LitLovers Blog

Rarely do I review new books.  I barely get through my own pile for the website, let alone take on brand new ones.  So usually I decline review requests. 

But this book was different.  A Journey Through Literary America looked so intriguing…I couldn’t resist the offer.  And what a smart decision it turned out to be!  This has to be one of the MOST gorgeous books ever born.  

Journey is a big coffee-table-sized book, chocker-block-full of sumptuous photos—the homes of America’s most beloved authors and the locales of their stories.  

With wonderful prose to boot—biographies and personal incidents that make up the authors’ lives, as well as the history and inspiration behind their works. 

This is a gorgeous book—the perfect gift for your favorite book lover. Which is you, of course!

It’s a virtual “Who’s Who” in American literature—Toni Morrison, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, John Updike, Langston Huges, Wallace Stegner … and many more.  All the biggies.

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M is for Magic.  Our book reviews conjure up books on magic—a subject that maintains a powerful grip on our imaginations, even in an age of science.

First, The Magician’s Elephant—a beautifully told fable about the possibilities of love and connection. In a dark and broken world, magic opens doors and heal hearts.

In The Magicians, Lev Grossman takes us through a magic portal into the Brakesbill College of Magical Pedagogy. Here his young hero learns the darker side of sorcery—and finds himself on a magical journey of self-discovery.

Finally, The Magus—John Fowles spellbinding novel of a young Briton living on a mysterious Greek Island.  Nicholas becomes  involved in a series of elaborate and increasingly dangerous games of illusion. Where does fantasy stop and reality begin?

Book Clubs—see all our montly book reviews . . .

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I just finished My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead (see our Reading Guide), a volume of 26 short love stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (author of Middlesex).  It’s been a long time since I sat down to read short stories, and I found it challenging.

As my friend Nan says, reading short stories is “like opening a jewel box.”  She’s right: stories are polished little gems…which is what makes them difficult. They’re written with economy—lacking the luxury of 100’s of pages for a more leisurely expansion of plot and character. Everything is compressed—precise—each word or idea contains significance, pointing to something beyond itself.  Stories are  packed with meaning.

They also tend to be dark, edgy, with more bite than longer fiction. Stories situate a character, an ordinary individual, in a moment of crisis—and within 2 to 20 pages, say, the author must resolve that crisis. Everything is intensified.

Finally, there’s the stop-and-go quality of a story collection, which as opposed to the long arc of a novel can be discomfiting. You get involved with the story and characters…only to have it end quickly.  Then on to the next story—working to come up to speed again.  It’s like establishing new friends, over and over, only to keep losing them.

But I found, reading through Eugenides volume, that the stories haunted me, out of all proportion to their length. And that’s the beauty of a short story.

For Book Clubs
Take a break from novels and try our LitCourses—each based on a single story.  The courses are short, fun, and packed with good information. You’ll find a study guide for each story—perfect to help with discussion. Take a look!

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If you’re a Malcolm Gladwell fan, then you’re in luck!  We have Readers Guides—with DISCUSSION QUESTIONS—for all 4 of Malcolm Gladwell’s books.  Read and discuss any of the books at your book club!

The Tipping Point    |    Blink    |    Outliers    |   What the Dog Saw   

Tags: Blogging & Musing // 2 Comments »

I came across a 2003 BBC World Book Club interview with Peter Carey, Australian author of Oscar and Lucina, winner of 1988 Booker Prize. An audience member asked Carey about an espisode in the novel that reminded her of Adam tasting the  forbidden fruit in Genesis. 

Here’s Carey’s response:

Your way of reading that holds up perfectly, I think, and it’s totally  consistent with the book and consistent with my intention, and yet it never occured to me!

And then he said . . .

So isn’ t that the extraordinary thing about literature? It only really works when the reader reads it because until then…it’s words on a page…. And when everybody reads it, everybody brings their own lives, and their own experience, their own intellect…and they apply all that to it — AND THEN A BOOK IS MADE!  And that’s the wonder of literature.

And then a book is made  — and that’s the wonder of literature! No one could have put it better.  You can listen to the full interview here.

Carey’s remarks also correspond to 2 theories of literature:  “Authorial Intention” and “Reader Response.” But that’s for another blog post.  For now…luxuriate in Carey’s wonderful comments.

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True Grit. This month’s book reviews look at three real American heroes, people whose courage, grit and ingenuity helped create the American Dream.

