Books read in 2010:

1. Maxxed Out - David Collins
2. Flying in Place - Susan Palwick
3. Kushiel’s Chosen – Jacqueline Carey
4. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
5. Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun
6. After Dark - Haruki Murakami
7. Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament – S.G. Browne
   
8. A German Love Story - Rolf Hochhuth
9. Kushiel’s Avatar - Jacqueline Carey
10. World War Z - Max Brooks
11. Kokoro - Natsumi Soseki
12. The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
13. Nightlight: A Parody – The Harvard Lampoon
14. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
15. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
    

War and Peace (Everyman's Library)

(Cross-posted from Goodreads, with a few minor changes.)

January 4, 2010 ~

In all likelihood, I will be chipping away at this slowly. As much as I’d love to steamroll through this in less than a week (like I did with A Suitable Boy), I have several other books on my plate, including the last installment of a rather awesome trilogy.

January 5, 2010 ~

So much for chipping away slowly. I just finished the first of the three volumes in my set, and my brain is fried. So much to process. I wish that I still had my notes from the Russian literature course I took in college. The introduction to my edition alludes to Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, suggesting that some of Tolstoy’s characters are cut from the same character archetype. If this is true, then we can look as far back as Pushkin’s titular anti-hero, Eugene Onegin–arguably the original recipe “superfluous man” of Russian literature. Prince Andrew in particular fulfills several of the hallmark traits of the superfluous man, and bears striking resemblance to the nihilistic Bazarov from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.

I own copies of all three aforementioned works. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to reread them at some point.

January 8, 2010 ~

*spoiler warning*

I have about 700 pages behind me now. I love this book. I’ll probably be posting random updates like this to jot down my thoughts.

If Prince Andrew were to roll with his literary homeys, his posse might include not only Bazarov, but Eugene Onegin as well. They could lay down hit tracks about lovin’ ‘em and leavin’ ‘em and really get down with their superfluous, commitment-phobic selves.

Andrew’s response to Natasha after proposing to her was straight from the pages of the Eugene Onegin Guide to Dating: woo a girl with unapologetic fervor and, once you’ve won her, fall immediately into a pit of existential ennui that propels you as far in the other direction as humanly possible. The thrill, after all, lies only in the chase. Seeing unborn children and future arguments over china patterns in your teenage lover’s eyes is heavy, man–and, for our bumbling anti-hero, kind of a buzzkill. Poor, withering Natasha. So young, so full of life–so encumbered by a fiancé who ran screaming in the other direction (on some trite “eat/pray/love” excursion abroad) about five seconds after proposing to her.

This should come as no surprise. While the little princess (Andrew’s ill-fated first wife) looms large on his mental horizon, he cared little for her while she was actually alive and pregnant with his son.

In other news, there were some interesting homoerotic undertones in Pierre’s journal entry concerning a dream about fellow Freemason Joseph Alexeevich. Will search for scholarly articles about this–Google turned up precious little.

If there were such a thing as “cultic criticism” (i.e., the analysis of text from a cult dynamics perspective), one could do a mighty interesting critical analysis of this book. Maybe I should spearhead the movement.

January 12, 2010 ~

I almost wish that someone had assigned me a paper to write about the superfluous man archetype as presented in War and Peace. The following passage would represent the trump card of textual evidence:

[Prince Andrew] thought not of this pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father, or regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was, that he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken… (821)

It doesn’t get much more clear-cut than that. Superfluity, thy name is Prince Andrew. In the subsequent moments, he leaves the room without finishing the story he is telling and feels an urge to “escape from these memories and to find some work as soon as possible.” He must remain in perpetual motion, because to stop would mean to downward-spiral into his own emptiness. Perhaps he finds fault not with his family’s various quirks; perhaps their existence alone is an uncomfortable reminder of what he isn’t capable of feeling.

There are strong, rather beautiful anti-war undertones in Book Three. The first chapter of Part I reads like a pacifistic tract. Unfortunately, this philosophical ideal quickly gives way to the reality: that all is not well between Emperors Napoleon and Alexander, and that thousands more Europeans will die to settle the score between these sparring figureheads. It all seems rather senseless, doesn’t it? Tolstoy certainly seems to think so.

