24 in 48 Readathon TBR

This weekend, January 21-22 is the next installment of the 24in48 Readathon.  The goal of this challenge is to read books for 24 out of the 48 hours in the weekend, beginning at 12:01 am in your local time zone. You don't have to read for 24 straight hours, however, which makes it more flexible than other readathons, like Dewey's.  If you have things to do, a job shift to work, or (gasp!) sleep - you can still participate in the readathon and do what needs to be done.

It's not just about the reading, however.  There's a real sense of community amongst all the participants, celebrating successes and rooting each other on to keep reading.  If you're involved in bookish social media, there are reading challenges, hashtags, and fun competitions that you can participate in for prizes.  During the last 24in48, I won a copy of Good as Gone by Amy Gentry for one of my photos!

This will be the first time that I've participated in 24in48 since I've started this blog.  Last time around, I updated my reading status via Instagram Twitter and Litsy, and had an absolute blast!  The readathon has a presence on all of these social media, and you can find their links on their homepage.  I'm planning to post my real-time reading updates on all of these social media channels, so be sure to follow me there if you're interested to see how I get on with things.  I'll also be posting a summary of my reading here in the following week.

Are you participating in any 2017 reading challenges...BookRiot Read Harder, Pop Sugar, etc?  A readathon is a great way to tick a few boxes off those lists!  As with all readathons, it's important to have a strategy in place for optimum success.  That's not only the books you'll be reading, but the eats and drinks you'll need to keep your energy topped up.

The Books

I always select my readathon books in advance, because I don't want to think about what book to read once I've begun.  It's important for me to be able to pick up something else right away once I've finished whatever I'm currently reading at the time.  When it comes to books, I have carefully crafted the criteria that books must meet in order to make any readathon TBR.  Generally they fall into three categories: Short, funny, gripping.  This means that I often choose short story or essay collections, graphic novels/memoirs, short novels, and culturally relevant books.  In addition, my TBR choices need to conform to my #WinterOfWomen17 project - all be written by women.

Here are the books (an optimistically large stack, to be sure) I've got on my 24in48 TBR, in no particular order -

The Eats

As I mentioned before, sustenance is important to success.  Because the hours of the readathon are individualized, the options for food and drink are wide and vast.  It might mean that you are snacking on celery and carrot sticks (popcorn and M&Ms) during the wee hours of the morning with some sparkling water.  Maybe you actually want to get some sleep, and start off your readathon with a mug of coffee or tea, and a pastry.  Whatever it takes to keep you reading, make sure you're stocked up on it before 12:01 am on January 21st.  

And what about me?  I plan to start reading right away, then napping here and there throughout the weekend.  For food, I'm actually thinking of going Gilmore - pizza, licorice whips, toast and butter, Chinese food, copious amounts of coffee, and maybe a salad.  Because, you know, health.  

Are you up for the challenge of reading 24 hours in a weekend?  If so, grab your books and snacks, log on to whatever social media strikes your fancy, and get ready to have some fun!  I hope to see you there.

Librorum annis

A Little New Year's Book Haul

Oh those Boxing Day sales.  So tempting.  It's hard not to just have an eensy weensy peek to see if there's anything on offer that I cannot live without.  A little look won't hurt anything, right?  When that website is BookOutlet, it can hurt my wallet a bit.  However, not enough for me not to check it out.  Having found a few goodies, I couldn't resist placing a little order - getting some books for myself that I didn't receive during the holidays.  Here's the glorious haul (cue the angelic choir) -

•  A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin
• Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman
• The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt
• The Summer Without Men, by Siri Hustvedt
• Living Thinking Looking, by Siri Hustvedt
• The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves, by Siri Hustvedt
• Dance to the Piper, by Agnes De Mille

Also exciting were the January Book of the Month selections, which were available bright and early on the first of the month.  Of the five available choices, I picked the short story collection Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh.  I have yet to read her novel Eileen, but I am interested to see what she does in the short story medium.  I had an extra book credit to use, as part of their Black Friday promotion that got me to join in the first place, so used it on one of last month's picks - Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller.  This will be my first time reading any Fuller, and I'm intrigued!  There was an extra-special surprise in there as well, an exclusive BOTM edition of Gillian Flynn's novella The Grownup.  I suspect that this was included because the company has only just made available a special reprint edition of Flynn's 2009 book Dark Places.  I had no idea this little book was being added to my order, and I'm interested to see what kind of story it has to tell!

