June 18, 2008
I came across this blog, and I couldn’t resist myself. This is the website for anyone who doesn’t want to trudge through the classics, but still wants to get a feel for the book.
My particular favorites include: Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. All three I studied for days and days in college, if only I had come across this site sooner.
June 18, 2008
I’m not even sure where to begin reviewing this short story, Jakob Wywialowski and the Angels by Audrey Niffenegger. It is a 1,255 words, 7 page short story about an elderly man, Jakob Wywialowski finding angels in his attic, and finding an exterminator to come and “angel-proof” his house.
This story is funny, sweet and ripe with imagery and humor. It is very different from Time Traveler’s Wife, but then again, so is everything else Niffenegger has written. Soon after reading Time Traveler’s Wife, I read The Three Incestuous Sister: An Illustrated Novel which really proved the depth and variety of Niffenegger’s style. She is quick to understand human suffering and emotional tragedy, but she also has a keen sense of humor. I fell in love with Time Traveler’s Wife, and I think I would fork over my entire library (minus The Princess and the Goblin) just to have a one hour sit-down conversation with the author.
This short is available through Amazon Shorts for 49 cents, and is sent directly immediately to your e-mail account. You can save this piece to your desktop, print it, or just keep it electronically linked in your Amazon Media Library.
It would be a really cool present to pick out some shorts by favorite authors, print them out, have them professionally bound and present it to a close friend/mate/parent. Its a very original anthology by yours truly, complete with your own dedication page and illustrations if you feel creative enough.
June 17, 2008
Forgotten Bread is a wonderful collection of poems, novel excerpts and short stories from some of the most famous first generation Armenian-American authors in the United States, complied and edited by David Kherdian. I find that usually when I mention Armenian literature, most people tend to think of William Saroyan. Although most of his work has permeated into modern society, (Come on-a my house my house - theme song for E!’s Girls Next Door), William Saroyan is not the only Armenian to garner an illustrious career, a much coveted education, and various levels or reputation in the States.
This collection includes snippets by seventeen first generation authors, preluded by seventeen introductions from second generation Armenian-American authors gives a valuable insight into the Armenian mind-frame and world. One of the most constant and steady themes I recognized in each selection was a sense of loneliness, alienation and a desperate search for identity and stability. In the crux of the Middle East, Armenia is a country that belongs to the world, but is still orphaned by tragedy throughout its history. Armenia is in the middle between western civilization and Middle Eastern mentalities. The lone Christian populous in an Islamic regime. Despite the various conquests, and the Genocide of 1915 by the Turkish government, Armenians have managed to survive. We have diluted ourselves throughout the world, sharing our stories, drinking our teas and reminiscing over the past.
Armenian story-telling is not superficial, and it is not overly dramatic. Armenian storytelling is an honest and raw look into the human psyche. Many of the authors in this selection write about their lives, write about their losses, or create characters that can better explain the author’s sense of being.
My favorite work was the poetry of Majorie Housepian and the short stories of Leon Surmelian. Both hit a nerve with me, in terms of merging Armenian traditions with American lifestyle, a struggle is never easy, no matter what the decade.
This book will be a welcome addition to any Armenian household, introducing new authors, providing stories from those already well known. I think other cultures would enjoy this book, to take a look into the lives of a forgotten nation.
Find this book at your local library
June 17, 2008
Elise Blackwell’s Grub is neither the most unique, nor the most cliche rendition of the starving artist saga, set in New York City. What I enjoyed about the book is the fly on the wall experience of spying on a group of young writers living in New York, struggling to write, to publish and win fame with their written work. This books it tauted as a retelling of George Gissing’s New Grub Street.
This books follows the loveless marriage of Eddie and Amanda Renfros, the budding relationship between Jackson Miller and Margot Yarborough, daughter of author Andrew Yarborough, and also that of Henry Baffler, the writer that cannot tell a lie. This group struggles to make ends meet financially, romantically and emotionally. Competition is ripe between couples, between friends and all six characters bring new levels of cynicism to the superficial powers that be, those that determine what sells and what doesn’t. Chuck Fadge is hoisted as a symbol of idiocy, and verbal trash, pawning off his limited skill set to future would-be writers. The funny thing, is that while Fadge does not deny who he is, the other set seem to be blindly following the same path Fadge laid down. There is competition and jealousy between friends, between lovers and even between father and daughter. I guess the old adage birds of a feather flock together, rings true in this lover, as writers, it seems, are only friends with other writers, either published or unpublished.
Elise traces the evolution of the writers, as they transfer from near-fame to quiet neglect, and struggle to get back to the top with cheesy best-seller formulaic writing. I’m not sure if this book is intended to insult readers, by its gripping and maybe truthful observations of what is popular and what is not. What sells and what doesn’t. There seems to be a theme in literature of what readers are looking for. It seems that in the past couple of years, memoirs have taken on a new life in the literary world, but were does that place regular fiction? People are now writing fiction and passing it off as memoirs because it garners more respect that way. If anything, I will now always wonder if the book I am reading is written from true devotion, or if it based on a formulaic diversion simply implemented to be a best-seller. Is one better than the other? For the author, obviously the latter will bring in more sales, but the former will cement his place in history with more reverence. Will the reader even be able to distinguish the formulaic from the genuine?
This book is very engrossing, with each chapter focusing on a specific character. The chapters are pretty short ranging from 2 to 10 pages, which in effect keeps the book going steadily and is hard to put down. Elise Blackwell does not dwell too long on any particular character, but each character has a unique depth with this someone trite struggling artist story. The point of the book, however, is not the story itself, but of the characters finding their own identities through their writing.
