Back Up Your Blog

Just a friendly little reminder to back up your blog.

2009 is almost over, you've probably got a few days off, now's a good time.

Backing up your blog is very easy to do. If you're using Blogger, I have complete directions here. There are directions for Wordpress in the comments.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

Twenty past one in the morning on New Year's Day. Magnus knew the time because of the fat clock, his mother's clock, which squatted on the shelf over the fire.

Opening to Raven Black by Ann Cleeves.

Many people who read mysteries will pick up a book because its setting is exotic. Reading a mystery for its setting is an easy way to get an introduction to a particular place or culture. The setting is the main reason why my book club selected Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. That and the fact that the book cover has an award on it.

Raven Black takes place in the Shetland Islands,  off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea. I suppose Raven Black is a good way to introduce oneself to the Shetland Islands; I know nothing of them beyond what is in the book so I cannot say. The book has made me think about the importance of setting in murder mysteries.


Raven Black reminded me so much of David Lynch's Twin Peaks that I really want to ask the author if she is a fan of the show. Both are set in cold, northern towns with a rural character. Both open with the discovery of a dead girl. Both feature a respected local policeman aided by a more sophisticated detective from the nation's main police force. Both feature a wide range of quirky local characters including a subset  of very wealthy people, one of whom is a prime suspect. Both include the discovery of the dead girl's "journal" which features may dark secrets about the quirky locals.   I don't think Ann Cleeves is borrowing from David Lynch, nor do I mean to suggest that anything untoward is going on with Ms. Cleeves' plot. I suspect both Raven Black and Twin Peaks simply play with the same ideas, tropes which are common to mysteries in which the setting is prominent.

How important is the setting to a mystery novel or to a series of novels?  (Raven Black is the first of a quartet of novels set in the Shetland Islands.)

Certain detectives are forever tied to their settings: Sam Spade to  San Francisco, Philip Marlowe to Los Angelos. I will confess that if Cara Black ever writes a novel featuring  Aimee Leduc on vacation in Florence, I won't be buying it. Keep Aimee in Paris where she belongs. I've never been exactly happy to see Inspector Maigret leave town either. Place is a major part of the reason why readers are so loyal to certain detectives.

Does Ms. Cleeves do the Shetland Islands justice? Modern mysteries all promise to go beneath the respectable surface of their settings. They all intend to expose what a place is really like. Raven Black takes place during the winter when the island's major festival, one celebrating its Viking ancestry, is approaching. The locals rely on the festival for much of their winter income, they participate in it without any sense of irony.  However many of them decry the fact that the outside world views their home as a quaint bed and breakfast with a rollicking Viking bonfire.

After reading Raven Black, I am interested in visiting the Shetland Islands, but I'm also certain I would never want to move there. There are good people everywhere you go, but there are so many awful people in Raven Black, so much small town prejudice and small mindedness, that I'm with the islanders who leave. This is not the case with Sam Spade's San Francisco, Philip Marlow's Los Angelos, Inspector Maigret's or Aimee Leduc's Paris. Nor with Twin Peaks for that matter.

But for the record, everyone in my book club both finished and enjoyed Raven Black.  We just wouldn't want to live there.

Full disclosure: the photos of the Shetland Islands come from Places Online and AllPoster.co.uk.

Giveaway: Culling My To Be Read Stack

Please enter by Friday night. Dakota and I will select winners on Saturday, January 2, 2010.

Short Story Sunday: BBC's National Short Story Award

I've been meaning to write about the BBC's National Short Story Award for a few weeks now.  I found the podcasts of the five short listed stories over at iTunes quite by accident.  Each year a 15,000 pound prize is awarded to the winner chosen from over 600 stories submitted to the competition. 

The short list of five stories was available by podcast but unfortunately they are no longer on iTunes and I cannot find them on the BBC or the contest websites.  An anthology of them all will soon be available here.  My favorite of the five "Other People's Gods" by Naomi Alderman did not win, but I did find this little clip of it still posted on YouTube.




The story's main character, Mr. Bloom, is a stalwart member of his local Jewish synogogue, so his rabbi is not at all pleased to discover that the Bloom family has started making offerings to Ganesha.  But the prayers Mr. Bloom is  making seem to work; his family is more at peace and more successful than they ever were before. 

I found Ms. Alderman's story charming and funny and in the end very thought provoking.  The judges were much more taken with Kate Clanchy's story "The Not-Dead and the Saved" which took first place and with Sara Maitland's "Moss Witch" which took the runner-up prize of 3,000 pounds.  Full details and an interview with Ms. Clanchy can be found here.  In the meantime, I've orderd Ms. Alderman's novel, Disobedience.


