Booking Through Thursday: A Second First Time?

Do-overs. This week's BTT question: "What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?"

At first glance, this seems like a simple question, but it's really a little problematic. I've thought about it before, and I always have trouble with it. I'm assuming we're not talking about time travel – so I wouldn't actually be returning to childhood or young adulthood or that original experience. And if I read any of my favorite books for the first time now, would I have the same reaction I had then? I'm a different person now – I've changed; maybe my feelings will have altered, too. In most cases, I wouldn't want to risk that. Not if it's a book I love.

However. Just to play the game – there have been some "first-reads" I wouldn't mind experiencing again. Mostly childhood books, of course. I suppose Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass would have to be on the list – I think they were probably the first "real" books I read on my own (as opposed to picture-books and easy readers), and they were absolutely magical.

And definitely Huckleberry Finn. I didn't actually read that one myself, the first time; my mother read it to me at nap-time everyday during the course of one summer. It was very effective at putting Mamma to sleep (she survived Tom Sawyer a little better), but I was fascinated and couldn't wait for the next afternoon's installment. I've re-read the book many times since then, and still love it. But none of my re-reads have come close to that first mind-altering experience.

And then, there are those books that served to help me get through trying times. Some of those are pleasant memories today – Little Women, the Nancy Drew mysteries, Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass – and some, like the novels of Barbara Pym, have become all-time favorites that I return to over and over. For those, while I'd love the experience of devouring them for the first time, I certainly wouldn't want to go through those rough patches of existence again.

Review: The Optimist's Daughter

Written by Eudora Welty
Library of America, 1998
Originally published 1972

The past is no more open to help or hurt than was Father in his coffin. The past is like him, impervious, and can never be awakened. It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world , . . . calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again – but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.

In Eudora Welty's short novel, The Optimist's Daughter, Laurel McKelva Hand travels from Chicago to New Orleans in order to help look after her aging father who is undergoing eye surgery. Though Judge McKelva seems strong and in otherwise good health, he never recovers from the surgery and dies several weeks later. Along with the Judge's second wife, Fay (his first wife, Laurel's mother, died a few years before the story begins), Laurel accompanies her father's body back home to Mount Salus, Mississippi, for the funeral. There, Laurel is reunited with friends and family, and struggles with the strained relationship between herself and Fay. Fay's family arrives unexpectedly from Texas for the funeral, and causes much uproar. Tempers flare. Old wounds are reopened. Memories of the past come painfully alive in the present. But eventually Laurel leaves it all behind and returns to her new life in Chicago.

In his New York Times review of the book (May 21, 1973), Howard Moss called it "a miracle of compression":

. . . the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work. Its style is at the service of a story that follows its nose with the instincts of a good hunting dog never losing the scent of its quarry. And its story has all those qualities peculiar to the finest short novels: a theme that vibrates with overtones, suspense and classical inevitability.

And that's basically pretty true. I especially admired the first part of the book – the hospital drama, with Laurel and her young stepmother locked in a sort of genteel mortal combat for proprietary rights to the Judge's care. But while I enjoyed the book as a whole, I must admit I was a bit disappointed with the second half of it. Once Laurel and Fay take their rivalry and the casket back home to Mount Salus, I felt the whole story sort of deteriorated into caricature and chaos. There seemed to be dozens of characters to keep track of, with nothing much to differentiate any of them, so that they ended up turning into a sort of Greek chorus of mourners. Laurel fades so far into the background, I was a little surprised when she emerged at the end for her final confrontation with Fay, who never really seemed like a flesh-and-blood character to me. And there's a rather heavy-handed use of symbolism in the last pages of the book when a bird gets trapped in the house and Laurel spends a night locked away from it, going through her mother's old books and letters. Perhaps in a longer work, that wouldn't have grated quite so much.

And as a Texan, I was more than a little disturbed by the fact that the nasty, loony people in the novel all seemed to come from Texas!

The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1973, and rightfully so. Even with all my quibbles I agree it's a powerful novel, with its themes of family, memory, and renewal. Before reading it, the only other Eudora Welty I'd read was her wonderful short story "Why I Live at the PO," which I'd loved. After finishing The Optimist's Daughter, I went back and re-read "PO" just to make sure I hadn't missed something. I hadn't. It's still just as wonderful. So, I guess you can't love 'em all. But that won't keep me from reading more Welty in the future. And although it wasn't my favorite read this year, I'd definitely recommend the novel to one and all.

Photo: Wikipedia

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Tuesday Thingers: Going Mobile

Wasn't that a song by the Who?

But I digress. Already.

This week's topic for the Tuesday Thingers group is about Library Thing and mobile devices:

Were you aware that LT had a mobile version of the site? Do you ever visit sites via a mobile device? Can you think of anything this would help you with?