Find this book at your local library
Find New Grub Street at your local library
June 17, 2008
Apparently, the Telegraph has named To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee as the greatest novel of all time. I read Lee’s one and only published novel quite a few years ago, and I remember it fondly as a vivid representation of racism, of honor and of love.
The top 5 on the list are
1. To Kill a Mockingbird [Harper Lee]
2. Lord of the Rings [JRR Tolkien]
3. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe [CS Lewis]
4. Pride and Prejudice [Jane Austen]
5. Da Vinci Code [Dan Brown]
What an odd selection. It is always refreshing to see that the classics are just as relevant now as they were when first written, in fact, most classics seem more relevant and famous now than before. It makes you wonder how well a book like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe would do if published this year? Would Charles Dickens’ still be the primary method of torture for every English class in every undergraduate university out there?
You can read the rest of the article below this link, as well as the Telegraph’s top 50 novels of all time.
June 16, 2008
Since this blog is in its toddler stages of development, I am still trying to figure out exactly what purpose I want this blog to serve. I don’t want to be just another book-review feed, so I’ve developed two new pages to help round-out this literary blog of mine.
There is the Bay Area Literary Events page that will be updated daily with upcoming literary events, festivals, readings, etc., going on in the greater Bay Area of California. I’m going to try my best to attend as many of these events as I can pending work schedules and other obligations.
There is also a smaller feature of cool/unique used bookstores that I come across in my travels. Hopefully this will encourage me to travel more!
June 16, 2008
I came across this post on a library-blog that I read, and I couldn’t resist posting it here.
Author Scott Douglas held a library themed wedding that I think any crazed reader would want to replicate in some fashion.
The invites were the most library-related aspect of the wedding, while everything screamed avid reader. Each table “was named after a writer that Diana & I like; it had a book by that writer, a framed picture of that writer, and a library card with the writers picture on it; every seat also had a book-themed crossword puzzle.”
This is such a cute idea. I wonder how they rationed off the books on the table amongst all the guests?
June 15, 2008
I just wanted to make a note that my blog has moved from http://anovelworld.wordpress.com to http://thenovelworld.com
I’m pretty sure the wordpress address will keep rerouting the link back to the dot-com page, but please make a note to change your bookmarks in case it stops rerouting for some reason. =)
June 15, 2008
In the Lake of the Woods by author of the bestseller The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien is an eerie book about the sudden disappearance of Kathleen Wade during a camping trip with her husband John Wade. This book focuses more on the psychology of loss suffered by John Wade, as he is the main focus on the novel. This book was a bit complicated to get into, since the author would switch back and forth between John’s childhood, his developing romance with Kathy, their marriage, and ultimately, his failed campaign run for the US Senate.
Due to the suicide of his father when John was only fourteen years old, he suffers from massive abandonment issues and has trouble trusting anyone in his life. Add to that a long stint on the front-lines of the Vietnam War, and John fits the mold of your typical troubled man. When his wife disappears, John comes under suspicion by those near him, the two patrol officers and even Kathy’s sister. The book is written in a unique way, not only with the chronology jumping, but also with the general storyline. O’Brien alternates between chapters of plot, and a chapter of testimonial snippets we can assume are taken from witness interviews and perhaps a court case sometime in the future. O’Brien even includes footnotes in these chapters where he expands on details and provides background information and those quoted in those chapters. Any chapters discussing Kathy’s whereabouts or even her mental state during her disappearance are titles “Hypothesis” so that the reader is aware that things are not as they should be, that Kathy’s disappearance is on many levels not what anyone expects to be. =O’Brien does not seem to point any fingers at an obvious culprit.
Its a gritty book, but its well written, and very emotional. John Wade is a disturbed man trying to make sense of the world he lives in.
Find this book at your local library
June 13, 2008
We all start blogs for different reasons and for different purposes. I chose to start a blog to have a place to articulate my feelings towards books I’ve been reading, so as not to fill up my friends’ Livejournal pages with endless rants on books most have not (and probably won’t) read. Petite Anglaise started her blog as a way to reconnect with her former world, to a world separate from her daughter and boyfriend. As her blog developed and gained in popularity, the author and the online persona began to merge into one woman, trying to find happiness and love in Paris.
In her first book, aptly titled Petite Anglaise, Catherine takes us through an eloquent and wistful journey through her life as she rediscovers herself through her blog, her friends and her family. Based on true events, this story of Catherine Sanderson brings a new life to her popular blog. The book follows the span of a year, from the start of the blog, to Catherine’s settlement into being a single mother. She takes us on a special insider’s trip into her world, her life with boyfriend Mr. Frog and daughter Tadpole. Her love affair with frequent blog commenter Jim from Rennes, and the ups and downs of relationships that are all too common in any city, in any country.
The book a very keen first chapter that sets the mood of the book, her frustrations with Mr. Frog, her love for Tadpole and her incessant obsession with everything related to her blog. What makes this book more endearing, is that its based on a real person. Although there is always something stalker-ish about blogs in general, I figure whatever Petite doesn’t want us to know, she wouldn’t post on her blog and wouldn’t publish in her book.
When I first read the synopsis on the back cover, I thought to myself, “great, another chick-flick as a book”, but this turned out to be something more profound. Maybe its Catherine’s writing style, her warm tone yet sarcastic tone, her effortless skill with description, her vulnerability as a writer and as a person encouraging the reader to keep reading, to live vicariously through Catherine’s life as many people have done previously through her blog posts.
You can go to her blog to read about her from the very beginning and were she has ended up right now. As long as the blog survives the story can continue. You can currently pre-order the book on Amazon, it is set to be published next week (June 17th).
Find this book at your local library
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