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My glasses are still outdated, but I did read a few chapters.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