The Sunday Salon: Saying Bye-Bye to May

Haven't written a Sunday Salon post for a few weeks. May has been particularly hectic this year – for some reason I just couldn't settle down to anything for any length of time during the first few weeks of the month. Spring fever, I guess. Well, that and annual mammogram time – I always get a little frantic when health check month rolls around.

And then, of course, there were all those NBA playoff games to attend to.

But that's all done now – everything is OK (if you ignore what happened to the Celtics and the Spurs) and back to normal; so I've been playing catch-up this last week, and trying to make up for lost reading time.

Still, I read seven books in May (counting the one I'm reading now, which I should be finishing up tonight). Here's the list, with links to a couple of reviews:

Brimstone. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Optimist's Daughter. Eudora Welty
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O'Brien
To Dance with the White Dog. Terry Kay
The Unit. Ninni Holmqvist
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively (reading now)

And although I haven't reviewed all of those yet, I did post two reviews of books I read earlier this year:

The Master. Colm Toibin
The Great Victorian Collection. Brian Moore

I know I still have a lot of reviews to write, but I'm working on it. Especially since I need to do a wrap-up post for the Book Awards II Challenge which ends tomorrow. Now I need to decide what to read next. Do I go with a book for one of the other reading challenges I've signed up for, or do I get back to Dance of Death, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, which I started a while back and put aside? Or do I start that ARC of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game I've been itching to get to?

Well, I'm really thinking I'll probably go with the Preston/Child – maybe I can make it fit one of my challenges, with a little tweaking. See, I think I've fallen seriously in love with Agent Aloysius Pendergast – he of the ghostly complexion and the perfectly-tailored black suits. And June is a good time for a nice bulky thriller, right? What a nice dilemma – two good books and a whole new month stretching out ahead.

Review: The Unit

Written by Ninni Holmqvist

Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy

Other Press, 2009; 268 pages

Originally published in Sweden, 2006

This review refers to an advance uncorrected proof of the novel, received through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program.

Description from Random House:

One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixty – single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries – are sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and…well, then what?

THE UNIT is a gripping exploration of a society in the throes of an experiment, in which the “dispensable” ones are convinced under gentle coercion of the importance of sacrificing for the “necessary” ones. Ninni Holmqvist has created a debut novel of humor, sorrow, and rage about love, the close bonds of friendship, and about a cynical, utilitarian way of thinking disguised as care.

A novel of humor, sorrow, and rage, indeed. But not nearly enough rage! What these people needed was an armed insurrection!

It's hard to know exactly what to say about this book without sounding excessively negative. And I wouldn't want to do that because I thought it was well-written and a quick read, and certainly an interesting idea for a good science fiction-y novel. But I can't really say I enjoyed it. Maybe if I were younger, or a parent, and not so very near to Dorrit's situation myself, I could be more dispassionate! As it is, I can identify just a little too closely with those "dispensables" to make this a comfortable read.

It's certainly true that as the book progresses, Dorrit's situation becomes more and more "unbearable." But I wouldn't agree that it happens suddenly – it's unbearable from the very start. The whole idea of a society based on the sacrifice of one group for the survival of another chosen group is abhorrent – just, I suspect, as Holmqvist intended it to be. It was difficult to stick with the book as characters kept disappearing without warning and sometimes without explanation (including Dorrit's older sister), heading for that final sacrificial "donation." I also found the ending (which is a bit of a surprise) very hard to accept; in the same circumstances, I don't think I'd make the same decision.

However, having said all that, I would still definitely recommend it for readers who can handle the very chilly subject matter. I think it's an extremely readable novel – just a little too disturbing for my taste.

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Challenges: 20 in 2009; Lost in Translation; Read Your Own Books (RYOB); Spring Reading Thing

Review: The Great Victorian Collection

Written by Brian Moore
E.P. Dutton, 1985
First published 1975

There is still some confusion as to when Anthony Maloney first saw the Great Victorian Collection. Can it be said that he first envisaged the Collection in his dream? Or did he create it in its entirety only when he woke up and climbed out of his bedroom window? [p. 3]

Brian Moore's novel The Great Victorian Collection tells the wonderfully bizarre story of Anthony Maloney, a 29-year-old assistant professor of history at Canada's McGill University in Montreal, and an expert in Victoriana. One morning, while on a trip to San Francisco to attend a seminar at Berkeley, Maloney wakes up to find that a dream he's had has come true: Outside his hotel window a vast, magnificent collection of exquisite and rare Victorian objects has magically appeared in the hotel parking lot.

From that moment, Maloney's life is completely taken over by the care and maintenance of the collection. The mass of objects is so large it can't be moved, so the hotel management has to be placated. Security has to be seen to. The press and TV journalists are soon clamoring for interviews. Maloney acquires an agent and an assistant (and promptly falls in love with his assistant's young girl friend). Debates develop between rival academic camps – some claim the collection is the real thing, others believe the objects to be very skillful fakes; although no one seems able to explain how Maloney might have pulled off such a "hoax." And Maloney finds, somewhat to his dismay, that when he goes to sleep at night, he can only dream about the collection – he conjured it up, and he's destined to guard it – even in his dreams.

