Inconsistent Little Old Me

When I first started this blog, I was keeping a reading diary here like the movie diary I have neglected am keeping. Then my sister-in-law asked me to join her on Goodreads, and I decided to post my reading over there instead. But I'm not feeling the love, and meanwhile the blog is getting a little dusty.

So I'm changing the way I do things once again. From now on, I'll post my comments to the blog as I finish each book. I'll retropost all the books from so far in May, then carry on one by one.

For the most part these will be the types of quick thoughts I usually offer, but occasionally I may get into a full-blown review as the mood strikes me.

What can I say? It's a blogger's privilege to change her mind.

It's Meme Time Again -- Top 106 Unread on LibraryThing

As usual, I'm behind the curve, but I saw on the LibraryThing blog that people have been ranking how they stand against the 106 books most often tagged as "unread" by the users of LibraryThing (why 106? 'Cause a plain old top 100 is too 5 years ago?).

The rules are as follows: bold the books you have read, italicize books you’ve started but not finished, strike through the books you read but hated (likely for school), and add an asterisk* to books you’ve read more than once. You're also supposed to underline those you own but still haven’t read yourself, but I don't have any of those. (For the uninitiated, the numbers represent "users listing book as unread"/"users listing book.")

My list, with commentary, is below.

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell* by Susanna Clarke (236/9041) -- A fabulous book, one of my favorites
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211/8954) -- Pure soap opera; slap a pink cover on it and stick it in the Romance aisle
3. One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183/11973) -- I still don't know what happened
4. Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176/10687) -- I've read enough Dostoevsky to know I don't want to read this
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (162/12137) -- One of the worst books ever; how it came to be a classic I'll never know
6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (158/10886)
7. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155/8789)
8. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152/6654) -- I stumbled through most of this in college, but it wasn't what I was expecting
9. The Odyssey by Homer (136/10954) -- I've read bits and pieces over the years but never made it all the way through
10. The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (136/7174) -- See, this is the Dostoevsky I was talking about
11. Ulysses* by James Joyce (135/6255) -- The best book ever written in English. Yes, it takes work, but it's so worth it
12. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (132/6267)
13. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (132/5953) -- I've made numerous attempts on this tome; hated the war AND the peace
14. Jane Eyre* by Charlotte Bronte (124/13765) -- One of the best heroines in literature, with nothing but her own steely sense of integrity to guide her
15. A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (124/7460) -- Not my favorite Dickens
16. The name of the rose* by Umberto Eco (120/7706) -- So much fun!
17. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (119/7719) -- Another one I made multiple attempts to read; now I've given myself permission to give up
18. The Iliad by Homer (117/8723) -- Again, just read the bits that any literature student needs to read
19. Emma* by Jane Austen (117/8949) -- When I was younger, I was all, "oh, how horrible that she should wind up with someone so much older" and now I'm all, "Where is my Mr. Knightley, goddammit?"
20. Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115/3827)
21. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (114/7115) -- I'm not reading this until I figure out One Hundred Years of Solitude
22. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (110/4806) -- Not a big Atwood fan
23. The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (108/6165) -- One of these days I'll tackle the whole thing
24. Pride and prejudice* by Jane Austen (108/18293) -- Elizabeth Bennett is one of the most likeable heroines I've ever met. Can I have Mr. Darcy with Mr. Knightley on the side?
25. The historian: a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (108/6447)
26. Great Expectations* by Charles Dickens (106/8595)
27. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (106/13572)
28. The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger (105/11414)
29. Life of Pi: a novel by Yann Martel (105/12692) -- I don't care how many people tell me they like this book, I'm just not interested
30. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (104/7493) -- Can be dry in places, but a must-read
31. Atlas shrugged* by Ayn Rand (102/5984) -- Skip all the speeches about capitalism and it's a great piece of science fiction; the scene where Dagny is flying her little plane chasing her mystery man is nail-biting suspense
32. Foucault's pendulum* by Umberto Eco (101/5616) -- By the time I finish it, I'm starting to look for conspiracies everywhere too
33. Dracula by Bram Stoker (100/6873) -- Just not that well-written, as far as I'm concerned
34. The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99/7812) -- I read most of Steinbeck when I was younger; why didn't I ever get around to this?
35. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (97/6451)
36. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (97/9127)
37. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (97/5565) -- I admire Woolf, but I hate her work
38. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (96/4404)
39. Middlemarch* by George Eliot (96/4159) -- I love Dorothea and I wish she had better taste in men
40. Sense and sensibility* by Jane Austen (96/8591) -- Just finished reading this one again; I so identify with Elinor
41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (95/5167)
42. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (94/11617) -- Gahh, I hated this book! Boring, with an infuriating heroine who won't stand up for herself
