Nicholas and Anne

I'm a little further along in Nicholas Nickleby; as with most classics, the more I read of a certain author, the more I appreciate them. I didn't have much to say about Great Expectations when I read it in high school, but I wound up coming around to David Copperfield and now I'm just solidly enjoying NN (I am still alternating between 100 pages of that at a time and my books for my summer book camp*, because I do need to make it through those by mid-August and I want to be sure I do that).

*I want to interrupt myself here to mention that today I finished Karuna Riazi's middle grade fantasy/adventure The Gauntlet for that aforementioned book camp (did I post a list of all the books earlier in the summer or did I just think about doing that?). I think my hopes might have been a little high. I'd place it in the same category as Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein - I like the idea and I think 5th and 6th graders will enjoy it, but I was completely underwhelmed by the craft of it. Farah is really the only character that is developed and I didn't feel like there was a lot of suspense in the plot. I know it was inspired by Jumanji and I can see it making an entertaining movie, but it really left me cold. It's from Simon & Schuster's new imprint Salaam Reads, which is focused on children's and YA books about Muslim characters and that is awesome (and I do think that aspect of this book is well-done), but I'm hoping for better. I will say that another of their books, Amina's Voice by Hena Khan, is also on our summer list and that one was very good. 

Okay! That went longer than intended. Back to Nicholas Nickleby! I've been thinking, during Nicholas' spell at Dotheboys (which just ended - and what an exit!), about noted Dickens fan Anne Shirley. The Dickens book I remember her reading was Pickwick, but I bet she dug this one too. After all, Nicholas is a teacher, just like her. Of course, Anne would have taken a very different approach to Dotheboys - where Nicholas just suffered and then exploded, Anne would have expended a tremendous effort to turn it into a proper school and would probably have won over at least the younger Wackford Squeers. I suspect Smike would have wound up adoring her, although I suspect he was bound to follow anyone that showed him even the tiniest bit of kindness. I'm glad Nicholas is willing to keep him around.

Austen and Defoe and Dickens and DeVos

1. It's the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death. The Atlantic has a little series of articles about her work going and I got caught up in reading favorite Austen quotes, at which point I was reminded that I had shared some great Austen (P&P) quotes here long ago. They're still great, so here they are again:

"She had dressed with more than usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than might be won in the course of an evening."

"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"

2. Man, it does not feel like it has been 3-ish weeks since I read Moll Flanders, but apparently it has been. This summer is going fast and I don't particularly appreciate it. Anywho, it was better than I expected! I can see why it was popular back in the day - it's quite scandalous. I also decided that if I ever take up roller derby, I'm claiming Maul Flanders as my derby name.

3. I've hit the Dickens. Given that this summer is moving so quickly, I may not make it out of Dickens by the end of August, but for the time being, I'm keeping my focus on Nicholas Nickleby. Nicholas has just seen the reality of Dotheboys, which brings me to...

4. I know that I keep talking about the way our current political reality keeps creeping into my reading material (which should be an escape), but I remain amazed by how frequently it happens (I read Corelli's Mandolin somewhere between Moll and Nicholas and the Mussolini stuff hit home). Reading about Dotheboys is so much harder in light of Betsy DeVos' desire to subsidize sketchy charter and private schools and limit oversight of said schools because people like Wackford Squeers exist (Dickens talks in his preface about them as a class of people) and they will see nothing but opportunity in DeVos' vision of the future of education. The DOE and government regulations exist to protect children against the Squeerses of the world, not empower the Squeerses.

Y'all

First things first: I have moved on to Moll Flanders. It's not the most compelling read, although it's better than I expected. Definitely slow going. I'm trying to be okay with that.

At the moment, though, I am not reading. I'm listening to this old episode of Lexicon Valley about modernizing Shakespeare (a discussion we won't enter into at this moment) and I just learned (how did I not know this already!) that "thou" was, way back when, the English second-person (and familiar) singular.

I use "y'all" more frequently than you might expect from a Midwesterner. I got in the habit of using it when I was taking Latin, because my professor used it as a simple way to differentiate the translation of second-person singular and plural verbs. I have continued to use it when I need a second-person plural (especially in group emails at work - it emphasizes the fact that a message is going out to more people than just the reader) and I occasionally get teased about it. I always explain that it's the best second-person plural we've got in English, but now I can be even more obnoxious and offer them a lecture about linguistics and then give them a choice between my using "you" and "y'all" or "thou" and "you."

(I'm really fun at parties.)

