(Photo courtesy of Dark in the Dark – an aficionado of all things macabre, a book reviewer and collector, and a pretty fantastic paper artist based on what I saw on the website.)

It is Edward Gorey’s Birthday and in celebration and the return of Words for Wednesday, below you can find the first lines from The Beastly Baby – a favorite. I wish I had taped the laughter of my youngest child when he rediscovered Edward Gorey as a teenager. I asked him what he was reading and it was The Beastly Baby. I was raised on Edward Gorey – doesn’t every mom read Edward Gorey to their children as bedtime reading? My mom still gets something Goreyish in her stocking each Christmas and I was delighted to find the house I stayed at just before the holidays held two Gorey fans complete with a Gorey shrine with prints, first editions, and lots of other treats for the eyes.

The Beastly Baby

by Edward Gorey

Once upon a time there was a baby.

It was worse than other babies. For one thing, it was larger.

Its body was not merely obese, but downright bloated.

One of its feet had too many toes, and the other one not enough.

Its hands were both left ones.

Its nose was beaky, and appeared to be considerably older than the rest of it.

Its tine eyes were surrounded by large black rings due to fatigue, for its guilty conscience hardly ever allowed it to sleep.

It was usually damp and sticky for it wept a great deal. It was consumed by self-pity, which in this case was perfectly justified.

It was capable of making only two sorts of noises, both of them nasty.

The first was a choked gurgling, reminiscent of faulty drains. It made this noise when it had succeeded in doing something perfectly atrocious.

The second was a thin shriek suggestive of fingernails on blackboards. It made this noise when it had been prevented from doing something particularly atrocious.

Fortunately, it was unable to walk.

Sam Still Reading is an Australian Blog and the book she is giving away is Villain by Shuichi Yoshida. A young insurance saleswoman is murdered at Mitsuse Pass in Southern Japan. The novel, the first of Yoshida to be translated into English, is part thriller and part cultural study into the loneliness and isolation of Japanese young adults. The more I read about the author and the book, the more I want to read it. Hopefully I will win the giveaway – if not I hope the novel isn’t too hard to find.

I found two books for my list at Cat’s blog, Tell Me a Story, and they couldn’t be more different. The first is a thriller, Black Flowers by Steve Mosby. Who could resist a mystery that is advertized as, “This is not a story of a girl who disappears. This is a story of a little girl who comes back. And this return has ripples years and years later moving between three time periods and multiple narratives. The second is a  quieter novel, Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop, and it explores, in the words of Hilary Mantel, ” where and how we choose to draw the line between innocence and guilt, ignorance and complicity.” Mantel goes on to state, “Obedience also asks us to consider what ghastly harm is committed in the name of love. It”s rare to find a book that is seemingly so simple, but is really ambiguous and thought-provoking.” In present day France, 93 year-old Sister Bernhard is leaving her closing convent with her two remaining fellow sisters. As they wait, they reflect on the past and Sister Bernhard thinks back to the war when, in an eagerness for love, she commits an act that has devastating consequences for everyone around her.

I must confess I have a fondness for end of the world scenarios. It all started with reading Neville Shute’s On the Beach in high school (I had bad dreams for weeks) and of course many re-readings of Stephan King’s The Stand. Last night I was able to combine this love with my fondness for bad TV watching Ice Age 2012 (which stands very high on the list for world’s worse movies). And today Gavin of Page247 gives me a book of short stories to read, After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh. The reasons for apocalypse in this collection are varied: bird flu, computers gone a muck, dirty bombs, problems with food supply. All of which are quite plausible which makes it all the more scary. Gavin write, “These stories are about how American people cope, or fail to cope.  Simple, spare and devastating, sometimes even funny, they are filled with the unexpected and completely mundane.  These things could really happen, maybe even have happened.” Fortunately this one is on the shelf of the local library and I plan on picking it up on Tuesday.

On a lighter note, Danielle from A Work in Progress showcases a memoir highlighting a love of Paris, New York, and all things sweet. Paris My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) by Amy Thomas sounds like one of the best food memoirs since Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone. Amy leaves Manhattan to take a job in Paris with Louis Vuitton. During her time there she explores all the sweet things the city has to offer and struggles with being torn between two great cities. I have long wanted to visit New York and I hope to see Paris next year when youngest is in Austria. Since I love to make desserts, this sounds like a perfect light hearted read.

