Telegraph Avenue #5

Well, boys and girls, this is the end. This is our final Telegraph Avenue readalong post. This one will cover the final section, Brokeland. This readalong is sponsored by Emily of As The Crowe Flies and Reads and Harper Collins. If you would like to pre-order Telegraph Avenue, please visit Odyssey Bookstore. Interested in some other views on this novel? You can find the other read-along participants here.


I closed the cover of this book and I felt...unsatisfied. This has never happened to me while reading a Michael Chabon novel and I'm trying to put my finger on exactly what rubbed me the wrong way about this ending. I think, after spending almost 500 pages with the characters, I wanted more to happen. I'm not saying that everything had to end happily ever after, but I wanted things to change more than they did. I felt in some cases (Titus and Julie, for example) that things sort of went backwards. I expected to finally have a strong reaction to Archy, the character who is the center of this story, but I still felt mostly ambivalent towards him. I think the only character who really had a journey during this book was Gwen.


Somehow, I also felt like the major themes in this novel were introduced but then skirted around.Chabon set up these great explorations of race relations by giving us a white couple and a black couple whose lives are intertwined on so many levels. But I feel as if I've spent more time trying to figure out which characters are actually which races than thinking about the ways in which we perceive each other. He also set up a competition between a mega media mogul and a small town record store. There was an initial confrontation, but somehow the end is reached without really addressing the issue of mega stores and mom and pop stores. 


Michael Chabon is an incredibly talented author and I have enjoyed several of his books. This one didn't work for me as well as some of the others. There is still some very beautiful writing here and interesting relationships. If you are a Michael Chabon fan or someone who is really into music, you should definitely grab this book when it comes out in September.


I'm going to end my musings with two of my favorite quotes from this section:


"For years his life had balanced like the world of legend on the backs of great elephants, which stood on the back of a giant turtle, the elephants were his partnership with Archy, and Aviva's with Gwen, and the turtle was his belief that real and ordinary friendship between black people and white people was possible, at least here, on the streets of the minor kingdom of Brokeland, California. Here along the water margin, along the borderlands, along the vague and crooked frontier of Telegraph Avenue. Now that foundational pileup of bonds and beliefs was tottering, toppling like the tower of circus elephants in Dumbo. Not because anybody was a racist. There was no tragic misunderstanding, rooted in centuries of slavery and injustice. No one was lobbing vile epithets, reverting to atavistic tribalisms. The difference in class and education among the four of them canceled out without regard for stereotype or cultural expectations: Aviva and Archy both had been raised by blue-collar aunts who worked hard to send them to lower-tier colleges. The white guy was the high school dropout, the black woman upper-middle-class and expensively educated. It just turned out that a tower of elephants and turtles was no way to try to hold up a world."


"Amid the layers of conscious thought and the involuntary actions of her body, Gwen found herself in possession, coolly palmed in her thoughts like a dollar coin, of the idea that she was about to bring another abandoned son into the world, the son of an abandoned son. The heir to a history of disappointment and betrayal, violence and loss. Centuries of loss, empires of disappointment. All the anger that Gwen had been feeling, not just today or over the past nine months but all her life - feeding on it like a sun, using it to power her engines, to fund her stake in the American dream - struck her for the first time as a liability. As purely tragic. There was no way to partake of it without handing it on down the generations." 

Emily asked us also to talk a bit about our experiences reading and discussing this book before publication. It's a really interesting experience to read a book before there is any buzz about the book. There are no other opinions that are stuck in your subconscious. I think it works really well to read it with a group, though. You come to your own conclusions, but then you have people to bounce ideas off of instead of waiting for someone to share your love of a particular character or passage. 


Thank you to Emily of As the Crowe Flies for hosting this readalong! 


Curious about what happened earlier in the novel? You can check out post #1, post #2, post #3, and post #4. 

It's Monday - how is everyone?

Hey everybody. How are you doing? It's been a long, tough week around here. Without going into too much detail, we would really appreciate your thoughts and prayers right now. It's not the three of us directly, but there are several people who we know and love who are going through some really awful stuff right now.

Anyway, the Telegraph Avenue readalong will have its last installment on Tuesday and I am currently working through a gigantic pile of library books. I will get through them before the fines kick in...I will get through them before the fines kick in...

