Need More Books

Best reading for breastfeeding

2011-10-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (originally published c. 1741, available for free download at kobo.com)

I once read (modern-day) historical fiction described as that which painstakingly recreates the details of the historical era in question, then inserts a markedly anachronistic protagonist. This might explain the continued currency of a novel like Pride and Prejudice, whose heroine is strikingly modern in her independence of spirit. By contrast, Pamela could never be mistaken for historical fiction. It is a tale firmly rooted in the value system of the eighteenth century.

I tackled this book because I have a newborn and spend a lot of time nursing. It is possible but not ideal to flip pages while breastfeeding; so I've taken to reading free books on my iPhone, which thankfully glows in the dark during those late-night sessions. Pamela was free, and I've long wanted to read it due to its (perhaps dubious) reputation as the first proper romance novel. Really, it is a rigorous exposition of morality and manners couched in high melodrama. It is tedious, and beats every lesson stone dead.

But from an historical point of view it enlightens. Pamela, the teenage waiting-maid who becomes the object of her lord's attentions, is no less than a paragon of virtue. She repels "Mr. B"'s advances time and time again, even after he holds her prisoner and all hope for her chastity seems lost. However, her pristine character eventually wins him over, and her virtue is thus "rewarded" with marriage and entry into high society. But until then, Mr. B's uncontrollable lust makes a fool of him; he is forever lurking in closets and disguising himself in women's clothes in his attempts to surprise her in bed. These are the most entertaining bits of the book.

Richardson repeatedly reminds the reader of all of Pamela's virtues as a servant, a virgin, and eventually, a wife. But what I found most intriguing was Pamela's almost Christ-like demonstration of the one virtue that is never made explicit: grace. The unhappy virgin shows astonishing grace towards her master by ultimately accepting him, in spite of the fact that he has threatened her, kidnapped her, held her captive, and treated her with physical and verbal callousness. As soon as his intentions become honourable - when he wants to make her his wife instead of his harlot - she is all gratitude, accepting his past, present, and (it is once hinted) future indiscretions. This indiscretions are not trivial, as we learn he has a six-year-old "niece" who depends on him. The novel, indeed, is a testament to the eighteenth-century conviction that sexual innocence was at a premium for women only. I find it nonetheless amazing that this morality lecture has so little to say about Pamela's grace towards a man who is so clearly her moral inferior. She is pure, sweet-tempered, pious, clever, and courageous, while he is mercurial, arrogant, spoiled, and a libertine. Yet Mr. B's nobility alone is so compelling that it renders Pamela's act of grace nothing more than a matter of course. The novel's silence on this issue, more than anything else, makes it a fascinating window on history.

YA for OAs

2011-10-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay (Scholastic, 2008, 2009, 2010)

Paradoxically, while I enjoyed the Hunger Games and its sequels, they have ended my flirtation with YA (Young Adult) fiction. Over the past several years, I, like many other OAs (Old Adults), grew interested in YA after falling hard for the Harry Potter series. After Potter, I sampled only the most celebrated, or notorious, offerings of the genre, including an age-inappropriate foray into the Twilight saga, and a much more provocative and fascinating turn with His Dark Materials. I latched onto The Hunger Games, the next flavour of the month, after the trilogy consistently appeared on lists devoted to the best youth fiction for adults.

For the story's every strength, I found a corresponding weakness that kept me from truly embracing it. To wit: Collins happily refuses to glamourize war and its effects, resulting in a far more tentative "happy" ending than one would expect from the genre. This is good. Unfortunately, she does glamourize the exploitation of the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, whose participation in the Hunger Games involves more fabulous makeovers and PR silliness than gritty hand-to-hand combat. And in theory, I appreciated the trilogy's central love triangle, which felt organic and showcased nice character arcs. Ultimately, though, I didn't care so much whether Katniss ended up with Gale or Peeta. Perhaps the film adaptations will perk up the romantic tension.

In short, this was capable YA fiction, and I burned through the three novels quick enough. But Rowling and Pullman have spoiled me with their transcendant storytelling, and ruined me for all the rest. It's back to the grown-up stuff for a while.

Back to posting

2011-06-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Kerry-Lynn's pick: Paula McLain, The Paris Wife (Bond Street Books, 2011).

Discussed: 9 June 2011 @ Ensemble (850 Thurlow Street, Vancouver)

I have decided to holler into the wilderness again, after a busy year during which I had no time or desire to spend my free time on a computer. But I miss cataloguing my reads - a year of fabulous reading has slipped from my brain. So without further ado, I'm back on track with The Paris Wife, though not necessarily with a bang. I applaud Kerry-Lynn for picking out new, untested fiction for book club while I gravitate toward literature with a pedigree, and in this case the literary premise was promising: a fictionalized account of the marriage of Ernest Hemingway to his first wife, Hadley, set largely in the Paris of the early 1920s. Their love was pure and intense, but sorely tested in a social world in which conventional marriage was an exoticism.

So why was the book so unfulfilling? Part of the problem was that I found the second half of the novel, in which Ernest and Hadley's marriage was failing, much more convincing than the happy first half. This is partly because it is made clear from the beginning that everything will end in tears. It is partly because Hadley's narrative voice seems fuzzy - the book is in the past tense, but is she recounting her story as an old lady? Or is narrator Hadley speaking from the perspective of now, from beyond the grave? I don't know, but McLain paints the historical backdrop in broad strokes, and the effect is impersonal and textbooky. (Would a contemporary American in Paris, especially a poor and unfashionable one, really cite Coco Chanel as the defining face of the age?)

All this is a fancy way of saying that I found the novel, or at least the first half, a little boring. I was, however, haunted by the account of open/hidden infidelity that cut Hadley so viciously. Her "good girl" persona becomes marginally more interesting when it survives the casual cruelties of Ernest and his lover Pauline. Even here, however, the story was all-too-familiar, and I found myself annoyed at having to rehash this perennial tale of woe.

Not cool

2010-02-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Jennifer's Pick:

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June:

From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (Penguin, 2001).

January 10 @ Au Petit Chavignol (Hastings St., Vancouver)

Wow. With the possible exception of Leanne (who couldn't attend the "meeting"), we were unanimous in our infuriation with this book, which comprises one famous year of Anaïs Nin's voluble, long-running "diary." (This is the year when she met Henry and June Miller, had affairs with both, and apparently discovered herself sexually.) So I'm going to have a good time here and really tear this apart.