Finally, when two of my favorite book bloggers love a book,  I take notice. Jenny of Shelf Love writes:

…the overarching new story, of healing and change, is deeply powerful, and it’s so beautifully and sparely written that it almost comes as a surprise to find out how tense it is…”

And, from Eva of a Striped Armchair:

…then I picked it up, and found it was one of Those Books; the ones that I’ll always remember exactly how I was sitting as I began to read, and how I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and the mix of desire to turn the pages ever faster to find out what was going to happen next with the desire to slow down and reread every sentence because they were all so wonderful. One of Those Books that feel like sheer perfection, and that have me internally exulting: “This is why I read!”,

it immediately hits my radar. Then I come to find that the original recommendation comes from Gavin of Page247 and I am already sold. This is an unusual novel, tense, and at times angry, but it seems to be well worth the effort to read. Sherman Alexie calls it, “Ceremony is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place.” Tayo, a Laguna Pueblo Indian, returns from WWII, the Bataan Death March, and interment by the Japanese, as a damaged man who doesn’t quite fit seamlessly into the pueblo life. A medicine man talks to him about the power of stories, and the importance of being able to change our stories. He tells Tayo that the old rituals are not working for him because those rituals haven’t changed with the times. These are themes I grew up with (it is nice to have a mom who is a Jungian) so I am incredibly drawn to this book. I will leave you with a quote from the second page of the book as it seems so fitting for a weekend filled with bookish thoughts. Happy reading.

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.

You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.

Welcome to Reflections of the Hinterland – I hope you are all enjoying the Blog Hop and Give Away, there are so many great books out there. Thanks to Judith of Leeswammes’ Blog for her organization. Most blog hops are geared toward very genre specific books but this one is for geared towards giving away books with more “literary merit”. Today I am offering one book to give away  – The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (translated from the Dutch by David Colmer) and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. My review of the book can be found here. It is a quiet novel set on a Dutch farm, more introspective then plot heavy but well worth reading. The copy is a once-read paperback and is beautiful. Archipelago Books printed it an an unusual size (5 3/4″ x 7″) with a drop dead gorgeous cover. I must say, it did felt as good to read as it was well-written.

Here is a description of the book from Archipelago Books:

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return from university life to take over his brother’s role on the small family farm, resigning himself to spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow.’

The novel begins thirty years later with Helmer moving his invalid father upstairs to have him out of the way as he sparsely redecorates the downstairs, finally making it his own. Then one day Riet, the woman who had once been engaged to marry Helmer’s twin, appears and asks if she and her troubled eighteen-year-old son could come to live with them on the farm.

Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, TheTwin is ultimately about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity, a world culturally apart yet laden with romantic longing.

Here are the rules:

1. The contest is open to readers from the United States and Canada
2. Please comment to this post with your email address to enter.
3. Entries close 2/22/2012 at 11:00 pm (PST)
4. I will randomly pick a winner and notify that person by email. They have three days to get back to me. If I don’t hear within that time frame, I will pick another winner.
5. One entry per person
6. You don’t need a blog to enter (just an email and a valid address to receive the book) not do you have to follow my blog (although followers are always welcome)
7. Enjoy the blog hop – there are some great literary blogs on the tour and I plan to spend some of my weekend happily reading about books

Here are the rest of the blog hop participants:

1. Leeswammes
2. Curiosity Killed The Bookworm
3. Lit Endeavors (US)
4. The Book Whisperer
5. Rikki’s Teleidoscope
6. 2606 Books and Counting
7. The Parrish Lantern
8. Sam Still Reading
9. Bookworm with a view
10. Breieninpeking (Dutch readers)
11. Seaside Book Nook
12. Elle Lit (US)
13. Nishita’s Rants and Raves
14. Tell Me A Story
15. Living, Learning, and Loving Life (US)
16. Book’d Out
17. Uniflame Creates
18. Tiny Library (UK)
19. An Armchair by the Sea (UK)
20. bibliosue
21. Lena Sledge’s Blog (US)
22. Roof Beam Reader
23. Misprinted Pages
24. Mevrouw Kinderboek (Dutch readers)
25. Under My Apple Tree (US)
26. Indie Reader Houston
27. Book Clutter
28. I Am A Reader, Not A Writer (US)
29. Lizzy’s Literary Life
30. Sweeping Me