Read This Week:

Telegraph Avenue
By Michael Chabon


Angelmaker
By Nick Harkaway

Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Telegraph Avenue #4
Wednesdays with David: When the Dinosaurs Lived
Reviews of The Great Gatsby and Code Name Verity

Reading Now:

The Chaperone
By Laura Moriarty

Up Next:

Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life
By Lauren F. Winner


What are you reading this week?

Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Scribner 1995

205 pages

My personal and much beloved copy

This is the third time I've read The Great Gatsby. The first time was in my junior year of high school in my English class, like many other people. I bought my own copy and read it again during college. Now, in my mid-twenties, I’m reading it as a part of my effort to read one of Fitzgerald’s novels or short story collections each month.  Gatsby is a pivotal novel for so many readers, the book that convinces people that books that are considered ‘classics’ or ‘literature’ can be accessible for everyone. I’m struck by feeling as if I could write about this book for hours and wondering if I can add anything to the conversation that hasn't already been said in the past 87 years.

As I read the novel this time around, I was struck by how sparse this story is and how much it says in less than 200 pages. The story at its core is a simple one: a man works for years to get the girl he loves, but his quest ends in tragedy. But Fitzgerald weaves a relatively simple story, one that has been in our collective psyche forever, and makes it so much more. He explores the American Dream, what it means to be wealthy, the distinction between being loved and being idealized, and the extent to which we can ever really know another person. All of this is done to the tune of some of the most beautiful language in the American literary cannon.

“Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something – an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.”

What struck me most this time around was how beautifully Fitzgerald writes about making our dreams bigger than they can possibly be. Gatsby is a man with a clear goal: marrying Daisy. In order to do this, he works (through honest means and suspicious ones) to become wealthy enough to take care of the woman he loves in the manner in which she expects. From first glance, this seems like an admirable goal. But the lesson in this novel, I think, is to not have just one dream. Gatsby has nothing else in his life – no family, no friends, no goals with the exception of a happy ever after with Daisy. Over the years, he has made her into a woman so amazing that no mere mortal can live up to the woman he has been dreaming about for so long.

There is a sense, throughout this book, of distance between the characters. Some of it is physical – Daisy and Gatsby have been apart for a long time. Some of it is mental and emotional. In spite of the fact that Daisy and Tom are married, there are definite walls between them and each has given their heart to another. I think Fitzgerald intentionally emphasizes this distance by narrating the story through the eyes of Nick Carraway. He is new to the area and does not even know who Gatsby is until they are awkwardly introduced at one of Gatsby’s lavish parties. As Nick begins spending time with these people, he tries to get to know them. But he finds it harder than he expected. Gatsby in particular is seemingly unknowable, as rumors about him seemingly contradict each other and the man in question does not jump to clear up the mystery.

The Great Gatsby is a book that you can return to time and again, one of those stories that will mean something different to you at different points in your life. If you haven’t read it yet, now is always the right time. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a great gift for mixing deep character insight with themes that still resound with the modern reader and prose that might as well be poetry. There are many very good reasons that The Great Gatsby is an enduring classic.

Review: Code Name Verity

People. This book.It's amazing.



Read my review of it here and then go get it. No, seriously. Immediately after finishing reading my review, get up and go.

You're welcome in advance.

Wednesdays with David: When the Dinosaurs Lived...

When the Dinosaurs Lived...

By Jonathan Shelly, aged 4 1/2 years

Pictures by Julie Park

Lion Publishing 1989

From David's bookshelf (an inheritance from his mommy)

The story: Jonathan Shelly, at four years old, was a great expert on all things dinosaur. In this small book, he regales us with the opinions of dinosaurs on crucial topics such as television and footwear. He also reveals the reasons he really loves dinosaurs.

Mama opines: Jonathan Shelly was four when he wrote this book. I was four when my dad got it for me. David is four now when we are reading it. It's good stuff, don't you think?
This book is adorable and really shows what little kids find important about dinosaurs (they couldn't read and oh...they are extinct and can't chase the kids!) I love the idea that his parents really encouraged him to take his passion seriously at the age of four and I am so supportive of a publishing company that actually put together the thoughts of a four year old on a topic that small people love so much.


Thoughts from David: I like it because dinosaurs can't bite us! I like that dinosaurs were alive and they don't have shoes or TV. It's kind of silly.
Favorite part: That they don't have telephones because they are loud. Roar!!!

We are off to the pool. Happy Reading!