43. The sound and the fury* by William Faulkner (94/5043) -- I used to adore Faulkner although I haven't read him for years
44. Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley (93/12421) -- One of the first science fiction books I ever read
45. Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson (92/3525) -- A great start to the series; I only wish it had ended as well
46. American gods: a novel by Neil Gaiman (92/10319) -- Really enjoyed this one; Shadow is a great character
47. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (91/8871) -- One of the best books I read last year
48. The poisonwood Bible: a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (91/7461) -- I've loved other books by Kingsolver, but this one is a stinker
49. Wicked by Gregory Maguire (90/8905) -- I honestly don't see how this became so popular
50. A portrait of the artist as a young man* by James Joyce (89/6646) -- Come on, didn't we all imagine we were Stephen Dedalus when we were young?
51. The picture of Dorian Gray* by Oscar Wilde (89/7165) -- Still as powerful and creepy as the day it was written
52. Dune* by Frank Herbert (89/9222) -- Thrilling, well-envisioned science fiction epic. Too bad all the sequels suck
53. The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (88/3251)
54. Gulliver's travels* by Jonathan Swift (88/4857)
55. Mansfield Park* by Jane Austen (88/5360) -- Yes, I am anti-Fanny, but it's still a great book
56. The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (87/4127)
57. The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (84/5066)
58. The inferno by Dante Alighieri (84/5873)
59. Oliver Twist* by Charles Dickens (83/4378) -- I first read this too young. They really shouldn't introduce kids to Dickens this way, even if it is about a kid.
60. The Fountainhead* by Ayn Rand (83/5795) -- I'm actually kind of impressed that something with this twisted sexuality could be published in the '30s
61. To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (83/4608)
62. A clockwork orange* by Anthony Burgess (83/6754) -- Horrorshow!
63. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (83/4735) -- Somehow I ran out of energy for Hardy before I got through this one
64. The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay: a novel by Michael Chabon (83/5956) -- An amazing book, tender, true, and funny
65. Persuasion* by Jane Austen (82/6479) -- It's hard to choose between this and Pride and Prejudice as my favorite Austen
66. One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (82/5908) -- It's on my BookMooch wishlist
67. The scarlet letter* by Nathaniel Hawthorne (82/7746)
68. Robinson Crusoe* by Daniel Defoe (82/4437) -- An amazing depiction of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic; even in Paradise he can't relax and have fun
69. Anansi boys: a novel by Neil Gaiman (81/6534) -- Not as great as American Gods, but still fun
70. The once and future king* by T. H. White (81/4293) -- One of my childhood favorites
71. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (80/6966)
72. The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (80/5509)
73. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (79/6266)
74. Oryx and Crake: a novel by Margaret Atwood (78/3976)
75. Dubliners* by James Joyce (78/5530) -- I had a great teacher who turned me on to Joyce
76. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (78/5385) -- He'd be a great writer if he ever learned how to end things
77. Angela's ashes: a memoir by Frank McCourt (77/6349)
78. Beloved: a novel by Toni Morrison (77/5523)
79. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (76/3822) -- I really have to get around to this
80. The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (75/2520)
81. In cold blood by Truman Capote (75/5473)
82. Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence (73/3169) -- Good sex scenes, stupid story
83. confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole (73/6061)
84. Les misérables by Victor Hugo (73/4694) -- It's Javert I feel sorry for
85. Watership Down by Richard Adams (72/6255)
86. The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (72/6363) --Somehow you'd think in my many years of studying the Renaissance I'd have read this, but I never did
87. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (72/6645) -- Pullman has some Serious Issues, but I liked the trilogy
88. Beowulf: a new verse translation* by Anonymous (72/6350) -- I used to have an elaborate theory about why Beowulf wasn't a hero, but I don't remember what it was anymore
89. A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (71/5122) -- Hemingway has some Serious Issues too; I admire his prose style, just not his characters
90. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (71/5554) -- It took me a few attempts to get into this, but I really liked it
91. The Aeneid by Virgil (71/5057) -- I read some of it in Latin, does that count?
92. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (69/4625)
93. Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (69/2563) -- My sister explained this to me; I still don't quite get it
94. The personal history of David Copperfield* by Charles Dickens (69/4311) -- With Jane Eyre, one of the best books about growing up ever written
95. The road by Cormac McCarthy (67/5099)
96. Possession: a romance* by A.S. Byatt (67/4128) -- I read this twice because I'd forgotten I read it the first time
97. The history of Tom Jones, a foundling* by Henry Fielding (67/2131) -- Delightful romp
98. The book thief by Markus Zusak (67/3554)
99. Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (66/3261) -- One of my Dad's projects for years; I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, although I did like The Crying of Lot 49
100. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (66/3046)
101. Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (66/3131) -- I guess I ran out of steam on Fitzgerald before I got to this
102. Candide, or, Optimism* by Voltaire (65/5083)
103. Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro (65/4317)
104. The plague by Albert Camus (65/4610) -- Too existential for me
105. Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (65/2944) -- I never understood what he saw in Sue
106. Cold mountain by Charles Frazier (64/4160) -- OK, OK, it made me cry