I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Short Story Sunday in 2010.  The start of a new year seems like a good time to re-evaluate things, maybe make a few changes.  I expect that I will still feature short stories in some form as a regular feature here,  maybe not weekly.  But, if you've read a short story this week, please feel free to leave a link in a comment below.

Friday Picture Reading: Merry Christmas to all

from Growin' Up in Maine.

Don't Know Much about Historical Fiction?

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Given the choice, which do you prefer? Real history? Or historical fiction? (Assume, for the purposes of this discussion that they are equally well-written and engaging.)

I don't really trust historical fiction for two reasons.  First, a novelist's primary obligation is to tell a good story; a good novelist should never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.  Second, no matter how well a novelist is able to imagine the mind set of a person in history all he or she can ever do is imagine it.  There's simply no way a novelist can enter the mind set of an historical period completely.  21st century baggage always finds its way into historical fiction.

The same is true of historians, but good historians know this, are upfront about it, and present whatever primary source evidence there is to support their claims.  Historians are not telling their own story, but the facts of history.  A good historian never lets the story get in the way of good facts. 

I suspect that many people who prefer historical fiction read their history books in school and never entered that section of the bookstore ever again.  Why would they? History textbooks are dull, edited to avoid controversy, doggedly determined to offer a version of history that offends no one, certainly not the status quo.  Real history is offensive, very offensive.  It's controversial--nothing about it is set in stone.  What we know today is not what we knew yesterday and may not be what we knoe tomorrow.  Real history is in the same state of constant flux that real science is.  Somebody finds a new piece of evidence, a letter in an attic or an achive and all bets are off.  Someone else looks at established facts from a new light and suddenly all bets are off.  Real history can force the reader to reconsider the status quo.  I'll offer three examples.

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild tells the story of the Belgian Congo most readers know only through Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness.  Hochschild's book is fascinating reading, full of drama and character.  It is difficult to look at Europeans in Africa in a any kind of positive light after reading it.  Mr. Hochschild discusses Joseph Conrad's novel and the character of Kurtz, the European who becomes a monster, ruling his outpost with an iron fist by sticking the heads of his enemies on poles around his hut.  Mr. Hochschild finds four European men who did exactly that, any of whom could have been the model for Conrad's character.  All Conrad had to do was tone it down enough for civilized readers.

Anyone who read Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John Barry could not have been all that surprised by the Federal Government's response to Hurricane Katrina.  That was hardly the first time African Americans were treated so poorly after a Mississippi River flood.  Mr. Barry's tale begins long before 1927 with a full account of how the Army Corp of Engineers made the Mississippi River what it is today in order to promote both navigation of its waters and development of its riverbanks.  His description of the flood itself, still the worst one in American history, is as difficult to put down as any thriller you will find.  And after the flood, we find out how Herbert Hoover drove the black vote away from the party of Lincoln.  I admit, I wasn't even aware that the Republican Party used to have the black vote in its pocket. 

C.A. Tripp's book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln is not a book you'll find on sale at the Lincoln Memorial gift shop.  At least I didn't find it the last time I was there.  Mr. Tripp presents a complicated picture of Lincoln.  His evidence suggests that Lincoln did not believe in heaven, that he loved to tell a dirty joke, sometimes a very dirty one, and that he may have been in love with his life-long friend Joshua Fry Speed.  While there is no conclusive evidence, nor likely to ever be any at this point, the evidence there is does suggest a possibility that remains a source of controversy.  (Larry Kramer has claimed to have found Speed's journal but has not published any of it as yet.)  In any case, whatever the truth may be, C.A. Tripp's book puts to rest the notion that history is dry, dull and fixed in stone. 

So, in the end, I'll have to return to the second part of today's prompt before finally answering the question.  Assuming both are equally well written and engaging I'll pick up history before I pick up historical fiction.  But then, I'll read just about anything.  (See sidebar listings of favorite books.)

The Dewey Tree

To find out more about The Dewey Tree project go here.

City Boy by Edmund White

In the 1970's in New York everyone slept till noon.

Opening sentence of City Boys by Edmund White.

What makes someone's life worth writing a book about? What makes someone's memoir worth reading? For me there are two possible answers-- either that person has done something worth knowing more about or that person knew people who did.

Edmund White has done things worth knowing more about. He wrote one of the very first coming-out-novels, A Boy's Own Story, and has become a well-respected man of letters with multiple novels, biographies of Genet, Proust and Rimbaud, and a position teaching writing at Princeton. But before becoming a success, he spent two decades living in New York City where, when he wasn't looking for sex, he met just about everyone on the literary scene that there was to meet: Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, Jame Merrill, and many others.