Telegraph Avenue #4

This post covers Section 3, A Bird of Wide Experience, and Section 4, Return to Forever. This readalong is sponsored by Emily of As The Crowe Flies and Reads and Harper Collins. If you would like to pre-order Telegraph Avenue, please visit Odyssey Bookstore. Interested in some other views on this novel? You can find the other read-along participants here.


A Bird of Wide Experience is the shortest section of this book and it gives us a literal birds eye view of the characters living on Telegraph Avenue. Fifty Eight, the beloved parrot of Mr. Cochise Jones, flies overhead in his search for a good place to land. This section didn't do a lot for me, mostly because it was an eleven page sentence. I didn't feel like it added too much to the story and, for me, it seemed to break up the rhythm that Chabon has established throughout the rest of the book.

After reading section 3, I realized that Chabon writes some really long sentences. This is by far the longest, but he will often spend a whole paragraph with just one sentence. Most of the time, this works well. On occasion, I found myself getting lost in a sentence though and having to backtrack to figure out what we were originally talking about.

Section four, Return to Forever, is back to normal with a lot of plot for the reader to take in. At this point in the story, I don't want to reveal a lot of the story. It sort of takes away the impetus for you to read it if I tell you everything, doesn't it? This section centers around the funeral of Mr. Jones - the preparations for the service, the beginning of the grieving process, and the actual service.

I thought that this section built nicely upon the ideas of family and generations that were explored earlier. In the pages we read this week, I felt that Chabon was illustrating that family is a choice. We are seeing the bonds that characters have with the family that is theirs by blood and the bonds they have with family they choose. In each of these circumstances, they have to choose to maintain the relationship - to get to know the grandfather they never expected to find, to reconsider the philandering husband, to think about going down in flames with your best friend because it's the right things to do. I'm really struck by the ways so many of these characters are relating to each other in moments big and small that they are there for each other, despite all of the tough times they are going through.

The interplay of race continues to be a huge them throughout this book. In earlier sections, I think some of us felt that Chabon was taking the easy way out, making obvious choices. But as the book goes on, I am finding that our author is actually very careful in the way he portrays race and the way people of different races interact with each other. Some things seem obvious, even painfully so. But we have to remember that sometimes these things are so imprinted in our consciousness because they have some truth to them. Then Chabon turns around and pulls an unexpected punch, like having Julius acknowledge that he is awful because he is about to assume that the man in a turban is a taxi driver. As readers, we are so focused on black and white that we don't consider how they relate to people of other backgrounds!

Throughout the book, Chabon has bookended the sections with images of Julie and Titus. The travels of these two boys, one white and one black, are some of the most lyrical phrases in the whole book. Take this one, for example:

"A last morning flag of summer, blue banded with gold and peach, unfurled slowly over the streets as the two wanderers, denizens of the hidden world known to rogues, gamblers, and swordsmen as "the Water Margin," made their way along the Street of Blake toward the ancestral stronghold of the Jew-Tang Clan, its gables armored in cedar shakes faded to the color of dry August hills. Armed merely with subtle weapons of loneliness, they left behind them, like a trail of dead, the disappointment of their tenure at the School of the Turtle. They were little more than boys, and yet while they differed in race, in temperament, and in their understanding of love, they were united in this: The remnant of their boyhood was a ballast they wishes to cut away. And still boyhood operated on their minds, retaining all its former power to confound wishes with plans."

I think most of us have a guess about the way this book will end. We all expect a happy ending, don't we? I rather suspect, though, that this author will have a few tricks up his sleeve for us in the final section of this book. Make sure to check back next week to find my thoughts on the last section of this book!

It's Monday...what are you reading?

Hi everybody! How was your week?

We just finished up a lovely dinner with the in-laws. I love making dinner in the crockpot - it means I can nap on the couch while it's cooking! I was really happy to put David to bed tonight listening to The Musical Life of Gustav Mole. It was one of my favorites books on tape as a child and I'm pretty sure I listened to it every night for years. I love sharing my favorite childhood books with him. Are there any books you love that you have shared with a favorite kid? 

Read This Week:

The Great Gatsby

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posts from this Past Week:

It's Monday

Telegraph Avenue #3

Reviews of The Eyre Affair and The Irresistible Henry House

Reading Now:

Telegraph Avenue

By Michael Chabon

Angelmaker

By Nick Harkaway

Up Next:

Ivanhoe

By Walter Scott


What did you read this week? 

