Hunger by Knut Hamsun

All of this happened while 

I was walking around starving 

in Christiania--that strange 

city no one escapes from until 

it has left its mark on him...

Opening line to 

Hunger

 by Knut Hamsun

 translated by Robert Bly

I came to Knut Hamsun by way of George Egerton.  Two writers few modern readers have heard of outside of academia and Norway.  George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright) wrote two volumes of wonderful short stories, Keynotes and Discords, in the late 1890's and became one of the prominent figures in the feminist literary movement known as the "New Women."  She had a romantic attachment with Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, whom she listed as a strong influence on her own writing.  In fact, she translated his first novel, Hunger, into English.  Mr. Hamsun went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, while Ms. Egerton faded into obscurity until modern critics such as Elaine Showalter rediscovered her work.  I found her through Ms. Showalter's book A Literature of Their Own.  


Hunger is based on the ten years Mr. Hamsun spent in Christiania, now modern Oslo, trying to become a writer, earning very little money for the few articles and stories he could sell, and going without food much of the time.  The novel's subject is hunger and its effects on the psychological and physical state of those who endure it.  


As such, it's an excellent work.  Because Mr. Hamsun believed that the subject of literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, Hunger focuses on the experience and thoughts of its un-named narrator almost to the exclusion of  other characters.  There are other people in the book--the editor at the magazine, a landlady, an old friend who tries to offer help, a woman he meets on the streets a few times--but these characters are of little interest to Hamsun and to the reader.  What interests Hamsun is the narrator's state of mind, the delusions his hunger causes, and his own desire to keep up appearances as he insists on surviving only by writing instead of taking on a profession which he feels his beneath a man of his sensibilities.

Photo of author from Wikipedia

Hunger is interesting reading, and this insistence on writing as the sole source of income eventually worked for Hamsun himself, eventually.  But midway through the book, one  starts wishing the narrator would simply get a job.  I suppose it may be of those moments when a modern perspective intrudes on the experience of reading classic literature, but I suspect many of Mr. Hamsun's contemporaries had the same reaction.  Even Franz Kafka took a job with an insurance agency, for heaven's sake.  No one ever accused him of selling out.


This trail I've been following--Elaine Showalter to George Egerton to Knut Hamsun--leads to Franz Kafka who some critics say was influenced by Mr. Hamsun's novel Hunger when he wrote his short story "The Hunger Artist."   This possible influence strikes me as likely.    


In later life, Mr. Hamsun was a strong advocate for National Socialism.  He praised Adolf Hitler and even sent his Nobel Prize medal to Jospeh Goebbels.  While Mr. Hamsun would survive World War II by several years, Mr. Kafka's sisters, who had outlived him,  died in Auschwitz.  

TSS: Dare to Go West

From the American Heritage Center
 at the University of Wyoming 

It's been fun following everyone's progress with The TBR Dare.  It seems I stumble on an update or a mention somewhere every couple of days.  Most people who signed up for it are doing pretty well.

I'm hanging on, though I have discovered a couple of very tempting books.  And my TBR shelf is actually getting a bit roomy.  There may even be enough space for a couple of bookends by April 1.

I used to collect antique book ends shaped like animals, but they've all been in the closet for years. Ran out of shelf space.

While it is too late to sign up for The TBR Dare, you can still joing  the Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge.  Just for fun.  Read a western in the month of May.  Or, if you don't like challenges, you can join me in a read-a-long of Thomas Berger's novel, Little Big Man which later became the Dustin Hoffman movie.

Westerns have an undeserved bad reputation.  They've been dismissed by many readers as out-dated pulp.  They can be, but so can every other genre one can name.  There have always been classic westerns that "transcend the genre" and there are plenty of newer titles that stray far from tradition.   I've got a little suggested reading list posted here.

You can sign-up for the challenge here or click the tab at the top of this page.  If you don't like challenges or have sworn off of them, you can sign up for the read-a-long here.  If you don't do challenges or read-a-longs one has to wonder why you're still reading this post. ;-p

Friday Picture Reading - Bellini

Giovanni Bellini, St. Jerome Reading in the Countryside

Slob by Ellen Porter

My name is Owen Birnbaum, 

and I'm probably fatter than 

you are.

Opening to Slob 

by Ellen Porter

Owen Birnbaum is not a genius.  He's one I.Q. point shy of genius, but his adoptive mother won't let him tell people that anymore.  Like many classic boy geniuses, Owen is working on a secret project, Nemisis.  Owen's theory is that Nemisis will pick up television signals that have been sent into space and bounced back to earth by nearby stars.  Since it takes several years for television signals to make this journey, Nemisis should make it possible to watch transmissions from the past, a visual time machine.  

There is a certain signal in particular that Owen wants to find, the one from the security camera in his parents deli.  Owen's parents forgot to replace the tape in the security system the night they were murdered.   Because of this, the perpetrators were never caught. If Owen can find the signal, maybe justice can be done at last.

Owen is also fat, the fattest boy in his class.  And someone is stealing the three Oreo cookies his mother puts in his lunch bag each day.   Meantime, Owen's little sister has joined a group of girls called GWAB, (Girls who are Boys) taken on the name Jeremy and started dressing as a boy.  

Slob is a gentle sort of book.  While the issues it deals with are heavy--grief, bullying, gender identity, body issues-- the resolution is entirely hopeful and even the book's worst villains aren't all that bad in the end.  (Owen is even able to find some peace with his parents' murder.)    Slob is an entertaining book that will probably satisfy most young readers.  I've a group of seventh grade boys currently reading it for their book club who all like it so far.  

Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Now the shadow of the 

column--the column which 

supports the southwest corner 

of the roof--divides the 

corresponding corner of the 

veranda into two equal parts.

Opening line to 

Jealousy 

by Alain Robbe-Grillet 

translated from the French 

by Richard Howard

A man suspects his wife is having an affair with his neighbor.  He searches  for proof, for clues, playing the same sequence of events over and over in his mind looking for signs.  When did it begin?  Do they suspect he knows?  How far will the affair go?

Alain Robbe-Grillet's short novel, Jealousy, covers familiar territory-- a married woman's indiscretion with her married neighbor.  But Mr. Robbe-Grillet breaks new ground, or I should say broke new ground when he wrote Jealousy in 1957.  Where have the French been hiding him since?