January 15, 2010 ~

(Warning: Contains spoilers from both War and Peace and Anna Karenina.)

*

Is there more meaning in the unspoken? Does verbalizing intense emotion cheapen it? Tolstoy might have thought so. I just finished Prince Nicholas’ deathbed scene and, in it, found striking parallels to the card table scene between Kitty and Levin in Anna Karenina. In both scenes, someone is trying to decipher an obfuscated message. In Anna Karenina, Kitty and Levin speak to one another in acronyms and, miraculously, understand one another. In War and Peace, Prince Nicholas struggles to communicate his feelings to Mary after a debilitating stroke. But, miraculously, she understands him.

In this encoded interplay between characters, in that world of subtext between the lines, we find the most honest of emotions. Perhaps these characters cannot express their rawest feelings explicitly, as they run contrary to that certain aloofness they find socially adaptive. But, despite all social posturing, these characters are so intimate with one another that no translation of these garbled emotional confessions is necessary.

Perhaps this is a more poignant mode of scene-building than an explicit expression of emotion. There is a certain element of shock when Kitty successfully decodes Levin’s longest acronym (“w,y,a,m:t,c,b,d,i,m,n,o,t?”). He has asked her about her past refusal, but the real romance lies not in his angst-ridden question, but the fact that she understands him on profound enough a level to decode it. So, too, is the case between Prince Nicholas and his embattled daughter, Mary. She has endured years of abuse from him, but on his deathbed, it is she (and not the insipid doctor) who interprets his stroke-impaired speech correctly.

In both books, Tolstoy approaches pivotal, intensely emotional scenes by imposing some sort of linguistic obstacle on the dialogue. In doing so, he proves that there are elemental feelings that pass between loved ones, feelings that require no translator.

This is poignant stuff, people.

January 18, 2010 ~

*contains spoilers*

From pp. 1390-1: “While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned, not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. [...:] Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man, and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.”

With this passage, Tolstoy has opened a can of superfluous worms. Does this establish Pierre as the anti-Andrew, or does Andrew’s deathbed conversion signify victory over his lifelong superfluity? In these parallel narratives, we encounter a soldier who has moved from agnostic to religious, and a prisoner of war who has moved from religious to agnostic and back to religious again. Both have seen unspeakable things, things that have led them to abandon all former ideology (or lack thereof). Were they both opposite faces of the superfluous coin? Did the presence or absence of faith determine whether or not they were superfluous?

If I ever reread this, I will certainly have to read Pierre through a different lens in light of the aforementioned passage.

Some of my unread books.

So, why am I keeping a reading log beginning in July 2008? Pretty arbitrary date, right? The thing is, before then, I was a casual reader. I picked up a book every few weeks or so (though I bought them pretty regularly), and I hardly knew my local library. Then, a friend of mine recommended a satirical novel to me, Maneater by Gigi Levangie Grazer (a spoof of chick lit). Money was tight, so I was thrilled to discover that the library had a copy. So I took out Maneater and read it in a day. Five years out of college and woefully out of practice, I could still inhale a book in a matter of hours. I took out several more books, and then several more, and the rest is history. In just sixteen months, I had devoured over 260 books (199 books in one year–I just missed the 200 mark).

What follows is a chronicle of my sixteen-months-and-counting book binge. My pace varies depending on my workload, but it is fair to say that I average 12-15 books per month (though, at one point, I was reading as many as 25-30). I have made a huge dent in my “bucket list” of books to read.

Warning/apology: There are some embarrassing titles in here. Some friends and I decided to read the 17 free e-books offered by Harlequin as an experiment, so you will see several of those in here. I also read some romance and chick lit last summer to get a feel for the modern romance market, as my manuscript will likely fall within the parameters of a contemporary literary romance. So if you see a lot of campy titles in the first part of the list, now you know why.