Review: The Irresistible Henry House

The Irresistible Henry House

By Lisa Grunwald

Random House March 2010

432 pages

From the library

The Irresistible Henry House is a fascinating hodgepodge of time periods and bizarre American culture. The novel follows Henry, who begins life as a practice house baby. Henry is an orphan and during the first two years of his life, he lives with several young women studying home economics.  The people in his life change often with the sole exception of Martha Gaines. She is the house mother, the woman who teaches the students of Wilton College to be mothers in spite of the fact that she herself is childless. When the time comes for Henry to return to the orphanage and be placed with an adoptive family, Martha cannot bear to let him go. Henry and Martha become the only points of permanence in each other’s lives.

Author Lisa Grunwald does a wonderful job covering a lot of ground in this novel. The book begins in the 1940s, during a time when gender roles are firmly established and Martha teaches a mothering philosophy of many rules and minimal coddling. As Henry grows, the reader gets an inside look at the changes that sweep the nation. Martha is forced to deal with the growing popularity of a doctor named Spock whose parenting philosophies are exact opposites of her own. Henry becomes immersed in the culture of the 1960s and 1970s as he experiments with drugs, watches his best friend take part in protests, and cheers on his girlfriend as she is cast in the musical Hair. This is where Grunwald truly excels as a writer – she deftly shows the pain of trying to keep up with a rapidly changing world and falling hopelessly behind.

A large focus of this book is the magic of art, especially the magic created by Walt Disney, As a child, Henry becomes enamored with Disney cartoons and begins to pursue art. He eventually becomes a part of the team creating beloved films like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and Yellow Submarine. This inside look into the inner workings of the animation department of a film studio is fascinating and one you don’t often see in the pages of literature.

Despite a sweeping history of the mid twentieth century, Grunwald’s characters fail to really pull the reader in. Martha is very needy and looks to Henry to fill the emptiness in her life. Obviously, Henry cannot do this as a child and resents Martha for expecting this from him. Henry has a lot of issues because of his bizarre upbringing. He finds it difficult to commit to any one person, since he is used to being passed from one woman to the next. Unfortunately, he is not a particularly likable character. What he needs is obvious to the reader, but seemingly impossible for Henry to ascertain. He lashes out at everyone, including the people who love him most, in ways that seem too extreme even for his circumstances.

The Irresistible Henry House is a sweeping look at the way American culture changed with staggering speed between the 1940s and 1970s. It is the story of a tiny, non-traditional family unable to keep up with a changing world and unable to live up to the impossible expectations of the people who love them. While the characters can be a bit hard to sympathize with, this book is an excellent piece of historical fiction. It’s not to be missed by any reader curious about American culture. 

Review: The Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde
Penguin February 2003
374 pages
From my to-be-read shelf

Thursday Next lives in a version of England that is a bit different from our own. Thursday works in a special unit of the police that solves literary crimes. The line between reality and fiction is blurred in her world. People take literature so seriously that it is not uncommon for brawls to break out over the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. Have I mentioned that her father was an agent in the time travel unit and Thursday enjoys the company of her pet dodo? Things take a turn for the stranger when someone begins kidnapping characters from beloved works of literature.

In the midst of this bizarre and wonderful world, we get a very serious narrator. Thursday has some serious mental scars from her service in the ongoing Crimean War, compacted by the tragic death of her brother. She is a tough cookie, ready to argue with her boss or take on the most evil villain the literary world has seen yet. I think this is a bold choice for Fforde. It would be easy to have a lovely, precocious heroine who wanders through the pages of books (sometimes literally). Instead, Thursday is a woman who truly loves books but has lots of baggage and some serious attitude.

The Eyre Affair obviously has much to do with that beloved novel. I don’t think it is necessary to have read Jane Eyre in order to enjoy this book, but I think it does add another layer of understanding. I actually found myself understanding the character of Rochester much better in the pages of this novel than I did while reading its inspiration.

I feel like this book is a huge hug from Mr. Fforde for everyone who loves books. The Eyre Affair is a lot of fun and a perfect break for the reader who is traveling through the gigantic tomes of classic literature. Who hasn’t imagined actually living in their favorite book and meeting the characters that they love best?

I enjoyed this book, but I don’t feel the need to run out and grab the sequel immediately. I am curious, though, about what else Fforde can do in this quirky world he has created. Have you read the rest of the series? Did you love it? 

I'm sorry we missed our Wednesdays with David post yesterday. We were saying a tearful goodbye to our newest sister/aunt, a foreign exchange student staying with my parents for the past year. We promise to have a great kid's book for you next week!