Jealousy is a third-person first-person narrative.  All but one of the scenes feature the husband and wife entertaining the neighbor who spends time at their house while his own wife stays home sick.  But the husband is almost invisible.  The third person narrator never mentions him.  Instead, the narrator obsessively reviews what look like unimportant events in a stream of consciousness style that perplexes as much as it enlightens.  

Try as he might, the narrator cannot find proof of the wife's infidelity.  Glances over dinner, pauses in the conversation, even a night spent together in a hotel do not prove anything.  There seems to be no grounds for jealousy.  But suspiscion lingers.  The reader understands that the wife and the neighbor must be up to something.  Why keep going over the same set of events if they're not?  Soon the reader becomes aware that the third person narrator is the husband--that the third person  is really a first person narration.  Obsessed with his wife's infidelity, the husband has written himself out of the novel as he jealously examines and re-examines how his wife and his neighbor behave.

One night, the neighbor kills a centipede as it crawls up the wall during an uneventful dinner.  This event is observed in such detail and so many times from so many angles that the reader soon  believes it must mean something.  But what?  The neighbor and the wife drive into town, a drive of several hours from the banana plantations where they live, and fail to return until the next day claiming bad road conditions prevented night travel.  This also must mean something, but again what are we to make of it?

By the end, the experience of reading Jealously becomes the experience of jealousy itself.  There is no resolution, no linear plot, not much in the way of character either. Instead, the novel takes the reader into the emotion.  Jealousy is the novel's main character in the end.  It serves no purpose, it is not resolved, it has no single cause nor anything to support its existence except itself.  Jealousy gives birth to itself and feeds itself as it grows.  

Jealousy knocked my socks off.  It's the best books I've read in a very long time.  I'm thrilled to find something so fresh, even if it is 50 years old.  I know it's only January, but this one is sure to make my best reads of 2011 list.   Alain Robbe-Grillet, where have you been all my life?

TSS: Reading Tristram Shandy, School Closure and The TBR Dare

Classic chunksters have led my reading each year for several years running.  Big, big, books like Victor Hugo',s Les Miserables and  Fyodor Dostoevsky's, Crime and Punishment.  Books so huge it's best to read them over the course of several months.   Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment, both big chunksters, each ended up on my yearly favorite reads list.

I wish either my father or my 

mother, or indeed both 

of them, as they were in duty 

both equally bound to it, had 

minded what they were about

 when they begot me;

Opening clause to book one of 

Tristram Shandy 

by Lawrence Sterne

This year, I decided to give Lawrence Sterne's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen another go. I tried it several years ago, the year after the movie came out*, only to find it nearly consumed by Dakota before I got halfway through.  This time, I'm keeping the book on a high shelf and limiting my reading to just one or two books per month. Mr. Sterne published the original novel in 9 books over a ten year period.  I won't have to wait ten years to find out how it all ends.

Or rather, how it all doesn't end.

The narrator intends to tell his life story and to present his views on the prevailing issues of the day, but he is so continually sidetracked that he never arrives at his own birth.  Books one and two begins on the day of his birth, but finds the narrator must explain why his mother is at home attended by the village midwife instead of in London with the best modern physician. This leads him into a debate over midwifery and modern medicine, a discussion of the forceps, the background of his parents marriage, the complete history of the village midwife and the village doctor and the question of whether it is better to be born head first or feet first.  (There are no women in the room during this conversation.)  There's also some business about a horse and a great deal of information about his Uncle Toby and Toby's famous groin injury incurred at the Siege of Namur.  While it's far from easy reading, it is lots of fun.

18th century literature rules!


School Closure Update


The staff at my school met with the district superintendent Friday to have our questions about school consolidation answered.  At this point it's really too soon for anything firm, but she did say that her goal is to have the administration of both remaining middle schools in place by the end of this coming week and to have all staffing decision made by mid-February.  I think mid-March is more likely, myself.   The district lawyers are looking into how they can get the new schools out of Program Improvement status.  If you're a teacher you know what that means. If you're not, you're lucky.  I suspect it can be done, but that the district will have to do much more than re-draw the boundaries and add additional staff.

Meantime, many teachers and many, many parents are already trying to get into the 'rich' school.**  I've no driving desire to go to one school or the other.  They're both perfectly good, middle class schools.  We're in Marin County, California after all.  What I want is a school with a new, exciting program. A place people want to transfer to because it offers opportunities other schools do not and because it has an excellent dedicated staff.  At this point it's just too soon to say which school will come closer to that ideal.  I'm not ruling out looking for a new district.  I've got 20 years before I can retire.  I want to do something exciting with them.


The TBR Dare

We are one week away from completing the first month of The TBR Dare.  I admit it, I'm hitting a wall.  Two new books arrived in the mail this week to tempt me, to taunt me, to tease me.  I considering cheating; I admit it.  How would my readers know that these books haven't been on the shelf for months?  They could have.  I considered fudging by leaving them on my TBR shelf for a week or two, long enough to consider them as fully fledged members of my TBR stack.

But, I'm remaining true to the spirit of The TBR Dare and reading only books that were on my TBR shelf or on my library hold list as of Jan. 1, 2011.  With possible exceptions for book club books.

I'll likely gain a lot of character as a result of this experience.  Character growth.  How I hate character growth.



*The 2006 movie is very good. It's also a wonderful example of why movies should remain true to the spirit of a book, but largely ignore the actual plot details as needed.

** Feel free to read "white" for "rich."  Both terms are an accurate description of the school in question.

  

Dakota's Favorites: Regeneration by Pat Barker

Dakota's Favorites are reviews from the archive featuring some of my favorite reads.  I found Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy as a result of book blogging.  It's become a great favorite, one I plan on re-reading someday.  Regeneration is the first volume in the trilogy.



I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

Regeneration by Pat Barker combines the stories of real and fictional people to create a compelling account of life in a psychiatric hospital for British soldiers during the first world war. Barker uses the true stories of poets Siegfried Sassoon and Owen Wilson, who met and worked together during their stay at Craiglockhart Hospital, Dr. William Rivers their psychiatrist and the fictional Billy Prior. The three soldiers, along with the other patients in the hospital, are all officers who have all suffered nervous breakdowns to varying degrees. It is Dr. Rivers's job to cure them and return the to service, either back to the front in France or to some other work.