Here they are, in ascending chronological order:

1. Maneater - Gigi Levangie Grazer
2. Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America – Mark Robert Rank
3. Eden Close - Anita Shreve
4. Where or When - Anita Shreve
5. The Real Deal – Lucy Monroe
6. The Pink Ghetto – Liz Ireland
7. The Symposium - Plato
8. On Bullsh** – Harry G. Frankfurt
9. When I Think of You – Liz Ireland
10. Goodnight Nobody – Jennifer Weiner
11. Sea Glass – Anita Shreve
12. Light on Snow - Anita Shreve
13. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
14. Dream of the Walled City – Lisa Huang Fleischman
15. Romantically Challenged – Beth Orsoff
16. The Accidental Virgin - Valerie Frankel
17. The Girlfriend Curse - Valerie Frankel
18. Close to Perfect - Tina Donahue
19. The Boy I Loved Before - Jenny Colgan
20. The End of Marriage - Nina Vida
21. Snowed In - Christina Bartolomeo
22. Empress Orchid - Anchee Min
23. The Last Empress - Anchee Min
24. The Return of Jonah Gray - Heather Cochran
25. Falling for Mr. Wrong - Caroline Upcher
26. Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk
27. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
28. Love, Work, Children - Cheryl Mendelson
29. Mike, Mike & Me - Wendy Markham
30. I’m Your Girl - J.J. Murray
31. The Love Letter - Cathleen Schine
32. Bump - Diana Wagman
33. The Snow Fox - Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
34. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
35. Diary – Chuck Palahniuk
36. Beginner’s Greek - James Collins
37. Stranger Than Fiction - Chuck Palahniuk
38. A Little Love Story - Roland Merullo
39. Something Borrowed - Emily Giffin
40. Something Blue - Emily Giffin
41. Rant - Chuck Palahniuk
42. All’s Fair - Julie Coulter Bellon
43. The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck
44. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
45. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
46. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
47. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
48. The Gospel According to Sydney Welles - Susi Rajah
49. After the Leaves Fall - Nicole Baart
50. Lux - Maria Flook
51. Wild Ginger - Anchee Min
52. My Legendary Girlfriend - Mike Gayle
53. Just Friends - Robyn Sisman
54. Baby Proof - Emily Giffin
55. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
56. Love the One You’re With - Emily Giffin
57. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
58. The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure - Adam Williams
59. Shelter - Susan Palwick
60. Peony in Love - Lisa See
61. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
62. The Idea of Perfection - Kate Grenville
63. The Host - Stephenie Meyer
64. The Painter from Shanghai - Jennifer Cody Epstein
65. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
66. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
67. A Clergyman’s Daughter - George Orwell
68. Perfect Agreement - Michael Downing
69. Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min
70. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
71. The Pearl - John Steinbeck
72. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe
73. Happiness - Will Ferguson
74. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
75. Life Before Man - Margaret Atwood
76. The Necessary Beggar - Susan Palwick
77. Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
78. Across the Nightingale Floor (Otori #1) – Lian Hearn
79. Grass for His Pillow (Otori #2) - Lian Hearn
80. Empress - Shan Sa
81. Talking to Addison - Jenny Colgan
82. Brilliance of the Moon (Otori #3) - Lian Hearn
83. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
84. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
85. Loves Me, Loves Me Not - Libby Malin
86. The Harsh Cry of the Heron (Otori #4) - Lian Hearn
87. Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
88. Death of a Red Heroine – Qiu Xialong
89. Heaven’s Net Is Wide (Otori prequel) - Lian Hearn
90. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
91. Lost & Found – Jane Sigaloff
92. A Trip to the Stars - Nicholas Christopher
93. Eros - Helmut Krausser
94. The Post-Birthday World - Lionel Shriver
95. Brothers - Da Chen
96. Veronica - Nicholas Christopher
97. Angels & Demons - Dan Brown
98. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
99. The Bestiary - Nicholas Christopher
100. There a Petal Silently Falls - Ch’oe Yun
101. Crossings - Chuang Hua
102. A Bad Bride’s Tale - Polly Williams
103. The China Lover – Ian Baruma
104. The Secret Vampire - L.J. Smith
105. Daughters of Darkness - L.J. Smith
106. Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian
107. One Man’s Bible - Gao Xingjian
108. The Wild Geese - Ogai Mori
109. Shinju - Laura Joh Rowland
110. Snow – Orhan Pmuk
111. The Hakawati - Rabih Alameddine
112. Red Dust - Ma Jian
113. Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet - Alai
114. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow - Wang Anyi
115. Cloud of Sparrows – Takashi Matsuoka
116. Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present - Peter Hessler
117. The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
118. Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
119. Heaven Lake - John Dalton
120. The House of the Sleeping Beauties - Yasunari Kawabata
121. Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
122. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare - Bertrand Russell
123. And Then - Natsume Soseki
124. The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan
125. Sunday at Tiffany’s - James Patterson
126. The Noodle Maker - Ma Jian
127. A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore
128. Bloodsucking Fiends - Christopher Moore
129. You Suck - Christopher Moore
130. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
131. Sharmila’s Book - Bharti Kirchner
132. I, the Divine - Rabih Alameddine
133. Secret Ceremonies - Deborah Laake
134. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness - Lori Schiller
135. Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles
136. Escape - Carolyn Jessop
137. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
138. The Chinese Room - Vivian Connell
139. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
140. Stolen Innocence - Elissa Wall
141. Testimony - Anita Shreve
142. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
143. One Nation Under Gods - Richard Abanes
144. An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
145. Baby Bonanza – Maureen Child (Harlequin experiment)
