May 5, 2013 at 3:49 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: biographies, book lists, hist, Just published, poetry, reviews, Sundays, Vietnam, war literature, writing process
Below are the books self is interested in reading after perusing the 7 March 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books. Her choices are nothing if not idiosyncratic:
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, by Douglas Smith: reviewed by Michael Scammell (Self admires the title of this book tremendously; she, too, has felt, many times, like a “former people.”)
Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis: reviewed by Helen Vendler. In a nutshell: “Thomas meets Frost in London in 1913, begins (for the first time since Oxford) to write poetry, feels guilty (in complex ways, including the fear of cowardice) about watching others die while he remains at home, decides to enlist, trains as an officer (in part for the higher pay), volunteers for the front, and courts death. When the death arrives (from a bomb blast in Arras) it is both shocking and unsurprising.” Tragic.
Several books about General David Petraeus, reviewed by Thomas Powers:
- The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kaplan
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe
In the course of the review, Powers cites three other fascinating books:
- The Centurions, a novel by Jean Lartéguy, about the lessons learned by French army officers captured by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu (“You’ve got to have people on your side . . . if you want to win a war.”)
- Street Without Joy, a “history of the long French failure in Vietnam,” by the French writer Bernard B. Fall
- Hell in a Very Small Place, also by Bernard B. Fall, about “a set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.”
And now, self must get going if she wants to catch the Menlo Park Farmers Market.
Arrivederci, dear ones.
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May 1, 2013 at 8:42 am (Books, Lists)
Tags: biographies, book lists, novel, travel
The bookshelf is directly over her bed.
The writing beckons now. Stronger than ever. When self is writing, she feels almost invincible.
Today, Trieste is overcast.
Self is making great headway with her book (Still the one she was reading when she arrived in Venice, almost two weeks ago: Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses). This book is a wonder, a narrative of truly gripping power. At dinner in the Antico Convento last night, over pork with porcini, she read the scene with the poor old man who shows up at the farm, dressed only in a thin suit and “summer shoes,” and about the German soldiers who are after him (The book is told in flashback, and the events of World War II blend almost seamlessly into the present). Self must have read 50 pages in the restaurant.
Afterwards, she spent the rest of the evening watching “Mississippi Burning” in Italian.
Self has decided that she will list all the books on the shelf above her bed in this little apartamento. She may not finish listing all today, but here goes:
- La Vie de Cézanne, by Henri Perruchot
- Das Monstrum, by Stephen King
- La Ragazza in Blu, by Susan Vreeland
- L’Ombra del Vento, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- Sol Levante, by Michael Crichton
- Die folgenschwere Ermordung Ihrer Majestat Konigin Elisabeth I, by Keith Roberts
- Maggie: Una Ragazza Di Strada, by Stephen Crane
- Come Fratello E Sorella, by Sandra Petrignani
- Uscita per L’Inferno, by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence
And now, to write.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 19, 2013 at 4:05 pm (Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, book lists, Chinese writers, nonfiction, novel, reviews, short story collections, The NYTBR, translation
That date (not today’s date, which is the 19th, but the date of the NYTBR issue) happens to be Dear Departed Dad’s death anniversary. Oh Dear Departed Dad, don’t think of Second Daughter too unkindly: all she’s done has been produce a couple of short story collections and one novella! While perfecting her reading and cooking skills! Not to mention gardening!
Now to the NYTBR. Following, a lits of books self is interested in perusing:
- Two translations of Mo Yan, both by Howard Goldblatt: Sandalwood Death and Pow! The review is by Ian Buruma, who says of Mo Yan: “There is nothing mandarin, or even urbane, about Mo Yan’s work. He has retained the earthy character of rural Shandong, where he grew up in a farming family.”
- Recommended by humorist Dave Barry: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, The Code of the Woosters (Wodehouse, self presumes), and A Confederacy of Dunces
- I, Hogarth, by Michael Dean. Self is a sucker for English biographies, they follow such an arc (usually, slicing through class divisions)
- Tenth of December: Stories, by George Saunders. Self would read anything by George Saunders. Anything. Even if the entire book consisted of just one page.