The novel is a true ensemble of characters; each takes a significant turn at center stage and each is fascinating in his own way. While there is no single narrative thread to the novel, the psychological profiles of the four main characters that emerge and their struggles to regain a sense of normalcy, to recover from their experience enough to return to it, make for compelling reading. Whether Sassoon has suffered a breakdown is not clear. He is placed in the hospital to save the army from embarrassment. A true war hero, decorated for bravery after saving the lives of many wounded men, he joins with several prominent pacifists and publishes a declaration against the war. Friends of his convince the army that he has had a breakdown and should be treated instead of court martialled. (This will save the army a good deal of embarrassement as well. ) Dr. Rivers treats him, as he does Owen and Prior, through basic Freudian techniques, the talking cure. Nightmares are problems for all of the soldiers in the hospital, so there is plenty of dream analysis in the book, all of it interesting reading.

Many of the officers in Craiglockhart want to be cured so they can go back to the battle, because they want to return to their men whom they feel guilty about leaving and because they have difficulty dealing with civilians who do not understand their experience. Billy Prior meets a local girl during the times he is allowed to leave the hospital and a romance develops. She knows that he is a patient, that he has had some sort of breakdown, but he does not tell her the details. He keeps her innocent of his experience so that her innocence can be his place of refuge. He loves her because she is not a part of the war; but this fact also separates them, prevents him from opening up to her in a way that would make a deeper bond possible.

Dr. Rivers becomes friends with many of his patients and often visits them after they leave the hospital. He is older than his many of his patients, actually old enough to be their fathers which makes it even easier for the doctor-patient relationship to become father-patient. His techniques and his manner with his patients work so well and are so admirable that I began to reconsider my own general skepticism about psychiatry. The men in Craiglockhart are so well looked after that it becomes tempting to read Regeneration as a commentary on how mental illness is viewed in the military today. Sassoon can have a 'breakdown' and return to battle as an officer in charge with no apparent loss of face while in the U.S. today we regularly hear stories about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who won't seek counseling for fear of repercussions from their superior officers that might end their careers. (How does this attitude contribute to the high suicide rate amoung U.S. soldiers today seems like a questions we're not really allowed to ask if we want to "support the troops.") But towards the end of Regeneration Dr. Rivers goes to a psychiatric hospital in London where he witnesses a different sort of treatment. The Doctor there treats his patients through prolonged sessions of electric shock. A patient who is mute has shock treatments applied to his throat, neck and mouth, until he is forced to speak again. The patient is speaking by the end of the near day-long session, but Dr. Rivers is horrified by the force that has been used as is the reader. The best treatment, that of Dr. Rivers, is reserved for the officer class while the other soldiers are subjected to treatments that would be classified as torture today.

The story continues in The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road which I'll be getting to shortly. I found Regeneration an enjoyable read the same way I found Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy enjoyable. In each series the reader is not rushed down a plot driven road towards a climax. Instead, we get to spend time with a set of characters who make up an enjoyable circle of friends. I'm giving Regeneration by Pat Barker five out of five stars. I'd have consider it a major contender for my top five books of the year.

Ariel by Steven R. Boyett

I was bathing in a lake when I

saw the unicorn.

Opening line to

Ariel by Steven R. Boyett

Sometimes I buy books because I like the cover art.  I admit it.  Months of summer vacation ahead*.  A handsome young man holding a ninja sword ready for battle amid the ruins of a fallen New York City.  Looks like fun to me.  Just the sort of Bladerunner like thing I enjoyed back in the day when I might not have looked completely ridiculous holding a samurai sword myself.  Just a little bit ridiculous. Okay, maybe more than a little bit.

Had there been a unicorn on the cover I would not have bought Ariel.  There's one in the book.  It says so on the back cover, I know, but I didn't read the back cover--I wanted to be surprised.  I certainly was.  A post-apocalyptic story with a unicorn.

Please.

What exactly happened isn't explained, just that a change occurred.  After the change when magical creatures started to appear, the rules of physics stopped working along with all of the machines those rules inspired.  Instead, a new set of rules governed by magic appeared or returned depending on whom you ask.  Somehow, 90% of the population vanished as well.  This is also not explained. 

Instead of explanations, the novel begins with Pete Carey, a young loner and survivor, stumbling upon a unicorn one morning.  Because the unicorn can speak only a few words--did I mention that the unicorn can talk?--and appears helpless due to a broken leg, Pete takes it under his wing, cares for it, teaches it to talk.  The unicorn soon becomes Pete's familiar, a creature bonded to a human for life.  The catch for Pete is that only virgins can touch unicorns.  Not an easy realization for any young man.

The adventure comes when the two discover that a necromancer who has taken control of New York City wants Ariel's horn for the magical properties it contains.  Instead of running away, the two decide to travel to New York and confront their enemy in order to end all attempts to capture Ariel.

Adventure ensues. There's a griffin, a dragon, a rebel army, and, of course, a beautiful girl. 

I enjoyed it.  It was fun.  I'm glad I gave in to the book's cover art and that I did not give up after finding a unicorn roaming about a perfectly good post-apocalyptic landscape.   

It's a perfect summer book.

If I could only remember where I stashed my samurai sword.



*There were months of summer vacation ahead when I bought Ariel.  Then it languished on my TBR shelf for longer than I'm willing to admit.

"The Man Who Liked Dogs" by Raymond Chandler

There was a brand-new aluminum-gray

DeSoto sedan in front of the door.

Opening to

"The Man Who Liked Dogs"

by Raymond Chandler 

I have no idea how many people are shot to death in Raymond Chandler's long short-story "The Man Who Liked Dogs" but it's a lot.  A lot.  I lost track early on, but I'd lay money on 10 to 12 which is one every four pages.

That's just how we like our Raymond Chandler.

Dames, Dicks*, Drugs, Danger and a Dog.

The detective arrives in a small seaside California town looking for a missing girl.  Her mother is very concerned.  Concerned enough to hire him.  He is soon over his head; caught in a crime syndicate that includes the beat cops, the local police chief, a psychiatric hospital, an offshore gambling boat, and a pair of bank robbers.

Chandler country in other words.**

While "The Man Who Liked Dogs" is second-rate Chandler, it does have it's moments.  Three good lines:

I had my mouth open and a blank expression on my face, like a farm boy at a Latin lesson.