Telegraph Avenue #3

This post covers section two, The Church of Vinyl. This readalong is sponsored by As The Crowe Flies (and Reads) and Harper Collins. If you would like to pre-order the book, please visit Odyssey Bookstore here.



People, I have started taking notes. Now I don't do this whilst reading. Instead, I stick random scraps of paper between pages with passages that I would like to revisit. But...I am trying to sound like an intelligent human being during this read-along and there is a lot of stuff going on and a lot of people to keep track of!


Part two seems to move faster than part one. While I still feel Chabon throws you into the narrative from page one, I think as readers we are used to the deep end by this point and it feels like progress is easier. We also have some idea of the characters now and their relations to each other (which is helped by a page of notes that probably look like chicken scratch to the rest of the world).


Although this novel is ostensibly about the way people of different races relate to each other, this section seemed to be heavily focusing on the idea of generations and legacy. In the beginning of this section, Archy spends time with Mr. Jones as he repairs his speaker. Mr. Jones is the closest thing that Archy has to a father figure and he tries to help him during a stressful time. "Mr. Jones sat there, confounded by grief, turning Archy's information this way and that, a paperweight, something small and heavy cut with a lot of facets. Wanting to say something to this fine and talented young man, something lasting and useful about sons, loss, and regrets." The theme of passing things down through family continues with Nat, who carefully makes the recipes his stepmother used to make in order to get Garnet Singletary, their landlord,  to support Nat's efforts to keep the new mega store out of their neighborhood. Nat recalls the way his stepmother cooked and worked around the kitchen as he acknowledges the powerful effect that food can have on people.


While this section has much to say about parents and children, there is also a lot in here about race relations. Nat and Archy are desperate to save their record store from being run off the street by the opening of Gibson Goode's mega record store, which will be a sign of the possibility of success for the poor black people who live on Telegraph Avenue. When Nat gathers people to protest the establishment of the Dogpile Thang (as the store will be called), they are a mostly ragtag group of white folks prepared to fight the opening of a store owned and operated by a successful black man. And...cue the racial tension. 


P.S. Did I misunderstand or did Mr. Chabon create a bit of revisionist history with our current president? 




So there is a lot happening in this section. I'm excited to see what happens in section three, A Bird of Wide Experience. Come back next Tuesday to find out what happens and make sure to visit the rest of the read-along participants here. 

It's Monday and we are having a party!

Hello there, bookish people! Did you have a good week?

I have a full house tonight (Sunday). It is my baby sister's sixteenth birthday, so that calls for four sisters, one boyfriend, and the literary family to make pizza, brownies, and a gigantic breakfast in the morning. Happy Birthday, sis!

Oh...I almost forgot. You guys, as of Monday, July 16, I have been blogging for one year. Last July, I wrote a nervous little post, followed up by my first review. Things have changed a lot since then! I feel like I'm getting in the swing of things - that balance between writing on your own blog and visiting others, reading and writing, and paying attention to stats without obsessing over them. Thank you all for visiting my little corner of the internet - you are the best.

Read This Week:

The Irresistible Henry House
By Lisa Grunwald


Second Nature: A Love Story
By Jacquelyn Mitchard


Reading Now:

Telegraph Avenue
By Michael Chabon


The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald


Up Next:

Angelmaker
By Nick Harkaway


What are you reading this week, friends?

Review: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

By Kevin Roose

Grand Central Publishing 2009

315 pages

Borrowed from my dad 

While working as a writer's assistant, college student Kevin Roose encounters a group of evangelical students from Liberty University. When their conversation turns awkward, he wonders how different the students at that college are from his classmates at Brown University. Instead of going to Italy or France for his semester abroad, he registers as a transfer student at Liberty and begins a semester of learning about the Bible, prayer, and Liberty's infamous leader Jerry Falwell. 

Mr. Roose, at the age of 19, becomes a student at Liberty and records every conversation and experience he has during the semester. He adheres to the dress code, attends chapel services, joins the choir at Rev. Falwell's church, and goes on a missions trip to convert the unwashed masses enjoying spring break at Daytona Beach. He has candid conversations about lust and sex with the other young men on his floor, dates a few Christian girls, and is one of the last people to interview Rev. Falwell before his death. 