Allow me, right away, to quash any knee-jerk explanations for our antipathy: (1) No, we are not frigid old bats scandalized by the sexy parts. I personally enjoyed the occasional depictions of her shenanigans with the Millers. Nin wrote her share of erotica in her lifetime, and I can see why. She's good at it. They were the best parts. (2) We did not sanctimoniously object to Nin's moral choices, e.g., her taking of a lover (or two or three) and concealing them all from each other. Fiction and non-fiction, obviously, have provided far worse for the interested reader. And outright amorality (which Nin does not exhibit here) often provides the raw material for a fascinating read. (3) We are not stodgy conformists suspicious of those who throw off the shackles of societal expectation to experiment with alternative life choices.

So where does that leave us? It is pretty clear that, on a nonliterary level, we didn't like Nin. Her self-absorption is incredible, and she had an uncanny ability to recognize her frequent unkindnesses and deceptions while preserving an untarnished self-image as a pure and generous soul. Her refusal to leave her seemingly decent husband is, in her diary, the testament of her selfless goodness. Hmm... you want to run around on your husband? Fine. But don't make out like you're doing him a favour. This issue here is not with her infidelity but with her self-delusion.

This irritation may seem unfair. A friend of mine once said that he didn't like the idea of book clubs because people in book clubs were preoccupied with their personal connection to the story, the way it resonated with them, instead of evaluating it on its own merits. But in this case, I would argue that Nin's self-characterization is so conspicuous and aggravating precisely because there is so little else of enduring significance to actually glean from her musings, however eloquent.

Let's see: Do we get insights into the nature of human relationships? Not really. Nin's incessant praise of (Henry) Miller serves primarily to reflect her own stature (i.e., this brilliant, creative genius is awed by my talent, beauty, incisiveness, and ferocity). I am not exaggerating; Nin spends many a paragraph transcribing his praise for her. Her relationship with her husband, on the other hand, becomes predictably claustrophobic, and, as I've already suggested, empathy is not exactly Nin's strong point.

Does the diary deliver unaffected authenticity? A resounding no, from the whole book club. Although it is copious and was clearly a labour of love, Nin's notebooks were not vessels of private recollection; she frequently mentions how they were read by others, especially Miller, who was no doubt gratified by what he read. This is not to say that Nin falsified her accounts, but that she was catering, at this time, to a specific audience of one. And it shows. It is all too obvious from her entries, for example, that she was not about to let her husband give them a perusal.

Finally, do we get a refreshing glimpse of women's sexual emancipation at a time when, so the story goes, very few women investigated, let alone wrote about, their own sexuality? Well, okay. Maybe. But these disclosures were just glints on a deep dark pool of self-congratulation and Freudian mumbo-jumbo. The masturbating woman on the cover of the Penguin edition (above) is appropos; but please take note that Nin's brand of self-pleasuring is only incidentally sexual.

Victorian gothic

2009-12-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Nicole's pick: Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (New York: Walker and Co., 2008).

Discussed: 29 November 2009 @ Stella's (Commercial Drive)

Alrighty, after an extended absence I am going to powerblog through the next two entries - book club choices from the last two months - before we have yet another meeting and I fall hopelessly behind. In short, everyone enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, a true crime account of a ghastly murder that took place in a country house smack-dab in the middle of the Victorian era.

Whicher was one of England's most celebrated detectives, and he was the real-life model for many of the famous sleuths of fiction, and, arguably, for the whole detective genre. He amazed followers with his ability to nab the culprit through deductive reasoning based on the tiniest of clues. Summerscale does a capable job of describing the Victorian detective craze, but her greatest accomplishment (to my mind) is how she reveals the other side of the coin - popular discomfort with the way inspectors like Whicher quite literally rummaged through a family's dirty laundry in search of evidence. To many observers, his methods reflected a disregard for the sanctity of the family and the Victorian home, at a time when public respectability was so important. Ultimately, it was this controversy that defeated Whicher.

Basically, the whole club thought this was a fun popular history; I especially enjoyed Summerscale's illuminating etymological discussions: the Victorian evolution of words like "detective" and "clue" (or "clew"). Honestly, we didn't spend as much time deep in discussion about it as we have with other books, perhaps because of our general consensus. What fascinated me was the fact that in the end, it was not deductive reasoning that elicited a confession from the murderer, but religious conversion. What was it about this experience that, after so many years, brought about the mystery's resolution? But that, I suppose, is another history.

What your great-gran was reading

2009-11-17T21:22:00.000-08:00

E.M. Hull, The Sheik (1919: London; Virago, 1996).

I'd been meaning to read this for a while. I first heard of it in Ross McKibbin's Classes and Cultures, an historical survey of interwar Britain. The plot: a haughty English heroine is kidnapped in the Algerian desert by a lusty sheik who rapes her repeatedly. She eventually falls for him, but, as McKibbin notes, "Her choice is not quite so shocking as it appears, since the sheik (typically) turns out to be half-English and of noble birth." It was a runaway best-seller, going through several editions in its first year and selling over 1.2 million copies. The thought of 1.2 million English ladies panting over this kind of softcore rape fantasy reduced my friend Bethany and I to tears of laughter. Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before I tracked it down for myself.

The Sheik did not disappoint, either as straight-up romance or historical artifact. The reclusive Edith Maude Hull, who wrote it as a hobby, was marvelously artless. She transmitted her sexual fancy, and her preconceptions about race and gender, with equal candour. The result is more innocent than repellent. In fact, the rich, beautiful, pampered, racist Diana Mayo is so smug in her (false) sense of superiority and self-sufficiency, you really start wanting her to be conquered by someone. Eventually, she is. And how! By the end of the book just a glance from the Sheik elicits quivers and shakes. The story's climax offers ludicrous proof of Lady Diana's utter submission. Not a feminist read, although perhaps a post-feminist one, given the unquestionable popularity of Hull's vision with interwar female readers. (And yes, I am again reminded of the Twilight saga, another piece of unliterary, unfiltered fantasy storytelling. Apparently Stephenie Meyer has responded to criticisms of her books with, "I never said that I was a writer.")

The Sheik is not a fount of political correctness. It is astonishingly racist in its depiction of Arabs, constituting a complete catalogue of stereotypical slurs; the men are dirty and violent, but easily cowed, while the women are slavish and sniveling. Diana is at one point captured by a rival sheik, described as "the Arab of my imaginings":

[...] this gross, unwieldy figure lying among the tawdry cushions, his swollen, ferocious face seamed and lined with every mark of vice, his full, sensual lips parted and showing broken, blackened teeth, his deep-set, bloodshot eyes with a look in them that it took all her resolution to sustain, a look of such bestial evilness that the horror of it bathed her in perspiration.