We look at Jeannette Walls’ new book, Half Broke Horses, about her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Walls’ book will surely lift Lily out of obscurity and endow her with celebrity-like status—and Lily would hate it. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, tells the true story of a  slave who escaped to freedom and placed herself in harms way for 10 years to bring others out of slavery. But that is only one part of her remarkable story.

And Ben Franklin, the true American original, tells his own story in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  His memoir is a great classic. 

Book Clubs—see all our montly book reviews . . .

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 A recent quip from the New York Times about book clubs caught my ire. It’ll probably catch yours, too. So here it is…

Gaggles of readers get together monthly to sip chardonnay and discuss the latest Oprah selection.*

Ouch. Don’t know about you, but that sounds a little…oh, I dunno… condescending? Not to get too upset about an analogy to unruly geese, but it’s kind of a potshot to all those who get together, out of a passion for literature, to talk (not honk) about something of value—books!

So…are mindless cocktail parties better? I’m Just asking…. Besides, I don’t like chardonnay; I like pinot grigio.

And what’s wrong with Oprah selections? —Breath, Eyes, Memory; Edgar Sawtelle; 3 Faulkner novels (Faulkner!); House of Sand & Fog;   We Were the Mulvaneys. That’s some pretty good reading.

To counter that unfortunate “gaggle” image (nothing against geese…understand?), I offer, again, two defenses of book clubs: one by moi and one by Joshua Henkin, author or Matrimony:

• Book Clubs—Smarter than Critics? 
  An April 2008 post on LitLovers Blog quoting Josh Henkin
• Saving the World—One Book Club at a Time
  My March 2009 guest post on the literary blog, Books on the Brain

Oh, heck…maybe I’m just over reacting. Honk. 

* Mokoto Rich. ”The Book Club with Just One Member.” New York Times, “Week in Review” section (1.24.10)

Tags: Blogging & Musing // 3 Comments »

A real challenge for any author is the remaking of a classic story. The new novel might set the older work in the modern era (Hamlet→ Edgar Sawtelle). Or it might use the older novel as a starting point—for a sequel, or a retelling of the story from a different perspective (Wizard of Oz→ Wicked).  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…

Makeovers
Resetting a classic in the modern era. 

Anna Karenina ………  What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn
The Great Gatsby …..   Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hamlet ……………….. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Howard’s End ……….  On Beauty by Zadie Smith
King Lear …………….   A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Mrs. Dalloway ………   The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Odyssey ………..   Ulysses by James Joyce
Pride & Prejudice ……  Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Starting Points
Writing a sequel, ”prequel,” parody, or using a secondary character’s point of view.

A Christmas Carol ……  Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard
Dr. Jekyll &Mr. Hyde ….   Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin        
Gone With the Wind …..  Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley
Gone  With the Wind ….. The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Great Expectations ……  Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Great Gatsby ……… The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
The Great Gatsby………. Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Jane Eyre ……………….. The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Ryhs
Huckleberry Finn ……….  Finn by Jon Clinch
The Illiad …………………The Human Stain by Philip Roth
King Arthur ……………..  The Mists of Avalon
Mansfield Park …………  Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd
Moby Dick ………………  Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Pride & Prejudice ……… Pemberley by Emma Tennant
Pride & Prejudice ……… Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Rebecca ………………… Mrs. DeWinter by Susan Hill
The Scarlet Letter ……..   Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes
A Tale of Two Cities …… A Far Better Rest by Susanne Alleyn
The Wizard of Oz ……….  Wicked by Geoffrey MacGuire
Wuthering Heights …….. Heathcliff: The Return to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire 
                                               Sargeant

What have I missed?  Surely, there are more.

Tags: Blogging & Musing // 6 Comments »

Apparently, I’ve got a good face for radio. Two days ago, I was on the air again, this time on Martha Stewart’s Living Radio—Sirius Radio/XM, the satellite radio.

No, it wasn’t Martha, but two shock-jocks, Kim and Betsy, who banter their way through morning drive time.  They’re a hoot.  We talked about starting a book club, how to talk about a book, etc.—the usual book club stuff. Here’s the short version (6 min.):

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Coming of Age —book reviews — What better way to enter a new decade than with coming-of-age novels—stories in which young people cross a threshold and enter the adult world?  Sag Harbor centers on a young African-American man who spends his summers on Long Island–hilarious and poignant. Lorrie Moore’s long awaited novel, A Gate at the Stairs, follows a young white college student in the midwest who becomes a nanny for an sophisticated couple.

Finally, John Knowles 1959 work, A Separate Peace, follows the friendships of young males at a New England prep school.

Book Clubs—see all our montly book reviews . . .

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