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?

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Seeing Shakespeare's First Folio

The Folger Library in Washington DC, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, has curated a series of traveling exhibits.  Called "The Wonder of Will", the highlight of this traveling display is the copy of one of the First Folios from the Folger Library's collection.  There are several, informative and introductory, displays giving an overview of William Shakespeare, his writing, and the impact of his work on the world.  Also included is a short video about the founding of the Folger Shakespeare Library and its namesakes - Henry Clay Folger and Emily Jordan Folger.  The tour is currently making stops in all 50 US states, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, and locations include historical societies, museums, schools, and a theater.  A nearby university was selected as a stop on the tour, and I couldn't resist stopping by and paying a visit.

The specific site for the exhibit was the second floor of the main library on campus.  After getting a visitor pass, I entered the main room and was surrounded by banners and the historical document, guarded by a rather friendly private security guard.  Here are some highlights from the displays:

Digital reproduction of a First Folio on a touchscreen that users can swipe to turn the pages

                               

Could you imagine if these works had been lost to history?  

First Folio is opened to Hamlet's iconic "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy

Is the First Folio tour stopping at a place near you?  Check it out here.

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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

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