Ahmed Ben Hassan, the Sheik, of course, does not fit this description. "Only" his sexual cruelty towards Diana fits the racial stereotype, while the heroine is bewildered by the Sheik's meticulous grooming and cleanliness - hygiene being apparently the preserve of Europeans.

The same passion with which Hull rails against the natives, however, she injects into the romantic bits as well, and the results are perfect: "The touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms, the close union with his warm, strong body robbed her of all strength, of all power of resistance." Rrrow!

Speak, blog

2009-10-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Amanda's Pick: Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966). 1st revised edition. Originally published as Conclusive Evidence (1947).

25 October @ The Banana Leaf (Broadway and Carnarvon, Vancouver)

Speak, Memory is not a suitable candidate for a blog post, so I will confine myself here to a few passing remarks instead of vainly attempting to capture some kind of essence. Nabokov, I believe, would not have approved of blogging, but there it is. Lowly literary worms like myself will never produce memoirs like Speak, Memory, so we have to content ourselves with shallow, ephemeral commentary on the masterpieces.

Like Lolita, this book - an autobiography of roughly his first forty years, his European period - is mechanically faultless, with prose as crisp and fresh as I can imagine. An astonishing feat considering that English was not his first language. His command of vocabulary is, in my reading experience, unsurpassed; words as obscure as pleach, ecchymotic, quiddity, and ha-ha (look them up) sprinkle every page, but never showboat. Of course, the reader gathers early on that Nabokov was some kind of prodigy, and I was amused, even charmed, by his casual arrogance in that regard. Although he mysteriously lost his mathematical genius in a childhood fever, he seems to have taken his other gifts for granted, scoffing at the fact that his cousin discovered War and Peace at age seventeen, when he had read it at eleven. Later, he pricelessly refers to Balzac and Zola as "detestable mediocrities from my point of view."

Nabokov rarely makes explicit his own self-image, stating instead that the true aim of autobiography should be "the following of... thematic designs through one's life," but it is a pleasure when he reveals his little idiosyncrasies. Sleep, for example, he describes as "the most moronic fraternity in the world," "a mental torture I find debasing," and a "nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius." This is an eccentricity, if there ever was one. Leanne noted that Nabokov discusses his mental snaps and faraway visual memories with a resonance that few have the talent to convey. His extended discussion of the colours he has long attributed to particular letters - the "confessions of a synesthete" - was not "tedious and pretentious" as he predicted, but refreshing.

The other, more obvious fascination of Speak, Memory is Nabokov's fabulous historical background. His family was not merely wealthy; it straddled the peak of the social pyramid. Nabokov's father was a liberal and a democrat, but he made no attempt to live as anything other than what he was - an aristocrat. The Nabokovs' country estate, Vyra, maintained fifty servants, and the star on their Christmas tree touched the ceiling of their "prettiest drawing room"; there were, apparently, multiple drawing rooms from which to choose. Nabokov exhibits a fierce belief in his father's virtue and progressiveness, but he makes no attempt to efface his own privileged outlook, revealed most clearly in his juvenile lust for a local peasant girl:

"Strange to say, she was the first to have the poignant power... of burning a hole in my sleep and jolting me into clammy consciousness, whenever I dreamed of her, although in real life I was even more afraid of being revolted by her dirt-caked feet and stale-smelling clothes than of insulting her by the triteness of quasi-seigneurial advances."

Nabokov was endowed with enough riches to care little for the loss of them when the Bolshevik Revolution broke.

Everyone at our meeting admired these memoirs and were, in many ways, overwhelmed by them. One widely-voiced complaint was that reading Speak, Memory felt like "homework." Nicole confessed that her "escape" between reading snippets of the book was watching snippets of Grey's Anatomy. For Leanne, it was the Sunday paper. Only two of us read it in its entirety, and the others were not sure they'd ultimately finish it. But I would enthusiastically recommend Speak, Memory to anyone who wants to see one of the few true virtuosos at work.

Didn't make my day

2009-10-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

Elmore Leonard, Hombre (1961: New York; HarperCollins, 2002).

I read this because I wanted to read some manly pulp; years ago I was lent Charles Willeford's The Cockfighter, and it entranced me. Leonard is revered in western and crime fiction circles, and several of his works have been adapted for the screen. (I very much enjoyed the 2007 adaptation of his short story, "3:10 to Yuma," starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.) But I found Hombre, considered one of Leonard's best, to be unremarkable.

In short, Leonard's picture of rugged masculine virtue seems trite. But it is certainly possible that he invented the western hero we know so well - that, in 1961, his vision was original. If so, Leonard's reputation is understandable. But from my 2009 perspective, the protagonist is cut from cardboard. In this story, John Russell is the true man of action and few words, a man who looks out for himself and minds his own business, but who, in a pinch, remains unruffled and incorruptible:

"He let people do or think what they wanted while he smoked a cigarette and thought it out calmly, without his feelings getting mixed up in it. Russell never changed the whole time, though I think everyone else did in some way. He did what he felt had to be done. Even if it meant dying. So maybe you don't have to understand him. You just know him."

Ho-hum. These kinds of characters do much better on screen, without the voice-over. That said, our narrator, a young man who spends three days in Russell's company while their stagecoach gets held up by no-good bandits, has an endearing everyman quality that meshes with Leonard's plain-talking literary approach. His remark on an improper exchange between two of the coach passengers made me smile:

"Frank Braden had eased lower in the seat and his head was very close to Mrs. Favor's. He said something to her, a low murmur. She laughed, not out loud, almost to herself, but you could hear it. Her head moved to his and she said one word or maybe a couple. Their faces were close together for a long time, maybe even touching, and yet her husband was right there. Figure that one out."

The book is not without its charms, therefore, but they have faded over the years. I didn't like Hombre enough to further investigate why Leonard is hailed as a master of his craft.

I'm ready for my dinner now

2009-09-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Kerry-Lynn's pick: Knut Hamsun, Hunger (1890: Penguin, 1998)

16 September 2009 @ Stella's (Commercial Drive, Vancouver)

Kerry-Lynn went out on a limb with this one - Hunger is not the kind of book that you burn through, unable to turn the pages fast enough because you are so thrilled by the action. The back of the Penguin edition calls it a "searing excursion into the realm of the irrational." Sounds like the latest Nora Roberts, no? Hamsun - I think of him affectionately as Knut - presents a few days in the life of a man in late-Victorian Kristiania (Oslo), as he scrambles to forestall starvation until his body and moral rectitude can replenish themselves. Our only version of events is filtered through his half-crazed mind.

