Reading Roundup: November 2012

The Fault in Our Stars John Green

All I Want For Christmas?

Am I allowed to do a round up post when I’ve obtained and read zero books this month? I do need a way to publish my Christmas wish list for certain secret Santas, so I’m going to say, “yes!”

Books Obtained and Read

  • None. That was easy.
  • Okay, I did read like 350 or 400 pages of Infinite Jest over November. That’s pretty much a book.

Books I Want to Read

Here are the top ten books I’d like to own in the near future, i.e. Christmas!*

  1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green – I want this to be my next read, so it’s first on my list. Have I mentioned that I have a fangirlish crush on this guy? I mean watch this. Or this. Love him.
  2. 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2012 Edition) – I own the original, but I’d love to have the updated version. These are beautiful books with lots of colour pictures. Great gift idea for anyone bookish!
  3. Strange Heaven by Lynn Coady – my local author pick, and sounds right up my alley in terms of troubled kids, family dysfunction and the East Coast setting.
  4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – I don’t own this book, which is ridiculous considering it’s my favourite read of like the past two years (pending completion of IJ).
  5. Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards – I gave my copy away at a book swap. I need to own this book.
  6. Dear Life by Alice Munro – After a year of long reads, I think I’ll be in the mood for some short stories. Nobody does it better than Alice Munro… unless…
  7. Astray by Emma Donoghue – I’m a huge fan of Emma Donoghue and she released a short story collection this year.
  8. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir – Because: feminism.
  9. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell – I’m going to read more classics written by female authors next year. I loved the mini-series, so this seems like a good place to start.
  10. When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman – Something about this book keeps nagging at me. Strange title.

*I’ve been joking that reading Sleeping Beauty made me want to read 50 Shades. If someone buys it for me, I will read it. But I reserve the right to make snarky blog posts/live-tweet my disgust/roll my eyes with abandon!

The Month Ahead

  • Finish Infinite Jest. There will be much rejoicing.
  • Submit a story to The 40 Below Project. This is a stretch goal for me and my first time submitting anything! Check out the website and wish me luck! I’m (trying) to write about what it’s like to experience a sudden 20 degree drop in temperature. Also about teenage drama (what else?)
  • Get through the week-long extravaganza that is Benjamin’s 3rd birthday and Christmas.

Search Terms

Just for fun, here are some interesting search terms that have landed on the blog.

  • “erotic exerpts from the claiming of sleeping beauty anne rice” – yeah… getting a lot of these since my review went up…
  • “adult words with friends” – um, do I want to know?
  • “i enjoyed reading heart of darkness” – well, that makes two of us!
  • “runny romantic letters for him” – it is the season for runny letters!
  • “how you know you are a book snob” – if you have to ask….
  • “invisible woman sex fanfic” – sorry to disappoint you.

REVIEW: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

I post on a women’s forum that runs very much to the mainstream. The posters tend to be married with children or heading that way. When a poster went “undercover” to post about her secret life as a submissive, it caused a bit of a sensation. She has a “taken in hand” marriage, which means her husband calls ALL the shots. They discuss things, but he has the final say. Period. And that might mean deciding what car to buy, where to live, or it might mean whether they have sex tonight.

It doesn’t much concern me what consenting adults do in their homes. However, the definition of consent in this scenario makes me nervous. The poster said that she gave her husband “blanket consent” for sex, whenever, where ever, and however he wants. But is consent still consent when it’s given in advance? How do you get out of this agreement if you want – isn’t it sort of, too bad, you gave your consent, so now what I say goes? To me, consent is rooted in the present tense. I can consent to sex now, but I can’t give consent for sex that’s going to happen tomorrow. Anyway, Drama Ensued. There were even accusations that this poster couldn’t be for real, but, a quick search of the internets tells me that “taken in hand” is a thing.