There is a lot going on in this book and Kevin Roose is an able narrator. He has an easy writing style and he comes across as the kind of guy you would want to hang out with in real life. I give him a lot of credit for his ability to keep an open mind at the age of 19. He has an ability beyond his years to be respectful of those who are different from him and to consider all of the possibilities in every given situation. 

He writes, “I didn’t come to Liberty to get a new religion, of course. I came here to spend time with the practitioners of another faith, to learn how they lived. But it was crazy of me to expect that I could situate myself among these people twenty-four hours a day, befriend them, and adopt their mannerisms without also internalizing and grappling with their beliefs.”

But the downside to this book is there is no major change for Roose. He spends a semester with people whose beliefs are very different from his occasional Quaker upbringing and his only revelation is that his classmates are not as different as he might have imagined. While this is obviously an important lesson, I think it is one that most of us have already learned. Those of us who are rational, conscientious adults already know that people are people, mostly trying to do their best, regardless of race, creed, or religion. While it would be surprising for Kevin to either discover that his classmates and mentors at Liberty were unreachable religious fanatics or to have a deep religious conversion experience himself, it would certainly make for more interesting reading! 

The Unlikely Disciple might be a good read for you if you want to get an inside look at the inner workings of Liberty University and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Roose presents a very balanced, respectful look at a group of people who are often misunderstood and maligned. However, this book ultimately suffers from a lack of change in our narrator. His journalistic attempts to present a fair, well-rounded picture ultimately leave this book feeling flat. If a man goes on a journey and comes back unchanged, has he really gone on a journey at all? 

Review: Tales of the Jazz Age

Tales of the Jazz Age

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

330 pages

From Project Gutenburg

This is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second collection of short stories. It was published in 1922, the same year as his novel The Beautiful and the Damned. Its most popular story is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

It took me a long time to get through this collection. I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for short stories or if the unevenness of the stories made me hesitate to dip back in, but I have been working on this one since April according to Goodreads. There are way too many stories in this book to cover each one of them here, but I will discuss a few favorites. 

Porcelain and Pink 

Fitzgerald loved to write plays. He threw one into This Side of Paradise and wrote a political satire entitled The Vegetable. I think this is one of his most successful. It centers around Julie, a young woman bathing in a pink tub. She converses with her sister and a suitor outside her window. The play has a fun twist ending which exhibits Fitzgerald's unique brand of humor perfectly. 

The Diamond As Big as the Ritz

I don't remember reading this one before. This story is about a young man named John T. Unger who is invited to spend the holiday with his extremely wealthy classmate Percy Washington. Percy takes John to his secluded mansion which is perched on top of the world's biggest diamond. John meets Percy's stern and mysterious father and his alluring sister. John's knowledge of the the family's fortune soon puts him in danger and the ending of this story is, well, explosive. There are also many  interesting race and class issues brought up throughout this story. 

O Russet Witch!

This story feels very different from Fitzgerald's usual fare. He tends to write about a young man in love with a woman who is defeated by class differences and money woes. This story takes place mostly at a bookstore (which you know we bibliophiles adore). The wonderfully named Merlin is enchanted by the young woman who lives in the apartment across from his. When he is not working at The Moonlight Quill Bookstore, he is observing this girl who he dubs 'Caroline.' The day she comes into the store, she turns the store and his life upside down. This story follows Merlin throughout his life and looks at the effect this magical woman has on him.

The Lees of Happiness

The Lees of Happiness is a really lovely, heartfelt story. Fitzgerald's stories often wink at the reader and have moments of humor and light. This one is about a singer named Roxanne who marries Jeffrey, a writer. They are wonderfully happy together until tragedy strikes the young couple. It's a story that looks at the longing for what could have been and the inability of others to heal our wounds. I think this is one of my favorite Fitzgerald stories. 

Do you have a favorite F. Scott short story? 

I will be (re)reading The Great Gatsby next and posting about it towards the end of the month. I would love for you to join me! Check out BookRiot for some great supplemental stuff - they are reading Gatsby this month too. 

Wednesdays with David: The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man

By Michael Chabon

Illustrated by Jake Parker

Balzer and Bray 2011

From the library 

The story: Awesome Man is, well, awesome. He can fly, hold things with his awesome power grip, and shoot positronic rays from his eyes. He defeats bad guys like Professor Von Evil and the Flaming Eyeball. But Awesome Man has a secret...

Mama opines: Well, I'm continuing on my Michael Chabon-fest this month. Who knew he also wrote a children's book? Not me! We read a lot of superhero books around these parts and this one holds up to the competition. The story is fun, it will make your small people laugh, and the illustrations are wonderful.