Our individual reactions to Hunger, more than anything else we've read for book club, were shaped by our personal interests and backgrounds. (I should say that Jennifer couldn't come to the meeting, and I don't know if she read the book, but those who know her best were confident that she wouldn't have liked it anyway.) For Kerry-Lynn, who spent years toughing it out in the rarefied world of ballet, Hunger was a tale of the struggling artist, whose suffering is at least partly self-induced - the result of an imprudent and even prideful commitment to his "craft."

For Nicole and I (she with a background in English literature and I with a background in English history), Hunger was a tale of alienation in the modern city, and Knut an early modernist because he privileged man's inner psychology over his outward actions - thought over plot. And Leanne, well, she didn't get past the first twenty-five or thirty pages. From what I could gather, the protagonist's disfigured thought processes and mercurial disposition repulsed her.

I won't speculate on the psychoanalytical impulses behind Leanne's violent reaction to the book (!), but I can see where she's coming from. You know the enraged homeless guy who stands in the middle of the street screaming at someone invisible? That's this guy. Fascinating, but disconcerting and frustrating too. His impaired judgment causes him to ignore and squander the few chances that do cross his path.

We all - even Leanne, perhaps - came away with a real... appreciation for Hamsun's achievement. But that is precisely what bothers me about my own assessment. I wanted to escape from myself when I was reading Hunger. It occurred to me at one point, "I should teach this for my European survey class," and from then on I was just gathering historical cues to flesh out the modernism lecture spontaneously writing itself in my head. That kind of systematic evaluation does a disservice to the story's most beautiful, brutally human moments.

Post-script: if you ever make it to Stella's, get the "Orleans" mussels, with fries.

Quirks that work

2009-08-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Penguin, 2009).

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is the kind of book that teeters on the edge of being irksome. It is, like so much postmodern pop culture, self-consciously idiosyncratic, bubbling with quick, knowing references to everything from railroad signals to Dolly Parton. The literary mechanism that enables such detail is a twelve-year-old cartographer - a child prodigy. His obsessive-compulsive mind spills out onto every page, and frequently into the margins. Footnotes, drawings, and maps are integral to the story; they are "illustrations" in the truest sense.

And although Larsen never makes this explicit, while the protagonist is twelve-year-old T.S., the speaker seems to be adult T.S., with emotional insights that could come only with life experience. These adult reflections also fill the pages, and the result could easily turn pretentious.

But Larsen errs on the side of charming. All the minutiae are offset by the powerful simplicity of T.S.'s "emotional journey" - he has lost a brother and is trying to understand, not only his role in the death, but his role in his transformed family. He uses his scientific work to grapple with his very unscientific dilemma. Not only does T.S. surreptitiously insert his brother's name into every one of his maps, but his personal issues determine the kinds of maps he draws. Faced with a surfeit of new sights and sounds on his first trip to Chicago, for instance, he ultimately chooses to chart the terrain of loneliness: he counts the number of people walking alone, and then the percentage who deflect their loneliness with cell phones or iPods. One of my favourite "maps" in the book uses arrows to illustrate the changing flow of conversation at his family's dinner table, both before and after his brother's death.

So all the bits and bobs have a role to play, and while some might find the end result cloying, I do not count myself in their number. The quirks worked for me. (For quirks that do not quite work, see the film 500 Days of Summer, playing now in your local theatre.)

Restoring the integrity of my blog

2009-08-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Jennifer's pick: Rose Tremain, Restoration (Viking Press, 1990)

17 August 2009 @ The Nook (Denman Street, Vancouver, BC)

I'm beginning to have a problem with the five-star system that my book club uses. There is no nuance. I can read three books, and give them each a rating of four out of five stars, but that indicates a sameness about them that is misleading. It also makes the reviewer (my friends and I) appear passionless. Maybe it's time to scrap the system; until then you can see our critical insights and opinions reduced to a number below. (I lost the ratings - it must be a sign. I hereby retire the star rating system.)

Everyone liked Restoration. It's difficult to see how someone could not like it. Tremain's story is a sensitive rendering of the seventeenth-century world of an English courtier, but it is also surprisingly funny and touching. The speaker, our hero Robert Merivel, is absolutely lovable, even when his character sinks to the depths of depravity. He is so pathetic, but so open and child-like that you forgive him his trangressions - which include a heaping helping of the seven deadly sins, gluttony and lust in particular. (I used the film adaptation cover here, with Robert Downey Jr. in Louis XIV's wig. Excellent!) Reading about Merivel's turbulent fortunes is a pleasure. I wish I could give more specific information on my fellow members' individual perspectives, but we all seemed to be in loose agreement, and to be honest we didn't spend hours discussing it. My sister, who joined us that evening, remarked later, "I don't know if that qualifies as a 'meeting'."

I do, however, want to emphasize what a lovely example this is of an historical novel. Tremain doesn't fetishize the period details or showboat her knowledge of seventeenth-century politics. But she captures the zeitgeist, especially the significance and role of the king in courtly society. Merivel's adoration of James II might seem overblown, but a good absolutist monarch had that effect on his followers in the seventeenth century. James was not as charismatic or effective as Louis XIV, but to his courtiers he would have been the centre of the universe. Meanwhile, Merivel's life in "exile" shows just how much the rest of English society was moving onward and upward, regardless of the shenanigans of the royal court.

Not even good enough to be called trash

2009-08-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Linda Lael Miller, Shotgun Bride (Pocket Star, 2003).

The only reason this is on my blog is because I'm committed to reporting on every (non-work-associated) book that I read. This book, apparently second in the hallowed "McKettrick Cowboys" trilogy, was one of a handful of romance novels on the bookshelf at the N.S. cottage that my family and I rented this August. I had brought the current book club choice - Rose Tremain's Restoration - along to read, but it made sense to read a vacation paperback instead. Judging from the back-cover synopsis, Shotgun Bride seemed the raciest and most amusing of the bunch:

Kade McKettrick's got five mail-order brides-to-be camped out at the local hotel, all more than eager to provide him with the heir that will win him the Triple M ranch. But Kade, the newly appointed marshal, has his hands full with a troublesome outlaw gang. Why, then, is he so easily distracted by pretty "Sister Mandy" -- who most assuredly is not the nun she claims to be?

