What you're reading. Anything you might have to say about Madame Bovary. All that stuff.

I'm still reading White Teeth. I like it a lot but I don't love it quite as much as I thought I would. I do think she's great, and I kind of disagree with various people who've said she's derivative -- she's obviously influenced by a bunch of different writers, but I think there's a lot of originality here, as well. I haven't found myself thinking that she sounds young so far.

This doesn't feel like a book written by a woman for some reason. Maybe it's because her influences are primarily male, I think, or maybe it's because her characters are middle-aged men, but I keep forgetting that this is a female writer. Weird.

What are you reading?

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Answers

On audio book - Catalina, by W. Somerset Maugham. Heard of him, of course, but I don't think I've ever read anything by him and never heard of this book. It takes place during the Spanish Inquisition and is about a crippled girl who has a vision from the Virgin Mary telling her that the 'son who has best served God' from a local prominent family will be able to heal her.

Right now I'm at the point where the son who was the area's Bishop tries and fails - now the son who is a soldier wants to try and is declaring that if it doesn't work, then it's obvious that the girl is hearing demons and should be put to death. yow!

Anyway... I'm enjoying the characters and the tone, although the author has a wierd way of stepping back and reminding the reader that he's writing this thing now, in the 20th century and that kinda bugs me. I mutther "Shut up you..." whenever that happens and wait for him to get back to the story.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I picked up "Acid Row" by Minette Walters and "Grave Secrets" by Kathy Reichs from the library yesterday, two books I had on reserve. I only have them for a week, so everyting else I'm reading is on hold until next Wednesday. I started "Acid Row" last night and it's pretty good so far, but I'm only on page 64.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I'm not reading anything right now, either on audio or on paper, though I plan to stop at the library tonight. I finished Madame Bovary while sitting in the airport on Sunday and didn't like it any better than when I read it the first time in my depressing classic literature course in college. I'd forgetten most of the plot and was looking forward to getting a fresh take on it. The edition I read contained several illustrations, helpfully inserted with their spoilery captions well before the appropriate places in the text. Between the pictures and my sister-in-law asking me if I'd gotten to the part where XX happened yet, I almost didn't have to read it at all. So much for being surprised.

I think Emma would be a pain in any era.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I'm still reading Big Stone Gap and I'm about halfway through. I highly recommend it. I have a 10 block WALK to work and felt it necessary to bring the book for my "commute." Ya know, in case I have time waiting for the light to change or something...that's how much I want to be at home curled up in bed still reading this book!

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I'm still working on Anna Karenina. I'm about 3/4 of the way through. I picked up the Maude translation which is infinitely better than the QPB one. It still has places that parts are left out though. I know this from a discussion on another forum (shhhh... yes I might have been sneaking around) Now I wish I'd bought the newest one. I really enjoy this book. I'll be rereading it, no doubt. I'm going to have to go back and read the first 200 pages from the Maude because I just picked up where I had left off on the other. I'm glad I didn't have to read this in high school. I wouldn't have appreciated it then.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

The Stars' Tennisballs by Stephen Fry (Steven? I can't check. Anyway, he played Jeeves.) Perfect posh teen leads charmed life, pisses off the wrong people, gets framed for drugs and put in a mental institution in Sweden. Escapes, returns to exact revenge. I don't know whether to laugh or puke, because I was all set for a satiric fairy-tale (um, no, not like that) and then it turned nasty. Still funny though.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Kazzy, I have a fairly battered copy of the Penguin Classic edition -- Rosemary Edwards or Edmonds translation, I think. I think I've currently got it for sale on Amazon for what will amount to about 25 cents, so it's free to you for the asking.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I may have mentioned in the other thread I'm listening to _Black Boy_, which I had never read. It's totally my speed and I love it so far, but what's surprisingly good is the reader guy. My car's at the train station a few miles away, so I'm not sure which edition it is or whatever, but I think the guy's last name is James. Somehow he manages to distinguish the characters with his voice - grannies, dads, and little boys - without sounding like an id.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Still with the _Dhalgren_. At 360 pages out of 800-plus, I think I'm starting to like this book. A few days ago, I would have said that this book doesn't have a plot, but it does, it's just very subtle and slow-moving. It's as if Delaney took a really good 300-page urban fantasy novel and added 500 pages of observations on sexual identity, class, race relations and the writing process. Except he did this back in 1975, and it doesn't feel like it's aged a day.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Wet Grave, by Barbara Hambly. I've been reading it for a week, and I really want to just sit down and finish it, but it's slow and mellow despite being a murder mystery (which is why I like it) and I just cannot. slow. down. enough.