When he grinned he opened his mouth wide, and he had a mouth a dentist could have got both hand in, up to the elbows.

Dr. Sharp's little face was as white as dough.  Perspiration twinkled in his cute little mustache.

I like a detective who can make men with cut little mustaches sweat.  And I liked "The Man who Liked Dogs."



*By which I mean private detectives, of course.

**I kept thinking of Neptune, California where the cult T.V. series Veronica Mars took place.  If you liked Veronica Mars you really should check out Raymond Chandler.

TSS: Closed for Business

The big news this week is that my school will close at the end of the spring semester.  The consolidation committee reported to the board of education on Tuesday which, in a surprise move, voted to close the middle school where I've taught for the past ten years.

Please do not feel bad for me.  I think this is a good decision.  The district which has had declining enrollment for several years, currently has three small middle schools.  Going with two mid-sized middle schools will make is possible to offer an improved program to our students.  We may even be able to get a full-time art teacher or a full time Spanish teacher out of it.  This, of course, assumes that the district and the board of education handles the consolidation correctly.

Always remember what Mark Twain said about school boards: "God created the idiot for practice. Then he made the school board."

Most of my students spent the week discussing who was going to go to which of the remaining middle schools, but a few of them are genuinely upset as are many of the staff members.  At this point, I'm looking forward to opening up a new middle school and thinking I may be able to make the move into full time history teacher.  I've been an English/history core teacher for 21 years now.  Time for something a bit new.  I'd like the chance to concentrate on making the history program top-notch.  Too often the history department gets short shrift.


The TBR Dare Status Update

Did you take The TBR Dare?  How are you doing so far.  With just over 70 days  to go I am enjoying the way my TBR stack is shrinking, but I'm probably going to go on a book buying binge April 1 when the dare ends.  So far, I've exposed almost one half of a book shelf.  If I can get enough books read I can expose enough shelf space to justify buying these wonderful antique bookends C.J. and I saw in a shop up in Petaluma last weekend.  The feature  Basset hounds chewing on a small pile of books.  How perfect is that for Dakota and  me?


Mark Twain's Lexicon

Speaking of Mark Twain, there have been a spat of posts and articles about an up-coming edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that feature replacements  for the word 'nigger.'   I'm ambivalent about this issue.  We do live in a capitalist country that has enshrined the freedom of speech as a sacred right, so publishers can publish whatever they want to as far as I'm concerned.  Leave words in, take them out, turn them into comic books, recast the main characters as zombie hunters.  It's public domain, we're free to do what we want with it.  At this point in history, anyone who can still make money selling books is doing something right.  And, I bet more than a few readers will decide to give it a go in the original.

I think we should all keep in mind that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has survived worse than this, much worse.  Anyone who has ever seen any film adaptation of the novel can attest to that.  I'm confident that Huck and Jim  will still be around, long after Twain's  lexicon has passed from common usage, and readers must refer to the footnotes if they want to understand what all the controversial words mean.

Friday Picture Reading - Batman



Batman gets caught reading
Found at Current Argus



Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

'Jeeves,' I said. 'May I speak frankly?'

Opening to

Right How, Jeeves

 by P.G. Wodehouse

I can confidently state that Bertie Wooster is the most beloved unreliable narrator in English literature.  I am unanimous in that.  Bertie narrated novels and short stories from his first appearance in 1917 to his final bow in 1974.  He never did figure out what was really going on.  It was always up to Jeeves to save the day.

But Bertie charms none-the-less.  Take his description of a grammar school assembly:

In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.


I know what he means.  


In Right Ho, Jeeves Bertie attempts to solve twin sets of relationship mix-ups.  A typical double marriage plot complicated by Bertie's refusal to take any advice from valet, Jeeves.  We all know what's going to happen.  Things will go go from bad to worse until Jeeves can get Bertie out of the way long enough to set them right.  But P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories are about the journey not the destination.  The reader never really cares who ends up who whom, we're along for the ride.  In that spirit, here's a brief bit of the famed scene at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School where Gussy Fink-Nottle has been given the job of presenting the annual awards.  Nervous of public speaking Gussy has had more than a few drinks to help build up his courage.  Bertie walks out before the ceremony is over, but Jeeves fills him in afterwards.

     "Was there much more of it after I went?"
     "No, sir. The proceedings terminated very shortly. Mr. Fink-Nottle's remarks with reference to Master G.G. Simmons brought about an early closure."
     "But he had finished his remarks about G.G. Simmons."
     "Only temporarily, sir. He resumed them immediately after your departure. If you recollect, sir, he had already proclaimed himself suspicious of Master Simmons's bona fides, and he now proceeded to deliver a violent verbal attack upon the young gentleman, asserting that it was impossible for him to have won the Scripture-knowledge prize without systematic cheating on an impressive scale. He went so far as to suggest that Master Simmons was well known to the police."
     "Golly, Jeeves!"
     "Yes, sir. The words did create a considerable sensation. The reaction of those present to this accusation I should describe as mixed. The young students appeared pleased and applauded vigorously, but Master Simmons's mother rose from her seat and addressed Mr. Fink-Nottle in terms of strong protest."
     "Did Gussie seem taken aback? Did he recede from his position?"
     "No, sir. He said that he could see it all now, and hinted at a guilty liaison between Master Simmons's mother and the head master, accusing the latter of having cooked the marks, as his expression was, in order to gain favour with the former."
     "You don't mean that?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "Egad, Jeeves! And then——"
     "They sang the national anthem, sir."
     "Surely not?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "At a moment like that?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "Well, you were there and you know, of course, but I should have thought the last thing Gussie and this woman would have done in the circs. would have been to start singing duets."
     "You misunderstand me, sir. It was the entire company who sang. The head master turned to the organist and said something to him in a low tone. Upon which the latter began to play the national anthem, and the proceedings terminated."
     "I see. About time, too."
     "Yes, sir. Mrs. Simmons's attitude had become unquestionably menacing."

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

It was sunny in San Francisco; a

fabulous condition.

Opening to

The Manchurian Candidate

by Richard Condon

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon was listed as one of the top ten best bad books of 1959 by Time Magazine.  That's a good way to describe the novel--it's a very good bad book.