31. Caribousmom (US)
32. Minding Spot (US)
33. Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea
34. The Book Diva’s Reads
35. The Blue Bookcase
36. Thinking About Loud!
37. write meg! (US)
38. Devouring Texts
39. Thirty Creative Studio (US)
40. The Book Stop
41. Dolce Bellezza (US)
42. Simple Clockwork
43. Chocolate and Croissants
44. The Scarlet Letter (US)
45. Reflections from the Hinterland (N. America)
46. De Boekblogger (Europe, Dutch readers)
47. Readerbuzz (US)
48. Must Read Faster (N. America)
49. Burgandy Ice @ Colorimetry
50. carolinareti
51. MaeGal
52. Ephemeral Digest
53. Scattered Figments (UK)
54. Bibliophile By the Sea
55. The Blog of Litwits (US)
56. Kate Austin
57. Alice Anderson (US)
58. Always Cooking up Something

I tried to imagine who the boy on the ship was. Perhaps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future. (pg. 4)

In the 1950′s, at age ten, the narrator of Michael Ondaatje’s latest novel, is put on board a ship traveling from Sri Lanka to England. The narrator is traveling alone and is sits at The Cat’s Table for meal service. This table, which lends the novel its name, is the opposite of the Captain’s table, where the lowest passengers sit, “in the least privileged place with no social importance, that persuaded us into an accurate belief that we were invisble to officials.” (pg. 9). The novel slowly tells the tale of the narrator’s voyage, its impact on his life and Ondaatje unfolds details in a beautifully slow style that builds upon simple details to form a dense narrative of identity and coming of age. Reading this novel reminded me of the time my mother made a clear tomato soup, straining time after time, the broth through successive layers of cheesecloth. The result was an absolutely transparent broth of pure flavor. This novel brought me back to the Ondaatje of The English Patient and Running in the Family. I thought it was simply brilliant.

Ondaatje explores some familiar themes in the novel: the immigrant experience the jarring dislocation you can feel mentally when transported to a completely alien place – “We meet many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place.” (pg. 139); the interplay between people on top and people on the bottom; how someone forges their identity and how circumstances impact that process; and how seemingly small details become so much larger when distilled through time – “Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage…” (pg. 143)

During the voyage, the narrator befriends two other boys and together  they explore the ship, the passengers, delighting in the freedom from supervision. They interact with other passengers, try to determine the story of the mysterious prisoner, and forge bonds that will last a lifetime. Ondaatje gives the reader a glimpse of an incident or conversation and later fills in the details so you have the impression of layers of sheer fabric slowly lifting to give you a clear view.

I really enjoyed the references to invisibility and recognition, recognition by others and recognition of yourself. Reading the novel gave me a chance to reflect on my own small details of the past, details which had an impact on who I am today. Anytime a novelist succeeds in drawing a reader into his world while also allowing the reader to bring himself into the picture, they manage to make the reading experience multifaceted and personal – in other words, a pleasure from beginning to end.

Recently I sat in on a master class given by the film maker Luc Dardenne. He spoke of how viewers of his films should not assume they understood everything about the characters. As members of an audience we should never feel ourselves wiser than they do; we do not have more knowledge then the characters have about themselves. We should not feel assured or certain about their motives, or look down on them. I believe this. I recognize this as a first principle of art, although I have suspicion that many would not.

The Cat’s Table is a journey of discovery – a journey, for the narrator, that takes far longer than the three week voyage of the Oronsay;  journey that unfolds in an exquisite and well-told manner and a journey I highly recommend you take.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

I am about halfway through Sudanese author Leila Aboulela’s novel The Translator and Eva from A Striped Armchair has given me a second book to read by the same author – The Minaret. I agree with Eva that Aboulela is very good at writing about women in search of themselves, women displaced from homeland and family, women in search of contentment.

