The Bad Sex Award

Shut. Up.

This is a real award?

I just learned there is an annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. No joke. Click on it. (Don't worry, there are no dirty pictures. I wouldn't even describe it as literary porn. But you will cringe when you read just the sentence from the winner.)

I am positively giddy about this. Something on Twitter led me to the title of an article about how the award came to be. The title was, "No sex, please. We're literary!"

I clicked on it because I thought that was funny, and it talked a little about how we think literature is great if it makes us laugh or cry, but there's this unspoken rule that it shouldn't turn us on. The author thinks that's a bad rule. And I tend to agree.

It might be a synthetic turn-on, kind of like if I read a passage about a huge dinner, and the author describes the food in steamy, delectable detail, I feel hungry. I'm not really hungry, but I want to eat those things now that I'm thinking about them. And I might go to the kitchen and get some crackers if it was an especially good passage.

(I get crackers because that's the only thing I'm usually sure will be in my kitchen. I try to keep snacks on hand, but I usually end up, well, snacking until they're gone. And I'm left with the least fun snack of snacking -- crackers. If I'm hungry enough to go somewhere, I'm truly hungry, and I'm getting steak or chocolate.)

My family laughs at my grandmother because she always has the latest Harlequin novels with her, and she devours them. It's not that she doesn't like to think; she does. She reads dry nonfiction history to compare to her historical fiction, or, more frequently, racy fiction set in the past. She likes authors who do their research.

I'm not sure how or when she settled on romances, but I was about 14 when I discovered that asking MeMe for recommendations is a much better idea than asking to borrow a book.

I remember being exactly 23 pages into the first book I borrowed from her and thinking, "My grandmother reads this?!" And, more disturbingly, "My grandmother thought this was something appropriate for me to read?!"

I finished the book, I insisted to my parents, because it was a mystery, and I wanted to see what happened.

Which was true.

Partially.

Come on, I was a teenager, and when MeMe announced over dinner that she'd lent me a book, my dad almost spit Sprite across the table.

"Did you return it?" he asked pointedly.


"Of course not," she answered for me. "She hasn't finished it yet. I just gave it to her this afternoon."


It was no big deal to her. Sex scenes were a part of reading, and I was going to stumble upon them soon enough on my own.


We've all seen the newest in-law come across an open book lying on a chair, pick up the book, flip it over, read a few lines -- and nearly pee their pants. And after a few too many drinks, once, an uncle told me he learned some things he didn't know from one of her books.

But after reading that article, I thought maybe we've been too hard on MeMe. Maybe her romances are the same as the silly books I read for giggles.

I kind of hid the fact that I was reading Shopaholic books last summer because I thought they were unintellectual. Is it because I knew the easy laughs were as trite as the sex scenes?


It's an interesting thing to consider. What do you think? Do sex scenes take the intellect out of books?

Wouldn't it be more impressive for a writer to reach our most visceral level -- something we do instinctually -- than to touch a more evolved emotion like humor or empathy? And why do we look at that like it's a terrible thing instead of admiring the author for the ability to move readers so deeply? Why the stigma?

Boy Books

For a few blissful weeks, my husband was wrapped up in South of Broad by Pat Conroy, and at night, before we went to sleep, he would suggest that we read in bed together.

I picked up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, hoping he'd take an interest -- I'd heard it was something of a thriller. He wasn't interested.

Any suggestions for a guy busy with school whose wife would love to read in bed with the actual bedside lamp on rather than a head-lamp?

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict: Oversimplified Review and Minimal Thoughts

Oversimplified review:

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler 

How much you have to think: ★★
Not so much a problem with this book. It's easy reading. But it gets a second star because it will make a lot more sense if you're familiar with Jane Austen books, particularly Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park. Northanger Abbey gets one mention.

Can't-put-it-down factor: ★★★★
I had a really hard time putting it down, but I was far more interested in the 21st-century woman stuck in the 19th century than her getting back to the 21st century.

Emotional magnitude: ★
That star is for me. However, if you've just broken off an engagement, as the main character has, it might be more emotional. Without similar experiences, though, you don't really feel the character's feelings.