Today, the story is known primarily from the two movie adaptations: the ill-fated 1962 version starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Landsbury and the  2004 version starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.  I can speak only for the Sinatra/Landsbury version which is terrific.  Angela Landsbury plays the meanest mother ever to appear on screen.  But, as mean as she is, she's June Cleaver next to the mother as written in the novel.

She's so mean, she cannot be named.  She's simply Raymond's mother throughout the book.  If she had a name, any reader who happened to have a mother with that name would soon need therapy.

Because this is a good bad book, Raymond's mother's meanness is part of the fun.  We are horrified by what she does but also a bit delighted, too.  Watching her manipulate both her husband and her son, one into the U.S. Senate, the other into marriage, all so she can get herself one step closer to the White House which she will rule as a pupper master, is a guilty pleasure.  Even guilty pleasures are still pleasures.  Think of her as a modern day Lady MacBeth.  If she has to force a few people into suicide to gain power, it's just the price she has to pay.  If one of those people is her own son, it's a heavy price, but one that must be paid none-the-less.

Image from Wikipedia

There's a plot about communists brainwashing American soldiers that was once topical but seems silly now.  While we do feel for Raymond and want him to find a means of escape, when his mother is off-stage we're impatient for her to return.  As the layers of her corruption are revealed,  the reader's jaw drops a little more, and the pages keep turning.  Raymond's mother is what makes The Manchurian Candidate a good book.

However, she's also what makes it a bad book.  While she is fun to hate for a while, ultimately she's too much a collection of symptoms without a motivation.  Why is she doing all she does?  Lust for power is understandable, but Raymond's mother's lust  includes blackmail, procuring, murder, treason, and one more sin that I won't spoil.  Something too extreme for the 1962 movie adaptation.  A character this corrupt needs more depth.  What she does is not much more extreme that what Lady MacBeth does.  But Lady MacBeth gets a mad scene which brings her back within the realm of sympathetic, believable humanity.  Raymond's mother just gets meaner and meaner.   As she does, her character becomes harder and harder to believe, making The Manchurian Candidate a very good bad book.

"How I Got My Nickname" by W.P. Kinsella



In the summer of 1951, the summer before

I was to start Grade 12, my polled Hereford

calf, Simon Bolivar, won Reserve Grand

Champion at the Des Moines, All-Iowa Cattle

Show and Summer Exposition.

Opening to

"How I Got My Nickname"

by W.P. Kinsella.

 W.P. Kinsella's baseball stories are perfect for people who don't really know baseball.  People like me.  They are about baseball enough to capture what is dramatic about the game without going too far into the play-by-play.  Going  too far into the play-by-play would make them stories only a true baseball fan  would love. 

If you are a true baseball fan, I'd love to hear what you think of W.P. Kinsella's short stories. 

"How I Got My Nickname" is classic sports story, with a couple of twists.  An Iowa farm boy is more-or-less accidentally discovered by a travelling ball team.  He can't field to save his life, but he can hit like no one they've ever seen right from his very first time at bat.  The team takes him on as a pinch-hitter, for a season.  He travels with the team, learns the ropes, becomes pals, but doesn't earn a true nickname until his very last game.  I'll give you one hint-- it's Tripper.

But it's the twists that make "How I Got My Nickname" the story it is.  Our narrator, W.P. Kinsella, is a genius fat-kid who wants to be a writer.  He has studied hitters all his life, but never picked up a bat until the  day the travelling team arrived.  All he knows he learned from observation and books; books are his true passion. As it turns out, books are the true passion of most of his teammates, too.  In between at bats, you'll find each man in the dugout engrossed in a book.  Their most passionate clubhouse arguments are over whether or not The Great Gatsby should be read as an allegory. 

This is perfect material for a short story.  It's a conceit that both sports fans and readers can enjoy, ball players trading quips on the pitcher's mound in Latin.  But it's too slight to withstand a novel length treatment.  Before it all begins to start to wear thin, the narrator has his nickname and the story is over.

The ball team moves on, and the narrator, W.P. Kinsella, goes back to writing.

Sunday Salon - Genetic Cook Book, Field Trips, and A Unicorn is Hear to See You

Photo by Thomas Hawk

Several slightly random things today.

I took my 6th grade class to the San Jose Tech Museum Friday where we saw this model of a double helix made from 300 cookbooks.  The idea is that genes are like recipes, hence the DNA strand made from cookbooks.  The kids were much more interested in the roller coaster simulator.  You can design your own roller coaster and then ride it in the simulator.

How fun is that?

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose, CA

We also went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum which has several real mummies along with a large number of reproductions and several thousand actual artifacts.  We had and excellent tour guide who kept the kids in line and enraptured.  They have a model tomb that we got to tour as well.  It was fun, an excellent day, but a very long one for me.  I spent over five hours on the road, going to work, driving down to San Jose, driving back to school and then driving home again.  Out of the house at 6:30 a.m; I returned home at 6:30 p.m.  Of course I get time and half overtime after my contractual 7 1/2  hour workday.  (Kidding. No one gets overtime in America anymore.)

Everyone had fun. In fact, we had so much to do at both museums that we skipped the gift shops altogether. This is a rarity with children.

Week one of The TBR Dare is over.  As of this update there are 49 participants, I'm pleased to say.  Please let me know if I've listed you incorrectly on The TBR Dare page.  And don't forget to fess up if you fall off the wagon. Or should I say when.   It's all for fun. I'm interesting in seeing who last longest.

I was including a rather large stack of library books in my own personal TBR stack, but I found I didn't really like any of them so I've returned them all.  I'm going to stick to my actual TBR shelf, which gives me  over 150 titles to choose from for the next 83 days.  That should be enough.

A unicorn here to see you.

I found this little blog called The Monkey's You Ordered that takes the often obtuse captions to New Yorker cartoons and replaces them with literal descriptions of what's actually in the picture.  The idea is to render the cartoons funny.  Some of them work pretty well.  I like this one with the unicorn.  I have no idea what the New Yorker caption was, but the literal translation works made me laugh.

Dakota's Favorites: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

One of the best American writers we currently have is writes non-fiction.  His account of the whaleship Essex disaster, In The Heart of the Sea is on my all-time favorites list.  His book about the founding of the Plymouth Colony is fascinating reading.  Mr. Philbrick consistently delivers entertaining and enlightening books. 




We all want to know how

it was in the beginning.