- The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece, by Roseanne Montillo. Three reasons to read this book: (1) Mary Shelley herself is a masterpiece. (2) It’s about science and literature. (3) The review by Deborah Blum is so beguiling.
- Another biography! Self is absolutely delirious with happiness! The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine – Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary, by Jenny Uglow
- Another short story collection! By a writer self has never heard of before! The News From Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story, by Joan Wickersham
And now, self must get dressed to drop off stuff at the post office.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 14, 2013 at 9:27 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: biographies, book lists, discoveries, historical novel, Just published, poetry, reviews, The NYTBR
Whew! It’s been a while since self perused a New York Times Book Review. They’re piling up!
But, anyhoo, the sun is shining, the neighbors’ parakeets are trilling, there is such furious activity in gardens all around self’s neighborhood, she doesn’t feel so alone weeding and fertilizing. Meaning: It is a great day.
So, here we are at last to the reason for this post: the books self is interested in reading after perusing a relatively recent issue (Only three Sundays ago!) of the New York Times Book Review, which she keeps thinking about discontinuing, but never actually gets around to. She renewed for another year in December.
The reason self can blog in the middle of a very busy day is that the list of books self is interested in reading is a very short one. Why, she has no idea. But, without further ado, The List:
- The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures, by Edward Ball. Congratulations to Candice Millard for writing such an enthralling review! Thanks to Ms. Millard, self learned that the photographer Eadweard Muybridge liked to eat “cheese flies, tiny insects that hover around the tops of old cheese and that he used to gather up into packages and snack on as he brooded over his photographs.” Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
- A couple of books about Christopher Marlowe, including:
- The Marlowe Papers, a biography of the dramatist written in verse, by Ros Barber (just published)
- Dead Man in Deptford, by Anthony Burgess (published 1993)
- Christoferus, by Robin Chapman (published 1993)
- Tamburlaine Must Die, by “Scottish thriller writer” Louise Welsh (2004)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 7, 2013 at 6:32 am (Movies, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Wall Street Journal)
Tags: biographies, lists, novel, performances, reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, short story collections, Sundays, Wall Street Journal
First, “Promised Land.” Though this was not one of the movies on self’s “Five Movies She Most Wants to See” list, she ended up seeing it after reading what Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, wrote about Matt Damon in a review. Self is glad she saw it, for it was indeed a very good movie. She found out that Damon and John Krasinski wrote the screenplay and that they also co-produced. The script was really smart and made some very intelligent sense. Kudos also to John Krasinski for SPOILER ALERT! coming off as the nicest corporate bad guy ever. She can see why the character played by Rosemary DeWitt was charmed. As for this actress, self has to say: She never believed her in the role of a small-town schoolteacher, not for one moment. Something to do with the way she spoke, the brittleness of her language, and the knowing way she gestured with her hands.
This evening, self saw “Django.” My, one thing you can say for Quentin Tarantino, his revenge fantasies are so satisfying and emotionally cathartic, and he’s funny, too. She loved the intensity here. She thought “Django” was better than “Inglorious Basterds.” Funny, Tarantino seems to be the only American movie director who knows how to make full use of Christoph Waltz’s extraordinary gift for the ironic throw-away. Kerry Washington is perfect as the iconic Brunhilda von Staft (Yes indeed, that is the full name of the character Ms. Washington played), and she performs terror very very well. Jamie Foxx is hotter than ever, and possibly hotter even than Channing Tatum. She loved the scene where he rides his horse at full gallop, back to a plantation named Candieland, to rescue his love. Self is amazed the people at the plantation didn’t kill off Brunhilda, the moment they knew of her connection to Django. No, in fact, there is not a mark on her – not a bruise, nothing. They put her in a room. With a bed. Then leave her alone. Go figure. (These men who had the lovely Brunhilda in their power were not gentlemen. In fact, they were sadists. Self fully expected the worst to happen. Though she is not complaining that Brunhilda was preserved. Just – puzzled. In the same way she was puzzled by Freida Pinto’s fresh-as-a-daisy countenance, even after 10 years of being a brute’s mistress, in the movie “Slumdog Millionaires.” There you go again with the digressions, self!)