Do I recommend it?: ★★
It's definitely not a book you have to read. It's not even up there with the best Jane Austen spin offs I've read. But if you're an Austen buff, it's worth the read.

How favorite it is: ★
This is kind of mean... But it's forgettable. I liked it. There was nothing wrong with it. But it's nowhere near on par with the best books I've ever read. Probably wouldn't hit my top 100.


Minimal thoughts required


I'm really not trying to sound like a book snob. I enjoyed the book a lot. It's a great beach book. I actually got into the book while I was lying on my deck sunbathing because I felt Anna Karenina was too heavy for first thing in the morning (which is noon-ish for me).


Confessions is a great book to follow a really heavy, tough read because your emotions aren't yanked all over the place, you don't have to keep up with a ridiculous number of characters, and if you're an Austen buff, let's be honest -- you're reading about something we've all fantasized a little about.

What I liked most was that it was a different look at the Austen era -- like the fact that they probably didn't smell good and probably had nasty teeth. It points out that bathing in Bath would gross us modern girls out with the open wounds and stuff.

One thing Rigler did a really good job with was surprising you with the heroes. The 21st-century guys, not so much. But the 19th-century hero completely shocked me.

I'll spare the spoiler and let you see for yourself.

A sequel

If you find yourself wondering what's up with the real Jane Mansfield while Courtney Stone is occupying Jane's 19th-century body, never fear. Viera is one step ahead of you:

For even more Viera, see janeaustenaddict.com.

And I'm adding a listing to my Blogs About Books because I found the cover art on this blog. I'm kind of wondering if the professor I took a brief Austen course with is writing it...

Anna Karenina: Oversimplified Review and Initial Observations

Oversimplified review:

How much you have to think: ★★★★★
Individually, the parts aren't that difficult, and it's not verbose and hard to understand. However, if you're going to keep up with all the characters -- and all the different proper, familiar and whatever else names Russians call people -- you have to be paying attention.

Can't-put-it-down factor: ★★
On Gray's Anatomy, Meredith tells Derek after her liver surgery that she started and quit reading Anna Karenina for the 14th time or something like that. Which brings me to this element: You can put it down. You have to want to read it. But if you can power through the agriculture and the Slav Question and the Women Question, they'll help you understand the pre-revolutionary Russian setting better. And the rest is pretty conversational.

Emotional magnitude: ★★★★★
All emotions. All directions. All intensities. I read some on the beach, but at that point, I was more than halfway through. It is the epitome of "heavy reading."

Do I recommend it?: ★★★
Yes and no. If you like literature, yes, by all means, you should read it. But it's not for everyone. If you like quick reads without multiple complex characters and footnotes, it's probably not for you.


How favorite it is: ★★★★★
Definitely in my top 10 now. Possibly top 5.


Spoilers below.


I finally finished Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. And wow. That was a long book.

What? I didn't promise intellectual discussion.

I feel like one blog post is just an insult to Tolstoy, but considering that I didn't read Anna Karenina in an academic setting, and these are just my observations, doing more posts could be even worse. But the whole point of this blog was not to over-analyze books -- just to talk about them in a way that normal people care about.

So just a few observations on what has become a favorite book of mine.

Tolstoy called it his first real novel, but he had already written several works that literary scholars would later call novels. I haven't read any of those, but the introduction to my edition of Anna Karenina talked about his earlier versions.

In those versions, apparently, Tolstoy gave more explanation of Anna. She's not such an enigma. He tells why she married so young, that she confused social status with love, more of what she was thinking as she entered her affair with Vronsky. They also described Karenin as a delightful, handsome man -- almost someone you couldn't understand her not loving. And Anna wasn't attractive.

By the time I read it, Anna is a captivatingly beautiful woman who can make men fall in love with her at will. No one fully understands her -- she doesn't even understand herself. There is very little explanation of her personality or of what she was thinking about Vronsky. Tolstoy gives us a lot of feelings but very little thought. Almost as if she can't even determine what her thoughts are. There was nothing (that I remember -- like I said, it's long) of why she was married to Karenin in the first place. They appear completely mismatched.