City Boy is more than a who's who of New York literati; it's a document of a time, a record of what it was like to live as a gay man when living as a gay man was a new idea. In the 1960's, when City Boy opens, being gay meant living alone, in fear, hiding one's true nature from employers, family, even from ones self if possible. All the gay men Mr. White knew, including himself, were in therapy trying to become straight. They all failed. No one thought they could find the right man and settle down; marriage or anything that resembled it were simply not on anyone's radar pre-Stonewall. In 1969, Mr. White participated in the Stonewall riots, a turning point in the gay rights movement and he survived the explosion of easily available sex and drugs that characterized gay life in the 1970's. He not only survived, he came away with many stories to tell.


These stories make for interesting, sometimes shocking, often amusing reading. Mr. White stayed at Peggy Guggenheim's home in Venice for a time and tells the story of Ms. Guggenheim's response to a tourist who stood outside looking at her home and asked her "isn't Peggy Guggenheim dead?" Ms. Guggenheim responded "Yes." City Boy has plenty of dish on others including an interesting chapter on Harold Brodky who was supposed to be working on the greatest novel ever only to publish a mammoth text few people were able to read let alone praise and a long confession about how poorly he treated Susan Sontag who was largely responsible for his success as a novelist.

A memoir can be a significant statement about a person or about a period of time. It can be as moving as a novel if it's able to come together as a such. The first half, perhaps the first two thirds of City Boy come very close to this. Mr. White's portrayal of his own life and the lives of those close to him do create a lively picture of New York when New York was down and out. But the last section of the book becomes a series of scenes, brief views of the famous people Mr. White knew, and City Boy becomes simply a collection of portraits and anecdotes with little sense of purpose to them. By the end there was little feeling of having reached a deeper understanding of the book's subjects. While City Boy falls short in the end, it succeeds as an entertaining, frank portrait of the author's life and of New York City in the 1960's and 1970's.




Full disclousure: I recived an advanced review copy of City Boy from the publisher.

Favorite Reads of 2009

I judge my favorite reads with a single criteria--how likely am I to read the book again. These are books I read in 2009 that I think I'll read again someday. My top ten in no particular order are:

Crime and Punishment - Unfortunately, this novel does break down into a sermon at the end, but I still can't get over how funny it was. This was one of the first books I read last year, and it set the stage for a year of chunkster classics. If you've been afraid of its size or the seriousness of its subject, give it a try. It is serious, there is violence in it, but its also very human and, at times, very funny.

Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany's massive science fiction epic has been on and off my TBR shelf for decades. Once I finally did read it, I wanted to read it again right away. I've no idea what the whole thing is meant to be about, honestly. It's a mad, hippie, drug-induced nightmare ride that just drew me in and kept me there.

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimimanda Ngozie Adiche's epic story of Biafra's rise and fall is one of two African novels to make my list this year. Hers is a gripping story that many readers have compared to Gone With The Wind. Almost a year later, I can still recall scenes from it as vividly as I can my own memories. It's a wonderful book. Everyone should read it.

Every Man Dies Alone - Long forgotten German author Hans Fallada is my discovery of the year. I'm doggedly tracking down everything I can find by him. This one is probably his masterpiece. This story of simple bravery in the face of overwhelming evil is hard to forget.

My Dog Tulip - J. R. Ackerley loves his dog, but he has no illusions about her. (Maybe one or two.) His memoir of her is clear-headed, down-to-earth, no-nonsense, funny and touching. All dog-lovers should read it.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl developed his own psychology based on the idea that what motivates mankind is the search for a life full of meaning. Normally, I'd find this sort of thing to be a bunch of pop-psychology nonsense, but Dr. Frankl developed the basis for his psychology while a prisoner in Treblinka and Auschwitz. The result is an inspiring book that made me reconsider things I hold as foundational truths.

Les Miserables - You're right to scoff at the idea that I might actually re-read a 1100 plus page book. In my defense I have read David Copperfield and Bleak House twice. Victor Hugo's masterwork took months to get through, but I am keeping my copy, and I fully intend to reread it in my old age. I'll be skipping the 80 page summary of the Napoleonic Wars next time.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - A man suffers a stroke that leaves him almost completely unable to move any part of his body except a single eye lid. A hospital employee develops a system whereby she can call out letters until the man blinks when he hears the one he wants written down. Together they produce a wonderful book, one I'll be reading again someday. (The movie is also excellent.)

Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout's title character his been facing some backlash lately. Many people say they have to like the main character to like a novel. I'm puzzled by this because I did like Olive Kitteridge, though I suspect she'd have little patience for me. And I loved the novel. I've already read it twice, so it simply had to go on the this list.

