read all the books I have before buying even one more

I’ve received a number of books as gifts recently, and made a pilgrimage to the library for some fresh items. I’ve made an updated list of To Read items at my blog, and will update it with links to a review here, once complete.

This weekend, I read Alexander McCall Smith’s Dream Angus and Love Over Sctoland, and enjoyed both immensely.

I don’t understand why it took me 15 years to read this, but I LOVE IT.

It took me several attempts to read this book; I finally forced myself to complete it last night. Many readers whom I like and respect love and recommend it heartily; I’m sure there’s something wrong with my approach to it, because I found the novel incredibly distasteful.

I found the characters, even the minor ones, completely unlikable, described in a way that diminished the sum total of each existence to a desire to possess everything seen—people, places, things, the appearance and actuality of absolute control. I wasn’t able to develop sympathy for the plight of life in this beautiful but corrupt and atrocious place, because there was nothing beautiful or meaningful in their development as individuals.

Separately, “the urgency of the narrative” is an absolutely inappropriate descriptive clause for this novel. The pace is slow and languid, only picking up speed more than halfway through, representative of the general selfish ennui of most characters involved in the story.

I was very disappointed, to the library book drop with it.

I seem to be drawn to dark tales of America’s rural South against my better inclinations—tales of people striving to cope with an inevitability in their lives, situations beyond their control to change for the better. As if the main premise of a story is determined by “control your reaction” to an external problem, a relinquishing of situational control. As a mover-and-shaker (and a control-freak New Yorker), such stories tend to infuriate and horrify me.

That said, Nielson’s novel is an excellent specimen of the genre, and if you can read Fannie Leary’s story without compassion and love for a fraught journey of discovery, you’re a harder soul than I.

I’ll be bringing this one to the library, though, rather than bringing it with me to New York.

I have yet to be disappointed by Sarah Waters’ novels; The Night Watch lives up to the expectations set by her previous work. The backdrop of war, particularly the European fronts of World War II, is one of my favorite scenes to explore in literature and history. 1940s London drew me in more fully than another setting might have done—indication that I might have been predisposed to love this story.

I found the reverse chronology of story-telling effective precisely because of the setting. Waters carefully orchestrated my impatience with the slow-spinning of details and my frustration at not fully understanding the connections between characters, to mimic the impotent frustration and impatience that infected London.

Against the war-time setting and the chronological device, Waters’ signature sparse prose and exquisitely depicted characters tell a wrenching tale of love, connection, and isolation—what I expect from war-stories. The loneliness she depicts isn’t new to our understanding or witness, and yet the people we are introduced to, and their emotional growth and development is new and fresh, in spite of the pathos and horror in which it is wrapped.

Definitely a novel to keep and read again.

I loved this novel, with the interspersing of snippets from Charlotte’s letters and novels with the main character’s own narrative. The geography and spiritualistic elements were a clear throwback to Jane Eyre without being actually reminiscent of that novel or misappropriating the arcs.

I’ll bring it with me to Brooklyn.

I’m still trimming down the stacks of books that need to be packed and readied for shipment to NYC; the interesting thing is that I’m trimming the stacks not by reading, but by being confronted, daily, with the question of, “do I want to read this? Whether I want to or not, will I read this?”

Today, I delivered an enormous bag to the public library; an email alert went out earlier in the week that they’re in financial trouble for the end of the year, and were soliciting donations of books for a pre-holiday book sale to support the library system. I brought them a large selection of books, mainly hardcover, in great condition—many of them still unread. Here’s the thing, though; better that tehy be read by omeone who will love and appreciate them, better that they bring a few pennies to the library, better that they do some good rather than clutter up the floor as I mull over them indecisively. I haven’t any recommendations to share, which is more telling than anything else I could say, about those which I delivered this morning.

I have a much-diminished “to read” list now, listed below. If anyone out there has been dying to read something on this list, drop me a note—I’d be happy to organize a read-and-discuss-a-long of a few volumes.

• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, kept, 02.16.09
• Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, kept, 02.27.09
• Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
• Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
• Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
• Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
• Richard Dawkins, The GOD Delusion
• Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
• Karina Gore Schiff, Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America
• Lady Gregory, Irish Myths and Legends
• Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
• Gregory Johnson, Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned From Living in 140 Square Feet
• Jumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
• Jumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• Bill McKibben, Wandering Home
• Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
• Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab’s Wife, or, The Star-Gazer
• Melany Neilson, The Persia Cafe (passed, 01.18.09)
• Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise
• Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway
• Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover
• Lily Tuck, The News From Paraguay (tossed, 02.15.09)
• Jennifer Vandever, The Bronte Project (kept, 12.08.08)
• Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (kept, 12.28.08)
• Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge
• Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping (kept, 02.08.09)
• Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief

Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
28 pages in, I put this down in disgust. I’m sure many readers are grateful for a collection of essays detailing an upper-middle-class wife/mother/writer/community organizer/friend’s search for balance in a world that simply asks too much without offering enough reward, but I am most definitely not one of them.

The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar
It’s 3:14am, and I’ve read this entire book in one sitting, starting a bit before 11. Disturbing in many ways, requesting an honesty and clarity of understanding from me-as-reader that I’m not quite prepared to delve into at 3:14 … but that I will most definitely be coming back to.

Set in 1870s New York, Elizabeth Gaffney’s historical novel about a German immigrant who gets catapulted from a typhoid-stricken immigration ship to the streets of New York City, first framed as an arsonist then courted by organized crime rings, brings the heart and soul and honesty of the American Dream blazing into the reader’s psyche. With hopes rising and dashed with every page-turn, fearing for life and love with each breath, Frank Harris holds fast to his integrity in spite of his own self-doubt and the precarious footing of being indebted to the gangs of New York.

A tale of hopes and dreams, told masterfully. I’ve already passed the volume on to my mother, and expect it to make the rounds of all of my readerly-friends.

• Greek legends and Stories, M.V. Seton-Williams
  I love myths and legends, but found this collection written more along the lines of a history lesson than a collection of vibrant stories. Out box.

• The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler
  I’ll finish this tonight; the bookmark is in the last chapter right now. This is a very hard read in a number of ways; I’ll blog about it in more detail later in the week. Out box.