As I read The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, I thought about consent quite a bit. Sleeping Beauty was my first erotic novel. I admit to reading the odd, shall we say, flash fiction erotica, but it’s not a genre I ever considered for a literary experience. I chose Sleeping Beauty because it has a reputation as a literary Fifty Shades (I know, I know).

I knew that the story was based on Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, and that it would have a BDSM element, but I was not expecting so much cruelty and so little tenderness. I don’t have a problem with BDSM, and I understand this is fiction; however, when presented with non-consentual, penetrative sex with a minor, or if you wanna get real, a child being raped, on PAGE TWO I was taken aback. Context: “Beauty” is fifteen and unconscious.

He mounted her, parting her legs, giving the white inner flesh of her thighs a soft, deep pinch, and, clasping her right breast in his left hand, he thrust his sex into her. Continue reading →

Infinite Jest broke my Kobo. And my brain.

Once I got over my initial fear, I’ve been pretty cocky about reading Infinite Jest. It’s been WAY easier than I thought it would be. I’m able to pick it up here and there without backtracking to remember what happened. DFW’s quirks and tics aren’t bothering me much (though starting sentences with “and but so then” just doesn’t make sense to me.) It’s just SO much easier to read something written in and about a culture you’re familiar with, than say 19th century Russia. My shiny new Kobo Glo is really helpful, too. I can look up words right on screen (my new favourite word is postprandial) AND I can jump back and forth between main text and end notes (good thing because there are a ton of them).

So I’m thinking I’m quite SMRT. Then this happens:

Calculus in Infinite Jest

CALCULUS!

Calculus was by far the most difficult subject I’ve ever learned. In an academic career marked by minimum effort and honour roll results, calculus was just beyond my brain’s capabilities. I worked harder  than any of my other classes and barely passed. Having to think about calculus again was like a big smack down, reminding me that I’m not that smart after all.

And THEN the end notes started to get out of control. The Kobo works great until you have footnotes within an end note. Then it just sort of shrugs and says “yeah, I don’t know, you find your own way back.” And end note 123 splinters into its own chapter for some reason. I guess it takes a book like Infinite Jest to expose the limitations of the technology (DFW probably would have LOVED that. You know his BFF Jonathan Franzen would.)

So, what’s the point of all the fussy words, strange constructions, copious end notes, and mathematics? Is DFW just messing with us? Trying to make the reader feel dumb? Weeding out the riff raff? Showing off? I think it’s a bit of all of these, but there’s probably some meta stuff going on… like, life isn’t a straightforward narrative, or something. I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty dumb right now.

But, I will soldier on! I’m one third of the way through after 23 days of reading, so I’m on track to finish in less than three months total. For the record, though, this is the ONLY way I want to deal with calculus from now on:

Reading Roundup: October 2012

Wuthering Heights Penguin Deluxe Edition

Oh Heathcliff. Pop that collar.

A slow month, but a few things to remark on:

Books Obtained

  • Wuthering Heights, Penguin Deluxe Edition. I gave away my copy, so I needed a new one. I’m trying to collect nice copies of my favourite books. So far, I have a hardcover Love in the Time of Cholera and this paperback Wuthering Heights. Next might be Grapes of Wrath. I had so much fun following the readalong that I want to flip through it again!

Books Actually Read

  • The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice. If I get it together and write a real review of this book, I might guest post it on Reading in Winter (After Dark), which you should definitely check out in the meantime if you enjoy a steamy read now and then. But this book. Wow. I knew it was erotica but I guess I didn’t expect to be bombarded with penetrative, non-consensual sex with a minor on PAGE TWO. And that was the LEAST risque scene in the book.

Books I Want to Obtain

The Month Ahead

  • Keep plugging away at Infinite Jest. I’m nearing the 25% mark!
  • SEE ANNA KARENINA. AM A LITTLE EXCITED. Paraphrasing a tweet I saw somewhere: How pissed is Jude Law that they didn’t make this movie ten years ago so he could play Vronsky? I’m pretty meh on Keira playing Anna, too. I saw the original 1935 movie with Greta Garbo and that’s a hard act to follow. But NO MATTER because COSTUMES and DRAMA and DOOMED LOVERS and EXCELLENT HATS.
Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina

Greta Garbo is not amused by the casting of the new Anna Karenina.