So, inspired by the cheese of Twilight, I dug in. But this book sucked. I didn't even finish it, a rarity for a completist like me. The story was plodding. The dialogue wasn't witty or sparkling. But I woud have dealt with this in exchange for good romantic tension and bodice-ripping love scenes. But no. When the cowboy and his lover finally get to it, after two-hundred-and-something pages, Miller likens their derobing to "an ancient ritual of sacred magic" or some such nonsense. It made my skin crawl.

Like a man

2009-08-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Sam Keith from the journals of Richard Proenneke,

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

(1973: Alaska Northwest Books, 1999).

This is one of my very occasional forays into non-fiction. Dick Proenneke moved to Twin Lakes Alaska, in 1968, when he was in his early fifties. His goal was to build a cabin and spend an entire year in this secluded spot, living off the land and braving the brutal winter, when the temperature could get as low as -45ºF. In the end, Proenneke stayed for about twenty-eight years. His cabin is now a provincial landmark, and his journals and film footage are valuable records of Alaska's native landscape, flora, and fauna.

While Proenneke's experience may not be the most extreme ever recorded - his loyal friend Babe regularly flew in with a few supplies from civilization, and he did not hang out with grizzly bears - it might be the most meticulous. With the exception of nails, tar paper and polyethylene for his cabin roof, and a few simple metal tools, Proenneke built his cabin, above-ground cache, john, furniture, and other odds and ends (like a sled and snowshoes) from logs that he harvested, transported, seasoned, and hewed himself. He used old gas cans to make hinges, containers, and pots and pans. He fashioned a dutch door with wooden hinges and even a wooden locking mechanism. Everything he made looked so clean and operated so smoothly that, from the photographs, it is hard to believe they are handmade. His cabin logs tuck together seamlessly. He gathered stones from the lake beach and built himself a beautiful, neat, fireplace. He fired one shot at a ram early in the hunting season, and the meat lasted him the entire winter. Proenneke described in detail many of his projects and travels up and down the lakes, and most fascinating of all, filmed his activities as well. (Some of this footage has been collected in the one-hour program Alone in the Wilderness, which you can periodically catch on PBS.)

I was drawn to the book by the televised program, but was happily surprised to find that, on the page, Proenneke has a flair for rustic turns of phrase. He could write as well as be manly. On getting a bite on his fishing line: "It happened with the suddenness of a broken shoelace." On the view: "Rags of fog are strewn about the high peaks." On encountering a weasel: "There he was, sitting upright like a fence picket." Evocative and authentic. And my favourite, on the sudden changes in the lake: "Like a woman. All smiles one minute, and dancing a temper tantrum the next." (Proenneke's bachelor philosophy and attiudes toward women were charmingly old-fashioned. When Babe promised to bring some "mission girls" out to the cabin for a visit, poor Dick set about scrubbing down his quarters with the zeal of my Aunt Donna before a family reunion. The girls never materialized.)

This book deserves your attention for three reasons: because Proenneke's feats as an outdoorsman were outstanding; because it reads with sweetness, passion, and honesty; and because it will make even the most committed urbanite sigh at the prospect of solitude in the mountains.

I must confess

2009-06-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (Little, Brown and Company, 2007) and Breaking Dawn (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

(Okay, although I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who have read this blog , I feel obliged to include a spoiler alert here. I give everything away.)

I just read Nicole's rational response to my thoughts on the first two instalments of the Twilight saga. It was like my alter ego speaking. Everything she said seems correct, in particular her criticisms of Meyer's writing and her qualms about our young couple's enforced chastity. Thinking back over the last two books, which I also read with alacrity, I cringe at so many things, not least Edward's one point three million schmoopy remarks towards his lady love. The character development is shallow and the story as a whole lacks complexity. When I went to a local bookstore to purchase #3, the lady behind the counter said, "Let me guess - you were up all night reading the last one and you couldn't wait to see what happens." I wasn't up all night, thank you very much... but I might have been if I didn't have a husband who insisted on an 11 o'clock bedtime. It seemed appropriate that the cashier gave it to me in a brown paper bag. I am that ashamed of myself.

But whereas Nicole could hardly bear to finish Twilight, I ate it up. Same goes for the rest of the series. When Bella kissed Jacob, I thought, "No! No!" When at long last she consummated her relationship with Edward, I thought, "Yes! Yes!" Just like pressing a button. Why is this? Has it been too long since my last trashy novel? Perhaps. Did I see the Twilight movie and get swayed by Robert Pattinson's good looks? Possibly. But the bottom line: I am lowbrow. Not in a cool idiosyncratic way, just straight-up mass-market. My ability to suspend my disbelief outstrips my critical faculties. I also enjoy romantic comedies.

Acknowledging this will not deter me from arguing the merits of these books. I was especially impressed by the patched-together behemoth Breaking Dawn. I didn't think Meyer would make Bella a vampire, and she did. It was a gutsy move because it is not right, not PC, that our protagonist should have to alter herself so fundamentally in order to become "complete." It's creepy. And there is more fascinating creepiness: Bella loses her virginity only to wake up covered in bruises; then she endures a staggering birth/vampirization ordeal. Bloody, sick, riveting. I knew that Jacob would be provided for romantically, but I did not anticipate the object of his imprinting. His connection to Bella's offspring nicely tidies up that strand of the story line.

In the end, it's all cheap thrills... give me more.

Holding out for that teenage feeling

2009-06-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (Little, Brown and Company, 2005) and

New Moon (Little, Brown and Company, 2006)

After finishing the first two instalments of Stephenie Meyer's fabulously popular Twilight series, I have decided to give them a good review. It would be all too easy to pan them both, for the sometimes clunky prose and the repetitive melodrama

of the relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen (living and undead, respectively). But that would be unfair; and if I was really concerned with such things I wouldn't have touched the series.

In fact, I devoured both books over the course of just a few days, and was, I'm ashamed to admit, just as enthralled with the teen romance as your typical pubescent girl. Bella and Edward are best compared to Romeo and Juliet in the immediacy and hyperbolic intensity of their mutual regard. While Bella spends much of her time wallowing in insecurity and comparing herself unfavourably to her chaste lover, Edward remains as faithful as a labrador retriever. Perhaps the series' biggest strength is Edward himself - even I got a crush on him. He contains within himself the recipe for a teenage girl's dream boyfriend: beautiful and devoted in equally impossible measure, thus assuaging any lingering insecurities; lusty yet gentlemanly. These amiable qualities outshine his disturbing traits: overprotectiveness, a penchant for stalking, melancholia, and unpredictable mood swings. (And I'm not counting the vampire-y things.)