I think being on "vacation" is not very good for me.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I had to put together a big scary bookcase by myself, so I decided to make it less horrible and scary, I'd get books on tape to distract me. And I wandered around the library with Jane Eyre and The Thin Man, fighting with myself, and then finally put them both down and picked up the Lemony Snicket audiobooks. Because I'm weak. He has such a cute voice, though. It's all soft and on-the-edge- of-lispy and I find it endearing. God, I really am falling in love with the man. I hate it when I do that.

On the real-book front, I'm still plowing through Instances of the Number 3, just sort of biding my time until I can read Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan. Because while I hate National Book Award winners with all my heart, I love me some Booker Prizers.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Jen,

Where did you get your big scary bookcase? Is is big enough to hold tall books? I ask because my mother-in-law pulled over my old crappy bookcase (fortunately she was not hurt) and now is a perfect opportunity to buy a new one, but whenever I've looked in the past, I've only found ones with stingy shelves that won't accomodate my books.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

IKEA, Karen. It's the three-hundred-foot Billy corner bookcase, and is really roomy, but the thing is, with the angled shelves, it's hard to pack the books in and have it look nice. They also have the ordinary flat Billy shelves, just as tall and damn cheap ($69? or maybe $89 for the seven foot ones), which might be perfect for you.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

KarenD, Ikea is so your friend. We got a couple of bookshelves there, and the shelves are about a foot high. We've got a couple of books that don't fit in a shelf, but now that I think about it, I'm not sure where we put them.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

IKEA. Of course. If Ikea were really my friend, they'd have a store closer to me than Chicago. Or they'd at least have a more informative website. Maybe I'll have to go on a road trip, or horrors, call a stranger on the phone to find out the things the website refuses to divulge about these bookcases.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

KarenD: or get a catalog by snail mail. Their catalog is pretty informative, and good for daydreaming too.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I just started Instances of the Number Three, and I must say, I'm having a hard time getting into it. Does it get any better, Jen?

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Just finished it this morning! It continues on with that smug-and- knowing omniscient narrator tone, Ana, and the story never especially picks up and gets dramatic and by the end you are quite, quite convinced that the author was, in fact, a lecturer in literature as her jacket bio claims. But it kept pulling me through with a small thread of mystery, and despite feeling rather emotionally distanced from the characters, at the end, in quiet sort of way, I liked it a lot.

Uh, don't know if that'll help any.

I'm reading The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint next, and though I haven't actually done more than drop it into my messenger bag, I think I love it for the first sentence alone: "If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head."

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I left The Club Dumas at work, so I am reading The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm. It's not what I was expecting - he takes this idea of the creation of a German streetfood and locks it into the life of a woman in Germany at the end of WW2, who seduces a deserter and won't let him go.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

I may regret admitting this, but I'm not feeling the Lemony Snickett love. I read the first book in the series at the start of the summer, and while it had the occasional amusing phrase, it wasn't terribly interesting, and I feel no compulsion to pick up any of the later books in the series. I just don't see the appeal.

Then again, I admittedly like happy endings...

Otherwise, I finished Changing Places, by David Lodge, the other day. The only reasons why I didn't throw it across the room upon doing so were that:

1. I don't do that sort of thing
2. It wasn't my book
3. I was in the middle of a subway station at the time.

The book has some very good bits, and there's one passage in which I had the feeling that he'd somehow read my mind, but the author is too damn clever for his own good. It's a problem that recurs throughout the book, but especially when it comes to the ending.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Karen, ignore my husband. The shelves on the bookcases he mentioned aren't really all that tall -- we have a handful of books which don't fit, and it's really annoying. The tall books go in the bottom shelf of a bookcase we semi-custom ordered at a place called Neoset which probably doesn't exist where you are.

The Ikea Billies have adjustable shelves, though, so you'll probably be okay with them. If you ever get to an Ikea.

