

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PaperboyDexter, Pete. The Paperboy. New York: Random House, 1995.

For the longest time I have been concentrating on books that begin with the letter ‘A’ such as About Time, Animal Dreams, and Awakening. As if getting through the A titles would be the most reasonable thing to do first. When The Paperboy by Pete Dexter showed up at my library I felt it was a sign to read it. Especially since it’s on The List and academics don’t keep books like The Paperboy around. I listen to signs.

The Paperboy is an intriguing first-person tale about two brothers working to prove the innocence of a man convicted of murdering Moat County Sheriff Thurmond Call. As Hillary Van Wetter sits on death row, looking as guilty as a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, Jack James and his journalist brother Ward investigate the events leading up to the murder. They get help along the way from Van Wetter’s girlfriend – an apparent death row groupie – as well as other interesting characters.
All the evidence leads towards Van Wetter’s innocence until one day it doesn’t. Instead of all hell breaking loose purgatory unfolds, unwinds for the brothers, slow and sinister like a boa constrictor unfurling itself from a tree limb. Things go from bad to worse until dark becomes death. I couldn’t put it down for three days straight. Even though I saw Ward’s suicide coming the instant he wanted to know more about swimming it still took me by surprise when it finally happened. 

BookLust Twists: From Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust and More Book Lust. In Book Lust in the chapter “First Lines to Remember” Pearl draws attention to Dexter’s first line, “My brother Ward was once a famous man”‘ (p.86) and in More Book Lust in the chapter called “O Brother!” (p180).

1916 (with spoilers)

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1916Llywelyn, Morgan. 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion. New York:Tom Doherty Assoc., Inc., 1998.

It should tell you something that I read this book in less than two weeks. What it should tell you I’m not exactly sure. I did enjoy myself, though. I think, for starters, it’s about a country I long to visit, a country I have heard much about. I also think this was a clever tale. The truth wrapped in fiction or is it fiction wrapped in the truth?

Right off the bat the story is intriguing. Our hero, Edward “Ned” Halloran survives the sinking of the Titanic. His survival is “lucky” because as a citizen of Clare County, Ireland he should have been in steerage with the other third-class Irish. The only reason why he and his family were in second class is because their passage was arranged by Ned’s sister’s fiancee, a White Star employee. The family was going to her wedding in New York City. After the tragedy, once back in Ireland, a series of events allows Ned to get involved with a group of men calling themselves the Irish Republic. It’s history from here on out. The struggle for Irish independence is painful and poetic.

I liked the characters well enough. Ned seemed to be a bit too good to be true, though. Easily liked, good looking, ambitious, intelligent, poetic, noble, a true gentleman, yadayadayada. I got sick of his self-righteousness off and on throughout the entire story. What was a pleasurable constant, however, was Llywelyn’s writing. Here’s a sampling of my favorite phrases:
“Life had scraped him to the bone.” (p 138)
“It’s the only place my skin fits me.” (p 201) My husband will tell you that sounds like Monhegan….
“An Irish solution for an Irish problem: pretend it does not exist.” (p 268)

Llywelyn also fits in other stories, but not as completely as I would have liked. The reader gets a glimpse into Ned’s sister, Kathleen’s life as a married woman living in America. You get sucked into enough to care about her when her husband gets abusive or when she begins an illicit affair with a priest. Sadly, Kathleen’s chapter is never closed. You get an indication that her true love will return to her but you don’t know if the reunion is successful. Alexander Campbell had a strong hold on his wife…

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust and the chapter called, “Digging up the past through literature.” (p 79)

1959

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Davis, Thulani. 1959. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. 1992.1959

Part novel, part historical rampage 1959 is 100% rich in descriptive imagery. 1959 is the story of Katherine “Willie” Tarrant, a coming of age girl growing up in racially divided Turner, Virginia. She has all the typical angst of any twelve year old – boys, makeup, popularity, daydreams driven by movies and celebrity fanfare. Woven into Willie’s world is the climate of the times. Segregation and integration push-pull of a racially divided era. While some of Davis’s story is told in first person from Willie’s point of view, much of the political, historical meat of the story is third person – conversations Willie overhears, meetings she eavesdrops on and situations she couldn’t have possibly been in. (Like during a sex scene and towards the end of the novel when Cole gets shot on a desolate road outside Turner.) There were times when I couldn’t believe a twelve year old was my guide, “With each grind your thighs would become sex weapons blowing away his cool” (p56). What kid speaks like that? “Death brought out banquets as if the mourners were starved by their loss, and yet the grievers never ate” (p 195).
What made this book such a page turner for me (I read it in less than a week) was the tension of the times. It builds slowly with the talk of school integration and builds after eight black college boys sit at a white only Woolworth’s counter, quietly demanding service. Davis masterfully weaves fictional characters with the undeniable historical truth of what really happened. I could hear the dogs bark, feel the sting of hate, see the bravery in the protester’s faces. Even though school integration didn’t happen for another six years, 1959 proved to be the catalyst for change and Davis captured it brilliantly.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Southern-Fried Fiction: Virginia” (p 209).