What most fascinated me about the story was how well-suited it was to Meyer's vampire trope. Other than Bram Stoker's Dracula I have never read anything in the ever-popular vampire genre, and I couldn't really see the attraction. But it certainly works in Twilight, a romance novel with no sex (so far). Meyer is a Mormon, so she may have a vested interest in striking a delicate balance between keeping things clean and creating a convincing romance for her hormonal readers. Edward's vampire status allows her to do this. Bella and Edward are perpetually hot and bothered; not only does Edward also crave the taste of her blood, but as a vampire he is designed to attract Bella as well. Unfortunately, Edward cannot allow himself to "lose control" sexually because - and I realize how ridiculous this sounds - he might kill her. (Ah, sex and death.) All these intricacies can, of course, stand in for everyday adolescent shenanigans in the real world: hot-blooded girls and boys furiously making out but struggling to restrain themselves because they're afraid of pregnancy, disease, ridicule, shame, regret, and on and on. This must have been Meyer's intention. She makes it clear that Edward's unusual makeup (and advanced age) does not hamper his desire. (One of his funniest remarks goes something like, "I may be a vampire, Bella, but I'm still a man." Yes!)

So, if we're going to get any satisfaction from these two, either Bella has to become a vampire or Edward has to become human. And then they have to get married. Good thing real life isn't so complicated.

The origin of annoying

2009-06-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

Leanne's choice: Nino Ricci, The Origin of Species

(Doubleday Canada, 2008)

Discussed 6 June 2008 @ Latitude (Main Street, Vancouver)

None of us had yet read anything by acclaimed Canadian author Nino Ricci, and I believe this was part of Leanne's motivation for her selection: to see what all the fuss was about. (So far, The Origin of Species has won the Governor General's Literary Award and has been shortlisted for the Trillium Prize.) But it seems that Ricci won't be winning any prizes from my book club.

We were all agreed that Ricci's writing was masterful. I personally found his prose much more sophisticated than that found in The Outlander, but Nicole reminded me that Ricci's subject matter affords much more "scope for the imagination" (these are Anne of Green Gables's words, not Nicole's). We were also all agreed that this one is not an urgent page-turner, excepting Alex's visit to the Galapagos Islands - a riveting episode.

The fact that The Origin of Species didn't have me on the edge of my seat did not deter me in the least (although it apparently deterred Jennifer, who for the first time didn't even finish the book. Tsk tsk). I was increasingly engrossed as Alex's back story unfolded, and truly awed by the way Ricci was able to draw tantalizing, but subtle, connections between ideas as diverse as evolutionary theory, agnosticism, ethnic and cultural identity, and (yes) love. I wish I could explain with more precision, but Ricci never lays out the connections for you, which I think is a strength of the novel. It's the kind of book that could use a companion university lecture.

While I was very enthusiastic, my fellow readers were more... irritated. Their appreciation for the novel's technical merits was dampened by their annoyance with Alex Fratercangeli, the protagonist (it would be too generous to use the term "hero"). Alex is insecure, neurotic, self-deprecating, and self-absorbed, and in many ways the story is simply about him trying to deal with his personal baggage. Doesn't exactly make one drop everything and run to the bookstore. Admittedly, Alex is... flawed. But I found him to be a soul struggling to do the right thing in a world where he is surrounded by assholes. While we view his decisions through the filter of his own self-loathing, most (if not all) of his actions are humane. This was not enough to keep everyone invested in the story; both Nicole and Leanne, apparently, finished it out of a sense of (noble) book-club obligation.

Incidentally, we very much enjoyed the new restaurant Latitude. I loved the chickpea fries (great for an empty stomach), and a few of us ordered the delicious paella in tribute to Alex's dinner date fiasco.

Stars (out of five):

Kerry-Lynn: 3.5

Nicole: 3

Leanne: 3

Jennifer: 2

Amanda: 4

Slumming it

2009-06-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

Nell Dunn, Up the Junction (UK, 1963)

A former professor, now advisor/colleague, gave me this to read; he's been using it in one of his undergraduate British history classes. Like much of the best urban-working-class work from England's postwar cultural revolution, Up the Junction can only be described as electrifying. I felt the same charge shoot up my spine (only perhaps more so) when I first read Look Back in Anger (1956).

What makes it so devastating is the unapologetic way it recounts presumably "real-life" tales of lawbreaking, casual sex, verbal abuse, infidelity, abortion, and racism in the back streets of south London. At first blush, there is no romance in these pages. Work, family, love, childraising, death - nobody it seems, is precious about these things, and the resulting picture is sordid at times, like everyone is merely hustling their way through life.

But for all her show of impartial reportage, Dunn, a wealthly young woman consciously chose her slum lifestyle, is clearly partial to her subjects. They are heroes to her, precisely because they can brush off tragedy and setback, and push on. She is particularly taken with her female peers, and I can see why. In most of the working-class-realism canon (at least in the early sixties), women figure variously as cowering housewives, witless victims of philandering husbands or predatory boyfriends, or man-eating materialists. No such women in Dunn's world - Rube and Sylvie work their way through the pool of eligible sexual partners with abandon, despite the ever-present threat of pregnancy. In short, they are like Arthur in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - only women.

But through a series of short vignettes Up the Junction sets the scene with razor-sharp precision, right down to the American rock 'n' roll tunes blaring from local jukeboxes. Dunn is careful to include bits of the sentimental lyrics, while the setting and actions make a mockery of them. I loved her authentic choices: "Twistin' The Night Away," "Rambling Rose," "She Said Yes" (Ben E. King), "Sherry" (the Four Seasons) "He's Got The Power" (the Exciters), "(I Love Him) I Will Follow Him."

Made-for-film book

2009-05-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2009).

This zombified rehash turned out to be exactly what I expected. It was a great read primarily because Austen's original is a great read. The new jokes were amusing, but not particularly funny, and tiresome by the end. Seth Grahame-Smith's best contribution is his stomach-churning descriptions of attacks by the "unmentionables," Charlotte's bodily decay, and Elizabeth's slaughter of her unfortunate enemies: "The ninja dropped to the floor - his innards spilling from the slit faster than he could stuff them back in. Elizabeth sheathed her sword, knelt behind him, and strangled him to death with his own large bowel." At a few points the language was strong enough to make me squeamish about my lunch.