Gillian Flynn's book is hidden behind that little jacket-wrapper.

• Swimming Lessons, by Claire Fuller
• Homesick for Another World, by Ottessa Moshfegh
• The Grownup, by Gillian Flynn

Lastly, I couldn't help making a small order from The Strand in NYC.  I only get up to the city once or twice a year, so I do most of my book buying online.  I'm especially excited by their signed new editions and huge selection of used books.  When I'm feeling the urge for more beautiful Persephone Books, but not flush enough to make a purchase directly from them, I turn to The Strand.  They don't always have Persephones in stock, but they do from time to time, and I stalk their site and usually make a purchase when they have some in stock that I want to add to my burgeoning library.  Here's what I found this time around -

• Paris I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down, by Rosencrantz Baldwin
• They Can't Ration These, by Vicomte de Mauduit
•  Plats du Jour, by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd

I'm excited to get to reading these - maybe even this weekend!




Librorum annis

Book Review - A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes

In this bittersweet book, readers are treated to a glimpse of real, day-to-day life in Victorian London from the perspective of a young girl.  Molly was the youngest child in her family, and the only girl, with four elder brothers.  The ways in which the children squabble, band together, play, and tease each other will ring true to most of us who grew up with siblings.  The construct of this book is that the author, as an adult, is reflecting back on her early childhood - a time in her life which is punctured by a catastrophic event.  This event is revealed in the final pages of the text, and marks a drastic change for the family.  Until those final pages, however, A London Child of the 1870's is quite joyful and exuberant.

One of the most surprising parts of Molly's childhood was how progressive her education was, especially for the era.  Molly's mother, who had come from a wealthy and educated Cornish family, encouraged her daughter to be curious and adventurous.  She was allowed to be rambunctious in her play and through her experiences she learned a great deal.  She learned a great deal from the books that her family kept in the house, and was well-versed in Latin, literature, French, and some science.  One subject, in which she admittedly didn't excel, was maths.  However, she wasn't segregated from the sentiments of her time; her brothers were enrolled in schools from a very young age, but it wasn't until Molly was over the age of 10 that she was allowed to attend a nearby school for girls.  In this way, her education was progressive, but she was still required to fit into the societal mold of a Victorian woman.

Although Molly was certainly aware of the expectations in her time, she did not automatically or happily internalize them.  When she was forbidden from going to the theater or out to other places with her brothers, she would freely express her frustration and displeasure.  There are so many things she wants to do, and places she wants to go, but cannot because she is female.  It gives some context for the reader to then reflect on how far society has developed with regards to the rigidity of gender roles, but also how much further we can go.

While reading, I was regularly confronted with the ways in which technology has advanced since the Victorian era.  Transportation, especially long-distance travel, was an arduous and dirty ordeal.  Buses were not motorized as they are now, but were pulled by animals across streets that were mostly made of dirt and stone.  Trains were much slower and far less comfortable in their appointments.  Although travel isn't always pleasant nowadays, it is certainly moreso than it was in the author's time.

One of the greatest takeaways from A London Child of the 1870's was the general freedom that children had in Victorian London.  Running around nearby parks and gardens was not uncommon, and parents didn't constantly chaperone their children.  If a window got broken, as happened when one of Molly's brothers convinced her that a rock wrapped in cloth wouldn't break glass the way a naked rock would, no one seemed to get severely punished.  The author and her family lived in the Islington neighborhood of London, which is quite an urban area today.  On a recent holiday in London, my partner and I stayed at a hotel in Islington, so I am quite familiar with the area as it is in the twenty-first century.  To allow these children to run amok around that area now, it would be quite unthinkable.

Would I recommend this book?  Yes, I would.  It not only gives a heartfelt and touching portrayal of daily life for a Victorian child, but it shows that the stereotype of that life is not necessarily the reality.  It also provides a perspective from which a modern reader can analyze the societal changes that have taken place and impacted our lives in all sorts of ways.  As with all books that have been republished by Persephone Books, it is beautifully written and quite poignant throughout - a touching and memorable book for sure.





Librorum annis

My Reading Year -or- Favorite Books of 2016

2016 has been an amazing reading year for me, for quantity and quality.  To start off, I read the most books of any year since I've been tracking my reading.  According to Goodreads, I've completed a whopping 137 books this year.  The shortest book was 21 pages long (How Not to Give a F*CK at Christmas by Sarah Knight), the longest was 901 pages long (The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber), and the average length of a book was 242 pages.  I read a mix of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essay collections, and short story collections.  I also read in a variety of formats - paper books, e-reading, and audiobooks.