Two observations:

• By my count, I've read 67 of these books. Does that make me a freak?
• I can't believe that all of Jane Austen's books are in this list. Why aren't you people reading them? Go out there and do it immediately!

Edited May 22 because I don't follow directions very well.

OK, I Lied

There won't be any Movie Diary for April because . . . well, in the spirit of the Blues Brothers (which I did just see and will be on the list for May if there is a May), I'll let Joliet Jake explain:

Honest . . . . I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for
cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from
out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood.
Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.

Oh, for Pete's sake. I blew it off. There! Are you happy now you made me admit
that?

Guess We'll Have to Cancel the Bentley, Then

Since I started cleaning up my mom's books, my dad decided to clean out some of the other books that have been accumulating unregarded for decades. He's been reporting to me periodically that he's amassed a number of first editions that he was sure were worth megabucks and asked me to find a rare book dealer to appraise them.

Knowing -- from John Dunning, among others -- that just because a book is a first edition doesn't mean it's valuable; remembering the well-loved condition of most of my parents' books; and judging by the almost eerie lack of collectible items among my relations (barely a set of Depression glass dessert cups between them), I gently suggested that I should look up a few items at the ABE booksellers site first to see if it would be worth it for a dealer to come out and have a look. Since I'm going over there tomorrow for round two with the dust monsters in the garage, I thought that would pacify him.

Well, I forgot two things about Dad: first, that he never cares about wasting other people's time, and second, that when he has a bee in his bonnet, he really gets buzzing. He called this morning to tell me that he's had not one but TWO dealers out to the house this week to assess the "collection." They both told him what I already suspected: the books are worth zilch.

Fortunately, he's philosophical about this disappointment. Unfortunately, it's suddenly become my problem to decide how to dispose of the books.

Book Quote of the Day #3

"Magic -- to use a word I'd rather not -- is not as simple as technology. Anyone can turn on a radio or flip a light switch. Magic takes training. A violin, for example, is an elaborate construct, but where one person can use it to create lovely music, another will make only scrapes and screeches."

. . . . "So you're saying that items created for magic are more like violins than radios. The virtue in them is as much in the user as in the item."

Jane Lindskold, Child of a Rainless Year

Movie Diary March 2008

I saw some movies this month. Damn if I can remember them all. Here's some lightning reviews of the few that come to mind. Those seen for the first time are, as always, in green.

1. Murder Must Advertise (1973, BBC). My favorite of the Winsey adaptations. Unfortunately, Ian Carmichael doesn't appear to his best advantage in that Harlequin costume. It's supposed to make him look sexy and dangerous. It doesn't.
2. Upstairs Downstairs Season 3 (1973, BBC)
3. All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz). Pretty much fabulous, except for Bette Davis's "you're not a woman without a man beside you" speech. George Sand is devastatingly effective in what's probably his best role ever.
4. The Rake's Progress (Sidney Gilliatt, 1950). Boring and sexist with unredeemable anti-hero.
5. High Wall (1947, Curtis Bernhardt). Robert Taylor is hysterical (and not in a good way), Audrey Trotter bland and wholesome, and Herbert Marshall sexily wicked in this stupid story.
6. The Cobweb (1955, Vincente Minnelli). A Freudian field day in the plushest asylum ever built. I love how the heroic doctor Richard Widmark gets to have an affair with social director Lauren Bacall and that's OK, but his spoiled wife Gloria Grahame (ravishingly sexy) has a couple of drinks with clinic director Charles Boyer and she's an OMG slutt!!!11!
7. The Lady Vanishes (1939, Alfred Hitchcock). Not the master's best work. I did like Paul Lukas as the villainous doctor.
8. The Girl with Green Eyes (1964, Desmond Davis). You know, I'm really over these earnest British social dramas of the '50s and '60s. Lynn Redgrave provides some much-needed levity.
9. Gaslight (1944, George Cukor). Charles Boyer basically gives a textbook illustration of stalking and psychological abuse. Angela Lansbury steals the film as slutty housemaid Nancy.
10. Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965, Otto Preminger). Creepily effective thriller, with uber-creepy Keir Dullea. If only they didn't say "Bunny" quite so often.
11. The Blue Gardenia (1953, Fritz Lang). Oh right, lady. Go out with the disgusting womanizer and let him get you drunk and take you home with him. Then, when he turns up dead, burn your new dress that your roommates have already totally called you out on. *snort*