146. The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie
147. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
148. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
149. The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie
150. Waiting – Ha Jin
151. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
152. Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
153. The Moor’s Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie
154. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
155. Portnoy’s Complaint - Philip Roth
156. East, West - Salman Rushdie
157. The Lake - Yasunari Kawabata
158. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
159. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
160. Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk
161. What Love Means to You People - NancyKay Shapiro
162. The Ocean in the Closet - Yuko Taniguchi
163. Mosquito - Roma Tearne
164. Love in a Dead Language - Lee Siegel
165. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
166. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
167. The Temple of the Wild Geese & The Bamboo Dolls of Echizen - Tsutomu Mizukami
168. Mating - Norman Rush
169. Beauty and Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata
170. The Other Side of the Sky - Farah Ahmedi
171. A Very Special Delivery - Linda Goodnight (Harlequin experiment)
172. Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa
173. Obasan - Joy Kogawa
174. The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
175. This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn - Aidan Chambers
176. The Stranger – Albert Camus (re-read)
177. The Wedding Day – Catherine Alliott
178. Dancing in the Moonlight - Raeanne Thayne (Harlequin experiment)
179. Fool’s Errand – Louis Bayard
180. The Romance Reader - Pearl Abraham
181. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
182. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon - Sei Shonagon
183. The Rebel Doctor’s Bride – Sarah Morgan (Harlequin experiment)
184. Koolaids: The Art of War - Rabih Alameddine
185. Beijing Coma – Ma Jian
186. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
187. First Love and Other Stories - Ivan Turgenev
188. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
189. Feathered Serpent - Xu Xiaobin
190. Running Mother and Other Stories - Guo Songfen
191. Brothers - Yu Hua
192. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
193. Arrow of God - Chinua Achebe
194. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
195. Homespun Bride - Jillian Hart (Harlequin experiment)
196. Stranded with a Spy - Merline Lovelace (Harlequin experiment)
197. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
198. Snowbound - Janice Kay Johnson (Harlequin experiment)
199. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
200. Sea of Lost Love - Santa Montefiore
201. Present Value - Sabin Willett
202. Once the Shore – Paul Yoon
203. Kiss Me Deadly – Michele Hauf (Harlequin experiment)
204. Burnt Shadows – Kamila Shamsie
205. The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem - Kanan Makiya
206. An Obvious Enchantment - Tucker Malarkey
207. Seventeen & J - Kenzaburo Oe
208. Strangers When We Meet - Evan Hunter
209. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - Kenzaburo Oe
210. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1,000th book)
211. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy #1) - Naguib Mahfouz
212. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
213. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
214. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
215. Palace of Desire (Cairo Trilogy #2) - Naguib Mahfouz
216. Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange - Amanda Smyth
217. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
218. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
219. Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather – Gao Xingjian
220. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart – Lydia Millet
221. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
222. Sugar Street (Cairo Trilogy #3) – Naguib Mahfouz
223. The Subterraneans – Jack Kerouac
224. Kartography - Kamila Shamsie
225. South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
226. The Rug Merchant - Meg Mullins
227. Everything Asian - Sung J. Woo
228. A Monster’s Notes - Laurie Sheck
229. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima
230. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
231. Call Me by Your Name - Andre Aciman
232. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
233. High Noon - Nora Roberts
234. Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
235. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
236. A Change in Altitude - Anita Shreve
237. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
238. The Consequences of Love - Sulaiman Addonia
239. Slow Hands – Leslie Kelly
240. Bone China - Roma Tearne
241. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
242. The Great Pursuit - Tom Sharpe
243. Hide in Plain Sight - Marta Perry
244. The Worst Intentions - Alessandro Piperno
245. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
246. The Most Beautiful Book in the World - Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
247. The German Mujahid - Boualem Sansal
248. Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl - Susan Campbell
249. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
250. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
251. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
252. The Secret Life of Laszlo, Count Dracula - Roderick Anscombe
253. Censoring an Iranian Love Story - Shahriyar Mandanipour
254. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
255. A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
256. Bright-Sided - Barbara Ehrenreich
257. The Republic of Love - Carol Shields
258. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
259. Old Filth - Jane Gardam
260. The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
261. Supermarket - Satoshi Azuchi
262. La Confession Impudique - Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (in French)
263. The Tokaido Road – Lucia St. Clair Robinson
264. Nine Parts of Desire - Geraldine Brooks
265. Lamb – Christopher Moore
266. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
267. Dearly Devoted Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
268. Dexter in the Dark - Jeff Lindsay
269. Firethorn – Sarah Micklem
270. Kushiel’s Dart - Jacqueline Carey
271. Dexter by Design – Jeff Lindsay