I love it when a brief mention of a book on a blog leads me around the internet and puts another book on my to read list. Frequently these mentions come from Danielle’s blog A Work in Progress and this week she didn’t let me down. Danielle picked up Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith (a novella just published in January) at her local library. The word most used to describe this novel is “luminous”. It takes place in a single day of Isabel’s life. Isabel, a twenty-something  thrift store shopper, collects remnants seeking connections between the bits and pieces.

I haven’t read much Jean Stafford ( with all the New Yorkers strewn around the house growing up, surely I read at least one short story of hers) and all I really know about her was she was once married to the poet Robert Lowell and she won a Pulitzer Prize for short stories. Diane from Bibliophile by the Sea has the first paragraph of Stafford’s novel The Mountain Lion which is about a brother and sister who are inseparable.  They spend the summer away from their Los Angeles home and on their uncle’s Colorado ranch. I must say after reading the first paragraph I really want to read more.

Finally, if you are in the mood for romance (after all, Valentine’s Day is near) then look at The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker and mentioned on The Boston Bibliophile (she also mentions Glaciers). I will leave you with the publisher’s description:

A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present.  When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

Happy reading!

Here is what caught my interest this week:

Becca from Bookstack gives us a peek into a memoir (published in 2003) by Marlena de Blasi called A Thousand Days in Venice. The memoir combines  romance with food and Venice Italy – a powerful combination and one that sounds perfect for the month of February.  De Blasi, a chef from Mid-West America, falls in love with a stranger and moves to Venice. As she struggles to adapt to her new surroundings, the love she shares with her husband and her love of food carry her through.

Becca also reviews a book that I mentioned in my Newly Published in January post – First You Try Everything by Jane McCafferty and now I really want to move it up to the top of the “to read” list. This book reminds me of Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich which is also about the dissolution of  a marriage. Ben and Evie fall in love in college, marry, and begin  a lifestyle based on music and pursuit of causes. Eventually Ben decides he wants a more conventional life and Evie becomes desperate to hold on to him.

This morning my mother and I were having a conversation about shyness. We have a shy gene in our family, we tend to be listeners. Many times my mom and I  have been fascinated by the power in listening and being “invisible” and lo and behold  there is now a book out about this reviewed by Teresa of Shelf Love.  Quiet, the Power of Introverts in a World that Won’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Cain discusses the role of introverts in a society that currently is enamored with personality. She goes into what this means for leadership, innovation, as well as the differences between shyness, introversion, and extroversion.  This sounds like a book worth exploring.

There is a line in the movie Hugo that talks about how movies show our dreams during the day. Tom of a Common Reader reviews a non-fiction book Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction by Keith Oatley. Oatley “suggests that when we read, our brains interpret social interactions in a work of fiction as the real thing – as far as our brains are concerned we experience real human contact and are as affected by the experience as though we were actually present with the characters in the novel.” This book is based on actual experimental research and has much to say about the impact of books and reading on our minds. I think this book will go on the birthday list.

Middlemarch by George Eliot (sub-titled “A Study in Provincial Life) is one of my favorite books and to find out that one of the best lines of the novel is the epigraph of The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life by William Nicholson (reviewed by Cornflower Books) was enough to put  the book on my list. The review only reinforced my decision. The novel is set over six days in May, 2000 in a village in Sussex and in one way depicts the everyday life of upper-middle class citizens worried about what to wear, old boyfriends appearing, commuting to  London, etc. and on another level it is about “that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” Cornflower writes about the book:

But it’s that ‘secret intensity’, that ‘roar … on the other side of silence’, which makes the book unusual and provides its major dimension, so beautifully balanced and intelligently played out, so marvellously entertaining and sparklingly done, and which holds the reader so effortlessly; I was genuinely sorry to reach the end.

Finally, A Work in Progress has a nice list of books centered in the Middle East – if you are interested in this area of the world, the list is worth looking at…or perhaps you would like to surround yourself with snow courtesy of Reading Matters who gives us five books about snow.

Happy Reading!

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron: This novel is the third winner of The Bellweather Prize awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice. I must admit I have been slightly disappointed in the first two winners (The Girl who Fell From the Sky and Mudbound) but this one seems to be getting good reviews so I am hopeful. Running the Rift is about 10  years in the life of Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, 10 years leading up to and including the tumultuous months of Tusi/Hutu violence. Nkuba is a gifted distance runner hoping to win an Olympic medal for his country. The novel explores his coming of age and training while the undercurrents of violence build. Before he can realize his dream, he must run for his life leaving behind everything he loves.