And now self would like to list the books she is interested in reading after perusing the Book Review section of the Weekend Wall Street Journal. Since it is getting quite late, and self has been sleeping only fitfully lately, she will simply list the favored books, with a minimum of commentary:
- Two short story collections by George Saunders: Pastoralia and Tenth of December (She loved, absolutely loved CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
- Constantine the Emperor, by David Potter: How self adores biographies of figures from remote antiquity!
- Three of five books recommended by novelist Stefan Kiesbye: Winesberg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson; The Murder Farm, by Andrea Maria Schenkel; and Melanctha by Gertrude Stein (one of three novellas in Stein’s first work, Three Lives)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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December 16, 2012 at 11:58 pm (Books, Links, Lists, Memoirs, Movies, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Wall Street Journal, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, biographies, book lists, discoveries, Fall movies, happiness, historical fiction, history, memoirs, novel, performances, Sundays, Wall Street Journal, war literature, weepers, World War II
Today self is peaceful and content. Which means she is happy.
She managed to get a mani/pedi from Belle Nail Spa on Broadway. She left before fingernails and toenails were quite dry, but she wanted to collect The Man and make it to the first screening of “Silver Linings Playbook” (Only $7 per ticket). Despite all the hectic running around, she somehow managed to avoid getting the slightest nick on any of her fingers or toes. Quelle magnifique!
Second, she really liked that movie. Even though it only got a wan endorsement from Eric B. Snider. And even though, OK, she’ll concede this point: the odds are pretty slim that two people that good-looking, both emotionally damaged, live in that close proximity to each other . . . OK! So what! Self knows this movie is totally in the land of make-believe! She’d rather see Jennifer Lawrence end up with someone who looks like Bradley Cooper than with someone who looks like, like – John C. Reilly? Even though chances are the right man for her would look just like John C. Reilly? (Not to knock John C. Reilly – self thinks he is a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL actor. But given the choice between John C. Reilly and Bradley Cooper – oh, NEVAH MIND!)
Jennifer Lawrence is a wonder. This is the first movie where self actually believed in a Bradley Cooper character. But, back to Jennifer Lawrence: Self cried at the end! She actually cried! Something she hasn’t done in a movie theater since watching Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in treacly The Time Traveler’s Wife!
And then, when she and The Man got home from the movie, she got to peruse the Wall Street Journal weekend edition and – Holy Cow! – it’s the one where they list Books of the Year!
But it’s not Books of the Year that self wants to post about – Ixnay! (BTW, it took self almost an hour to speed-read the entire books section. But more about that later)
They interviewed all kinds of celebrities to get their lists of favorite books of 2012. Self found a few choices enlightening. Also, she was surprised at WHOSE choices she liked the most. And here’s the list of people whose book choices self found the most intriguing:
- Judd Apatow, Director and creator of the phenomenon that is Seth Rogen: He said he wanted to read Henry Wiencek’s book about Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Master of the Mountains. He also recommended Dave Eggers’s latest novel, Hologram for the King.
- Craig Brown, British, writer of satirical columns: He recommended Robert Caro’s latest installment of his life of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power (like almost every other person interviewed by the Wall Street Journal), and Mimi Alford’s tale of having sex with JFK when she was a White House intern, Once Upon a Secret.
- Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking: She recommended a first novel, The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, and Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews.
- Joseph Epstein, essayist and cultural commentator: He recommended a novel, Only Yesterday, by S. Y. Agnon, and Once Upon a Secret (also recommended by Craig Brown, see above)
- Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: He recommended Robert Caro’s book on LBJ, The Passage of Power; John Keats, a biography of the Romantic poet by Nicholas Roe; several classic westerns: Saint Johnson and Goodbye to the Past, both by W. R. Burnett; a novel about telephone linemen, Slim, by William Wister Haines; That Winter, by Merle Miller, a “pre-Kerouacian group portrait of the disaffected generation of the postwar 1940s”; Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth and The Innocent; and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.