I am really enjoying this book so far. The opening chapters serve up some rudimentary feminism, along with a healthy dose of skepticism aimed at Freudian psychoanalysis. The narrator, Isadora Wing, has grown to objectify men–she wants the “zipless ****”, an experience untainted by expectation or friendship or prior infatuation. She wants something base, something devoid of the emotional and psychological. It is when she becomes better acquainted with men that she loses interest. Her “fear of flying” isn’t restricted to the aeronautical–despite her quasi-feminist convictions and aversion to traditional gender roles, she finds herself trapped in one failed marriage after another.

I remember reading one passage and thinking, “Sad, how it is man’s inclination to conquer woman, and woman’s inclination to conquer the world. What a tragic impasse in the battle of the sexes.” Everywhere Isadora turns, there is a man (a psychoanalyst, a magazine writer or advertiser, a brother-in-law, a husband, et al.) filling her brain with antiquated nonsense to keep her from taking flight and pursuing a life on her own terms. She resists this brainwashing–but, as of page 67, has far from overcome it.

[Added commentary upon finishing the book.]

What I loved most about this story, strangely enough, was its ambiguous ending. Jong doesn’t try to pull any unbelievable sleights of hand in the final chapter to tie up the many loose ends. She doesn’t presume to solve the feminist dilemma through Isadora. Like many women, Isadora will continue to struggle with her sometimes conflicting desires for independence and companionship. She will continue to feel mixed relief and despair when her monthly cycle arrives on time. Most importantly, she will continue to feel an intrinsic emptiness that no husband, baby, career high, or no-strings-attached sexual experience can fill. She is more complex than any one of these individual drives; therefore, it seems inevitable that they will often be at odds with one another. The sum of her parts will always be a bit confused and conflicted.

Her character can be exasperating, if not a bit neurotic (her bout of terror after Adrian leaves her is a tad excessive), but she is struggling constantly against a tide of convention promoted by well-meaning loved ones and associates. Everyone–from her family to her husbands, lovers, psychoanalysts, and friends–conspires to confine her to traditional female roles. Anything else threatens the women who surround her, because it represents not only the unknown, but also that which they dared not do themselves. Anything else threatens the men in her life, who are toiling day and night to keep her and the rest of womankind under their thumbs.

But not all men are as pretentious and innately chauvinistic as the ones presented in this book. Not all women are as conflicted and lost as Isadora. Still, many of Isadora’s intrinsic struggles will likely resonate with female readers. She can be self-serving, hedonistic, and cruel–but she is hardly the first woman to lose herself in a world where she has ample opportunities, but a learned “fear of flying” that keeps her from pursuing them and detaching herself from toxic relationships.

View all my reviews >>

Feathered Serpent - Xu Xiaobin

The Hakawati - Rabih Alameddine

Children of the Alley - Naguib Mahfouz

Of Bees and Mist - Erick Setiawan

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke

As you can see, I prefer minimalist designs for the most part. The photo doesn’t do justice to the Naguib Mahfouz cover, though. There is beautiful gold foil that shimmers in the light.