Topic: I'm about to start The Best Scientific Writing of 2000 edited by James Gleick.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

For thesis purposes, I'm having to dip back into Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. If you like getting pissed off (and really, who doesn't?), I highly recommend it. It's some scary stuff about the very worst of the PR industry.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I'm rereading Empire Falls. And I've reread it once before. I think Empire Falls is keeping me from branching out as a reader. It's the literary equivalent of comfort food.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I bought a used copy of Empire Falls and I think I'm going to read that next.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

austenclaire - i read 'Dhalgren' about a year ago, and really, really liked it. You come across these passages that are just so amazing...i wanted to run out and find somebody to read them to. The only thing in the book that got to me after a while - hygiene was NOT a priority to 'our hero'.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

The shelves of an IKEA Billy case will sag if you like hardcovers, alas.

Still reading the Goncourt brothers dairies, that will rank high on my list of all time weird books. Amazing what people write, when they try to be perfectly honest.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Scratch what I said before. I forgot to bring White Teeth to work with me, so at lunch I went to a used bookstore and bought a copy of Martin Amis's The Information. Liking it so far.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I read the new Cynthia Voigt, Bad Girls in Love, and finished the three Shoes books I was given. I've got Artist of the Floating World in my bag, Middlemarch (halfway through), Kavalier and Clay for bedtime, and Postmodernism for Beginners for breakfast.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Beth, Thanks, I e-mailed you.

I've finished Anna Karenina. (Contented sigh.) The threads didn't get wrapped up to my complete satisfaction in the end, but all in all it's a very good book. The back cover of the book spoiled Anna's fate for me. (Thank you very much Oxford U. Press!)

Well, what shall I read now? Something shorter perhaps? What is the next book club book? Or has everyone given up on the club?

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Shoot. I got your e-mail but I didn't know the answer to the question and I was going to look it up, and now you've finished.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Don't worry about it. I'm not in any hurry. You've got other things to deal with.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

My book club vote would be Instance of the Fingerpost. Anyway, I can't really remember what else was on the list, other than all those same books that keep getting voted down.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I just finished The Lovely Bones (I can't remember the author, but the book just came out).

It's about a girl who was murdered, and the story is told from her perspective in heaven. Sounds morbid, but it was actually quite good. And funny in some places. Heaven has guidance councillors and swing sets (but only the good kind with the rubber seats, not hard plastic or wooden ones), and singing at night before you go to bed. And dogs.

But the story is actually about the girl's family, and how they cope with her dissapearance. It's sad in some places, but a good read.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

I am supposed to be in chanrge of the September book club, so I have a question - do you all just want to take a break on it until the new server is up? Or should we try and get it up and running here? I have a list of possible books (although there were a couple I wanted to pull off from TUS (sob)) but I could start a thread of suggestions again?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Kate, My first choice for the book club is to wait until we get settled back in at the Homeland. My second choice is to continue it here. I don't have a problem with you just picking a book, because I'll read whatever is chosen.

And thanks, everyone, for the bookshelf advice. A fair number of the homeless books are both tall and hardcover, so I'm thinking I'll need to a take shelf full with me when I go shopping to test the options out. Mom lives near the Chicagoland IKEA, so if I can't find something around here at a reasonable price, I'll just leave the books stacked on the floor until my next trek to see her.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

I read 'Five Quarters of the Orange' last month for a book club. I don't really recommend however. I didn't like any of the characters and Harris needs a better editor. The good part is that I bought a copy on half.com and just sold it today so it all comes out even. We're reading 'Sahara Unveiled' next and the library has a copy.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

Well, I actually liked Madame Bovary. Mostly because it was very well-written, and I was all proud of myself for being able to read it IN FRENCH, I suspect. But I was also extremely engaged for at least the last 1/3 of the book, and chuckled out loud several times during the other 2/3rds. One thing I was wondering about is whether other people think he deliberately harped on certain words, or whether I'm just being overly suspicious (the only such word coming to mind right now is 'orgueil', a cross between pride, selfishness, and grasping materialism - but there were a few other words that seemed to be repeated more than necessary to drive home the point).

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

Regarding [i]The Information[/i], Beth, and totally spoiler- free....Amis claimed it was in no way to be taken as [i]roman á clef [/i] for his shattered friendship with Julian Barnes and Pat Kavanagh, but it's much more fun if you read it that way!

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002

Still reading Middlemarch. I understand that it ends sometime?

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002