Six-Month Booklist

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

With the year more than half over already, it’s time to take stock of what I’ve been reading. I’ve watched enviously while here_be_dragons has been reading about 2 books per week. In between work, family and all those things I foolishly volunteer for, I’m pretty much at the one-book-a-month rate, and I read most of these books on the subway, often standing up hanging onto a pole.

Since I can’t possibly read all the books I’d like to (I haven’t even read all the ones that I own), I’ve tried to look at why I choose to read a particular book:

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by David Isaacson. This was a Christmas present. I've always enjoyed reading history, and this book was no exception. In the end, I found that I appreciated Franklin's accomplishments more than before but didn't really care for him as a person. Biographies are often slanted, but I couldn’t tell with this one, as his virtues and faults were in plain view, as apparently they were, more or less, in his lifetime.

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery. I picked this one up (which I’d never read before) off my daughter’s bookshelf because her best friend was scheduled to appear in a dramatic adaptation of the novel. After reading Anne’s first long monologue my reaction was “OMG! Miss Bates reincarnated!” Not a good start. Anne proved to be a lot smarter than Miss Bates, if something of a drama queen, but I never really warmed to her, and I found the novel too moralistic. I don’t know if it’s because the book doesn’t translate well to the 21st century, or if I was too old to appreciate it. I doubt I’ll ever pick it up again.

The Woman in White, by Willkie Collins. This is the book that sageofgodalming recommended. This book, which was described as the first real mystery, was a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it.If there was a flaw, it was the character of the heroine (and love interest). Laura was a proper Victorian heroine – beautiful but weak, almost childlike. Her half sister, Marian (through whose eyes part of the story was told), who had intelligence and gumption, seemed like a better match for Walter, but we are told when we first meet her that her face was ugly despite a beautiful figure. I suppose it offended my feminist sensibilities, but there was something disturbing about the fact that only the villain (whom I enjoyed very much as the villain) of the book was attracted to her. Perhaps in Victorian times an assertive heroine would have been unacceptable? If so, it appears that Collins would have liked to create one, and settled for splitting the character in two, for in the end Walter seems intellectually married to Marian, though physically married to Laura.

Mandragola by Niccolo Machiavelli. I pulled it off my bookshelf after DH noted a reference to mandrakes (aka mandragola) in a book he was reading. This is a very short, but delightfully funny play in which Machiavelli applies the realpolitik principles he expounded on in The Prince to the art of seduction. Recommended, especially if your only prior experience of Machiavelli took place in a tedious political philosophy class.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Morrison came up in a conversation I had with my sister, who said this was her favorite. I especially liked the way it combined gritty realism with quasi-magical elements and how she drew the characters. I regret that in the context of the novel she could not show more than a few vignettes of some of the minor characters; I especially liked the ending which was simultaneously sad and extremely satisfying. Midway though the book, I was thinking that I preferred Beloved to Song of Solomon but changed my mind about three-quarters through.

Appalachian Mountain Girl, By Rhoda Bailey Warren. I only knew about this book because the author’s son is a friend of mine, in fact the only RL friend with whom I've ever had a serious discussion about HP. This is a short, sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, series of reminiscences about the author’s childhood in Kentucky coal mining country, beginning with the family’s decision to leave the company town.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I happened to visit www.pemberley.com just as they were beginning a “group read” of this book. I’ve read it more than once before, and I’d also read a lot of critical essays on this book and on Jane Austen, but I’d never participated in a group discussion, so I got out my old paperback and joined in. This is my favorite of all Austen’s works (with Persuasion a close second); though it lacks the “light, bright and sparkling” (and arguably fairy-tale) quality of Pride and Prejudice, I suppose I prefer its shade. In particular, I think the Sotherton and play sequences are a tour de force. I’m impressed with the way Austen appears to have used the book to explore larger issues such as education, evangelicalism, the improvement of the estate and feminism. I like the Portsmouth section as well, though I am dissatisfied that, in contrast to the multiple POVs presented by the omniscient narrator earlier in the book, she constricts our POV to Fanny’s so that the important events of this stage of the book occur “offstage” and the reader learns of these events in fragmentary fashion through the cryptic letters she receives.

Unlike me, many critics don’t like MP much; some object to Fanny’s stasis, and find the ostensible villains of the story much more appealing characters. Feminist critics, on the other hand, seem to object to Fanny’s willing subjection to male authority, and denounce Sir Thomas as a monster, and to a lesser extent, Edmund. I think that misses the point. Austen appears to have used the female conduct book of the day as a model for Fanny, which requires her to appear meek and submissive, yet she does not submit to what goes against her principles. Austen nicely shows how absurd the conduct-book school of thought is in the first place, particularly when it operates side by side with the economic aspects of the marriage market. And Sir Thomas and Edmund, as representatives of the marriage-as-economics and the evangelical/conduct-book writer POV, respectively, inevitably won’t look too good, I don’t think they’re intended to be deliberately cruel, just unthinking, as evidenced by Sir Thomas’ about-face at the end of the novel. As a good HP fan, I paid particular attention to the character of Mrs. Norris in this reading. Though generally considered to be a comic character, I find Mrs. Norris’s avarice and self-aggrandizement too destructive in result for her to be considered merely comic. She presents herself as the most indulgent person in the world, eagerly spends money as long as it’s not her own, spunges constantly off others, and displays sycophantic tendencies toward her betters while heartlessly humiliating those who she deems beneath her. At the same time, Mrs. Norris’ treatment of Fanny as her primary whipping post, provides a basis for Fanny’s outward appearance as a conduct-book model even though in substance, she is not. Other than her nosiness (ex: "The Grants had their faults, and Mrs. Norris soon found them out"), though, I can't see a lot of similarities between her and Filch's cat.

What am I going to read next? While reading Mansfield Park I also reread the MP chapter of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature from his teaching days at Cornell University. Unlike many critics, Nabokov seems to like Fanny’s innocence, and I cannot read that Nabokov’s lecture without feeling urged to run to the library to check out Lolita. So that’s what I’ve done.

Also must borrow The Jane Austen Book Club from my friend, after taking a sneak peek at her copy yesterday.

Goal for the next six months: Double the number of books read.

Bound to obey and serve

Six-Month Booklist