I've called Pride and Prejudice the ultimate novel, but Anna Karenina is up there. Definitely. It's obvious that it took years to write and that Tolstoy considered every single detail. Even the translators put painstaking work into their work with the footnotes and which pieces they choose to translate. Most of the characters speak Russian, French and English. Russian is the dominant language; they speak French in high society or if they don't want the servants to understand them. English just gets thrown in every once in a while because they think the British are super refined and fancy -- more so than the French, or so I got the impression.

I assume (I don't know this) Tolstoy just wrote it in all three languages. My translation, which, obviously, was English, had some French parts that were translated in footnotes. Occasionally, an end note would explain that a particular Russian phrase was very difficult to translate into English, and it would explain the phrase in more detail without interrupting the narrative. The footnotes and end notes make the whole book more understandable. This is the version I read:

A surprise: It's not boring at all. You would think 800 pages set a century and a half ago would be boring, but it's not. There are times that I thought, "Really Leo. I don't need to know all about Levin's farming techniques," but ultimately, it helped me understand Levin's character better.

I had heard somewhere that the last 100 pages of Russian novels are about as depressing as it gets. Anna Karenina holds true to that. It's about 75 pages from the end when she throws herself in front of the train.

I had worried less that she would kill herself than that Levin would. I just kept waiting for someone to find him hanged somewhere on his farm. But he actually didn't kill himself, and he and Kitty get a happy ending.

I think Anna went crazy. Between her social ruin, the juxtaposition of her feelings for her two children by two different men, and her overwhelming jealousy -- mostly for invented reasons -- her rational brain stopped working.

I really dislike Countess Lydia. I really want to punch her in the stomach under her yellow shoulders. She was a setback for Karenin after he forgave Anna, encouraging him to be bitter, telling their son Anna was dead, encouraging him not to grant a divorce to which he'd been open before. She's one of those Christians who's more concerned with judging others' behavior than considering the hypocrisy of her own judgment. I don't like those people in real life either.

I can't promise that I'll write more about this book, but it's definitely worthy of more than I've written here.

Children's books made me like poetry enough to get through an English major.

When I was little, I adored Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Recently, I read it to my 4-year-old nephew, and he was nonplussed, which puzzled me.

I've had the book in my car since my nephew's birthday. (I got him a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom puzzle, and I didn't realize until the night before his party that he didn't have the book -- I could have sworn I'd given him a copy.) I keep looking at it and wondering why I loved it so much -- because even from a young age, I liked plot and structure, which isn't exactly a strong point in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom -- and why my nephew didn't like it.

I've finally come to the conclusion of the words.

I still love the rhythm, the made-up words, the rhymes, the fact that even just reading it sounds like singing. My nephew, obviously, is a boy, and psychologically, boys don't tend to be as drawn to words and word patterns as girls are.

So I guess this -- and Shel Silverstein -- is why I still like poetry now.

Speaking of Shel, my husband and I were talking about a poem the other night, and I asked if it was a Silverstein poem. His response: "Oh, no. This is a legitimate poet."

Whaaat? It was ON.

He backtracked very quickly and recited part of "Sick" to make me feel better.

So, in honor of my early love of rhythm -- and the larger print in children's books, for which I'm super grateful these blind days -- here's "Sick" by Shel Silverstein.

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more -- that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut -- my eyes are blue --
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke --
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is -- what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is ... Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

Love it still. And recite it still when I don't want to be productive, but nothing is wrong with me.

A little progress on Anna Karenina

My glasses are still outdated, but I did read a few chapters.

And I have to say that even though the back of the book specifically said Anna and Vronsky were going to have an affair, I still was totally shocked when they hooked up.

First, I don't think I was expecting Tolstoy to relay a post-sex scene. And second, I kind of feel like Anna is too good for Vronsky. Vronsky has no soul. Otherwise, how could he be so cruel to Kitty?

Speaking of Kitty, I really want Levin to come back to Moscow and propose to her again. And I want her to not be stupid this time. Her mother is super stupid, and it made me super happy that Prince Scherbatsky told the Princess that Kitty's illness was all her fault.

That's all I've read. I'm seriously furious with my vision genetics.

I think I need to read it again.

I finished American Pastoral by Philip Roth. And it was a great book. But there is a "but."