Thoughts from David: Awesome Man is the best! I like it! (proceeds to crash into mommy)

Favorite part: When he gets the eye to go away!

Happy Reading!

Telegraph Avenue #2

This post covers the first 124 pages, or section 1, entitled Dream of Cream. This readalong is sponsored by As The Crowe Flies (and Reads) and Harper Collins. If you would like to pre-order the book, please visit Odyssey Bookstore here.



Now that I have completed the first section, I am reminded why I love Michael Chabon's novels so much. He immerses the reader so completely in the lives and thoughts of his characters. In the first few pages, you may feel like you are struggling to swim because Chabon likes to drop you right into the deep end of the pool. There are no idyllic chapters that set the scene before the action begins. Instead, you are immediately a part of the events going on in the lives of the characters.

Telegraph Avenue centers around two friends who own a record store in California - Archy and Nat. Archy is expecting his first child and Nat is the father of a teenage boy. Their wives, Gwen and Aviva, are a renowned team of midwives. Archy and Nat are feeling the pressure of being small business owners as a media mogul is developing a mega-store down the street, threatening to put them out of business. To top things off, Nat's son Julius has started to date another boy who might turn out to have an important connection to Archy.

This novel is not one you can read while half paying attention, or just plow through in a day. It is a big book with a lot going on. Before we hit page 200, we have encountered a home birth, the first meeting of a young gay couple, the discovery of infidelity, and an attempted assassination. What I really appreciate about reading Chabon's novels is that he doesn't baby you. He assumes that you are an intelligent reader and can follow along without too much explanation. 


I am excited to see what happens in the next section.Check back next Tuesday for my thoughts on section two, The Church of Vinyl. 

It's Monday again...

Hi friends. I'm going to keep this one short and sweet since it seems I am battling some sort of stomach thing. Boo! Stomach ailments aside, this was a good week. We watched some fireworks from the in-law's boat, had a great church service with two other churches in our town, and welcomed my sister back from Austria with a joyful, noisy family dinner at a Mexican restaurant with truly delicious food.
I'm excited to read the rest of Telegraph Avenue for the readalong during the rest of July. Make sure to check back here on Tuesdays to see my thoughts!

Read This Week:

The Chosen
By Chaim Potok

Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Telegraph Avenue Post #1
Wednesdays with David: The Night Pirates
June Wrap-up
Review of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits 


Reading Now:

Telegraph Avenue
By Michael Chabon


The Irresistible Henry House
By Lisa Grunwald


Up Next:

Second Nature: A Love Story
By Jacquelyn Mitchard

What are you reading this week?

Review: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

By Ayelet Waldman

Anchor 2007

340 pages

Won from Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic 

Emilia is avoiding things - playgrounds, mothers with strollers, and telling her husband what she thinks really happened the night their newborn baby daughter died. But she can't avoid spending time with her five year old stepson Willliam. Emilia finds him insufferable, especially when he makes brilliant suggestions like she should sell the baby's things on Ebay. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits chronicles one woman's discovery of who to trust, who to love, and what truly makes a family.

I have to preface the rest of this review by saying that I am slightly in awe of Ayelet Waldman. She is married to this fellow here, whose book I am currently reading. The two of them churn out brilliant novels all the time and in the meantime, they take care of their four children. I am jealous of their literary prowess in light of four kids. I can barely manage to write a few reviews with one kid running around the house!

Moving right along...I found Emilia to be a really interesting character. She can truly be a pain in the tush, but she knows it. "That is quite nearly too much to bear, because don't they see that I am busy? Don't they realize that obsessive self-pity is an all-consuming activity that leaves no room for conversation? Don't they know that the entrance to the park lies right next toe the Eighty-first Street playground and that if I am not completely prepared, if I do not clear my mind, stop my ears to all sounds other than my own breathing, it is entirely possible - likely even - that instead of striding boldly past the playground with my eyes on the bare gray branches of the trees, I will collapse outside the playground gate, the shrill voices of children keening in my skull?" Emilia is dealing with her grief in a very loud, messy way. She can't go back to work and she can't face the world, so she is left in a sort of no woman's land. 

