Completed: Little, Big

Dear Jenny,

I finished this book a few weeks ago and I don't really know what to say about it. It was strange, which can be okay, but just kind of missed the mark for me this time. I thought a bit of distance would give me some clarity, but what was already a sort of murky reading has become murkier with time.

Here is the synopsis of this book from Wikipedia (because I can't really come up with one myself):

Little, Big is the epic story of the Drinkwater family and their relationship with the mostly obscured world of Fairy. It is set in and around their eccentric country house, called Edgewood, somewhere north of "the City" (implied to be New York). The story is dreamlike, quiet, and meandering, spanning a hundred years of the intertwined family trees of the Drinkwaters and their relations—from the turn of the twentieth century to a sparsely-described dystopian future America ruled by a sinister despot. The magical elements are subtle rather than overt, with only occasional glimpses of the fairies themselves, although their presence is felt throughout.

I guess that covers it. Oddly enough, this description really does help me put some of my thoughts into words. It's the "mostly obscured world" and the "subtle rather than overt" parts of this book that really turned me off. I found myself constantly re-reading passages to figure out what the hell just happened which, for me, is a tiring way to read a book.

The house (Edgewood) is awesome and some of the characters are interesting and genuinely likable, but the inscrutable aspect was a slog. And even when I *thought* I was figuring stuff out, I'm still not 100% sure that I did, which isn't very satisfying. I actually wrote pretty lengthy plot summary notes for myself after every section of this book, which is something I never do. For these TBR books, I use post-its for stuff I want to tell you later and some pencil markings, but 5 pages of notes? Um, no. And even reading them over right now, I feel like, "Waaait... is that what happened?"

But here is one of the "notes" that I took in the book -- it cracks me up every time I see it:

Curious about the passage referred to there? Here it is:

The athenor of the alchemists, for instance, the Philosopher's Egg within which the transformation from base to gold took place -- was it not a microcosm, a small world? When the black-books said that the Work was to be begun in the sign of Aquarius and completed in Scorpio, they meant not those signs as they occurred in the heavens, but as they occured in the universe of the world-shaped, world-containing Egg itself. The Work was not other than Genesis; the Red Man and the White Lady, when they appeared, microscopic in the Egg, were the soul of the Philosopher himself, as an object of the Philosopher's thought, itself a product of his soul, and so on, regressus ad infinitum, and in both directions too. [250]

That's exhausting, right? Other than dialog scenes (which were so refreshing!) this was the entire book.

Also... there was one character who took photos of his sisters in the woods naked (And... kissing each other? Not sure. Glossed over it.), a weirdly veiled probable rape of a sleeping teenage girl by her cousin aaaaand... some guy might have had sex with his own estranged daughter (he suspected she might be his daughter, and he didn't care. She might have known too. Unclear.).  These were areas that I actually didn't look too carefully at to figure out what the hell was going on, as I'm sure you can understand. So that was all creepyville.

Finally, I think the book was building to some sort of epic battle and, for the life of me, I cannot remember how it ended, although I do remember having a more interested feeling as we headed toward the finish, like, "What's going to happen next?!" Buuut... I guess that didn't pay off.

So yeah. Little, Big. Not for me.

love,
kelly

PS -- In related news...  2014 is going to be my year for abandoning books. You read it here first: I vow to give up on books that don't interest me. The entire time I was reading this book, Bill kept saying, "Is that the book you should have stopped reading weeks ago?" Yes. Yes it was. Onwards!

Completed: Lark & Termite

Kelly,

Sorry I never wrote the preview post on this one. The truth is, I didn't remember much about buying it! I thought for sure I bought it at the Borders bender, but I cataloged those books, and it wasn't there. Until I got to the back of the book and found the receipt! A ha! As it turns out, the Borders Bender was an ongoing event lasting several weeks. Looks like I picked up Lark & Termite along with 3 other books at a table of books marked $4 each. Score!