Opening to

 Mayflower

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick is not your father's Thanksgiving. Mr. Philbrick's ambitions are large and the scope of his book is wide. He begins with the Pilgrim's roots, back in England, follows their story to America and through the lives of their children and grandchildren some 50 years after the founding of the Plymouth colony. His ambition is to tell the story of how this group went from a close, symbiotic relationship with the Native Americans to an all out war that devastated both populations.

Fans of Mr. Philbrick's earlier book In the Heart of the Sea will find much to enjoy in the first section of Mayflower. We learn the inner workings of 17th century trans-Atlantic travel in detail. We all know this part of the story, how hard the journey to America was and how the pilgrims and the sailors formed the Mayflower Compact to guide their settlement. Mr. Philbrick tells this part of the story well, but the book really picks up speed once the Mayflower gets to America and leaves the Pilgrims there.

Mayflower has been called a revisionist history, which seems to now mean that it puts in what other history texts have left out. The details Mr. Philbrick includes are fascinating: Miles Standish was so short he was known as Captain Shrimp, behind his back. He actually had to cut the tips off of his rapier so it would not drag on the ground when he wore it on his belt. The first words an Indian spoke to the Pilgrims were "Welcome Englishmen!" Squanto, who spoke fluent English after living in Europe for many years, became the main interpreter for the local sachem, tribal leader, out of an ambition for power. The Pilgrims did have turkey at the first Thanksgiving, but they'd already had it back in England since once they were imported to Europe domestic turkeys became widely popular there.

But Mr. Philbrick's real interest is in the Plymouth colony's second generation. King Philip's War and the events that led up to it, illustrate the deteriorating relationship between the colonists and the native population that would haverepercussions throughout the history of the United States.

Much of this part of Mayflower is focused on Benjamin Church, grandson of Richard Warren one of the passengers on the Mayflower. Benjamin Church became one of the central leaders of the English in the war against the Natives of New England which was started by King Phililp, the sachem or leader of the Pokanoket Indians who had been the saviours of the Pilgrims under the previous sachem Massasoit. For almost 50 years the English and the Native Americans has existed side by side in a difficult but peaceful relationship. However, the children of the first settlers did not think they needed the help of the Natives to survive and badly wanted to expand into their lands. A series of injustices, culminating in the execution of three innocent Indians who'd been charged with murder, led to the outbreak of war. Native Americans from throughout New England joined King Philip in his attacks on English settlements. Benjamin Church argued that the English should maintain as many friendly relationship with Indian tribes as they could. He argued that few Indians wanted to join with King Philip and that most could be convinced to fight alongside the English.

During the first half of King Philip's war, few English would listen to Church; even peaceful Indians with longstanding ties to English settlers were attacked and driven from their homes if not killed or captured and sold into slavery. King Philip was not a good leader and, though he won a few significant battles, he was soon on the run from the English and from Benjamin Church. Eventually, the English agreed to let friendly Indians fight alongside them, which made it possible for them to finally defeat and kill King Philip. The English had won the war, but lost any hope of maintaining a peaceful coexistence with the Native Americans who'd lost some 60% of their population to battle or to slavery in the West Indies.

What struck me in reading this section of Mayflower was that the divisions among the Native American population is what made it possible for the English to succeed. Massasoit and Squanto both were engaged in a power struggle with other tribes that led them to see the English as potential allies. This was a strong motivating factor in the help they gave the early Pilgrims. These tribal conflicts continued into the time of King Philip and Benjamin Church. Had King Philip been able to unite the tribes in an alliance against the English, the Native Americans may have been able to drive them from New England or at least keep them confined to the settlements they already had. American history would have been dramatically different in any case.

That the English were cruel to the Indians during wartime, that they used their justice system against them, came as no surprise to me. The time period is just prior to the Enlightenment age, Europe was a violent place, there was little that the Pilgrims did to the Indians that was not done to every defeated population in Europe at the time. What did surprise me was that they sold captured Native Americans into slavery. This included women and young children and was done for the expressed purpose of removing the Indian population from New England.

It is compelling to speculate about what might had been. If a few incidents had gone a different way, if this person had risen to leadership instead of that person, who knows what might have happened. What is clear from reading Mayflower is that the path of Manifest Destiny that led to the removal of the great majority of Native American people from their homelands was not the only option available when the English first arrived in what became the United States.

Mayflower is a compelling read that you may find hard to put down and it raises many interesting points and questions that will leave you thinking. I'm giving Mayflower by Natianiel Philbrik five out of five stars.

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

There is a photograph in existence

of Aunt Sadie and her six children

sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh.

Opening line to

The Pursuit of Love

by Nancy Mitford.

If, while driving through the English countryside, you spot two girls running across a field pursued by a pack of hunting dogs and a crotchety old man, don't be afraid. It's simply the Mitford sisters and their father, out for a bit of fun.

Hunting tomorrow, girls.

I've no idea if the hunting scene in the opening chapters of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love is autobiographical, but I hope so.
The Mitford sisters were the "it" girls at one time.  Four beautiful young women, wealthy, eccentric family, aristocratic.  Jessica Mitford went on to become a successful journalist while Nancy Mitford wrote novels. 


Nancy Mitford
Photo from Wikipedia

Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love deals with the life of Linda Radlett, her eccentric childhood, marriage and affairs set between the World Wars.  But it's clearly the story of Nancy Mitford, novelized to protect the innocent, or maybe just the family.

Linda Radlett's life is one of scandal.  She makes a bad first marriage, has a daughter she does not love, gets divorced, makes a second bad marriage and then finds true love with a Parisian known for a long string of affairs.  But a scandalous life can make for entertaining reading, and the Mitford sisters never fail to entertain.

I admit I had several problems with the characters' snobbishness.  Nancy Mitford is credited with coining the terms 'U' and 'Non-U' for upper class and not upper class.  It's difficult to find a character in The Pursuit of Love who's not a snob.  Even the communists look down on each other.  But the novel's charm and the author's wit win the day.  At her most heartless, Linda Radlett is an amusing character.  Take for instance this passage where Linda tells her cousin why she dislikes her own daughter after discovering that the child is afraid of air-raids and is happy her father is sending her to America for safety:

     "I'm in such a temper," she said, "I must talk to somebody.  To think I ruined nine months of my life in order to have that. What do your children think about air-raids, Fanny?"
     "I must say them simply long for them, and I am sorry to say they also long for the Germans to arrive.  They spend the whole day making booby-traps for them in the orchard."
     "Well that's a relief anyhow--I thought perhaps it was the generation."