I felt that Waldman excelled in a tricky genre. Novels from the point of view of the child tend to paint the stepmother as, well, evil. Books that feature the stepmother as protagonist seem to contain awful children and their nasty mothers. Instead, this book gives us characters who feel like real people. We get a woman who is concerned about the effect that her ex's new wife is having on her son, a little boy who can't help but be outrageous due to his being five years old, and a woman who is truly baffled about how to be a good stepmother in the wake of her incredible loss. 

Ms. Waldman infuses this novel with a wry humor that offsets the difficult circumstances that the characters find themselves in. There is a sort of twisted irony in being the other woman after the marriage of your parents was dissolved in the same way. There is humor in a woman finding sanctuary in Central Park (which almost becomes a character of its own), but only if she can avoid the legions of stroller pushing super mothers who lurk around its entrances. There is also a kindness that is present throughout the story. Motherhood, stepmotherhood, and marriage are all very difficult pursuits and Waldman showers grace throughout for her characters and for those of us who are living these situations in our real lives.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is a novel with brains that doesn't fall into predictable stereotypes or take cheap shots at your emotions. Instead, it presents life and love in all of its awful, wonderful, messy glory and asks its readers to think about what it means to love another person and create a family. 

June Wrapup

Is everybody keeping cool? Man, it is hot here in NJ! Thankfully, we have air conditioning and Grammy's pool down the street.
I'm curious - do you read more or less during the summer?

June Stats
Books reviewed: 8
Pages read: 2376
Fiction/non-fiction: 5/3
Female authors/male authors: 4/4
My books/library books: 8/0
Lindsey's favorite book in June: Russian Winter

Books reviewed by David: 3
David's favorite book in June: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

What was your favorite book in the month of June?

Wednesdays with David: The Night Pirates

The Night Pirates

By Peter Harris

Illustrated by Deborah Allwright

Scholastic 2006

From the library

The story: One night, a nice, brave, little boy named Tom is awoken by noises outside of his house. He is met by a band of girl pirates who borrow the front of his house as a front for their pirate ship. Can Tom join them on their adventures to take the treasure from the rough, tough, grown-up Captain Patch? 

Mama opines: I like so many things about this book. The illustrations are wonderful and it's such a fun look at the ways in which small children love pirates. Perhaps my favorite part is that Tom is a boy, and he has to ask to join the girl pirates. It turns out that small girl pirates are pretty fierce and great companions for an adventure. Most of all, this book is a lot of fun to read. You know it's a good one when your little guy or girl asks to read it for the millionth time and you think, "Oh, ok, I love this one!" 

Thoughts from David: I like that they go down, down, down and I like that they go up, up up in the beginning. I do like all of the story.
Favorite part: I like this part (points) when the house is all tipped over.

Have a very happy Fourth of July!

Telegraph Avenue Post #1

So I promised a surprise yesterday during my "It's Monday" post. If you happen to be a gigantic Michael Chabon fan or are one of those people who obsessively check release dates, you may have noticed that my next book is not actually published yet. It will be released in September, but I am super excited to be participating in a pre-publication read along hosted by Emily of As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) and Harper Collins.

I sort of think Michael Chabon is a genius and could write brilliantly about any people in any situation. I reviewed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay here on the blog last December and I reviewed The Yiddish Policeman's Union on my column at the Atlantic Highlands Herald back in 2009. I also enjoyed Gentlemen of the Road, but I don't think I wrote a review for that one.

Suffice it to say that I am thrilled to be taking part in this read along. The book has four parts, so I will be posting on one section each Tuesday during the month of July. If you are excited for a new Michael Chabon book too, you can pre-order your copy here.

I was going to include some photos of me snuggling up with my brandy spanking new ARC, but my camera doesn't want to play. I will just tell you that Telegraph Avenue and I are going to be very happy together.

It's Monday again. Welcome to July!

Hello again, guys and gals! What's shaking? I knew that I could not possibly match the amount of books I read last week (four, in case you were wondering) and I was right. This week I read one book and I am about halfway through another. I am ok with that. Some weeks you actually have to sleep instead of staying up until 2 a.m. to finish the book!

Make sure you come back tomorrow, because I have something super exciting to tell you! Until then, I present to you the books. 

Read This Week:

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde

Posts from this Past Week:

It's Monday

Wednesdays with David: Party Time! 

Reviews of The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller and The Magicians

Reading Now: 

The Chosen 

By Chaim Potok

Up Next: 

Telegraph Avenue

By Michael Chabon

The Irresistible Henry House
By Lisa Grunwald 

What are you reading this week?