- Robert Harris, bestselling novelist: He recommended Soldaten, a book by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, “based on secretly recorded tapes of German prisoners of war held in Allied camps during World War II.”
- Thomas Keller, chef: He recommended Killing Kennedy, by Bill O’Reilley and Martin Dugard, which “is not about a conspiracy. It’s about how a presidential assassination can be at once a tragedy and a human-interest story.”
- Ted Leonsis, Founder and Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment: He recommended The End of Illness, by David Agus, “a smart look at how to extend a life of vigor by playing offense with life.”
- Joe Maddon, Manager of the Tampa Bay Rays: He recommended Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth (Self has been meaning to get to these books, for quite a while), and the first two books of Follett’s Century trilogy, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.
- Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning novelist: She recommended The Yellow Birds, a first novel by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran; and The Lifeboat, a first novel by Charlotte Rogan, “set in the summer of 1914″ and centering “on a shipwreck in the Atlantic.”
- Karl Marlantes, author of What It Is Like to Go to War: He recommended The Snake Eaters, by Owen West; Blackhorse Riders, by Philip Keith; Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails, by Anthony Swofford; and Westmoreland, by Lewis Sorley.
- Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius: She recommended Gulag, by Anne Applebaum, a book which “takes readers back to the events that triggered the half-century long standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”
- Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur: He recommended The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, by Mark Leyner, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and A Partial History of Lost Causes, by Jennifer DuBois.
- Marcus Samuelsson, chef: He recommended This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz, and The Click Moment, by Frans Johansson.
- Colm Toibin, novelist: He recommended Edmund Spenser: A Life, by Andrew Hadfield and Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power.
- Jim Webb, senator from Virginia: He recommended The Last Lion, by Paul Reid (the last installment of a trilogy begun by William Manchester, on the life of Winston Churchill), and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, by Barbara W. Tuchman.
Self is pretty sure she can get to these books in about five years.
Self was going to make a count of the men who recommended women writers, but, alas, today self is very — and she does mean VERY — short of time! She thinks Jim Webb did. Yup, he most definitely did. And Arthur Phillips. Yes, most definitely Arthur Phillips. In fact, the good man recommended three books by women writers. Good for you, Arthur! And Gary Giddins recommended Louise Erdrich.
(She won’t single out women who recommended women writers because — hey, just because! Let’s get on with it, or self will never get free of this post!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 3, 2012 at 9:38 pm (Books, Lists, Memoirs)
Tags: biographies, history, Just published, lists, nonfiction, reviews, The NYTBR
This issue of the NYTBR was one of the strongest self can remember reading in quite a while. Here are a few of the most memorable reviews:
- Alida Becker’s review of Thomas Becket, Warrior, Priest, Rebel: A Nine-Hundred-Year-Old Story Retold, by John Guy. It begins with a fantastic quote from the book: “The biographer’s trap . . . is to look for a decisive moment of change.”
- Meghan O’Rourke’s review of Winter Journal, Paul Auster’s new memoir. It “lacks the kick” of an earlier Auster memoir, The Invention of Solitude, O’Rourke writes. “Strange, you may think, that a novelist so devoted to themes of anonymity and disappearance should have written not one but multiple memoirs.” This is a fantastic review, one that makes me want to read other books by Auster.
- Linda Robinson’s review of Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (whose Imperial Life in the Emerald City, about the American occupation of Iraq, was one of self’s favorite books of recent years). Robinson writes: “The United States seems condemned to lurch between disastrous quick fixes and unrealistic visions of remaking countries overnight in its own image, never finding a middle road.”
- Jennifer Gilmore’s review of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, a novel by Jonathan Evison. The novel’s hero is a hapless guy called Ben Benjamin, whose string of bad luck even extends to a neighbor believing “he’s poisoning her cat.” Very funny review.
- Marilyn Stasio’s review of Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, by Ginger Strand. Stasio’s opening sentence poses the million-dollar question: “What would highway killers do without highways?” then follows it up with the fact that, “in 1956, Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, authorizing the construction of 42,975 miles of an interstate road system.”