Heart of Darkness

Two times this year, a book has let me down by not being dark enough. I felt like the authors held back to make things a little more palatable – The main characters got off too lightly. There wasn’t enough at stake. Things resolved themselves a little too neatly.

I don’t like it when a story feels reigned in. I want the characters to hit bottom and keep falling.

I do feel a little guilty about this. Why do I want bad things to happen to good characters, and why do I roll my eyes at a happy ending? Schadenfreude? Shock value? Or, am I not quite over my goth phase of 1996-1997? I think it’s a bit of all of those things. I need an emotional connection to really enjoy a story, and the dark and depressing route is the easiest way to my heart.

Here are the two examples that came up this year, the darker alternatives I found, and even more dark recommendations for the long winter nights ahead. BONUS: All four books featured below are by Canadian authors!

Continue reading →

Meet the Edmonton Book Bloggers! Spotlight on Reading in Winter

Reading in Winter is having a month-long first blogiversary celebration! This week’s feature is a profile of Edmonton book bloggers, including yours truly. Today, I’ve turned the tables and asked Kristilyn the same questions she asked each of us. Here’s a look at one of Edmonton’s most prolific readers and bloggers. Enjoy!

Psst… Are you a book blogger in the Edmonton area? Head on over to Reading in Winter and get in touch with Kristilyn if you’d like to be added to the Edmonton Book Bloggers Directory!

Continue reading →

REVIEW: From Away by Michelle Ferguson

From Away by Michelle Ferguson

“There is no law past here.”

My husband (then boyfriend) and I passed the hand-lettered sign on a dark stretch of highway on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. The whale watching tour we’d planned was cancelled due to rain, so we decided to go off the tourist path to Dark Harbour. This side of the island was rough and isolated. After passing the sign, the road simply ended at a beach. This was not a tourist spot. The people there were working – getting on or off a boat while dulse was drying on racks. No one said hello or smiled. There was something about the situation that screamed “leave,” and we did.

Dark Harbour, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick

Dark Harbour, NB. I took this picture just before the road ended. This place gave me the creeps.

The rest of our trip was all quaint B&Bs, cafes and gift shops. But we’d seen something else. Something that wasn’t meant for us. Some of my family had told us about a group of local vigilantes who burned a drug house down recently. Did the sign have something to do with that?

I thought about this experience as I read From Away. I share a lot in common with Marion, the main character. We are both from Alberta, but feel some claim on the East Coast, because “our people” are from there. Like Marion, I visit every couple of years and consider myself an honourary Maritimer. The premise of this book, an outsider trying to find her place in a small maritime
community, was interesting. Continue reading →

This is What a Feminist Book Snob Looks Like

This is what a feminist looks like

Let’s assume Ashley is also a book snob, then this image works.

So there is this article, in which guy-author Jeffrey Eugenides accuses lady-author Jodi Picoult of “belly-aching” about the fact that she doesn’t get any love from the New York Times. I hate how soundbites are taken out of context, so here is the full quote, emphasis mine:

I didn’t really know why Jodi Picoult is complaining. She’s a huge best-seller and everyone reads her books, and she doesn’t seem starved for attention, in my mind — so I was surprised that she would be the one belly-aching. There’s plenty of extremely worthy novelists who are getting very little attention. I think they have more right to complain. And it usually has nothing to do with their gender, but just the marketplace.