Wizard of the Crow - I picked this one up on a impulse, because my brother mentioned he had to read Ngugi for a graduate school course in African literature years ago. I loved it even when I didn't understand it. I'm sure that someone more versed in East African politics would get much more out of Wizard of the Crow than I did, but I had lots of fun with it, myself.

Honorable mentions, again in no particular order. Run by Ann Patchet. My book club's second Patchet novel. We all loved it just like we did Bell Canto. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Fascinating and not at all what I expected. Absolute Brightness by James Lescene. The haunting story of a boy persecuted because he was gay. Cassandra by Christa Wolf. What if you could see the future, but no one believed you? On Writing by Stephen King. Useful, practical advice for both amateur and professional writers. Red Lights by Georges Simenon. A master work by a master of crime fiction. Columbine by Dave Cullen. I always say that if you want to know the truth about what really happened, you have to wait at least ten years. The Emperor's Chidren by Claire Messud. Ms. Messud always manages to create a cast of characters as real as people I know. The Looming Tower by Lawerence Wright. Non-fiction journalism that you can't put down.

So, did you read anything in 2009 that you'll read again?

Short Story Sunday: "The Prison" by Domenic Stansberry

It was 1946, and Alcatraz was burning.

Opening sentence to "The Prison" by Domenic Stansberry

For pure entertainment value, the Noir series of mystery anthologies published by Akashic Books is hard to beat. This is the second volume I've picked up and so far both Paris Noir and San Francisco Noir deliver the goods. Solid, hard-boiled crime fiction full of the attention to place film-noir is so good at. They reek of atmosphere. And the stories are darn good, too.

"The Prison" concerns an Italian-American soldier, home to the North Beach nieghborhood of San Francisco after the war. He has scores to settle, if he wants to. His father, an anti-fascist, was driven out of town by the local Italian-American populace, which was a little too in love with Mussolini before the war, then imprisoned by the Federal government which saw Mussolini's influence in every Italian-American they investigated once the war began. The characters include the powerful local judge who handed the narrator's father over to the authorities, a girl named Anne, and over them all the smoke from the fires set on Alcatraz by rioting prisoners led by Al Capone.

Add to the mix some very choice lines like this one when the narrator first sees Anne standing in a crowd of his old friends: "Her eyes met mine and I felt something fall apart inside me."

I am so there.

If you've read a short story or two lately and would like to participate in Short Story Sunday please feel free to leave a link in a comment below.

Friday Picture Reading #17

Boomer Reading from Reading with Rover.

The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam

Dear Joan,

I hope I know you well enough to say this.

Opening from The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam.

I had the good fortune of not knowing anything about this book when I started reading it. Many books end up on my to-be-read shelf because of recommendations on book blogs, as this one did, only to lie there so long that I forget why I put them there in the first place. I decided to read The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam without reading the inside flap, just so I'd have no idea what to expect.

It turned out to be a little unnerving.

The Queen of the Tambourine is a series of letters from Eliza Peabody to her neighbor, Joan. Eliza is a difficult woman. She reminded me immediately of Olive Kitteridge, the title character in Elizabeth Strout's novel. Both women are far from perfect, not immediately sympathetic, and prone to provoking love/hate reactions in readers. Eliza is something of a busybody, sticking her nose into other people's lives, writing them little notes to give them a bit of helpful advice. Of course no one ever wants such a note which has contributed to Eliza's isolation. The neighbors don't like her very much, the people at her church dread her presence, the patients at the hospice where she works as a volunteer cannot abide her, and her husband is ready to move out.

Eliza explains all of this in her letters to Joan, who leaves her own husband to explore the world. Eliza's letters are very funny and very entertaining. They remind me of what we lost when we all switched to email. She is free with intimate details, with her own opinions and she has a very sharp wit. For a while I wondered if she would end up a novelist. Joan never writes back.

(If you haven't read the inside flap and don't know what to expect and want to keep it that way read no further here today. Just know that I recommend the book.)

Of course I began to suspect that Eliza is going a little mad right away. Sending a series of very intimate letters to someone who does not reply is generally not the act of a healthy mind, especially if that person is basically a stranger. How much can the reader trust what Eliza says? A madwoman can tell the truth in ways others cannot, and Eliza lets the truth fly. But the reader cannot be certain she isn't making things up as she goes.

Eliza has one patient at the hospice she is allowed to work with, a man dying of AIDS. He enjoys Eliza as she is, with her wild hoop earrings and errant way with local gossip. He gives her the name "The Queen of the Tambourine" because of the earrings. She says they are a gift from Joan. If he suspects she is going mad, I wonder if he sees it in part as a reaction to her situation as it was in Sylivia Plath's The Bell Jar. The two books are sisters under the skin. Had Ms. Plath's heroine married, lived to middle age, been a suburban London housewife, she could have become Eliza Peabody, The Queen of the Tambourine.