Before I get to that... I think I said before that Roth is an amazing crafter of words, and I have a friend who, every year, curses the Nobel committee for not awarding him the literature prize. I happily join her, even though, until now, I'd never completed one of his books, and I haven't read any of the other literature prize-winners.

But now, I'm confused.

I've read several books along the way that I hate at the time and learn to appreciate later. Heart of Darkness. Anything Dickens wrote. I struggled through Oliver Twist in seventh grade, and that was the last time I chose a book based solely on Accelerated Reader points and accolades. Now, I appreciate those. And I appreciate Great Expectations, even though when I first read it, I cried halfway through because I was only halfway through.

I think American Pastoral will be one of those books I appreciate as it sinks in. And reading it was a very humbling experience.

After graduating from college but not continuing to work with literature, I promised myself that my literature courses wouldn't be the end of my reading classic (and just plain good) work. American Pastoral was one of those books that it would have been nice to have a professor and classmates to help me flesh it out.

It's a very long book. Not so much long in pages, but very, very long in detail. Because of Roth's writing style, everything seems important. Every chapter or story that doesn't exactly fit seems like something I should remember later. Instead of a point A to point B story line, he includes flashbacks, multiple storytellers, and a host of other techniques that make you feel like you're inside Seymour Levov's mind. When Seymour's mind races, so does the text.

The best example I can think of is the dinner party at the end of the book. Seymour has seen his fugitive daughter, who confirmed that she has killed four people, and he has just found out his wife is having an affair. The conversation of the dinner party is interspersed with Seymour's earlier conversation with his daughter, his thoughts about what she might be doing right then, memories of his father meeting his wife for the first time, his wife's experiences as Miss New Jersey, his parents' interactions with her parents, and tons of other details that tell you so much about the characters you're almost done reading about.

The dinner party brings in characters we've discussed but not really met, and the end left me pretty confused.

I think if I go back and read the book again, I'll recognize the names earlier. I'll know to expect intellectual snobbery from the professor couple, and I'll remember more clearly their part in Merry's downward spiral. (Merry is Seymour's daughter.)

There probably are those that would argue Merry didn't spiral out of control, but when I finally met her after hearing her father's stories about her for most of the book, she seemed like a very lonely, very confused young woman.

I'm having trouble piecing together all my thoughts about the book because of the way it was written. A piece of information about Seymour's upbringing here, newspaper clippings of Merry's crime there, Seymour's brother's high school reunion, the friend of Seymour's brother who ultimately tells the story but really didn't know Seymour very well. Thoughts or understandings I had about characters or events had to be pushed aside to read about different characters and events and ultimately, often, were overturned.

It's going to take at least another read to feel like I've digested the book properly -- probably more than one rereading. I'm sure part of that is the length of time it took me to read the book. And part of it is the complexity of Roth's writing.

It was a refreshing kick in the stomach for a book to challenge me as much as this one did. Because of the challenge, I can't form an opinion yet.

All I know is that the tone of the book is heartbreakingly sad, a father second-guessing every conversation and interaction with his daughter, questioning whether he could have helped her turn out differently from who  she ended up. That's the easy part.

Symbolism, allusions, and all the other literary concepts I don't even remember are beyond my grasp right now. I definitely need to read it again.

Slow going

I need new lenses in my glasses. The eye doctor was shocked at how much my vision declined in only a year.

Needless to say, between job applications and all that, my eyes are pretty exhausted by the time I'm ready for pleasure reading.

Anyone who would like to contribute to my lenses fund or my much-needed ego boost (since, apparently, I'm 75) is more than welcome.