When buying books at a sale table, my move is to look for books that had good reviews. It's all about what you find, since you'll almost never find what you're looking for. And since I read lots of book reviews, I have lots of titles floating around in my head as possibilities---and I mean lots of book reviews: The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune Printers Row...and that's just the good ones. I even read the book reviews in Entertainment Weekly! And, of course, let's not forget word of mouth. Some of my favorite books come recommended by others. I keep all that stuff stored up in my brain for book sales! (I try to stay away from bookstores if I can, but the major danger I face now is in used book sales. There are lots of those around here that benefit local charities. I try to only *give* books away rather than buying books at them, but it's hard. The one at the Newberry Library is a freaking zoo, but it's also very well organized and most books are only a few bucks. On the other hand, the one in the neighborhood is just a mess and therefore easier to avoid. I won't let myself go into used book stores. Too dangerous.)

In the case of Lark & Termite, I had just heard good things. It was a National Book Award finalist and I must have read a few good reviews. Also, and this is a weird one, there was something about the author's name that just seemed familiar and pleasing. I kept thinking that I must have read something by her before, but what? Well, a quick google search revealed what I probably had been thinking: there's a romance author named Jayne Ann Krentz. Not exactly the same, but there you go. Hahah!


Anyway, Lark & Termite is a story with dual story lines. The first is of 2 siblings: 17 year old Lark and her half brother, the 9 year old Termite. (This naming protocol was a little too precious for me, but whatever.) They are living with their Aunt in West Virginia from July 26-31, 1959, and the whereabouts of their mother, Lola, is a mystery. The other story is about Termite's father, Robert Leavitt, a soldier in Korea on those same July days, but in 1950.

I would call this book...just okay. Actually, it would probably make a decent aBook. It has long, lyrical passage that are lovely to read. But I think Phillips didn't really know what she wanted to do, here. I think the timing (the same days in July!) of the dual plots is supposed to lend some mystical quality to the story, but it really doesn't work. The Leavitt plot is too thin to hold up its end of the pairing. He is leading a stream of Korean refugees somewhere when they are attacked in a round of friendly fire. He then hangs on for the next two days...so that in nine years, when a story unfolds for his son in West Virginia, the timing will be similar? Um, okay. He's a sympathetic but flat character, and I started to wonder why the author kept him alive in a sort of Dick Clark-like stasis.

The interesting character is Lark, who's funny and fierce and independent. Their Aunt Nonie is the one officially in charge of Termite, but he's really Lark's baby. Even though he's 9 to her 17, his profound medical challenges, and his physical and mental handicaps, make him little more than a child. But even that's a problem, as there are several times that Termite narrates, and it just strained my credulity to the breaking point. Nonie gets a few turns at narrating, too, and she's a totally interesting character. The story of how she came to be caring for her sister's kids was compelling and interesting.

The plot picks up in the last third as a massive rainstorm raises the river through town to flood stage. Lark and Termite are alone in their house, and the story of Lark going down into the flooded house to find Termite's lucky moon charm and his wagon is a visceral and haunting scene. There's some good here, but it just felt like too little too late. I guess I'd say the structure of the novel seemed forced, and that got in my way of enjoying the story. There was also a weird mystical figure who appears to bring Termite a new wheelchair. Umm...sure. I guess as a mystical item, a wheelchair would count. But in this novel, it was a strange addition that didn't really work. At all.

Also, there's enough creepy sexual action between Lola and a bunch of the men in town, and then one of those old men later putting the moves on Lark that I felt a little grossed out. Lark has a precociously early sexual relationship with the boy next door that was also a little disturbing. I won't go into the details, but at one point, I thought, Was that really necessary?! 

Anyway. It was okay. It ended up better than I expected, and I always like that feeling. On to what's next. Only one more book for me this year!

Jenny

Kelly's Book 10.13: Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State

Dear Jenny,

I have finally finished Little, Big but... yeah. It was such a slog to get through, it's even more of a slog to write about. Maybe this weekend? We'll see. 

In the meantime, I am on a mission to finish and I have 3 books to go, so I have started Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State.

From the start, I will tell you I have a problem with the very name of this book, although... further research indicates that I need to let this problem go because I am apparently the only one having this problem?

Ugh. Let me explain...

I have always thought that the nickname for Michigan was "The Great Lakes State." You know, cause it's made of two peninsulas that are created by... The Great Lakes! (Fun fact: if you are in Michigan, you cannot be more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.) 

A few months ago, I saw a dishtowel identifying Michigan as "The Great Lake State." Notice: "Lake" is singular right there. I was all "Ooops! That's not right!" Or... is it? So I looked into it. Omigod! It's not at all clear!