This book counts towards the Random Reading Challenge.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen.

Opening line to City of Thieves by David Benioff

What if you wrote a novel set during one of the most horrific battles of the twentieth century with more casualties than almost any other calamity in human history and everything came out okay in the end?  Almost everything?

David Benioff's novel City of Thieves takes place during the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Russia, one of the worst battles of World War II.  (Over 1.1 million casualities.  Only the Battles of Berlin and Stalingrad had higher casualities.  Iwo Jima had roughly 20,000 in comparison.)  

Heavy stuff for a comedy.  

That the novel works as well as it does is due to the two main characters.  Lev Beniov, the grandfather mentioned in the opening and the narrator of the novel's main section, is an inexperienced teenager arrested for looting the body of a German pilot who froze to death after parachuting from his burning plane.  While in jail Lev meets Kolya, a handsome, college student and would be author/critic  arrested for desertion, mistakenly he insists.  The two are due to be executed in the morning but manage to convince the officer in charge to give them one more chance.  The officer's daughter is to be married in a week and his wife is insisting that she have a real wedding cake at the reception.  If the boys can find one dozen eggs needed for the cake, the officer will spare their lives.

The two set out looking through the city and then the countryside for 12 eggs.  

Along the way they talk about all the things two young men would talk about: sex, literature, chess--sex mostly.  Lev is a virgin; Kolya considers himself a lady's man.  In fact, it is much easier for Kolya to find a willing partner than it is to find a dozen eggs during the siege of Leningrad.  Eventually, the two must go into the countryside, behind the German lines to find the eggs they need to stay alive. 

 I was more than willing to play along with the novel's premise, it's a good, darkly comic idea.  The two main characters are not exactly new, (Butch and Sundance, Thelma and Louise, C3PO and R2D2-- take your pick) but they are charming and it's easy to root for them.  While I didn't laugh-out-loud at them, I did smile quite a bit.  But I'm betting, that if you put your mind to it, you can figure out the book's plot based on what I've told you.   I'm not boasting when I say I saw every twist coming from miles away.  I'm disappointed. That the book has so few surprises in it's second half, is a problem.  What could have been a haunting story becomes a synopsis for a pedestrian buddy film.  

But in the right hands, and with a few changes here and there, City of Thieves could be a very good movie.  Something along the line of Seven Beauties.  

Short Story Sunday: "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorw

I've argued here before that apocolyptic science fiction is a form of escapist fantasy. What would it be like if the world ended in this particular way and only this kind of person survived? Popular author and keeper of the influencial blog Boingboing Cory Doctorow looks at what would happen to the internet if the world ended and only the people who administer the operating systems (sysadmins) of various search engines and internet hubs survived. Civilization may be falling, but people still need Google.

Mr. Doctorow's heroes, guys who advertize their nerd status through the use of t-shirts, are all on the job when the end comes. They work in a sealed building designed to protect the servers that form their section of the internet which now protects them from whatever it is out there that's killing everyone. The sysadmins do everything they can to keep the internet going. People may not be able to contact eachother via phone but they can still use email, still put up blog posts, and they're going to need to as things get worse, as civilization ends.

Because the sysadmins are able to connect with their conterparts all over the world, they are able to post regular updates on the state of things, to connect survivors with eachother and provide them some of the information they need to stay alive. Of course, they still have to fight their way past waves of automated spam which continues long after whatever it's selling has ceased to exist. In the end, spam will talk to itself, an undying conversation no one wants to hear, automated replies to replies to replies.

You can find full text versions of "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" as well as podcast version and a full cast radio play version at Mr. Doctorow's site here. It's a lot of fun. Maybe someday he'll write a story in which the world ends and only 7th grade English teachers like me survive. I can tell you one thing, that world would be quiet.


Full Disclosure: The cover of "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" is from Robot Comics. The photo of Cory Doctorow comes from TheAge.com.

Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge -- Suggestions the Sequel

I may be pushing this a little too much, but I'm kind of excited to be hosting a challenge for 2010. My first one after several years of book blogging. The idea is to read a book, watch a movie or television show based on it and include some mention of both in your review, whether it be just a line or two or a full review of each.


Several people sent in suggestions for good book/movie pairings.

Ted suggests:

• Howard's End
• A Passage to India
• Brideshead Revisited (The old TV series, not the more current movie)
• My Life as a Dog

Amanda suggests The Hours.