From The Washington Post: Benaron does not spare us any of the abominations of the genocide, but her denouement is surprisingly redemptive — not to say romantic.

From The Seattle Times: This well-written and well-researched novel is an impressive debut, although at times the book suffers from a surfeit of disturbing events. Our sympathy never deserts Jean Patrick. We concur with Bea when she says to him, “Your hope is the most beautiful and the saddest in the world.”

Book Blog Reviews:

The Literate Housewife: Naomi Benaron took these horrific events full of blood, terror, and despair and wrote nothing short of an amazing novel. It is a novel which steadfastly bore witness to human determination, loyalty, the love of family, and, against all odds, hope.

Devourer of Books: The story Benaron tells is gripping, and she tells it in a very personal and engaging way. It is easy to sit down with Running the Rift and read for 100 or more pages at a time. Jean Patrick is a complex and sympathetic character, and the reader cannot help but root for him – and keep reading to make sure he will be okay.

Linus’ Blanket: Running the Rift is an amazing book, carefully nuanced and paced in a way that  perfectly examines the way the ordinary can coexist with unspeakable horror and violence. Benaron convey the joy, frailty and contradictions which are the handmaidens of human existence, no matter the cataclysms that life offers up. (You know it is a really good review when you can’t decide which part to quote)

The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay:In Battersea, south London simple-minded Mary-Margaret, claims to have experienced a miracle in the Chapel of the Holy Souls, Father Diamond, in the midst of a personal crisis of faith and other church authorities try to downplay events as the members of the church and the neighborhood deal with issues of belief, faith, hope, and despair.

From The Telegraph: If Francesca Kay’s second novel were a piece of music, it would be a requiem, finding the poetry, perhaps even the glory, in loss and despair. Which is not to say that her novel is depressing or gloomy – far from it. In its depiction of a community grappling with the pain of what it means to be human, it is a novel which manages to be both poignant and uplifting.

From The Independent: With its finely worked tapestry of voices and viewpoints, its keen-eyed pleasure in the contrasts of inner-urban life, its lyrical excursions into memory and yearning, The Translation of the Bones sharpens the reader’s mind – and stretches its sympathies – rather than drenching it in mystical mawkishness.

Book Blog Reviews:

Cornflower Books: This is a moving book about faith, belief and love, isolation, loneliness and passion, and about motherhood, too

A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook: With writing so quietly majestic and probing, Francesca Kay shows how intricately and inevitably love and suffering are connected. Without love there could be no sorrow, and thus suffering is spared. The novel is heedless of the miracle’s credibility but rather how we respond to such a claim. It registers precisely the potential within religious belief for mania, obsession, literal-mindedness, and delusion as profusely as for uplift, consolation and compassion.

Heft: A Novel by Liz Moore: Arthur, a 550 pound housebound former academic, Kell, a seventeen year old poor boy in a rich school, and Kell’s mother, Charlene who reaches out to Arthur for help. This is a novel about lost and lonely people seeking a connection with each other while dealing with the untold reality of their lives. Many reviews mention that this novel is not perfect but worth reading nonetheless.

From The San Francisco Chronicle: The novel progresses at a comfortable pace, thanks to Moore’s graceful prose. There are no bad metaphors to wince at in this book. In fact, Moore scarcely allows herself any showy literary tricks, which, these days, is a trick itself.

From The Star Tribune: While the three main characters remain physically apart for the majority of the novel, their stories intersect and create a narrative that pulls in other stories of hidden sadness along the way.

Book Blog Reviews:

Book Reporter: HEFT is both a lyrically written tale and an engrossing page-turner. In Arthur Opp, author Liz Moore gives us a complete, three-dimensional person rather than the media’s stereotypical obese recluse; Arthur is quite heartbreakingly real, as is young Kel Keller, who we also grow to know. Their stories, simply told without soap opera-ish flourishes, tug at a reader’s emotions. Although not a light read, this tender tale is ultimately hopeful and unforgettable.

Bibliophile by the Sea: The way in which the story unfolds is not perfect, but I cared so much about the characters that I was able to overlook any flaws in the story structure.