The truth is, as long as there are corporations and firms, there will be a demand for writing and editing services. The trick–and sometimes greatest challenge, particularly for beginners–is building a winning portfolio and marketing your expertise in such a way that you become irresistible to potential clients.

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Today, many companies are looking to independent contractors to complete projects. Since contractual employees do not receive traditional benefits and are often paid in a lump sum, they often prove to be an economical choice. Capitalize on this. Offer your services to publishers, magazines, and successful businesses as a freelancer. Because of this trend towards contractual labor, you will be able to cast a much wider geographic net than someone seeking conventional employment. Freelancers often work remotely; thus, they open themselves up to a client base that spans not only the country, but the entire globe! Working remotely will also save you a fortune in gasoline expenses.

Feel free to post your tips about freelancing in a recessive economy. Just remember: no matter what the economic forecast, writing is always a marketable skill.

This Is All - Aidan Chambers

**spoiler alert** (I have marked this as spoilerish in content, but wish to reiterate here that this review contains MAJOR spoilers.)

If I could, I would give this book 3.5 stars; however, since that isn’t an option, I will give it 4. I try very hard not to grade a book down when the ending doesn’t go my way. Some of the best books I have read have had disappointing/ambiguous/depressing endings, but ones generally in keeping with the tenor of the narrative. But I do not enjoy cheap narrative tricks (i.e., contrived “twists”, Hollywood tearjerker sleights of pen, or saccharine big-red-bow endings).

Unfortunately, Book Five of this narrative involved a rather unrealistic big-red-bow sequence of serendipities; jobs, income, dwellings, office help, and even rent waivers fell from the sky and into Will’s and Cordelia’s laps. After so much struggle, their starting a life together felt somewhat effortless. These were college-age kids trying to strike out on their own. Where was the ramen, so to speak? Where was the initial financial struggle that couples even a decade older face? Simply put, where was the realism? Perhaps Chambers knew that he was running low on real estate, that his epic adolescent tome was already several inches thick and in need of an ending, so he had Cordelia apologize on his behalf for rushing through this part of the narrative. Unfortunately, in doing so, he forfeited some of the overarching realism that made this story so endearing.

Book Six, however, was when this book jumped the Heinian shark for me, and an otherwise unique narrative inspired by a timeless Japanese classic became a hackneyed tearjerker. Let me preface this by remarking that this story was a bold endeavor from the get-go–a male author taking on the psyche of a teenage girl. Chambers did the feminine adolescent mind justice throughout much of this book, with a few minor missteps here and there. However, Book Six was where he made his most egregious miscalculation. In killing off Cordelia and finishing the story from Will’s point of view, he essentially broke the promise of the first five books–that this was Cordelia’s story, her psyche, her gift to her child. She was not allowed to finish her own story; instead, she was disposed of (literally) at her beloved Uffington White Horse and we were left with nothing but Will’s closing statements. We experienced some of the most pivotal moments of her life–her wedding, her baby’s naming, and her few months of motherhood before death–through her husband’s eyes. Thus, both narrator and reader were robbed of something vital.

Cordelia’s voice carried us through nearly 800 pages of teenage angst, heartache, joy, musings, and relationships. It strikes me as strange that, in the final pages, the author took away her voice and replaced it with that of a man.

Beijing Coma - Ma Jian

**spoiler alert**

There are three major periods of Beijing upheaval in this amazing novel, and Dai Wei survives them all: first Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, and finally the beautification of Beijing for its Olympic bid, which brings his mother’s housing complex to rubble around him. Through all of this turmoil, Dai Wei is ever the observer, watching as the Cultural Revolution wreaks havoc on his parents’ marriage, as his friends orchestrate the protests at Tiananmen Square, and as his mother struggles in vain to remain in her home. He is, in this regard, an omniscient third-person narrator, allowing us a snapshot of many characters’ lives as he witnesses the conversations, deaths, romantic encounters, and psychological struggles that defined these periods in recent Chinese history.