Perhaps it was the generation.  A generation of Mitfords.

American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt by Daniel Rasmussen

Down from the mountains of Canada,

 through dozens of tributaries and

smaller rivers, the waters of the

American Midwest find their outlet

to the sea in the great American Nile:

 the Mississippi.

Opening to

American Uprising

by Daniel Rasmussen

Did Lincoln free the slaves, or did the slaves free themselves?

A high school history teacher friend of mine recently asked me this question while explaining the new writing program she's using in her tenth grade U.S. history class.  In the program, students are given a set of historical documents to read, discuss and draw conclusions about in essay form. 

The point of the activity is not to reach a pre-determined correct answer but to produce a quality piece of writing with a well-reasoned argument based on historical evidence like historians. 

Sounds like a great class.  But the question bothered me.  I think the Emancipation Proclamation has been long under-rated.  Any cursory look at the document will reveal that it frees very few people, but cursory looks reveal very little.  Lincoln was fighting to uphold a Union based on a constitution.  This meant following the rulings of the Supreme Court  that ruled slaves were property, without rights, in the Dred Scott decision.  Roger Taney, the chief justice who wrote that decision still had the power to over-rule Lincoln.  The Union Lincoln was fighting to preserve included four boarder states that allowed slavery.  Should Lincoln free the slaves, even if he had the authority which the Dred Scott ruling said he did not, he risked losing those four states to the Confederacy thereby losing the war.  The Emancipation Proclamation, while it did not end slavery immediately, was an act that crossed the Rubicon.  There was no way slavery could last afterwards.  Win the war and in a few years slavery would end nationwide.  Frederick Douglas said as much himself.

You can see that I'm a Lincoln fanboy.

Even if we set aside the  question of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the question of the slaves freeing themselves remains.  How can slaves themselves bring about an end to slavery?  Don't the people in power have to agree to give up that power?  Doesn't that make them the only ones who could have ended slavery?

Daniel Rasmussen's book, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt, provides a case study explaining just how the slaves themselves brought about an end to slavery.  Decades before the Civil War, long before the Nat Turner slave revolt, several hundred slaves took up arms against their masters, burned down the plantations where they were kept and marched on the city of New Orleans.  Although their revolt was eventually put down, it is one among many actions that led to the end of slavery in America. 

This revolt is almost completely forgotten today.  Those who put down the revolt made sure they got to write the history books.  This means there is little documentation for Mr. Rasmussen to draw on for American Uprising, not enough for a book devoted to the revolt.   So Mr. Rasmussen fills out his book with background on slavery and slave revolts in America.  Unable to describe in detail the lives of the revolt's leaders,  Mr. Rasmussen provides a general overview of the slave trade, the conditions faced by slaves in America, and the successful slave revolt in Haiti which came to represent the greatest fear and hope for Americans in the slave holding southern states. 

In the end, American Uprising is a good primer on slavery in America.  A highly readable 200 pages, American Uprising provides a solid general background on a shameful chapter on American history.  The details and documentation that would have provided the information necessary for a book length account of this slave revolt are lost to history, but Mr. Rasmussen has done a good job rescuing this story and bringing it to our attention. 

I think it would make a fine addition to any tenth grade history class.  My high school history teacher friend agrees.  She'll plans on using American Uprising with her students next year.


Full Disclosure:  I received a advanced review copy of American Uprising from the publishers.  It's been on my TBR shelf for several months.

TSS: Random and Phoney Year End Stats




Image found at Open2.net. Creative Commons


While reading everyone's year in review posts, I noticed that many bloggers list their annual reading stats.  Some  post very basic information--fiction vs. non-fiction, men vs. women authors.  Other's post detailed evaluations--breakdowns by genre; authors by gender, race, orientation; percentages of challenges completed; original language; etc.  I even saw one with bar graphs.   I'm impressed.

It's all I can do to count the books I read each year. 

But I want to do more.  So I decided to make up a bunch of random statistics just for fun. 

In 2010 I read 98 books, just under the 100+ book challenge goal.  I completed 98%  which is an A, in Marin County an A+.  This is how those 98 books break down in imaginary statistics.  Percentages have been rounded and may not add up to 100.

How the book began

• with an article - 22
• with a noun - 34
• with a pronoun - 13
• with a preposition - 12
• with an adjective - 10
• with a verb - 3
• with an interjection - 1
• with a subordinating conjunction - 6

How the book ended

• In a period - 96
• In a question mark - 3
• In an exclamation point - 1
• With three dots in a row - 1

How the book is divided

• Into chapters - 58
• Into sections with gaps between them - 21
• No divisions - 9

Book's reading level

• Mostly pictures - 4
• Pictures with some text - 8
• Largely text with some illustrations - 13
• Text with no illustrations - 68
• Text with copious footnotes - 1

How the first draft was written

• On binder paper with a pencil - 21
• On legal pads with a pen - 32
• On a typewriter in a drunken stupor- 14
• On a laptop in a Starbucks- 21
• While sitting in a homemade fort on a rainy night - 3

Author's political affiliation

• Democrat - 68
• Republican - 20
• Libertarian - 5
• Tory - 3
• Labor Party - 6
• Lib/Dem - 1
• Independent/Other - 5

Author's preferred coffee

• Latte - 18
• No-foam latte - 12
• Decaf latte - 13
• Decaf 2% latte - 12
• Half-caf non-fat latte - 17
• Chai tea latte - 28
• Decaf vanilla latte with chocolate sprinkles - 3
• Bottled water - 1

Author's favorite childhood pet

• Cat - 9
• Dog - 48
• Hamster - 14
• Guinea Pig - 2
• Bird - 14
• Goldfish - 8
• No pets - 1
• Imaginary - 3

Authors who wear or do not wear glasses

• No glasses or contacts - 21
• Glasses - 43
• Contact lenses - 24
• Monocle - 1/2

Author's birth sign

• Fire - 22
• Air - 31
• Earth - 13
• Water - 22

Current state of author's mortgage

• Renter, no mortgage - 23
• Currently lives with parents - 7
• Owns home, no mortgage - 3
• Owes less than home is worth - 21
• Owes more than home is currently worth - 34
• Currently undergoing foreclosure procedures - 4

Author's preferred pastimes

• Drink - 63
• Drugs - 12
• Sex - 7
• Gambling - 5
• Bach 2

Author's oral hygiene

• Brushes and flosses twice daily - 23
• Brushes twice daily, flosses weekly - 31
• Brushes daily - 25
• Brushes occasionally- 16
• Brushes monthly - 8
• Chews sugarless gum - 1 

Psychic's predict in  2011 the author will...