At the beginning of 2016, I set my Goodreads goal to read 75 books.  So, how did I manage to almost double that total?  One word - audiobooks.  My day job involves a lot of work on a computer, so I have plenty of time to listen to things.  While I do subscribe to a few podcasts, and listen to them regularly, I make a point to listen to a few audiobooks every month.  My local library gives me access to audiobooks through a digital streaming service called Hoopla, and also stocks a pretty impressive array of books on CD.  Through the year, I've determined that I really enjoy the audiobook format for certain types of books.  The first are celebrity memoirs, but only when the author narrates her/his work.  In particular, Julie Powell's Julie & Julia and A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston were really great listens...it feels like you're having a chat with these really interesting people.  Another great set of audiobooks are the Complete Arkangel Shakespeare collection.  One of the great series I have read this year was the Hogarth Shakespeare Series.  Before I read any of these retellings, I made a point of re-reading the source play.  I own massive, omnibus of Shakespeare's Complete Works, so reading the play isn't the problem.  What is the problem is being able to connect with the material, because it's meant to be performed for an audience, not read like a book.  The Arkangel productions are full cast recordings of the plays, which allows me to follow along in my omnibus and really appreciate and enjoy the story.

With all the books I've finished this year, it was really difficult to decide on which ones I really loved.   I finally decided to settle on 5 categories, and five favorites in each.  Not all of these were published in 2016, and they are listed in no particular order.  Here we go -

Poetry

1. Crow by Ted Hughes - A grotesque and emotional collection of poems about a crow who embodies all sorts of elements of earth, history, humanity, religion, and time.  Written in the aftermath of Sylvia Plath's death, it is an all-engrossing reading experience.
2. Hold Your Own by Kate Tempest - An intersection of Greek myth, gender, sexuality and the experience of being human
3. The After-Party by Jana Prikryl - A debut collection that takes the reader from New York to Italy, to Eastern Europe, and to Canada.  The poems are deeply rooted in a sense of place, yet are imbued with motion.
4. Errata by Michael Allen Zell - A poetry pamphlet from a small, New Orleans press, focusing on the preparation for and experience of the failed 1984 Louisiana World's Fair.
5. Why God is a Woman by Nin Andrews - In this collection of prose poetry, the concept of traditional gender roles in patriarchal culture is turned completely on its head. 

Short Stories

1. Minnie's Room by Mollie Panter-Downes - A collection of stories that explore the changing British society after WW2.  Republished in 2002 by Persephone Books, most of these stories were original published in The New Yorker between 1947-1965.
2. Good Evening Mrs. Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes - Giving readers a sense of everyday life in England during WW2, this collection explores those on the Home Front who deal with the fear, loss, and inconveniences of war.  Republished by Persephone Books in 1999, these stories were written between 1939 and 1944 and appeared in The New Yorker.
3. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman - This is constructed as a series of hypothesized dreams that Albert Einstein had, regarding the nature of time and our human experience of it.  Each is short, vivid, and altogether the work is a fascinating thought experiment on the different ways to consider time.
4. Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra - How do you discuss a work of fiction that is disguised as a Chilean college entrance exam from 1993?  This doesn't follow anything remotely resembling a traditional narrative structure, but is playful, sarcastic, and devastatingly human. 
5. Whatever Happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins - A group of 16 stories, of wildly varying lengths, that plays with the concept of White Gaze and the experience of black people in America in the 1970s.  The author was also a groundbreaking filmmaker, and this shines through in many of her stories.

Essay Collections

1. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison - Exploring a wide variety of situations and, more importantly, the people who occupy those situations.  The theme of empathy runs throughout the essays, even though the particular topics diverge from one another quite a bit.
2. Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman - A celebration of the author's love of books, the written word, and all things literary.
3. Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti - Part social psychology, part gender study, part documentary, part fine art.  It's a real mixture of graphics and text that work to build a convincing idea of what "clothing", "beauty", and "woman-ness" means in our society.
4. The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson - One of the most thought-provoking collections I've ever read.  The author identifies herself as a person of faith, but takes a positively humanist perspective on the world.
5. I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley - A very insightful, funny, and honest collection of personal essays.  I thoroughly enjoyed each and every essay, which is atypical for me.  I especially enjoyed reading about her miniature plastic pony collection!