I imagine that Grahame-Smith took on the endeavour of writing this book in the hopes that a large studio would option the film rights. His creative interpretation of a novel that continues to be wildly popular just begs to be put on the silver screen. The zombie slayings, as well as Lizzie's duel with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, deliver all the action of a summer blockbuster. And what hardcore P&P fan would not want to see the Bennet sisters lifting their petticoats in order to violently take out their opponents, undead or alive? While the print adaptation has a mechanical, fill-in-the-blank quality, cinema would bring it to life.

Scott is in the details

2009-05-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Vol. 5) (Oni Press, 2008)

Okay, I have to stop it with the corny post titles but this one was so apropos I couldn't resist. I love the Scott Pilgrim series (and not just because my old band wrote the song that inspired the guy who created the comic). What I really love about it is its ability to overcome its cultural profile. There are other art works that do this - those books or movies or songs that aren't pioneering, but are so strong that they win our hearts.

Weezer was like this. Just a pop-rock band, four white guys from LA, no new stories to tell. But note-perfect (at least their first two albums). And Scott Pilgrim is like this. The story features an indie-rock-style protagonist, in his twenties, mediocre band, McJob, totally self-absorbed, meets cute girl. O'Malley's not blazing any trails here. But his execution is what sets the series apart. Everything - from the story (a superhero/video game metaphor for emotional baggage), to the mannerisms of the characters, to the illustrations - are so sincerely and lovingly rendered. Examples: O' Malley's footnote stating that dollar amounts are Canadian currency. Scott's silent, knuckle-biting reaction to Ramona's off-hand remark that she doesn't like his band. And I have a crush on the producer of the Sex Bob-omb album, but he wouldn't like me because (1) he's gay, and (2) he's an asshole. But it's futile to describe what makes this comic lovely; its strong suits are better seen than explained.

The changing face of Booker

2009-04-26T22:29:00.001-07:00

The dining room of the real Hotel du Lac

Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac (Jonathan Cape, 1984)

This was a wonderful little book. Sad to say, I am one of those young ladies unreasonably devoted to period English romance. Persuasion and Howard's End are among my all-time favourite novels, and I share Bridget Jones's compulsion to rewind Colin Firth's dive into the pond in the BBC's definitive adaptation of P&P. So imagine my pleasure at discovering this throwback among my old books. Hotel du Lac was published in 1984, but it takes place in the 1950s or 60s, and reminds one most strongly of Forster's A Room with a View, both in setting and tone. No one writes serious fiction of this stamp anymore, or so it seems.

Edith Hope is a marvelous heroine. She hopelessly out of step, hopelessly independent, and hopelessly true to herself, choosing to be the mistress of a man she loves instead of the wife of a man she likes (twice). We cheer her on, partly because, unlike so many other romantic leads, she is neither pretty nor charming enough to be so bold. And she writes romance novels (!), proof that she is much more passionate than people (herself included) give her credit for.

It is noteworthy that Brookner won the 1984 Booker Prize. The event says more about the prize than the book. Despite its obvious merits, I wager that Hotel du Lac would never receive such recognition if it was published today. Over the last twenty-five years, fiction's frontiers have moved far beyond Europe, and the winningest books now wrestle with issues of colonialism, identity, migration, poverty, violence. Their protagonists skitter along the peripheries of the bourgeois world, the world in which Edith Hope, notwithstanding her quirks, is entrenched. Yes, it is arguable that Brookner's novel is a feminist re-reading of postwar, middle-class spinsterhood, but from the perspective of today's Man Booker judges, second-wave feminism is passé, even quaint. The politics of publishing and promotion have changed, and perhaps for good reason: there are new, more urgent stories to be told. But I wonder how many talented Anita Brookners are out there today, trying in vain to get published.

Half a boy and half a man

2009-04-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

Nick Hornby, Slam (Penguin, 2007)

Every time I read a Nick Hornby novel my expectations are kind of low. Strange, considering that I have relished everything of his that I've read, especially the literary mix tape Songbook, which taps into the very personal reasons behind his (and my) attachment to popular music.

So why are my expectations persistently low? I think it is because, with the possible exception of A Long Way Down (about four suicidal people who help each other push through their despair), all of Hornby's novels are about the same thing: "men" in their thirties and forties still growing out of their adolescence. How much mileage can one writer get from this?

Quite a lot, in fact. Hornby has the Woody Allen-esque ability to endlessly capitalize on the theme of adult neurosis. The difference with Slam is that the central character is not an immature adult, but an actual teenager. Nevertheless, the emotional challenges are startlingly similar to those faced by much older protagonists in High Fidelity and About a Boy.

So after four or five books, I expect mediocrity. But Slam was as delightful to read as all the rest. Hornby writes about very tender things - in this case the feelings of a sixteen-year-old father-to-be - with the light touch they deserve. Most impressively, his adolescent vision seems authentic. The highly constructed paragraphs of The Outlander and Oryx and Crake seem leaden in comparison. Of course, Hornby's scope is much less ambitious, but that is what makes Slam feel like such a treat. Now that I have had that refreshing drink of water, I can swallow something heavier.

... but she didn't use the word "ornery"

2009-04-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Nicole's pick: Gil Adamson, The Outlander (Anansi Press, 2007)

Discussed: 30 April 2009 @ the Locus Restaurant (4121 Main Street)

After warming up to the story for the first fifty pages or so, I was as hot on the Widow's heels as her grumpy pursuers. Initially, this was because I had no idea where the story was going. Surely Adamson constructed it this way; the reader is meant to be as directionless as the protagonist (the Widow, Mary Boulton). By the book's final section, "World Without End," I was certain of the finish, and again this was likely Adamson's intention - by the end of the story, the Widow too has found her bearings. But I kept reading to see the romance unspool.

So I burned through the book eagerly, as did the rest of the club. It was a great read, lively, and well-constructed, but I doubt, as Nicole remarked, that it will remain with me for years to come. Two things in particular niggled at me much of the time. The first was her language. Erudite, but a bit showy. (And I suppose I'm being showy by using the word "erudite," but there it is.) Is it odd to use such language to describe the thoughts and actions of a person who is almost illiterate? I found some of Adamson's descriptions just plain irksome, especially when she repeated certain obscure words and phrases ("vertiginous," "organic angles"). At other moments it worked ("... his voice shredding with emotion"). I was more impatient with Adamson than the others. Jennifer loved the descriptions, and Leanne found the account of Mary's baby's decline "arresting." So maybe I'm just cranky.