Theliterarystew suggests:

• The Go-Between
• Doctor Zhivago
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Jewel in the Crown

Farmlanebooks suggests:

• Fingersmith
• Tipping the Velvet
• Affiniaty

Thomas at My Porch suggests:

• The Reader
• Babette's Feast

Biblibio suggests:

• All the King's Men
  

I thought I'd throw in a couple of more off-beat suggestions:

• Thumbsucker
• Little Children
• The Lathe of Heaven
• The Watchmen
• A Bridge to Terabithia
• Brokeback Mountain
• The Last Picture Show
• Pride and Prejudice/Bride and Prejudice

The Henderson County Public Library has a great list of books that have been adapted into movies here. I found this list on The Bibliophiles Lounge where Chase92 is hosting the 30 Books to Movies Challenge. It seems that Chase92 and I came up the just about the exact same idea for a challenge independent of each other. We even posted our challenges within the same 24-hour period. So if you're feeling ambitious and want to go for 30, please feel free to double count your books/movies here and sign-up for both challenges. And please visit Chase92's blog, The Bibliophiles Lounge.

The Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge starts on New Year's Day. For full details or to sign up go here.

Dakota's Favorites: Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields

This review first ran here in December of 2007. I'm always pleased to revisit Carol Shields, one of my favorite authors.

Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields is a little gem, a masterful chamber piece. It's not the grand orchestra of The Stone Diaries but it is wonderful none-the-less. Set in a Canadian university town in the 1970's, Small Ceremonies is a year-in-the-life of Judith Gill, mother, wife, biographer. Judith lives with her husband, a professor of Milton, her teenage daughter and her young son. Their family is haunted by the year they spent living in England in the home of an English university professor whose family spent that same year in Cyprus.

While in the English home Judith discovered the professor's collection of unpublished novels. She read them all and later used the plot of one as the basis for a novel she wrote as part of a creative writing class. She never pursued the novel, gave it up to return to writing biographies, but her professor and friend Furlong Eberhardt used her version of the novel as the basis for his only successful work. That's the basic plot of Small Ceremonies but it has little to do with what makes the book so wonderful.

What makes Small Ceremonies such a treat is Ms. Shields' insight into the ordinary, into what makes the simple events of every day so mysterious and so full of wonder. She does this without sentiment but with open eyes. For examply, one day Judith Gill searches through her husbands desk for writing paper and finds a drawer full of yarn. This is so out of character for her husbands that she can't help but wonder what is going on with him. Who does he know that kints? Is this evidence of an affair? The reader suspects all sorts of things just as Judith does, but she cannot bring herself to confront him about a drawer full of yarn. Judith's son Richard corresponds with the English professor's daughter each week, waits anxiously every Tuesday for the mail and the letter from Anita whom he has clearly fallen in love with though they have never met nor exchanged pictures over the course of their years long correspondence. One day the letters stop coming, of course. Judith sees her son's sorrow and also sees how quickly he gets over it and notices how the loss of the weekly letters actually helps Richard become outgoing enough to develop a small circle of friends.

Nothing huge happens in Small Ceremonies, just the unexpected things that happen now and then in an ordinary life. But these small surprises add up to an enchanting read. Carol Shields is the sort of writer who says things we'd all like to say, but didn't know how to or didn't know we needed to. You're likely to find yourself somewhere in one of her books, or someone you know. When you do, you'll see that even everyday folk can be the stuff of novels.

I'm giving Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields five out of five stars.

BTT: You Put That in Your Book!!!

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

What items have you ever used as a bookmark? What is the most unusual item you’ve ever used or seen used?

My bookmarks are very ordinary. Whatever piece of paper is handy at the time. If it's not paper then it's whatever will fit, a pen, a comb, my reading glasses. I've a few actual bookmarks that I use when I can find them--one from the Japanese Literature Challenge, one a student made for me.

However.....

This question gives me a chance to mention one of my favorite blogs, Forgotten Bookmarks. Forgotten Bookmarks belongs to Michael who runs his family's used bookstore. As the shops book buyer, Michael constantly runs into things left in books and forgotten. He posts pictures of them, along with the books he found them in, on Forgotten Bookmarks.

Here's one of his favorites:
I like this little postcard found in a cheap volume of Poe stories:

If you're looking for a little diversion today, stop by Forgotten Bookmarks.

How did you know I was in a funk?

Many of you know Lisa Roe from her work as an on-line publicist. She has sent many of us an advanced reader copy. Lisa has come up with a wonderful idea to break the winter/holiday blues. The Dewey Tree project is based on a simple idea--to honor book blogger Dewey who passed away last year by spreading the love of books and by using our books to help others.