Non-Fiction

1. No Surrender by Constance Maud - Published in 1911, at the height of the Women's Suffrage movement in Britain, this work masterfully straddles the line between journalism and historical fiction.  This was republished by Persephone Books in 2011, a century later.
2. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson - Like her partner that Nelson writes about here, this book defies categorization.  It's part memoir, part part poetry, part cultural criticism, part inter-sectional feminist manifesto, and part gender study.
3. March (books 1-3) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell - A graphic memoir trilogy of Congressman John Lewis' life from his beginnings as the son of a poor sharecropper, to his education and his activism during the Civil Rights era, and finally his political career.  It's truly inspiring!
4. Talking Back Talking Black:Truths About America's Lingua Franca by John McWhorter - A fascinating argument in favor of recognizing African-American Vernacular English (Black English) as a separate dialect of American English.  Most White Americans understand Black English to be a broken and error-filled form of standard American English.  It comes down solidly in the realm of linguistic racism - a topic before which I was unaware.
5. An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - This book challenges the dominant narrative of the founding and development of the USA, presenting an alternative (and more historically accurate) perspective from the people who resided in the North American continent before the first European settlers arrived.

Fiction

1. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn - A native Jamaican who now lives in the USA, the author uses this story to explore post-colonial ideas of class, sexuality, family, tourism, beauty - Jamaica itself.
2. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson - A very atmospheric novel about a family of women living in a small lakeside town in Idaho.  It envelops you in its quiet, poetic, and dreamlike prose, like a hand-crocheted and infinitely soft blanket.
3. Human Acts by Han Kang - The fulcrum of this book is the Gwanjgu Uprising in South Korea in 1980, and the government's brutal response to it.  It is an interconnected narrative of person, time, and location, but it really is the spirit that lives within the prose that makes the story so powerful.
4. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead - This is an incredible book, pulling no punches about the harshness of life for a dark-skinned person in mid-19th century America.  There are moments of joy and comfort, but they are infantismal compared to the brutality and overwhelming suffering.  Yet, amongst all the darkness, there is a sliver of hope.
5. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride - The prose of this novel is written in fragments, which gives it a kind of poetic musicality and rhythm.  Essentially the story of a young girl and her unhealthy brother, this story includes graphic portrayals of physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal abuse.  Despite this darkness and bleakness, this is the most heartrendingly beautiful book I have ever read.

Here's to another great reading year in 2017!  Cheers!

Librorum annis

Winter of Women

Yesterday, December 21, was the first official day of Winter.  Here in the Northern Hemisphere, wintertime is for coziness and warmth because it's freaking cold and dreary most of the time.  I'm happiest when I'm curled up on the sofa with a warm blanket, a hot beverage, and a good book.  Perhaps a pot of soup is simmering on the stove and a loaf of bread is baking in the oven, but perhaps not.  Whatever the occasion or situation, books are a part of it.

Recently, I was taking a look at my bookshelves.  Actually, I look at my bookshelves fairly often.  I find the act of looking at books to be soothing and relaxing (is it just me?), and where better to do that than amongst the comforts of home?  Upon a recent trip to my shelves, I found myself noticing just how many of my own books are unread.  Normally this doesn't bother me, because it leads to fruitful possibilities when I'm not sure what to read next.  Even if I have many many books yet to read, I'll happily order more, especially if they're by an author I'm excited about or a topic I'm interested in exploring.

For some reason, this time, it bothered me that there were so very very many unread books (I'm talking over a hundred books on my entire TBR).  Thus, I've formed a reading project for myself...and I'm calling it my Winter of Women.  From December 21 - March 20, I will do my best to only read unread books, written by women.  I'm hoping that this three month span of devoted reading will diminish my TBR at least a little bit.  I'll be tagging my social media posts with #WinterOfWomen17 if you want to join in or follow along.

Because this reading challenge will extend over such a long time, I'm not going to commit to a specific list of books.  However, here are some of the books I'm hoping to get to before March 20th:

1. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
2. Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple
3. At the Existential Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
4. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
5. How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti
6. The Mothers by Brit Bennett
7. Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
8. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
9. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
10. William: An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton
11. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
12. You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
13. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
14. Mariana by Monica Dickens

Librorum annis

The "Books to Read in Pairs" Book Tag

In mid-November, Jen Campbell created the "Books to Read in Pairs" book tag on her YouTube channel.  You can watch her video here.  Unlike most Booktube/book blog tags, this one has no questions.  The only rule is that you go to your bookshelves and find pairs of books that would be interesting to read together.