Hmm, you mean she wants to be commercially successful AND respected? How dare she! Complainer! And really, does ANYTHING have “nothing to do with gender?” My feminist spidey-sense are tingling…

Then I read this Jezebel article. Jezebel has a feminist perspective, and I was ready to be righteously outraged… but I totally wasn’t. The author doesn’t deal with the fact that Eugenides writes literary fiction while Picoult writes commercial fiction, so all the ranting about how ladies aren’t taken seriously is moot because literary fiction is more deserving of publicity and attention… isn’t it? Maybe Eugenides is right, it’s all about the marketplace…

I was feeling very conflicted and icky.  I didn’t expect to agree with a guy who accuses a woman of “belly-aching” because she demands the same sort of respect her peers are getting. But then, I don’t see a situation in which I would ever read a Jodi Picoult book on purpose. Jeffrey Eugenides is brilliant and wrote one of my favourite books, The Virgin Suicides. So am I sexist, a book snob, or both?

Then I read this article (tweeted by @jenniferweiner. Follow her.) The author takes the time to research the background, present some actual data, and break down the issues. There are a couple of things going on:

  • Commercial fiction is not seen as important or worthy as literary fiction
  • Female genre writers like Picoult are treated differently than male genre writers, like, say, Nick Hornby.
  • Female genres like romance and YA are treated differently than male genres like horror and mystery.

The whole “belly aching” controversy seems like a smoke screen to distract from the real issues. Kind of like that whole “mom wars” silliness a few months ago. There is ABSOLUTELY sexism in publishing and in writing and in reading. I’ve been reading the classics for years, and it is a vast sea of dead white dudes. Think it’s not a problem today? Nearly all of the current New York Times hardcover bestsellers are by male authors. If you add e-books to the mix, suddenly half are by female authors – thanks to E.L. James are her ilk.

I’m trying to assuage my feminist guilt by stacking my Classics Club list in favour of female authors. I still only made it to 19/50 books, and that was difficult. Maybe I need to write a book.

Do you think the publishing industry is sexist? Do you make an effort to read female authors?

Reading Roundup: September 2012

Who knew I could do enough book and bloggy things in one month to warrant an update?

September was a challenging month. Henry went through pink eye, thrush, teething, and colds. He still doesn’t sleep at night. Or ever. But, I feel like I’m getting back into a groove. My commitment to read every day helps a lot. There were a few days where it didn’t happen, but usually, if I tell myself “just one sentence,” I’ll end up reading a few pages. I may never be as prolific a reader and blogger as most, but this feels good.

I got books! And things!

  • Every Love Story is a Ghost Story A Life of David Foster WallaceWon: Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Max, a biography of the late David Foster Wallace. The Edmonton Journal’s book columnist Michael Hingston (@mhingston) had an extra copy to give away and I entered on a whim; I’ve never read any of DFW’s work. I was going to jump right in with Infinite Jest, but Michael suggested I start with something a little less ambitious, like Consider the Lobster. “Considering” that Infinite Jest is more than a thousand pages long, I think I’ll take that suggestion.  Check out Michael’s blog for lots of local literary goodness.
  • Bought: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This might just be the longest book I’ve ever attempted. Eek.
  • Bought: Love in the Time of Cholera. See my rant about the cover here.
  • Gifted: A brand new, pink Kobo Glo. It’s great! Mostly. Review to come.

I read books! Yes, plural, BOOKS.

  • Vineland by Thomas Pynchon – I wrote up my initial thoughts on this excellent book. Four stars, nearly five.
  • From Away by Michelle Ferguson – Review soon. Interesting themes but the characters didn’t come alive for me. Three stars.

I did things on other blogs!

  • I guest blogged on Reading in Winter. Check out my post on Paranormal in Classic Literature. What a great experience. Kristilyn even helped me with the final touches as I was in the middle of sleep hell with my seven month old.
  • I created my Classics Club list! Now I just have to actually join. I figure it’ll be book snob central – so excited.
  • I committed to do a guest post for Angry Vegan in October. It’s not a book blog, so I’ll have to come up with something a little different. Here’s a guest post I did last year about my week-long vegan challenge failure.

Here’s to an even more productive October. And hopefully some sleep.