The Dewey Tree project asks you to collect the books you have that you no longer need. Maybe a stack of ARCs, and donnate them to the charity of your choice. Local school, nearby library, charity shop, whatever works best for you. Take a picture of this, somehow and send it in to The Dewey Project.

Lisa's email arrived at the perfect time. I was in a bit of a funk and needed something good to happen to get out of it. Thanks.

Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton

Andy Warhol famously said of himself, "I come from nowhere," a claim that makes his spectacular domination of the art world over the past fifty years seem only more mythical--a character without a past, who conjured himself out of his own head.

Opening to chapter one of Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol.

Not everyone thinks Andy Warhol is a genius, but everyone knows who he is. Love him; hate him; be indifferent to him; he is one of only a handfull of 20th century artist just about everyone recognizes immediately. Recognizes and can probably call to mind at least one of his paintings be it soup can or movie star.

Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton is a highly readable account of just how Andy Warhol managed to become a household name. Mr. Scherman and Mr. Dalton limit their biography to the 1960's, the period that saw the rise of Pop Art and Andy Warhol's most creative and influential period. Mr. Warhol's childhood and young life along with what happened to him after the 1960's are covered, but focusing their biography on his most productive period allows the author's to go in-depth in the most interesting part of the artist's career. The result is a fascinating look at how Warhol's art came to be.
It's possible that his most well recognized work is still his first successful series, the Campbell's Soup cans. Mr. Warhol began as a commercial artist. For many years he made a very good living as a painter of shoes for a series of print advertisements. Once he began to become more and more interested in crossing the line into fine arts he also became interested in blurring the line between fine art and commercial art. Throughout his career her would force the art world to reexamine why there was a distinction between the two. As both a commercial artist and a fine artist, he continued to produce commercial art throughout the 1960's, advertisements for shoes and cars paid the bills for his famed factory.

The soup cans were suggested by a friend who was paid 50 dollars for her ideas. They created a stir right from the start. But they did not create sales. The series was part of Warhol's first significant Los Angelos gallery show. Everyone wanted to see them, and everyone had something to say about them, usually a joke, but very few people bought them, even at only 100 dollars a piece. Even in the mide 1960's that was a low price. In the end, the gallery owner bought back the few he'd sold in order to keep the set intact. He paid Warhol 1000 dollars for the 32 canvases, each a different flavor of soup. They were later sold to the Museum of Modern Art in New York at just over 15 million dollars.

While the Campbell's Soup cans did not make much money for Andy Warhol, nor did any of the art he produced during the 1960's other than the commercial ard he continued to do to pay the bills, it did make him famous and it did make it clear that he was a force in the art world to be reconed with.

Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol divides its attention between the story of how Mr. Warhol made his art and what his life was like. The authors do an excellent job with this. It would be more than easy to write a salacious, gossipy story of life at the Factory, the famed studio where Mr. Warhol worked during the 1960's, but the authors are much more interested in the story of Warhol's art itself. They are true believers in Warhol's genius as an artist and they make a very convincing case for it. I came away from the book with a much deeper appreciation of Andy Warhol's work and of what he was trying to do. Both the art and the ideas behind it are much more complex that they appear at first glance.

The last secion of Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol deals with his work as a film maker. While Mr. Warhol loses me as an interested fan once he takes up filmmaking the book still entertains. We get the story of how Mr. Warhol began making improvised films along with the ideas behind the films but, based on the descriptions of his movies I found myself agreeing with Pauline Kael, a film critic quoted in the book for having said, "So often after an evening of avant-garde films one wants to go see a movie." The authors do make a very strong case for Mr. Warhol's filme The Chelsea Girls as an important landmark in cinema history. They left me wanting to see the movie in its original two screen projection format.

I suspect biographies of artists have a very specialized audience, especially those concerned more with the production of art than with the more sensational aspects of the artists life. This is too bad really. Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol is a very good read. I found it every bit as informative and entertaining as Becoming Judy Chicago, which I reviewed here in 2007. After reading and enjoying these two books it's clear to me that I am a member of this very specialized audience and I suspect that many other readers out there would probably discover that they are too.

Full disclosure: I found the Soup Can image here. Ethel Schull 36 Times came from here. The still from Chelsea Girls came from here. I recieved an advanced review copy of Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol from the publisher.

Short Story Sunday: "Easy Street" by James Purdy

I've come to look forward to James Purdy's short stories. I don't read entire anthologies at a time. Instead I read one or two and then move to the next book on my shelf, which means I get to James Purdy two or three times a year. So far, I've been very happy with the stories I've read.

"Easy Street" is about an unusual relationship. Viola has lived with Mother Green for decades. Mother Green is in her nineties when the story opens, and has not left her large house for many years. Viola, some 30 years her junior, takes care of Mother Green and runs the house. The two have enjoyed a very quiet life together.