Maybe the books address similar topics, or were influenced by the same time period.  Perhaps they were written by the same person, or people in the same family.  Maybe one book was written as a response to or was inspired by another.  The particulars of the pairing aren't concrete, which allows the book pair-er to be creative and inventive.  Whatever the linkage, Jen asks only that you share 8-10 pairings, and discuss why they would be interesting to read together.  

This sounds like great fun, and a unique way to engage with my bookshelves.  Here are my pairings -

1. The Tempest by William Shakespeare & Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood 
   
   Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood's modern take on Shakespeare's classic play.  Set on a small island, The Tempest features the exiled magician Prospero and his daughter Miranda; there are three separate plots that alternate during the play.  Atwood's version features theater director Felix who has been exiled to teaching drama to incarcerated individuals.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal & Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, both by Jeanette Winterson 
   First published in 1985, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is based on the author's life being adopted by a very conservative, evangelical, Christian couple and discovering herself in that context.  When she develops romantic feelings for a female classmate, for example, her family and their religious order subject the girls to exorcism.  She grows into a woman seeing her self both in opposition to and in the context of this kind of upbringing.  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal is Winterson's memoir of the same time in her life.  Comparing life through fiction and non-fiction would be a fascinating project.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf & This Is Sylvia by Sandy Wilson 
   
    Did you know that Virginia Woolf wrote a fictional biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel Flush?  Well now you do, and you should go read it!  Flush: A Biography is written as though the dog itself is penning its memoir.  It intertwines non-fiction from Browning's letters and journals, and Woolf's imaginative writings on class, gender, and European society.  This Is Sylvia is the fictional memoir of a show business star cat.  Fictional memoirs of a dog and a cat...yes please!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank & An Interrupted Life by Etty Hillesum 
   
   These are two diaries, written by young Jewish women living in Amsterdam during World War 2.  Anne Frank was 13 when she started her journal, and continued writing it up until her capture by the Nazis in 1944 at age 15.  Etty Hillesum was 27 when she started keeping her diary.  She discussed the increasing Nazi presence and crackdown of the Jewish population, as well as romantic relationships and work that she was involved in before she was finally deported to a concentration camp in 1943.
   

   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot & My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
   

   

   Rebecca Mead has read and loved Middlemarch, and her book My Life in Middlemarch gives readers not only information about her life, but also about George Eliot's life, her classic Middlemarch, and how it relates to her own life.  A life in books book that is thoughtful, well-written, and really interesting.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg & Girl and Flame by Melissa Reddish 
   
   A horrific, murderous, destructive fire might seem a risky subject for a work of fiction, but both Bill Clegg and Melissa Reddish take it on in masterful ways, and in entirely different forms.  Girl & Flame  takes the form of flash fiction and prose poetry, following a woman whose family is killed in a fire, and who saves an ember from the fire and keeps it burning as a visual representation of her memory and her feelings.  Did You Ever Have a Family is a more traditional fiction story of a fire that kills everyone in a family except one, and how so many people in a community are affected.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott & Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante 
   
   In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott presents a family that, because the father figure is away fighting in a war, is maintained by their mother - Marmee.  Eve LaPlante's biography of the relationship between Louisa May Alcott and her own mother would give readers some context and insight into the creation of the characters, as well as details about her own life that would enrich the reading experience of this classic, American novel.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber & Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 
   
   Both of these books focus on the ways people relate to bureaucracies, and how those complex systems impact their lives.  Graeber, an economics professor and social anthropologist, examines the mechanics and impact of bureaucracies, and includes references to Heller's satirical novel Catch-22.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. The Vegetarian by Han Kang & Animal Liberation by Peter Singer 
   
   A touchstone of vegetarian/veganism writing, Animal Liberation is Peter Singer's manifesto on adopting a less animal-product-centric existence.  He argues that humans and other animals are differentiated only slightly, so should be valued and treated the same.  In The Vegetarian, the main character decides to no longer eat meat after a series of violent nightmares.  This puts her at odds with her family in particular and her Korean society at large.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. The Liszts by Kyo Maclear and Julia Sarda & So Much for That Winter by Dorthe Nors 
    
    The Liszts, protagonists of this children's picture book, are a family of people who love to make lists for everything.  One day someone comes to visit who is not on anyone's list.  What will the Liszts do about their lists?  Dorthe Nors' novel is a work of experimental fiction, in that it is made up of long lists.  It looks like poetry, but is truly a series of lists.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville & Railsea by China Mieville 
    