Don't know why I fell down on the job this month. I'll try to be more on the ball in April, I promise.

Book Quote of the Day #2

I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind up everything nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels.

Diane Satterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Cleaning Out and Moving On

When my parents moved into their house 20-some years ago, they didn't have enough bookshelves, and in a power dynamic pretty typical of their marriage, they couldn't decide what kind to buy. So in what was supposed to be temporary solution, Mom set up her collection of paperback mysteries on makeshift shelves of plastic crates in the garage.

Of course, the books never made it out of the garage and into the house. While Mom was alive, however, the set-up actually functioned pretty well. Mom, my sister, and I read and traded mysteries avidly, so there was always a lot of activity going on. Plus, Mom was always more than content to binge-read her way through the entire oeuvre of Michael Innes or Margery Allingham over and over again.

When she died a few years ago, my sister and I debated about whether to split up her collection, but we decided against it. On a sentimental level, it seemed like leaving her books just the way she had arranged them, pages splattered with grease from when she read with one hand and cooked with the other, or wrinkled from being dropped into the bathtub, was a way of keeping her with us. And on a practical level, we liked knowing that if we were ever stuck at (now) Dad's house with nothing to read, or if we really wanted to reread a particular Ellis Peters or Emma Lathen, the books were there.

But inevitably as the years passed, we used the shelves less and less. Finally, a few months ago, I went looking for a Dick Francis I wanted and was dismayed to find how dusty and musty it and its fellows were. The time had come, I decided, to take action.

So I announced to my sister that I was going to rescue the books. We would each take what we wanted, and I would find homes for the rest before they moldered away completely. Sis objected at first, but I pointed out that Mom would surely prefer for her books to be loved by someone else rather than die from neglect. Sis, who lives in a Manhattan apartment the size of a shoebox, declined her share of the legacy, but gave me her go-ahead.

Thus, last Saturday I spent a long hour making my way through about half of the collection, cherry-picking the stuff I wanted most. I was underprepared for the amount of dust involved, and wound up completely covered and sneezing; some books had amassed bunnies big enough to hop away (it was Easter, after all). Next time I'll go armed with an apron, a mask, and an industrial-size can of Pledge. Despite that, most books were in better shape than I feared; although a few fell apart in my hands, most were dry and relatively intact.

Now I've got six grocery bags of books to find room for on my own full-to-bursting shelves. But I feel in a way that I've reached a new level of adulthood; that the books were already mine, but I've finally stopped relying on my folks to store them for me.

Once I collect the remainder, I will try to make good on my promise to disperse them to a caring audience. Some of them may be collector's items; I will take them to the used mystery bookstore near my house and see if there's anything they will actually pay for. The rest I will probably list on BookMooch. Perhaps I will offer a 2-for-1 deal on the most stained or rippled. Eventually, in any case, most or all of them will find their way into appreciative hands.

Mom didn't believe in an afterlife, but I like to think that somewhere she's sitting at a kitchen table with a tepid cup of coffee, a cigarette, and an exciting book that hasn't even been published yet, nodding her quiet approval.

A Few Quickies

RIP Gary Gygax. Despite being a prototypical nerdy teen, my major D&D period was in adulthood. For 6 years, I interacted once or even twice weekly in a group that combined the best parts of writing, improvisational theater, and performance art, while eating Doritos and laughing our asses off. Our group eventually broke up for the most adult of reasons: one group member, the DM's wife, was having an affair with the brother of a fellow player; she and the DM got divorced; and the group split amid mutual recriminations. But it was a fabulous, creative period in my life and for that I will always think of Gygax kindly.