One day, a movie crew arrives on their block to film several scenes in a building down the street. The noise and clamour of the crew and the crowd of on-lookers it attracts upsets the lives of Viola and Mother Green. Late one night, a very good-looking, young black man arrives at their doorstep. The film's star, a celebrity sex symbol, he enters the lives of Viola and Mother Green, becoming a regular visitor. Both Mother Green and Viola are soon infatuated with him and are distraught when he eventually leaves town.

If this plot sounds familiar you may be thinking of Ladies in Lavender, a Judi Dench/Maggie Smith film based on a short story by William Locke. Mr. Purdy's story shares a common premise with "Ladies in Lavender" but that's about all. The two tales take a similar idea in different directions, so much so that knowing one does not affect experiencing the other. For one thing, Mr. Purdy's story is very southern, almost Gothic. The lives of Viola and Mother Green and their reactions to the young film star they meet are straight out of William Faulkner or Tennessee Williams. Either Faulkner or Williams would have done an excellent job had they been given the chance to write a screenplay based on "Easy Street."

If you'd like to participate in Short Story Sunday, please leave a link in a comment below. If you're looking for a short story to read, there are currently 333 titles in the 1001 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die list. Please let me know if you have a story you'd like to add.


Full disclosure: The photograph of James Purdy was found at Poetry Dispatch and Other Notes from the Underground.

Friday Picture Reading #16

Cabinet photo of Spanish American War era soldiers. From The Cabinet Card Gallery.

I Have Needs, Too -- Booking Through Thursday

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

But enough about you, what about ME?
Today’s question?
What’s your favorite part of Booking Through Thursday? Why do you participate (or not)?

My favorite questions are those that spark the longer entries I written. Some of these are perfectly ordinary questions that just came along at the right time. Others are unusual things, or at least things I hadn't thought of before.

Some of my favorite recent questions:

Name 15 books that have stuck with you over the years.

Is there still symbolism in use in today's fiction?

How do you arrange your books when you store them?

What's a book you could live in?

I participate in Booking Through Thursday for fun. I enjoy thinking about the questions because they give me a reason to spend some time writing about books in a big picture fashion that ordinary review writing does not. I like having a chance to discuss some favorite books or some book related issue that wouldn't come up otherwise. Since I started including random pictures, I've been enjoying the hunt for images as well.

Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital

Brightness falls from the air, and so do the words, which rush him.

Opening to Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital

Terrorists hijack a Paris-New York flight. For days they fly from place to place, negotiating landing rights and refueling. At one stop they unload the bodies of several victims who've died in the extreme heat of the passenger cabin. At another, they release all of the children. Then the plane explodes over the ocean, killing everyone left on board.

Years later, the children have grown up and found each other through Internet chat rooms. One of them, Samantha, tracks down Lowell a single father whose mother was one of the passengers killed on Air France 64. Samantha does not believe all of the passengers were on board when the plane exploded. She thinks some of them were released during a stop in Iraq. She thinks the authorities have never admitted the full truth of what happened on Air France 64 or of the events that led up to the hijacking. Lowell has reason to believe her. His father was one of the authorities. Before he died his father left him the key to a bus stop locker that contains his last confession, several video tapes and a coded notebook that Lowell believes contains all of the details behind the hijacking of Air France 64.  Lowell's home is ransacked and the coded notebook stolen. The novel jumps from past to present as Samantha and Lowell try to find out exactly what happened on Air France 64 and to evade those who don't want the truth discovered.

It could not have been easy to write thrillers in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. (Due Preparations for the Plague was published in 2003.) How does an author deal with the still lingering emotions of a very real event while writing in a genre that has entertainment as its core purpose? Ms. Turner Hospital chooses to ignore September 11 altogether; she makes no mention of the attacks, placing her novel in a time outside of their existence. This strategy works very well. While the reader is focused on the events of the fictional Air France 64 hi-jacking, its aftermath and the subsequent cover-up one can't help but compare this fictional attack with the real one of September 11.  By ignoring September 11, Ms. Hospital makes it all the more difficult to ignore.

Though it's not about September 11, Due Preparations for the Plague is the perfect thriller for a post September 11 audience. Ms. Turner Hospital covers all the territory her readers want covered. She tells the story of the conspiracy that led up to the hi-jacking connecting it to the government which hopes to control the terrorists but cannot. She tells the story of the families of the victims and their struggle to deal with the hi-jacking's aftermath. She spares the children and she gives the victims a voice in the powerful closing section of the novel.

In Due Preparations for the Plague Ms. Turner Hospital has written a gripping, thought-provoking thriller that does much more than entertain its readers.