    Moby-Dick is a part-adventure and part-encyclopedic story about a ship captain's manic quest to kill the white whale Moby-Dick, who took his leg on a previous journey.  Railsea is basically Moby-Dick, with trains instead of whales, if Moby-Dick was written as a Young Adult novel.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky & The Mirador by Elisabeth Gille 
    
    Irene Nemirovsky wrote Suite Francaise about the exodus of Jewish and non-Jewish Parisians during the Nazi occupation during World War 2.  She, herself, was a Jewish woman living in France at that time.  She was arrested by the Nazis in front of her daughters at age 39, and lost her life in the Auschwitz concentration camp.  Her youngest daughter Elizabeth wrote The Mirador as a way to give her mother the life that she never had.

What books would you like to read together, especially combinations that -at first- might seem unrelated?

Librorum annis

November 2016 Reading Wrapup

This month, I participated in "Non-Fiction November", which encourages readers to incorporate more non-fiction reading into their bibliographic diets.  More specifically, there were four challenges in which readers could divide their non-fiction reading, meant either as a way to encourage more depth in the subject matter of the books, or as a way for less-seasoned readers to find non-fiction books that might appeal them.  The four categories are as follows:

1. "New" (recent release, recent purchase, new subject matter, etc.)
2. "Controversial" (debated subject matter, memoir/biography of a controversial figure, etc.)
3. "Important" (subject important to your life, necessary to be a more educated citizen, etc.)
4. "Fascinating" (mind-blowing topic, etc.)

I enjoy quite a bit of non-fiction reading already (mostly historical diaries, essays, and memoirs) so I challenged myself to read 100% non-fiction during November.  Here are the books I read, a bit about them, and into which of the four categories they fall:

The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial by Maggie Nelson

In 2004, as Maggie Nelson is preparing to release her poetry collection Jane: A Murder, she receives word that police believe they have found the man responsible for her aunt Jane's death, decades before.  In The Red Parts, the author explores her involvement in the investigation of the killer, primarily through research for her poetry collection and her experiences as the investigation moves toward arrest and eventually the trial itself.  Through this, the reader is taken, ultimately, on a journey to come to terms with whose life really matters, and how much, in society.

NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 3,4

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

The theme of empathy runs throughout the essays in this collection, even though the particular topics diverge from one another quite significantly.  In each of the entries, there is an attempt by the author to see life through the eyes of the people she encounters, no matter how different their experiences have been from hers.  I found that some essays were more successful in this endeavor than others, but overall The Empathy Exams was a satisfying reading experience.

MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORY: 3

Slavery and the Underground Railroad in South Central Pennsylvania by Cooper Wingert

In this slim book, Cooper Wingert focuses attention to the Underground Railroad in the area of South Central Pennsylvania, just West of the Susquehanna River.  The story begins in the early days of Pennsylvania's founding, and continues through the Civil War and ends just after the passing of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution.  The work is well researched, as evidenced by the combined 20 pages of Notes and Bibliography, but there were problems with the writing style that took away from my enjoyment of the book.

MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 1,3

Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

While often considered to be a feminist masterpiece, this work really is a long-form essay in favor of educating females.  She argues that, because women are the ones who become mothers, they should be well-educated so that they can promote and model healthy behaviors, relationships, and ideals in their children.  In fact, she recommends a national system of education for all children up to a certain age, where boys and girls of all social classes are educated together.  Once they get a bit more mature, lower-class children should be educated separately, to prepare them for whatever employment they will be expected to fulfill.  While this is quite revolutionary for the 1790's, a modern audience may not be in full accord with categorizing this work as feminist.  It is largely a book of its time, but in some important ways more far-looking.

MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 2,4

Kill 'em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride

Ostensibly a biography of legendary performer James Brown, McBride uses it to tell a much larger, heartrending story about American racism, greed, violence, and poverty.  The author begins with telling a tale about how, near the end of James Brown's life, he lived not far from the McBrides in Queens.  McBride's sister Dottie, as a young child, bravely walked up to the front door of Mr. Brown's house, rang the doorbell, and actually met the man.  This, coupled with McBride's musicianship and training as a journalist, meld together perfectly in creating this masterful biography.
MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 1,2,3,4

Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

In her powerful autobiography, Eugenia Ginzburg shares her experiences of being arrested in 1937, imprisoned, and eventually sent to do grueling manual labor in a Siberian gulag.  She was "officially" convicted as a political terrorist and Enemy of the People.  Naturally, none of this was true - she was part of Joseph Stalin's "Great Purge" campaign.  While her experiences were unbelievably harrowing and heartbreaking, it is her unrelentingly strong spirit that shines through this work.
MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 2,3

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

In this long-form essay, the author discusses her view on all things "book cover".  She leads with a personal story about how she wished that her school had uniforms, like those her cousins wore at their schools in India, because it was more egalitarian.  Then, she shares her strong opinions about the relationship between books, book covers, publishers, authors, and readers.  It was fascinating to realize that the humble book cover is really living at the confluence of art, marketing, psychology, sales, and readability.  While this essay only touches on book covers, it certainly gives readers a glance at an oft-hidden world, and may cause you to look more critically at the books on your shelves.
MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 1,4

Negroland by Margo Jefferson

Margo Jefferson gives readers an account of her life, not just as a Black woman in mid-twentieth century Chicago, but as an upper-class Black woman.  Her father was the head of pediatrics at a prominent hospital, and her mother was a socialite.  Because of her family's social status, the author enjoyed a certain amount of privilege, compared to lower-class Blacks.  She was raised to behave in a certain way, to talk a certain way, and to dress/groom in a certain way - all that would differentiate her from the stereotypes of Black People in that time and place.  The Jeffersons were afforded some privilege, but had to work twice as hard and be twice as respectable to maintain that privilege in white society.
MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 1,3,4

An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

In this incredible book, the author challenges the enduring, national narrative of the founding of the country.  Instead of the heroic settlers taking on the savage and brutal Indians, the research has proven that the opposite was true.  Indigenous peoples lost their land due to illegal seizure and genocidal activities of the white settlers, with no concern for the legacy and impact of their activities.  Native Americans have historically been seen as an inconvenience to be either assimilated or destroyed.  They represent non-Capitalist traditions and ways of life, which go against American ideals of "progress".  To remove the dominant origin myth and replace it with a historically accurate portrayal of the country's founding and development would mean a significant change in mindset, and coming to terms with the genocidal activities of our founders and family members.  But just because it's difficult doesn't mean it should be done.
MY NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 2,3,4

Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsythe

If you've ever wondered if a writer could make rhetoric hilariously informative, here is your answer - yes!  In Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsythe employs his distinctive writing style that not only elicits laughs but help you appreciate some of what makes great literature, lyrics, lines, and poetry so timeless and endlessly interesting.  Topics he covers include alliteration, merism, rhetorical questions, epizeuxis, and paradox - amongst many others.  You'll learn, you'll laugh, you'll have tidbits to share at parties and social gatherings.  What more could you ask for?
NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 4

 

Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter

A collection of brief, biographies-in-essay, Outlaw Marriages is a fascinating read.  Each chapter contains the profile of a same-sex couple who made a major and lasting impact on the world, in a time when such couples were not accepted in society.  Some of the names, like Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, and Greta Garbo may be familiar, but just as many (and more) are not.  It was inspiring, in a world where same-sex relationships are still denounced by many in society, to learn just how much our culture has benefited from the contributions of these couples.  Spheres of influence range from literature and art, to education and social justice, to music and interior design - and span from 1865 through 1988.
NON-FICTION NOVEMBER CATEGORIES: 2,3,4

Librorum annis

Book Review - Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

In her powerful autobiography Into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg shares her experiences of being arrested in 1937, imprisoned, and eventually sent to do grueling manual labor in a Siberian gulag.  She was “officially” convicted as a political terrorist and enemy of the people.  Naturally, none of this was true - she was part of Joseph Stalin's "Great Purge" campaign.  While her experiences were unbelievably harrowing and heartbreaking, it is her unrelentingly strong spirit that shines through this work.

Ginzburg was a highly educated woman, receiving university training as a teacher, and later heading up the Culture section of a regional Communist Party newspaper called Red Tartary.  She was proficient in literature, poetry, and political theory; could understand some German, and read other languages.  She was solidly in the Soviet Elite social class, as were most of her acquaintances.  This made her, and her family, a prime target for Stalin’s program of intellectual and political repression.