We encounter characters who are of sound body and deadened mind, and vice versa. No one, however, escapes with both body and mind intact. Of particular interest is Dai Wei’s mother, who devotes her entire life to caring for his comatose body. His mind, however, is sharp as he travels the neural pathways of his own history and somatic systems. Even with eyes closed and body immobilized, he can sense his mother’s frustration and despair. After she is arrested for her participation in a peaceful Falun Gong demonstration and her would-be lover Master Yao is imprisoned, she returns as broken as Dai Wei’s friends after Tiananmen. She wishes her comatose son dead so that she can have some semblance of a life, but ultimately finds herself echoing the student demonstrators she once so vehemently opposed: “Down with Fascism!” The inclination to be free, Ma Jian insinuates, is innate, regardless of ideology and generation.

Few novels have driven home for me the horrors of the Cultural Revolution as vividly as this one, despite its focus on Tiananmen Square. Ma slips in some harrowing, eye-popping anecdotes about Red Guard brutality and inhumanity. Of course, the main event in this book is the unjustifiable brutality against peaceful student demonstrators.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie

**spoiler alert**

This was my third foray into Salman Rushdie (the first two being “The Satanic Verses” and “The Enchantress of Florence”). What made this reading experience so pleasurable, beyond the exquisite and sometimes raw prose, was being familiar enough with Rushdie’s work now to recognize a few universal themes. Perhaps most notable are the following three:

1) Estrangement from India. India itself is alternately protagonist and antagonistic, sometimes driving away the main characters, but also sometimes reeling them back in. Wherever they flee, she is a reality they will never escape. In this novel, Rushdie examines in some depth the concept of detachment from the East (i.e., “disorientation”).

2) The “goddess vs. property” conceptualization of women (p. 486). In Rushdie’s novels, particularly this one, women harness remarkable power. Reminiscent of Kawabata’s “The House of Sleeping Beauties”, the woman becomes “an empty receptacle, an arena of discourse, and we can invent her in our own image, as once we invented god” (p. 485). The male characters pour their entire selves into women like Vina or the Florentine enchantress, women whom they idolize. In this case, Vina becomes that “empty receptacle” for Ormus’ and Rai’s hopes, failures, desires, passions, expectations, shortcomings, disappointments, neuroses, etc., just as the sleeping beauties do for the old men in Kawabata’s story. In fact, it is not just Ormus and Rai who use Vina this way–the entire world, captivated by her singing and atypical candor in the press, makes Vina its “empty receptacle”. Even in death, she continues to function as the tabula rasa for various therapists, religious gurus, theorists, philosophers, and pundits–all of whom seek both to derive greater meaning and profit from her untimely death.

3) Doubles, twins, doppelgangers, and mirror images. The end chapters of this book are densely populated with Vina lookalikes and impostors. Ormus is haunted by his dead twin brother, Gayomart, who offers him visions of songs yet to be written and glimpses into alternate realities that torment him to no end, ultimately driving him mad. Mirror imagery throughout the story reinforces these dualistic themes.

Ultimately, this is the story of a very flawed, human love, something the narrative tells us explicitly. Ormus and Vina hurt many people throughout the course of their stormy on-again-off-again courtship–perhaps themselves most of all. Rai is the only character who escapes the destructive triangle, emerging not only with life and limb, but with a tamer, more humane version of Vina (Mira Celano). He achieves happiness with Mira that he could not with Vina–while Vina shunned the notions of fidelity and marriage, Mira craves them. And, perhaps most importantly, he does not have to share her body and soul with Ormus Cama.

The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata

What strikes me about a lot of Kawabata’s post-war fiction is its attendant silence. There are no melodramatic climaxes, no cheap tricks to shock the reader’s sensibilities. What plot contrivance, after all, could rival the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, of World War II itself?

The eerie quietude of Kawabata’s post-war Japanese fiction mirrors the silence that must have descended after each horrific detonation. There could be no louder sound, and Kawabata respects this in his nuanced, quiet narratives. He doesn’t try to talk over the deafening boom or outdo it with dramatic excess. Instead of showcasing the tidal waves of human relationships, those culminations of resentment and anger that sell millions of books and movie tickets every year, he probes their undercurrents and finds ample narrative potential there. In short, he reads between the lines of family and romantic relationships, giving voice to the motives, memories, and miscommunications that plague them.