- Jeffrey Rosen’s review of Privacy, by Garret Keizer. Keizer maintains that one of the privileges of being rich is greater privacy, which he describes as “a form of resistance to exploitation.” Fascinating.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 19, 2012 at 7:55 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, short story collections, The Economist)
Tags: biographies, Just published, reviews, short story collections, The Economist, war literature, World War II
From an Economist review of Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead), 8 September 2012:
The men cheat on their women; the women usually vanish, never to be seen again. Most of the tales are narrated by Yunior, the alter ego who forms the backbone of much of Mr. Diaz’s fiction, circling around one relentless question: Is he, as one girlfriend asserts, “a typical Dominican man: a sucio (pervert), an asshole?”
These are stories about the difficulty of love: how hard it is to recognise or hold onto. In one, Yunior tries to save a relationship he has torpedoed yet again by cheating, on a beach vacation to his homeland. In another, he seeks solace from his brother’s death with an older woman, and wonders if she ruins him for girlfriends his own age. Some are bittersweet accounts of the fragile relationships between other recent immigrants.
On the next page is a review of a very different book: A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson, by Peter Conradi.
Frank Thompson was killed in 1944 aged 23, younger even than Rupert Brooke had been when he died in 1915, and in similarly futile and tragic circumstances.
Peter Conradi first became interested in Thompson while researching his acclaimed biography of Iris Murdoch. The two had been contemporaries at Oxford the year before the war. Thompson fell in love with the future novelist and with communism in the same week: “two flights of irrationality . . . two simultaneous conversion experiences.” Their love could never be fulfilled. But for Murdoch, “Frank grew to combine the roles of heroic martyr, potential husband and lost soulmate.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 23, 2012 at 4:44 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: 9/11, biographies, book lists, history, lists, medicine, novel, reading lists, thrillers
- Nicholson Baker, for Human Smoke
- Louise Erdrich (Self is reading her novel, The Plague of Doves. So far, have loved every page)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, for The Beautiful and The Damned
- Adrian Goldsworthy (What a name, that! Self only realized after she had finished typing G-o-l-d-s-w-o-r-t-h-y), for Caesar: Life of a Colossus (See the Goodreads list of “Best Books About Ancient Rome”)
- Jerome Groopman, M.D., for How Doctors Think
- Colin Harrison, for The Finder, the first New York-set thriller that self has enjoyed in a very, very long time
- Ian McEwan, for Atonement
- The 9/11 Commission: for The 9/11 Commission Report, 600+ pages of analysis that reads like a thriller. Albeit one with a very sad ending.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 30, 2012 at 3:03 am (Lists, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: biographies, book lists, history, Joan Rivers, Just published, Marilyn Stasio, memoir, mysteries, nonfiction, reviews, Sundays, The NYTBR
Joan Rivers is one of self’s favorite people: Self is NOT, absolutely NOT kidding.
And guess what? She is the interviewee in this issue’s “By the Book” feature. And her book recommendations are — hold on to your hats, dear blog readers! — as follows:
- The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro
- a “four-volume history of English kings” by Thomas B. Costain: The Conquering Family, The Three Edwards, The Magnificent Century, and The Last Plantagenets
- Enter Talking, by Joan herself (her first book)
- The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West
- Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman
- Life Itself, Roger Ebert’s memoir
- The Chaperone, by Laura Moriarty
- Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
The Fiction Chronicle (this week’s reviewer: Tom LeClair) contains two entertaining reviews: The first is a review of An Uncommon Education, by Elizabeth Percer, which is about a young girl who “endures a secretive and lonely childhood until a boy named Teddy moves into the neighborhood.” The second is a review of Drowned, by Therese Bohman, and even though the reviewer does not really like the book (He describes it as having an “aura of artifice”), self can never resist a book that sounds very much like that movie Elizabeth Olsen was in, the one where she sleeps with her older sister’s handsome Significant Other (played by Hugh Dancy) after escaping from a cult ?!!! The movie was called Martha Marcy May Marlene and self totally missed it when it was showing in theaters, but that is definitely something she is adding to her Netflix queue.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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