When one of her coworkers was arrested for supposed terrorist activities, she was brought in for interrogation.  The violence she experienced in her interrogation was purely verbal and emotional, as the questioners were not permitted to use physical torture until a few months after.  During one of her interrogation sessions, she was pressured into writing a statement, one that the secret police could use to discover other “enemies of the state”.  She knows that her fate has essentially been sealed, so she decides she has nothing to lose.  She tells her questioner that, “Well, you yourself mentioned the kind of writing I do – articles, translations.  But I’ve never tried my hand at detective novels, and I doubt if I could do the kind of fiction you want” (pg. 58).  She decides that she should at least write something, as the time spent writing would be time without the interrogator’s abuse.  So, she spends hours writing a letter to the head of the secret police, explaining the illegality of the case against her and the methods used for the investigation.  The questioner verbally abused her for this act, but ultimately could not do anything to harm her.  It is this undercurrent of sass and bravery, appearing throughout the work, which endears Ginzburg to the reader.  She understands that she is powerless to change her overall situation, but jabs at those in power when she has the opportunity.

Because she refused to denounce her colleague, or to implicate others, she was tried (in a show-court lasting only a few minutes) and convicted of being a co-conspirator.  She was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, with a loss of civil rights for 5 years.  Instead of feeling dissolute about her situation, she was almost euphoric because it meant that there was the possibility of freedom and life.  However, this jubilant spirit is tested throughout the rest of the book, because the conditions she endures are horrific at best.

Ginzburg’s imprisonment is described as being “buried alive for a little over two years” (pg. 146).  Ginzburg, as a political prisoner, is kept in almost complete isolation in her cell.  Deprived of much light, company, and fresh air, she is afraid of losing language and her sanity, so she quietly recites poetry and other works that she can recall, and reads whatever books she is able to acquire from the prison library.  This solace in literature serves her throughout the rest of her time in that prison, with its filthy conditions, meager food rations, brutal guards, and the knowledge that all this was for false charges. 

The cruel treatment of the prisoners leads to near-starvation and suffering from a wide variety of malnutrition and constitution sicknesses.  After being in the isolation of prison, the author and her fellow prisoners had to adapt to life in a camp where there is a hierarchy based on the crime.  As political prisoners, they were treated as the lowest form of inmate, and given the hardest and least desirable tasks.  Ginzburg and many of her fellow political prisoners, many of them unaccustomed to heavy manual labor, were expected to fell large trees on very meager rations and terrible living conditions.  The author, herself, was close to death on many occasions, and was saved through a kind-hearted camp doctor. 

Her experience of the camps, and the treatment of the prisoners, seems eerily similar to the Nazi treatment of prisoners in concentration camps.  Although the USSR camps were meant for labor and not necessarily extermination, the incarcerated often died because of the harsh conditions and poor health.  The most critical aspect of this novel is that most of the individuals she encounters in the prisons and camps are of similar social class to her.  Therefore, the reader gets no perspective of what conditions and treatment were like for people from more impoverished conditions and rural areas.  There is also no information about what life was like for non-incarcerated peoples.  These criticisms are accurate, but also invalid because the book was written as her own memoirs of this time.  Into the Whirlwind is important because it bears witness to the ways that the USSR treated its citizens during this time in history.  In a world where political instability is a real possibility, and human rights are violated regularly, works like this remind us of how dangerous those things can be when unchecked.  

Persephone Book Haul

Biannually, Persephone Books adds a few new additions to their collection.  In April of 2016, they republished their spring books: The Godwits Fly, by Robin Hyde; A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves; and Maman, What Are We Called Now by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar.  I ordered Maman a few months after its release; it seemed to ring similar bells to what I loved about Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - the firsthand experiences of French citizens during the Nazi occupation.

On the 19th of October, Persephone released their fall selections.  Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington, Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood, and a new collection of short stories by Dorothy Whipple called Every Good Deed and Other Stories.  As someone who loves Dorothy Whipple's novels, I was excited to see a new bind-up of her stories, and decided it was high time to place my transatlantic order.

Living on the East Coast of the US, once I see the "Persephone Books: Shipment" email appear in my inbox, I know that my order will be delivered exactly one week later.  It's like clockwork!  The three envelopes that arrived hold the promise of weeks of delicious, reading pleasure...

The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 

(Persephone's first published Whipple collection)

Every Good Deed and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 

(Persephone's second published Whipple collection)

An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943 by Etty Hillesum

(a diary kept in the time frame and city as Anne Frank's famous diary, except that Etty Hillesum was in her late 20's)




I can't wait to cosy up with a snugly blanket and a mug of tea, and read these books!




Librorum annis