Favorites and not-favorites

Really good stuff:

• King Lear can be related to anything. It's my favorite of Shakespeare's works. So complex.
• Jane Austen was an amazing author, and it never ceases to shock me that in her heyday of writing, she was significantly younger than I am. Pride and Prejudice shaped the template for the novel. (That's a professor -- not me -- but I agree.)
• Because I love working with people with special needs, I love reading books that understand their thought processes. So many people don't bother to try. The Memory-Keeper's Daughter and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime are two favorites.
• In Confessions of a Wallflower, I love that the narrator describes the girl he loves as "unconventionally beautiful."
• Books that changed the way I looked at the world: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Kite Runner (not even trying to spell that author's name correctly), Blue Like Jazz by Donald Somebody (I'm better at this not sleep-deprived), and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

I'm sure there are many, many more. Here are some not-so-favorites:

• I'm not a fan of Romeo and Juliet partially because it's overexposed.  And I think it's safe to say that it has one of the most depressing endings in all of literature. I don't care that the Montagues and the Capulets make up; it's really a bummer. I'll concede that the balcony scene is pretty awesome and pretty much every teenage girl's dream, but you can get that in Cyrano DeBergerac.
• I don't know what all the hype was about Love in the Time of Cholera was about. Maybe I didn't read it well, or maybe I missed some analysis, but I wasn't a fan.
• I think Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is as popular as it is because of when it was written. Descriptions are good, character development is fabulous, but I didn't like the plot structure.

And a part of my book philosophy I forgot to mention: Movies adapted from a book almost always disappoint. BBC's Pride and Prejudice is an exception. I've heard the Lord of the Rings trilogy also was pretty close to an exception, but I haven't read those books.

My sister says My Sister's Keeper is a prime example of movies ruining books. I'm kind of nervous about seeing The Lovely Bones for that reason.

Hello fellow book lovers!

To state the obvious, I love to read. I'm creating this blog for several reasons.

1. I can't sleep. I was laid off from my job as a copy editor/page designer at our local newspaper, and since my husband is in school, that was our primary income. I see bills, numbers, and bank statements in my dreams as my husband snores happily beside me.

2. I need a project. An escape from job applications and resumes and a chance to write. One of my professors told us the first day of freshman English that writing is the only way to write better. So it's self-improvement.

3. I miss school and literary analysis and term papers. I'm a huge nerd like that.

As you've probably inferred, I was an English major in college. I also majored in psychology, which is a little more practical but not quite as strong a passion.

Part of being laid off from a newspaper made me think about how many sacrifices newspapers are making. Features -- including book reviews -- were the first to go. I've been lying awake crunching numbers and idly wondering where people go for book reviews now. The ones I see online are scholarly papers so boring they make you hate reading, the introductions to CliffNotes, uploaded essays (which usually are terribly written), or opinions from people like me who just like books. I haven't searched extensively, but that seems to be what's most readily available. Hence this brainchild, of which a childhood friend who shares my affinity for good books probably will be the only reader.

I haven't finished a book in a while. While planning our wedding (we got married in August), I read the Shopaholic series and etiquette books. Rebecca Bloomwood provided great entertainment and distraction from floral arrangements, and my friends think it's ridiculous how seriously I take Emily Post.

My grandmothers both think it's funny that I read about five books at a time. MeMe does it too, so she likes that I take after her. Nana asks me how I can keep all the plots and characters straight. I don't know the answer. I just like variety.


My philosophies on literature are pretty simple:

• If it makes me laugh out loud or cry real tears, it's good.
• It doesn't have to be prize-winning material to be enjoyable.
• Sometimes the stuff that wins awards is the least enjoyable. (Not always.)
• Grown-ups should have a regular dose of children's books. They're like personality vitamins.
• Heavy literature such as Pat Conroy's books or The Kite Runner should be followed with light, easy reading to prevent burnout or depression.
• Reading should be fun.
• Reading should make you a better person.

 Here's what I'm reading now:
1. Anna Karenina It's a lofty undertaking, I know, but it's surprisingly conversational.
2. Sanditon by Jane Austen and "another lady" It bothers me that I don't know whether Jane Austen or "another lady" wrote whatever I'm reading at the moment. It also bothers me that in this printing, single quotation marks are used in every situation that calls for any quotation marks. Including character's quotes.
3. American Pastoral by Philip Roth I've been reading this for a year. That's not at all a testament to how good the book is. Philip Roth is an amazing crafter of words.
4. Letters to Karen by a minister whose first name is Charlie -- It's a book my dad recommended for us to read when we got married. The book is a series of letters Charlie wrote to his daughter, Karen, before her wedding. She asked her dad to tell her how to make her husband love her forever. It's super sweet and only slightly dated.