Michigan.gov says "Great Lake State" and so do old license plates. AND a quick Google search finds 1.2 million hits for "Great Lake State" and only about half a million for the plural.

So that's it, right? It's singular and these authors have their heads up their butts and I cannot possibly trust anything that they write!

BUT WAIT! The plot thickens! The state quarter for Michigan says "Great Lakes State." WHAAAA---? Aaaand... most Michiganders (and that nickname is a whole other topic, believe it or not) have said "Of course it's Great Lakes State" (plural) when I have asked (including, clearly, the authors of this book).

Sooo... what the what, Michigan? I mean...

More importantly than any of this, there seems to be zero discussion/debate about this on the Internet anywhere! In a world where the abbreviation "Gd" for "Grand" (still bizarre!) gets thoroughly examined... where are the nerds speculating about plural vs. singular "Lake" in our state nickname?

All this to say... I hope the authors address this question in the book and give a very good and clear reason for going with the plural in the book title.

Also... yes, yes. I have thought about this way too much, including spending valuable reading time creating that stupid graphic.

love,
kelly

Completed: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Kelly,

So. There's this problem that crops up for teachers of literature, especially if there's any expectation that their texts will tie in to content from another class. For example, let's say that my students are learning about China in their history class, and I'd like them to read a book set in China to compliment their learning. In those cases, what can happen is that the need to have the book cover a certain concept, or be set in a certain place, or have a character of a certain gender TRUMPS the literary merit of said novel. At some point, this is why we uncoupled a "humanities" course in the high school, turning in back into a history course and an English course: if content drives the book selection, the literary quality of the selected novels is likely (not always, but usually) to suffer.

That brings me to this book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, which seems to be a novel driven by AN IDEA the author wanted to explore, and A POINT the author wanted to make, rather than a compelling character or conflict. It's hard to put my finger on it, but the closest I can come is that the author was looking to explain the phenomenon of the intellectual celebrity, the mystery of how humans can both feel part of and divorced from their communities of origin, and our modern dilemma of how to understand religion in the face of modern scientific knowledge----but rather than writing a few New Yorker articles, she thought it would be cute to put it all in a novel. You know, serve up the tough ideas with a thin veneer of plot, and it'll wash right down!

Not so much.

The novel itself centers around scholar Cass Seltzer, who's recent work on religious faith has won him quite a bit of media-attention. He's known everywhere as "the atheist with a soul." As it turns out, Cass's mother and family are part of a community of Hasidic Jews, in particular one of the most isolated and insular religious communities in the country. The novel starts with Cass looking out over the Charles River, considering a job offer from Harvard. They want to scoop him up from a second-tier university that's also in Boston. This leads Cass to ruminate on how his girlfriend, Lucinda, will react. But he doesn't want to tell her until he can do it in person, and she's away on a business trip. This is the A plot, moving forward in time. An old girlfriend of Cass's, Roz, appears to surprise him, some 20 years after their break-up as graduate students.

Roz's arrival sets into motion the backwards-moving B plot. This traces Cass's development as a graduate student, and his involvement with 2 extraordinary men: a young Hasidic boy, Azarya, from his hometown who is a definite genius, and Cass's mentor and PhD thesis advisor, Klapper.

The problem, and it's a big one, is that these stories never come together in any sort of satisfying way. All the characters are clearly being put into play to show the push/pull between faith and reason. For a guy as smart as Cass, it's sort of pathetic to see how unprepared he is for Lucinda's freak-out after he tells her about Harvard. Did any reader really think that Azyrya would leave his community behind for MIT? Most annoyingly, the B plot spends a lot of time setting up the disunion of Klapper and his graduate students, including Cass, but then never actually talks to much about the final rift. The entire B plot is ostensibly to reveal what happened between Cass and Klapper...and it's like crickets. I literally thought to myself, I must have missed something, I've done it before.

Instead of revealing the demise of Cass's relationship with Klapper, he rises from the dead to write a NYTimes article on the day that Cass is going to debate the existence of God with a Nobel prize winner. I mean, honestly, the whole thing is sort of ridiculous. As a novel, it's not satisfying because there's all these dropped characters and plot lines; as an exploration of faith and reason, it's unsatisfying because it's cluttered up with all these stupid characters.