The project continues apace

I'm just coming to the end of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. For all that I (sincerely) extol the virtues of classic literature, this is the kind of book I dread a little when I begin it. When I started writing here, lo these many years ago, I talked quite a bit about David Copperfield, which I wound up really enjoying, but that kind of lengthy, meandering, Dickensian work still makes me a little uneasy as I see it looming on my TBR list. I don't think it's actually the thought that I won't enjoy it. I think it's the rest of that TBR list. I think it's the knowledge that it will take me some time to get through that book, no matter how enjoyable I find it, and during that time, the rest of those books will be staring me in the face.

This is, for me, particularly true in the summer. This is largely my own fault - I start the summer with a (long) list of books I want to read and, though I don't reasonably expect to get to the end, it is my goal to get as close as possible. This summer, that list is somewhere around 50 books, about a third of which are part of that reading-my-shelves project (like The Woman in White) and tend to be lengthy classics (Collins is the last of my C authors, which means Defoe, Dickens, and Dostoevsky await).

Anyway, maybe this is good for me. For all that I've loved reading a metric ton of YA and middle grade stuff over the last 5 or 6 years, it might be a good idea to be forced to slow down a bit and revisit that other side of myself as a literary consumer. Not to mention, those books tend to wind up being pretty great. The Woman in White has been pretty great. It is suspenseful and thrilling and often quite funny, and it's two of my favorite funny lines that I'd like to close this with:

On Mrs. Vesey and vegetables:

"Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all."

And this, which I think I'd like to include in some variation on any invitation I send from this point forward:

"My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody." 

A Project

I think I've mentioned that I have a reading project in the works quite a few times now without actually expounding on what that project is. All of which makes it sound quite ambitious and complicated. It actually does feel rather ambitious, but certainly not complicated.

I am reading my shelves. I own so many books I haven't actually read and I keep adding to that number and I've decided it's time to work on lowering that number instead. I began in fiction, where I'd say I've read about 2/3 of my collection, and I'm just going through alphabetically and reading what has not been read. (While also reading some of this year's new books from my work library, as well as books for our summer book camp.)

I've made it through the A's and B's and am into the C's - Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness at the moment. I have some rather daunting mountains to climb down the road, but so far it's been quite satisfying. I really enjoyed Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and I was reminded of how much I like Willa Cather while reading The Professor's House.

As I said, today I'm reading Heart of Darkness. Not really my jam thus far, but as has so often been the case since the election, I've come across a passage that sheds some light on these current times. Marlow is fixing up his steamer and the Eldorado Exploring Expedition has appeared. He describes them in a way that sounds awfully familiar to this reader, who continues to watch with horror as American democracy is gutted from the inside out:

"Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers; it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe."

Fireworks

It's late, so I'll keep this short.

Today I finished the third book on my summer reading list (of 47, which even I know is probably unrealistic). That book was Kate Milford's middle grade take on Patrick O'Brien, The Left-Handed Fate. It took me awhile to get into it (more my fault than Milford's - I was distracted by soccer games and congressional hearings), but it ended with a literal bang and I wound up keeping myself up this late so I could finish it.

In the interest of keeping this short, I will just share this quote that I wanted very much to share with somebody. It comes right at the end and it is (kind of) about fireworks and it sums up quite nicely why I like fireworks so darn much (and eclipses and anything else that stops people in their tracks with awe):

"Wonder is great and important. And wonder at the visible - at what can be seen and shared, that requires no nationality or belief to experience - that is a special kind of phenomenon."

I forgot the list!

Of course, now I have to remember what was on the list.

September: ?????? I can't remember! September is forever ago!

October: Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier and Ghost by Jason Reynolds

November: The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner

December: Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer

January: The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork

February: Samurai Rising by Pamela S. Turner

March: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

April: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

May: The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

It's been a good year. I have to pat us on our collective book club back for getting The Girl Who Drank the Moon on our list long before it won the Newbery.

---

I also keep thinking about my Serpent King / Oedipus thoughts. Can Dill be Oedipus and Oedipus' children? Because then it works pretty well - Oedipus has that apotheosis at the end of Oedipus at Colonus, which would parallel Dill's leaving Forrestville behind, moving on to a higher plane of existence (so to speak). But generationally speaking, Dill's father would be Oedipus, which also makes sense. Oedipus saves the people of Thebes, Dill's father is a preacher who tries to save his congregation. Fate brings Oedipus down, but it uses sexual taboo (incest) to do so; same with Dill's father (in his case, pedophilia); you could also say that hubris played a big part in taking them both down, obviously.

We're meeting on Wednesday to talk about The Serpent King. As I mentioned, our conversations never go very deep - we tend to stick to classroom applications of the books - but this Oedipus thing may be something I have to bring up.

Has it only been a day?