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RIP Arthur C. Clarke. To be truthful, I was never that big a fan. Like many of the so-called Golden Age science fiction writers, Clarke had some great ideas but was too concerned with gadgets, not enough with characters. However, his Hugo-winning stories "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" are both filled with a numinous sense of wonder and are among the finest short stories I've ever read.

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How weird is it that within the same week I read two books that couldn't be more different -- Christine Falls and Flight Lessons -- but whose plots both hinged on the fact that, at some time in the past, a guy married the wrong sister because Sexy Sister would sleep with him and True Love Sister wouldn't?

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My sister and I once took a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to LA. Along the way are miles-long stretches where there's nothing but the ocean on one side of the road and on the other, grazing cows in meadows that any sane person would build a dream house on. Every time one of those happy cow California cheese commercials comes on, we look at each other and say, "It must be the million-dollar views."

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I thought Hung already won Top Chef season 3. What's he doing back this time, masquerading under fellow competitor Dale's name?

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A Bellini. A blini. Not the same, Valerie, thank you very much. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, and say hi to your equally annoying sister Melissa when you get home.

Movie Diary February 2008

Movies seen for the first time are in green.

1. Sense and Sensibility (1995, Ang Lee). OK, now this is how you do Jane Austen. Masterpiece Theater, are you paying attention? For me the only false note is Hugh Grant (dearly though I love him); he's simply too stiff, even playing a character who's kind of a stiff guy.
2. Quiz Show (1994, Robert Redford). I've heard some doubts cast on its literal historical accuracy, but this movie remains an absorbing and entertaining study of ambition, celebrity, greed, and family. Ralph Fiennes is perfect as the aristocratic Charles van Doren, who is equally proud of, burdened by, and not sure he measures up to his famous surname.
3. Caesar and Cleopatra (1945, Gabriel Pascal). Talky, stagy version of the George Bernard Shaw play is taken from his own screenplay, perhaps to its own detriment. Cleopatra is throughout portrayed as stupid, venal, and incapable of ruling without masculine guidance -- neither her sexuality nor her power is self-directed. Also, Shaw's in-jokes about the British probably went over better with the Victorians for whom they were written. Nevertheless, Vivien Leigh is so luminously beautiful that one can almost forget what she's saying, Claude Rains is worldly-wise as Caesar, and hunky Stewart Granger gets to show off his calves as Apollodorus.
4. Upstairs Downstairs Season 1 (1971, ITV). See post to come.
5. Upstairs Downstairs Season 2 (1972, ITV). See post to come.
6. Little Big Man (1970, Arthur Penn). Unlike many movies of the late '60s-early '70s, this one holds up beautifully. The thoughtful, funny script skewers (even if it can't kill) all the Wild West cliches John Ford and his ilk ever perpetrated. Dustin Hoffman gives a bravura performance as Jack Crabbe, with notable contributions from Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, and Richard Mulligan.
7. The Goodbye Girl (1977, Herbert Ross). Worth watching for Richard Dreyfus's hilariously bad gay Richard III, but lord, Paula (Marsha Mason) makes me tired. She's a whiny, clinging, unliberated shrew who defines herself by redecorating her apartment for each new relationship. Get a grip, lady!
8. A Raisin in the Sun (2008, Kenny Leon). It's no shame for an actor to fall short of Sidney Poitier -- I mean, seriously, who doesn't? But Sean Combs (Walter Lee Younger) in this made-for-TV production of the recent revival of Lorraine Hansberry's classic play is so pathetic, so lacking in every way, that he sucks the life out of everything around him. The rest of the cast, though flat, is at least competent (but Tony-worthy? I don't think so). Without passionate and intelligent performances, Hansberry's lines have never sounded so insipid and sententious (and the changes by screenwriter Paris Qualles add nothing).
9. Pride and Prejudice (1995, A&E). Yes, Masterpiece Theater, this is also how you do Austen. Thank God you had sense enough not to try and mess with this perfection, because I'd have to cut you. As many people have said: Colin Firth, yum.
10. A Man for All Seasons (1966, Fred Zinneman). Ponderous, pompous costume drama based on Robert Bolt's award-winning play about Sir Thomas More. Although featuring fine performances from Paul Scofield, Leo McKern, Wendy Hiller, and others (not to mention a luminous cameo from Vanessa Redgrave), the film never really comes alive. Maybe it's just me, but More comes off not so much as a man of principle as a guy hiding behind sleazy lawyer tricks.