With The Outlander, the reader is also forced to make dubious judgments of the central characters in order for the story to work itself out neatly. It is obvious that we are meant to sympathize with the Widow, and even condone her murder of her husband. But he was dastardly, nothing more. Same goes for the "twins": cold fish to be sure, but loyal to their brother's memory, mindful of the procedures of law and order, and decidedly less violent than their sister-in-law. I couldn't help but feel for them at the moment of their final defeat. Nicole informed me that Adamson intended this moral ambiguity, but if that is so, then the uniformly happy ending is a little too neat. (And unconvincing. Kerry-Lynn pointed out that if a man leaves you once, he'll do it again...) In the end, The Outlander teeters strangely - or admirably - between populist historical fiction and high-brow literature. Our stars out of five below.

Nicole: (a confident) 3.75

Kerry-Lynn: 3.5

Leanne: 3.5

Jennifer: 4

Amanda: 3.5

Not sci-fi, but speculative fiction

2009-04-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (Random House, 2003)

The back-cover synopsis of Oryx and Crake states, "This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers." Very true. If Atwood did not possess such literary power, I would have closed the book when it began to recount Oryx's history of poverty, captivity, and sexual exploitation, and would never have opened it again. I normally can't stand to read about that kind of subject matter. But Atwood is so compelling that I pushed through my revulsion and finished this unhappy novel. It was great, and I don't know where to begin.

Of course, the "speculative" vision is clever and precise and plausible. It takes no great imaginative leap to imagine biotech experiments gone awry. Nor the corporatization of health care, law and order, education, and property ownership. Nor the elimination of the middle class, as the human population becomes divided between those protected from biological threat, and those not.

What (perhaps?) separates Atwood from other writers of the genre, is that she fetishizes her vision less. The story is not simply about the world she has created. For instance, she might have had her hero, Snowman/Jimmy, move restlessly around the world, exploring both the compounds and the unprotected "pleeblands" (presumably "plebian lands"), discovering many more juicy details of the dystopia. (Director James Cameron once said of Titanic that he made it a love story because it allowed him to show every part of the ship. Thus the movie was about the ship more than the characters.) But Jimmy's perspective is always narrow and biased, and his emotions, not the structures of the society he inhabits, drive the most consequential actions in the novel. I like that. There are always the grand narratives of science and society, but it is good ol' familial loss and heartbreak that shape the characters most profoundly - not just Jimmy (whom Atwood has called a "romantic"), but also Crake, who is an idealist, not a realist. In the end, people are people, even when they are non-people. The book ends as the Children of Crake, defying their creator's every intention, turn to myth and worship in order to make sense of their existence.

An old look at the new millenium

2009-04-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

Amanda's choice:

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Discussed: 24 Mar 2009

@ the Dockside Pub (Granville Island)

This was only my second selection for the book club, so I was still frightened that an unwise pick would get me thrown to the curb. However, I decided to go out on a limb (or what constitutes "out on a limb" for the likes of me) and opt for something less literary than what we've been reading so far. I've been meaning to explore the sci-fi genre ever since reading H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), so I picked the classic 2001. What usually attracts me to science fiction is not just what it tells us about the future, but what it says about its own time; how it takes present-day issues and extrapolates a fantastic but plausible vision of their ultimate effects. Sci-fi novels are marvellous historical documents.

But this is not why I enjoyed 2001, although it does capture the cold-war era determination to pursue the limits of space exploration. In fact, I did not enjoy the book for the first eighty pages or so. The story initially seemed silly, what with the screeching ape-men named Moon-watcher or whatever. Clarke's writing struck me as clunky, and his characterization particularly shallow. These men were cartoons. (Later, when I read Clarke's foreword to the 2000 Roc edition, I learned that he had written the novel at the same time as he and Kubrick were writing the screenplay for the film. And, as Jennifer I think mentioned, it reads like a function of the film, and not like a free-standing, complex narrative.) I was similarly unimpressed with Clarke's renowned "wit." Jokes about the technicalities of interstellar masturbation, for example, have not aged well, although his mention of the scarcity of "dusky maids" in space did make me chuckle. (Leanne, thanks for reminding me of that gem.) Incidentally, Kubrick's cinematic handling of humour is much more successful.

By halfway through the novel, against all odds, I was completely engrossed, and this has everything to do with the power with which Clarke conveys the impression of the solitude and magnitude of "outer space." His astronauts don't have to be paragons of human complexity, because they are utterly insignificant next to the real show. And our hero, Dave Bowman, demonstrates his humanity most poignantly in his passion for discovery, his explorer's spirit, which ultimately trumps even his concern with survival.

A general complaint voiced by my fellow readers was that, after the tense and thrilling confrontation between Bowman and HAL, the ship's sentient central computer system, the story sort of peters out, with a comparatively obscure, tacked-on ending. I do agree that the action peaks with HAL's meltdown, but the playing out of Clarke's evolutionary vision, in which organic beings transform into something I can only describe as "energy," is hugely compelling, precisely because the mind can grasp it.

The club's response to 2001 was largely positive, and I was especially pleased with Kerry-Lynn's four-star (out of five) rating, after she had declared her aversion for "space" literature at the previous meeting. Nicole, quiet (and exhausted) through much of the meeting, did eventually declare her unequivocal dislike of the book - always an exciting event - and uttered the quote of the evening: "I could relate to nothing in this book." Awesome.

I hope to post each member's individual ratings in the future. For now, you'll have to settle for mine (and Kerry-Lynn's): 4 stars (out of 5)

My intentions

2009-04-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

I belong to a smallish book club that meets about once a month for dinner, drinks, and book talk. We are: Amanda (yours truly), Nicole, Leanne, Jennifer, and Kerry-Lynn. There are no fancy rules: we each take turns picking our monthly selection, and we are free to choose any kind of book we want, although our general tendency is to choose fictional novels of the more substantial variety. Past picks include: Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, David Chariandy's Soucouyant, Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, Anne Enright's The Gathering, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

This blog is essentially an extended book club forum. I'll try to transmit our various thoughts about each book, and the result will (hopefully) be a series of concise little reviews, with perhaps a comment or two about the Vancouver restaurants we savour during our literary travels.

I will bastardize the proceedings slightly by posting about what I read between book club selections (it is my blog after all). I invite the other honourable members to do the same.