Ahab’s Wife

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Naslund, Sena Jeter. Ahab’s Wife or, The Star-Gazer. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.Ahab

This took me forever to read! I tried to twice before starting the BookLust Challenge and practically groaned when I saw it on “the list.” It’s not that it isn’t a wonderful book. It is. It’s beautifully written for sure. The only problem is that is it so long! Una’s marriage to Ahab, the namesake title, Ahab’s Wife doesn’t come to pass until page 359! There’s a bit of back and forth on the timeline but all of that is explained at the end.
My other “issue”? Una’s life experiences are shocking yet she handled every single one with heroic resolve. Nothing fazes her for very long. Her father committed suicide, her mother froze to death, her first born died, her first husband went mad, she experienced cannibalism first hand, she braved hurricanes, blizzards and fires. Laced in with all the events are the scientific, political, and sociological happens of the era. Una is submerged in it all: slavery, the womens movement, astronomy. Many famous people parade through the second half of the novel.  
Despite the length of Naslund’s story, I loved the language. There were passages that held my attention and caused me to read them over and over. “I have ever feared the weathervane in me. I point toward Independence, isolation. Sometimes I rotate- my back to Independence – and I need and want my friends, my family. with a force like a gale” (p190). I too, find myself wanting to be alone much of the time. Yet, when I need the ones true to my heart the longing comes over me strong and hard. I can relate. Another passage I identified with was on the very next page, “The very atoms I’m made of come apart in a kind of sparkle. A cloud of sparkle propelled by will” (p191). It reminded me of that partical theory I have.
Probably the best part of Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer is the many, many references to literature. If I had more time I would create a reading list from everything Una mentions in her narrative. Shakespeare, Keats, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass to name a few…

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lustin the chapter of  “Lines that linger, sentences that stick” (p143). Pearl points out the opening sentence “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.” 

7 1/2 Cents (with Spoiler)

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Bissell, Richard.  71/2 Cents. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1953.Bissell

This was a fun read. I loved the wit, the humor of Bissell’s main character, Sidney Sorokin. He’s the new superintendent of the Sleep Tite Pajama factory in lovely, just-not-Chicago, Junction City, Iowa. With a sharp sense of humor he tells his story of romance and industry, ulcers and alcohol.  
The “gun on the table” in 7 1/2 Cents  is an unavoidable strike if the workers don’t get a 7 1/2 cent raise. At the center of the controversy is Sid’s girl, Babe. She’s a worker in the Sleep Tite factory and the ring leader for a industry-ending slow down. She’s beautiful, smart and funny. Of course she leads Sid around by the you-know-what. He’s so smitten he not only gets her her 7 1/2 cent raise he proposes to her in the end. You many think I spoiled the entire story, but I didn’t. There’s more to the book that inspired the musical “The Pajama Game.”

BookLust Twist: From the chapter “The Book Lust of Others” in More Book Lust (p.34). 7 1/2 Cents was mentioned as an aside. Bissell’s other book, “High Water” was the featured read in the chapter.

Amy & Isabelle

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Strout, Elizabeth. Amy & Isabelle. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

Amy & IsabelleBy sending me a copy last year, my sister introduced Amy & Isabelle way before Nancy did. An advanced reader copy, in fact. This was a BookLust reread because I couldn’t remember how it ended (one of the book lust rules is remembering the story). I think I read it too fast the first time around. That always happens to me with the really good ones. I tear through words and pages and chapters because I need to know What Happens Next. And Next. And Next. I think I’ve said it before, but I sift through words, looking for phrases that catch my imagination, rattle my heart. I underline them to lay claim to them. My favorite from Amy & Isabelle is from page 232, “…and then roof of her life collapsed…” I also to admit I was excited to see the words ‘jesum crow’ (p.224). I spell it j-e-e-z-u-m but I think the phase is a Maine thing through and through. (Amy & Isabelle takes place in Maine.)

Isabelle and Amy are in a typical mother-daughter relationship. Amy is a coming-of-age 16 year old. This is the story of her alienation from her mother, thanks to an exploration of sexuality that her mother, Isabelle is not ready to admit her daughter is capable of, much less ready for. They live alone with each other and must deal with their love/hate struggles without the distraction or guidance or stability of a man to call husband or father. The psychology of this story runs pretty deep. When Amy gets her period for the first time her mother shoves pamphlets at her, thinking it’s better than how her mother handled it by not saying anything at all.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “It was a Dark & Stormy Novel” (p128).