I'm trying to rediscover my purpose for this blog. It wasn't actually to review books. It was to have a place to spill all of my immediate reactions and thoughts about what I was reading, as if this blog were the fellow reader I never have, a reader who was reading the same books at the same pace and who would know what I was talking about when I said it.

So I'm going to try to get back to that. It was easy and fun to write that blog.

Over the last couple of days, I took a break from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I am reading as part of the project I mentioned yesterday, which I am once again punting down the road) to rip through The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner. It's the final book for my teacher book club and a brilliant way to close out a year of really awesome books (list below, if I can remember it).

Number one, I think I'd like to just hang out with Jeff Zentner and talk books and music. The Secret History is name-checked in the first few pages of The Serpent King. And then a bunch of other books and bands that I love. I won't list them - just read the book. I wrote years ago about music in books and every time I read a book that's heavy on dropping names of musicians (it happens a lot in YA) or movies or books I think kind of similar thoughts. First, it usually comes off as trying to hard to prove the cred of your characters, and your own by extension (I think Zentner escapes this, but not by a lot). Second, I prefer less explanation to more explanation (this Zentner does really well). I want the music referenced to make me curious enough to look it up. Finally...well, a new paragraph for this finally.

In The Serpent King, Zentner mixes up some fictional artists with his real artists, both musicians and authors. I'm never sure how to feel about that. So, like, Lydia listens to lots of great real music, but when she interviews a pop star for her blog, it's the fictional Laydee (terrible name, BTW). And Travis is obsessed with an obvious George R.R. Martin ripoff* - so obvious that I found it a little distracting. Why not just have it be the man himself? Or, flipside, why not make up all fictional celebrities (Daniel Handler is great at this - I'm still crushed that Hawk Davies doesn't exist)?

Fictional books and music aside, mostly when my thoughts drifted from The Serpent King, they drifted to Greek mythology and politics (as my thoughts so often do since November - it's amazing how politically charged even innocuous things are now).

First, myths. The Serpent King as a name seems like it's straight out of ancient lore, and clearly the story of Dill's grandfather has a place in his town's mythology. But I was mostly thinking about Oedipus and everything the Oedipal trilogy has to say about fate. That it's inescapable. That the sins of the father will be visited on his children, whether or not they've done anything to deserve it. (I was trying to remember if there were snakes in the Oedipus story - aside from the snakes that played a part in Tiresias' blindness, I don't think so?)

Of course, we aren't quite as bound to the idea of fate as the Greeks. Probably a good thing.

So, politics. Or religion. Politics and religion? They seem inextricably linked for so many people and I myself can't separate fundamentalist Christianity from conservatism. Dill's parents trying to convince him that education wasn't necessary because he had religion? Ugh. That seems to be the thing Trump and his ilk want the unwashed masses to believe. They don't want the lower classes to strive, to dream of more. They want them to be satisfied with as little as possible, misled by the belief that to want more is to be prideful, something to avoid, and that their reward for that miserable, humble life is in heaven. My favorite thing about this book is that it shows just how toxic those beliefs are.

*By the by, this is the second YA book I've read in the last year with a fictional take on George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones. The other was Morgan Matson's The Unexpected Everything, which I unexpectedly enjoyed, although the fantasy novel excerpts were one of the things I liked least about it.

Slow reading

Apparently I started writing a post here when I was sick about a month and a half ago. I don't have any recollection of doing that. Since that time, I've been sick again and I have not read many books. Really, I haven't read many books since, like, October.

Let me interrupt myself here to acknowledge that my not-many-books is still quite a few books. I just haven't been reading at the breakneck pace of last summer (none of which was recorded here, so you'll just have to take my word for it). 

I had been thinking for quite a long time that it was the election that knocked me off my reading pace (still a strange thing to say, but I willfully admit that I spend a lot more time since November 9 watching and/or reading the news and thus, a lot less time reading books), but looking back at my reading log (or Book of Books), it seems I lost some steam before that terrible night. I've had some spurts of renewed literary energy (especially over breaks from work), but I'm still not back to my old self, reading-wise. 

Maybe I just needed a break. 

That said, summer is fast approaching and I am finding myself increasingly excited about having lots of time to read. I have some good books lined up for summer book camp (and I may actually bring myself here to talk about them, because we never dig very deep at book camp - conversation tends to be limited to classroom applications), a few titles I bought over the year that are looking very tantalizing on my book shelf, and a reading project I started in January that should keep me busy well past this summer.

I'm going to hang on to that project for my next post (an optimistic pronouncement, given the likelihood of that post materializing in any kind of timely fashion, but whatever, I choose optimism).