• meet the love of their life - 15
• find great wealth - 12
• write their masterpiece - 14
• take a long trip - 37
• most likely remain dead - 33

From these statistics what can we conclude?  Some things are interesting.   Over half of the books I read began with either a noun, pronoun or an article which is almost the same as starting with a noun.  It's the difference between 'dogs' and 'the dogs.'     Almost all of them ended with a period.

Nearly two-thirds of the books I read were written by Democrats.  If Labor Party members are counted as Democrats the number is well over two-thirds.  I'm not sure how we should count the Lib/Dems at this point.   This could be because I am simply drawn towards a left-leaning world  view, or it could be evidence of just how liberal the media actually is.

 While the authors I read drink some form of latte, a surprising number prefer decaf or chai.  This probably reflects the trend in America as more people steer clear of caffeine.  Or it could just be additional evidence of how liberal the media is. 

I overwhelmingly read books written by dog people.  I think this is something I should work on in 2011--more books by cat people to bring some balance into my reading.  Reading more books written by cat people might help me better understand cat people.  It's possible that the books Dakota ate in 2010 were written by cat people.  She remains mute as to her motivations. 

 2/3 of the books I read in 2010 were written by people who wear some form of corrective lenses.   It would be interesting to find out how many are near sighted vs. far sighted.  Some may even have astigmatism or other more serious forms of optical challenges.  A few may just be poseurs.  

While my reading in 2010 was balanced between authors born in water signs and authors born in fire signs, 22 each, I clearly favored air signs (31) over earth signs (13).   Again this is something I should work on in 2011.  Maybe some one will set up a Birth Signs Reading Challenge.  The Read the Dirt Challenge maybe.  Back to Mother Earth.  Something like that.

When it comes to the home mortgage crises, most authors are no different than the rest of us; over a third of them currently owe more than their home is worth. 

Two-thirds of the authors I read in 2010 consider drink to be their favorite pastime, which should not surprise me since I read so many hard-boiled detective stories.  I know we all thought the stereotype of the author who drinks too much was a thing of the past, but considering how many of the authors I read have underwater mortgages or live with their parents this figure is understandable.  These figures both serve to make the fact that two-thirds of the authors I read in 2010 practice good basic oral hygiene all the more impressive.  Even in hard times, it's important to take care of your teeth.

Psychic predictions show that one third of the authors I read in 2010 will take long trips in 2011.  Many of these will probably be book tours.  I assume this counts only physical book tours, not virtual ones.  Another third will most likely remain dead.  'Most likely' is used because several authors who have been dead for a very long time  come back to life in 2010 in the form of posthumous autobiographies and zombie mash-ups of their classic works.  I'm hoping that trend ended in 2010, and Jane Austen can finally rest in peace.

Top Ten Favorite Reads 2010

In alphabetical order.

Benediction by Jim Arnold  There are two ARC's on my favorite reads list this year.  This one and Let the Great World Spin.  My advice, don't give up on ARC's.  Once your blog has been around for a while, you'll start getting good ones on a regular basis.  Benediction is about a sexually active gay man fighting prostate cancer.  Mr. Arnold goes where few writers would dare go which makes Benediction compelling, often uncomfortable, reading.  But  the narrator's sense of humor that keeps the reader reading.  If you're out there Mr. Arnold, I'd love to do an interview.  I thought your book was terrific.


Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.  I am continually surprised by the treasures I find in the western genre.  I read Butcher's Crossing for the NYRB reading week expecting to find something outside the typical NYRB book.  I certainly did.   Butcher's Crossing inspired me to start a western read-a-long.  You can join in by following the link in the sidebar.

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer has an unfair advantage this year.  I didn't just read Canterbury Tales I spent the summer reading it with a class full of dedicated teachers/students under the guidance of a Chaucer expert at Yale University.  It was nerd heaven;  we all had a great time. 

Caucasia by Danzy Senna  I so wish Danzy Senna would write more.  This is the second of her novels that I've read; the first one to make my end-of-year favorites list.  But that's it.  No more novels.  Ms. Senna, please write more soon. 

Dead Souls by Nicolai Gogol  Honestly, though I loved Dead Souls, it could use another draft.  There are some very strong scenes in the first half that the second half doesn't quite live up to.  With some work, Mr. Gogol could have a popular classic.  Too bad he died 150 years ago.

The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler  This is the only YA book to make my list this year.  While Ms. Mackler's novel may not win writing awards, it is so much fun.  I fell in love with the narrator.  If she were real, she and I would have been best buds in high school.  Maybe, maybe not, but we both would have had a better time if we'd met. 

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.   Not what I expected, nor like anything I've read before.   Some love it, some hate it, some both love and hate it at the same time.  It's one that has stuck with me and one I'll remember. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Even if you've never read The Great Gatsby you've probably heard so much about it that you think you have.  My book club picked it largely from a sense of curiosity.  Would it be as good as we remembered?  It was.  It's justifiably called a classic.  We all loved it.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann  This is the second ARC to make it to my favorites list this year.  It's  a tightrope act about a tightrope act.  If a tightrope act fails the results are disaster; if a tightrope act succeeds the results are a thing of wonder. 

School for Love by Olivia Manning.  I always enjoy spending time with Olivia Manning.  People always seem to be waiting for something in her novels.  But since they're waiting for something in foreign capitals under duress, their stories are always interesting.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.  I read A Single Man again this year hoping to do a book/movie post about it for the Read the Book/See the Movie challenge.  I didn't get around to watching the movie until months later.  While I liked the movie, it's the book that I'll go back to.  This was my second reading.  I suspect it's a book I'll return to every decade or so.  Re-reading it was like getting together again with an old friend.

Okay, that's eleven books, not ten. 

I'm an English teacher.  You do the math.

You can find my complete long list of favorite reads for 2010 here.

Happy New Year.