Yes, I guess I did know about LT's mobile capabilities. But I've ignored them. See – I'm one of the least knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to mobile technology. My cell phone is so ancient (and yet, it's only a few years old) that it isn't set up to access email or the internet or play games or take photos. Or play the ocarina. It rings, I answer. That's it.

To me a mobile device is a bicycle or a wheelchair.

I don't text or IM. Although I think my cell phone is sophisticated enough for that – I would not even know how to go about it.

But having said all that, I should also say that I can see how wonderfully convenient it would be to have access to my library catalogue when I'm out book shopping or library browsing. Yes, I have on occasion come home with a copy of a book that's already sitting on my shelves. Avoiding that would be an obvious good thing. So maybe when I finally decide to upgrade to a jazzier mobile device, I'll give LT's mobile thingies a try.

Tuesday Thingers is hosted by Wendi of Wendi's Book Corner. If you'd like to see more or participate yourself, head on over to her blog and leave a comment.

Teaser Tuesdays: Now That's True Love

This week I'm reading an ARC of Stone's Fall by Iain Pears. And I suppose I should say that I haven't checked this quote against the published edition, which I believe came out this month:

It is worth any sort of nonsense or frivolity to make her happy, see her smile, to have her turn and say – thank you for putting up with that. For her I even learned to dance, although never well; but I am content to behave like an elephant to see her graceful, to feel her body move as I hold her in my arms. [p. 606]

As I've only read about a hundred pages, I'm not sure what's going on there – who's talking about who. The book is holding my interest so far, but at 800 pages, it's really going to have to pick up quite a bit for me to make it all the way through! If you've read it, I'd be gratified to know what you thought.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or participate yourself, head on over to her blog. And these are the rules: Grab your current read; Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given! Please avoid spoilers!

Friday Finds: 15 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Here are three interesting new titles that I found this week (well, new to me anyway). I'm pretty sure all three are going to end up on my TBR list, which is now so enormous it will take more than one lifetime to make a dent in.

A Proper Education for Girls: A Novel, by Elaine DiRollo
Sacred Hearts: A Novel, by Sarah Dunant
The Family Man, by Elinor Lipman

I've never read any of Dunant's other works, although I've got a couple on my TBR list. And I've only read one of Lipman's earlier novels (The Ladies' Man), but it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, so I'm very much looking forward to reading this latest book.

Booking Through Thursday: Gluttony? Who, Me?

Hello. Joy's books here. Joy can't come to the blog right now because she's either: a) out buying more books; b) running to the library to bring home more books; c) dusting/arranging/storing/reading the books she's already got overflowing her shelves.

But she just wanted to let you know that she admits to being a truly world-class Book Glutton who just can't seem to get enough of us books. She loves new books and she loves old books and she loves her own books and she'd love your books, too, if she could get her hands on them. ( Watch it!) She buys way too many books – many more than she'll ever actually read because she's the world's slowest reader (don't tell her we said that).

Anyway, it was nice talking to you, and Joy will be back soon. So if you'd like to leave a comment, please do so after the beep, and she'll get back to you ASAP. 'Bye now. Beeeeeeeeeeeepppp!!!!!

Tuesday Thingers: Reviews

This week, the Tuesday Thingers topic is about the LT reviewing process:

Do you add your reviews to the books you add to your library? If so, do you put your full review on there, or a quick review (one - two paragraphs)? Do you find other people's reviews helpful? Do you know of any other ways to enter your reviews (Other than Edit Book, or Quick Edit)?

I almost decided to sit this one out. I've gotten so far behind in my reviewing, it's really kind of embarrassing to talk about. I've been sort of all over the place lately – not getting much reading or reviewing done, for some reason. [Note to self: Pull yourself together!]

I do put just about all my reviews on LibraryThing as well as on my blog. At first, I was just putting a link to the blog review, but I decided that was sort of off-putting. Now I put an actual review on the LT site, but it's frequently a scaled-down version of the review that appears on my blog.

No, I don't know of any other ways to add reviews. In the beginning, I did find the process a little confusing; but now that I've had some experience with it I don't really find it all that inconvenient. In addition to the book page, I usually put a very short thumbnail review or synopsis on my 50 Book Challenge site, for each book I read – just a line or two.

Yes, I do find other people's reviews very helpful, and I do read them. Lately, however, I've begun thinking that if a book already has hundreds of reviews, there's probably not much point in adding one more. So probably in the future, I'll take that into consideration before I add my rantings to the already crowded LT review list. Of course, that wouldn't apply in the case of the Early Reviewer books I get. I'll definitely keep on adding my reviews of those, no matter how many are there before me.

Tuesday Thingers is hosted by Wendi of Wendi's Book Corner. If you'd like to see more or participate yourself, head on over to her blog and leave a comment.