The book ends with an appendix, 36 arguments for the existence of God along with a way to logically refute them. It's sort of interesting reading, but it's also weird. In the novel, Cass is famous for his 30 arguments, and he's widely regarded as brilliant for his work. Needless to say, it's a little awkward to read the author describing her own work as being brilliant. The whole thing was just a little too Jonathan Franzen, to be honest. 

It wasn't terrible for what it was, which was a thinly veiled exploration of the modern science of belief, but it just wasn't a very good novel. 

Jenny

Wherein I Change My Mind

K,

In your comment the other day, you said something about tackling Don't Know Much About History on chapter at a time. I think that's what I might have to do with The End. It's boring. I'm not in the mood. I'll finish it this year, but it might be interspersed with other books.

To that end, I've been reading another book on the list, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. I was sure I picked it up at the Borders Bender, but it appears that must have been at another trip. (Meanwhile, of those books, I've only read 4! Perhaps one or two will make it on to next year's list?) Anyways, I've started it and will finish it soon. It's a novel about an academic who suddenly becomes famous, and his back story and assorted conflicts due to his sudden fame. The book also does contain 36 arguments for why God exists in the back, along with how they can be logically refuted.

So far, I'm off to a good start. I think I will finish it this week!
Jenny

Kelly's Final Countdown

Dear Jenny,

Okay! The end of year is closing in. Let's see what I have to do to complete my TBR pile this year...

Like last year, I have done the math -- I need to read 17 pages per day for the rest of the year to finish my list successfully, which seems doable (I'm in slightly better shape than last year -- that post was made in September and I had more books and a 20p/day goal.)

I am about halfway through Little, Big (going more slowly than I would have anticipated... kind of hard to get into that book.) My game plan is to read Michigan next, since I think I will struggle with that. (Generally speaking, I *am* interested in the topic of Michigan, but this book is actually used as a textbook, so I am afraid of a "medicine" feeling to it.) Then I'll hit that Bill Bryson (usually an easy read -- also, of note, my 2nd author repeat in our TBR challenges) and finish with Florence Broadhurst (just flipped through that today and there are photos, so, you know... 17 pages a day is a bit of a cheat with that one...)

As for the TBP... sigh. I totally floundered with that. I read one that was *so* great that I wanted to share a bunch of photos with you. So then the post got really overwhelming because midway through writing it, I got a new computer and have not fully transferred photos from one to another (first world problem, I know!) sooo... I totally stalled out with it. I'm not giving up on that list entirely... maybe I should move on to another book and leave that picture-heavy one for when I have the time to devote to it? Bottom line: I am not going to hit 12 this year -- that's for sure! Oh, well... I'll take another whack at it again next year.

Speaking of next year... have you started making your 2014 TBR list? I do find myself looking at my bookshelves with 2014 in mind, gotta say.

love,
kelly

Jenny's End of Year Reading Plan

Kelly,

 In a fit of masochism, I've decided to go right into another World War II book. It's called The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw.

I bought this a few years ago after reading a review of it in the New York Times. I'm generally interested in World War II, of course, but I'm also coming up on the Anne Frank unit. So it's a good time to get that knowledge into my head. Also, Kershaw is a renown WWII scholar, and he wrote the definitive biography of Hitler. One appeal of this book was being able to read Kershaw's work without having to read a thousand pages about Hitler.

Can we both agree that life's too short to read a thousand pages about Hitler? 

I'm a little afraid I won't find it as compelling as I'd like. The premise of The End is that it explores why the Nazis didn't surrender, and instead fought through the last year of the war, knowing full well they couldn't win. I think I was interested in that idea from a psychological perspective, what was it about the German people that kept them fighting? However, I'm about 90 or so pages in, and it seems to be more from a military perspective. So, honestly, I'm not enjoying it too much so far. 

That leaves me with four novels, of which I need to choose two to get through the challenge. I have a feeling I'll read Purple Hibiscus, which is by the author of Americanah. It's her first novel, a coming of age story. I've heard good things about it. My guess is I'll choose Lark and Termite as the other. Ceremony just seems daunting in its language at this point, but maybe I'll be wrong. Either way, I feel like I can make it.

Jenny