Books Matter: But the novel reminds readers that one is not “chosen” to be alone, only chooses to be so. In this imperfect novel of very imperfect characters, that hefty choice, between grappling with the often harrowing outer world and hiding from it, blooms.

Other releases of note:

1222 A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel by Anne Holt – Norwegian Crime Fiction

Poser: My Life in Twenty Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer – a memoir of motherhood and marriage structured around her love affair with yoga.

How it All Began by Penelope Lively – …the powerful role of chance in people’s lives and deftly illustrates how our paths can be altered irrevocably by someone we will never even meet.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy – a modern day retelling of Jane Eyre

First You Try Everything by Jane McCafferty – An engrossing tale of a marriage that’s falling apart and a wife who will stop at nothing to keep it together.

Here is what caught my interest this week.

My mom and I frequently talk about how our friends are so important to us – women who laugh with us and support us when times are tough. Alyce of At Home with Books highlights a book about four women who were childhood friends, The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar. I read Umrigar’s The Weight of Heaven some time ago and really enjoyed both the writing and the story. Unrigar is very good at examining how a character gains growing insight while undergoing a difficult time. In her newest novel, she explores the relationship and lives of four Indian women, one of whom is dying to cancer and she wants to see her three friends before she dies.

Sometimes I am in the mood for a quick, easy, fun read and The Boston Bibliophile reviews one that sounds like it fits the bill. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: a Novel in Pictures is based on Frankie’s scrapbooks- a 1920′s girl who goes from Vassar to Paris to New York. Not quite a graphic novel, this seems like a good read to while away a couple of rainy hours.

Gin Phillips’ first novel, The Well and the Mine was a good read for a debut novel. It had a interesting storyline and made for a good book group discussion. Devourer of Books reviews Phillips’ second novel, Come in and Cover Me. Jen did have a difficult time connecting with the main character but felt the book was interesting and that Phillips is “a strong writer”. Ren is an archeologist who has discovered the work of a potter and artist. What people don’t realize is that she was led to the site by the ghost of her brother who died when she was twelve. This doesn’t seem like a ghost story – instead it is a tale of loss and how that loss can damage a person.

Every once in a while I come across a book that is hard to find but sounds totally worth it. This week it is Lynn Coady’s book of short stories Play the Monster Blind reviewed by Gavin at Page 247. Set in a small town in Canada the stories are also linked by characters and shared history as well as the location.  I can get this book through inter library loan and it is available from some used book sellers. What sold me on the collection were these words from Gavin:

Reading these stories felt like walking barefoot over gravel, sharp and painful, wanting to hurry and get into cool grass.  Coady is an insightful writer, exploring the dynamics of family and community in a small town.

Anyone who has lived in a small town, particularly as an adolescent, knows the feeling Coady expresses in her stories.  Gossip, back-biting, bullying, the need to fit in and the need to escape…I know, this sound depressing, but Lynn Coady’s abilities bring a sharp humor to these stories and make even the most unlikable character understandable.

Finally, Diane of Bibliophile of the Sea reminds me why everyone should read Steinbeck’s East of Eden at least once in their life. It remains one of my all time favorite books discussing choice, family, inheritance, evil, and redemption.

Happy Reading.

Ted stepped toward the relief. He felt as if he’d walked inside it, so completely did it enclose and affect him. It was the moment before Eurydice must descend to the underworld a second time, when she and Orpheus are saying good-bye. What moved Ted, mashed some delicate glassware in his chest, was the quietness of their interaction, the absence of drama or tears as they gazed at each other, touching gently. He sensed between them an understanding too deep to articulate: the unspeakable knowledge that everything is lost. (pg. 214)

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad won, among other accolades, the 2010 National Circle Award for Fiction and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. A set of interlinking chapters (or stories) Good Squad is about a circle of people in the music industry including Bennie Salazar, a rock music executive, his assistant, and various other people. The chapters do not necessarily follow a strict timeline, rather taking a character that appears in one chapter (even if briefly) and focusing on them in the next. It is very hard to write about the plot of this book because it is so wide spread and yet also so interconnected. The settings vary from the Bay Area punk rock scene, to Los Angeles, New York, Africa, and Italy. The characters are numerous and varied ranging from a 12 year old girl and an aging music promoter. It can be difficult to follow all the ins and outs but I found what Egan said in an interview to be helpful. In each story is a character lurking on the outskirts is generally the focus of the next.

The Goon Squad is about culture and aging, language, and change that happens at warp speed. Considering that my husbands first computer had the same computing capacity as the math calculators our sons use for math and Eagan is write. How do people cope with rapid technological change and how that change impacts our culture? How does that change effect how people relate to each other? With time being the Goon Squad waiting to ambush us, is happiness limited – or are things more hopeful?

I did not expect to like this novel. I was suspicious of all the hype it received and I was unsure about the punk rock/music aspects of the story. However it was sitting right by the check-out station at the library and I grabbed it on a whim. And it completely blew me away. I enjoyed the way Egan wrote about language and culture and I loved the experimentation she did with structure. My favorite chapter is the power point chapter (and it is definitely worth seeing it on Egan’s website). The power point not only discusses the pauses in rock music and their importance, it touches upon many of the themes of the book in a subtle way that was almost musical in its approach. The Goon Squad is funny and sad, a commentary on the present and a look to the future, it is both simple and complicated – in other words a good read.

I didn’t expect much when I picked up this book and I was so pleased that my reading experience was so good. Sometimes I guess I should put my expectations on hold and be more open minded about books – if that leads to a wonderful experience then all is well.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

I haven’t read much South African fiction other than some work by J.M. Coetzee. Stefani of So Many Books reviews another South African author Nadine Gordimer which sounds fabulous. The Pickup (which was longlisted for the Booker Prize) is the story of an unlikely couple: wealthy,  white, rebellious Julia Summers and Abdu, an illegal alien desperately trying to not be deported from South Africa to his impoverished country. The first half takes place in South Africa and the other in Abdu’s homeland. This is a story of immigration, of dissatisfaction with your family, of yearning for something different and Stefani makes it sound wonderful.

Last year I read Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster and thought it was a little jewel of a piece – short, and evocative and I am looking forward Songs for the Missing. Now Diane from a Bibliophile By the Sea tells me about his latest work The Odds: A Love Story. What a like about O’Nan is his ability to convey vast amounts in such a short form. The Odds is the story of Art and Marion Fowler, married for thirty years, now both unemployed, in debt and in danger of losing their house. They cash everything in and go to Niagara Falls for a second honeymoon and Art convinces Marion to gamble their funds in an attempt to save their marriage and themselves. Ti from Book Chatter also raves about the book.

One of the best books I read last year was David Malouf’s Ransom and yet I haven’t look at the rest of his work. Now I have a second book of his to put on my list courtesy of Kimbofo of Reading Matters in her review of Fly Away Peter. She writes of the novel, “It is a truly beautiful and devastating story set before and during the Great War. I read it in two sittings and felt stunned by the sheer power and emotion that Malouf wrings from just 144 pages of eloquently written prose.” The novel is about three people, Jim a bird watcher (to be it simply), the well-to-do farmer Ashley, and Imogen Harcourt, an English photographer. Set in 1914, the two men go off to the trenches of WWI. With language like the following, this book is definitely going on my list to read:

Often, as Jim later discovered, you entered the war through an ordinary gap in a hedge. One minute you were in a ploughed field, with snowy troughs between ridges that marked old furrows and peasants off at the edge of it digging turnips or winter greens, and the next you were through the hedge and on duckboards, and although you could look back and still see farmers at work, or sullenly watching as the soldiers passed over their land went slowly below ground, there was all the difference in the world between your state and theirs. They were in a field and very nearly at home. You were in the trench system that lead to the war.

I am fond of book lists and The Boston Bibliophile describes what sounds like an excellent reference work 500 Essential Cult Books: The Ultimate Guide. Marie says these are “the underground classics, the ones that got passed from friend to friend, or the ones you picked up in a used bookstore and read when you should have been doing your homework.” I wonder if Steal this Book is listed. I bought my copy when I was in high school at a used bookstore and have never parted with it – in part because I consider it a classic. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

Finally, Wendy from Caribousmom has an excellent list of books about the African-American experience. The list is worth looking at.

Happy Reading.