Throughout the book, Maloney himself struggles with the problem of just how real or unreal the collection might be. Was it actually created by his dream? Or is there some other mystery involved? And if it is just a manifestation of his imaginings, what exactly is allowing it to exist in the real world? Is it here to stay, or likely to disappear just as suddenly as it came into being? At one point, Maloney experiments with trying to remove an object – an antique toy train engine – from the collection only to find the engine seriously altered when he inspects it afterward:

And, on picking it up, [he] read the . . . incriminating legend: "Made in Japan."

Then, and only then, Maloney realized the laws of his creation. Already the toy engine reproached him, a small cancerous blemish on the perfect bloom of the whole. It had been given to him to envisage the Collection here, in a parking lot in California. Any further attempts to remove these items to some other location would result, not in the greatest collection of Victoriana the world had ever seen, but in an astonishing conglomeration of . . . fakes. [p. 17]

In the end, the collection causes Maloney nothing but grief, and his attempts to maintain it in its pristine condition fail miserably. But that's all I'll say about the ending because there are twists and surprises I don't really want to reveal (including a strange subplot involving Mary Ann, the young companion of Maloney's assistant, and a road trip to Los Angeles).

This stunningly inventive, and deliciously weird novel won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1975, but seems to be out of print now (I had to hunt my copy down on eBay). And that's too bad. It really deserves to be rediscovered.

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Challenges: 20 in 2009; 2009 TBR (Lite); Book Awards II; Read Your Own Books (RYOB); Winter Reading Challenge

Review: The Master

Written by Colm Toibin
Scribner, 2004; 338 pages
Originally published in Great Britain by Picador, 2004

"I have in mind a man who all his life believes that something dreadful will happen to him," Henry said. "He tells a woman of this unknown catastrophe and she becomes his greatest friend, but what he does not see is that his failure to believe in her, his own coldness, is the catastrophe, it has come already, it has lived within him all along." [p. 334]

I've never been a huge Henry James fan. Although two of his shorter works, The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw are among my favorite novellas, I've generally found his longer novels hard work. I tend to agree with one of my old college professors who used to say that Henry James was "all about whether I should have broccoli for lunch, or whether I should have carrots, and who the hell cares anyway." Of course, that prof was a Medievalist, so I suppose his opinions on Victorian novelists don't carry much weight. But I always thought it sounded perfectly accurate.

However, the story of Henry James the writer and the man is something that's always intrigued me. So I was eager to read The Master, Colm Toibin's fictionalized portrait of James. The book was highly praised by critics, and honored with several awards, including the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, and was listed by The New York Times as one of the ten most notable books of 2004. Needless to say, my expectations were high.

And I was not disappointed. The Master is a fascinating blend of fact and invention, offering a poignant image of James and just how many sacrifices he made to become a great writer. James never married, never resolved his sexual identity; he had problems with intimacy and close friendships throughout his life. As Toibin has said, James missed out on a lot of things in life because he spent so much time working. And although the work itself gave him great satisfaction, and not doing it would have made him unhappy, there's little doubt that his private life and personal relationships suffered because of the work.

Rather than trying to portray James's complete life story in a straightforward narrative, Toibin has chosen to show us several dramatic episodes in that life – eleven episodes, set between January 1895 and October 1899: from the disastrous reception of James's stage play Guy Domville, to the acquisition of his beloved Lamb House in Rye. During this period, although many of his greatest works were completed or yet to be written, he produced The Turn of the Screw, What Maisie Knew, and The Awkward Age. And for me, one of the most interesting aspects of The Master was the way in which Toibin allows us to watch James receiving the inspiration for these works, and then doing the research and writing. I suppose there's no way of being certain that this is how the great man did what he did, but it's a terrifically absorbing speculation.

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Challenges: 20 in 2009; 2009 TBR (Lite); Book Awards II; Read Your Own Books (RYOB); Winter Reading '08-'09

Friday Finds: 29 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 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.

Just two new finds this week. Lately, I've been devoting most of my time to reading, and not doing so much "shopping around."

Picked up The Romance Readers' Book Club (by Julie L. Cannon) from the bargain table at our local Borders. Have to admit I was mainly attracted by the cover – it looked so summery. But the story sounds interesting, too; perfect reading for the months just ahead.


I think I first discovered Michelle Richmond's No One You Know while browsing the May selections in LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, but I've seen it mentioned several places since then. It's "a tale of a woman's search for her sister's killer" and sounds like it might be another great summer read.

Booking Through Thursday: Unread It?

This week's BTT topic is a follow-up to last week's question about books you'd like to read again for the first time:

Is there a book that you wish you could “unread”? One that you disliked so thoroughly you wish you could just forget that you ever read it?

Kind of a strange question, but an interesting one. At first glance, I thought, "Ah-hah! A chance to slam all those boring, pointless, and unreadable books I was forced to struggle through in high school!"

But after I had a chance to ruminate a bit, I started having second thoughts. After all, one of those books I fussed and fumed about was Pride and Prejudice. Given a chance at the tender age of seventeen, I would have gleefully condemned Lizzie and Darcy and all their boring ilk to the fires of hell forever and ever. Eventually, of course, I re-read P&P and realized what a imbecilic ninny I'd been, way back all those years ago in Miss Weber's senior English class.

And that's an experience that teaches a useful lesson. Things change. Life is change. And change can be good. Your reading shapes who you are: everything you read adds a little to the person you turn out to be. Even books you feel may be a waste of your precious time might have an influence that won't make itself apparent until years later.

These days, I'm privileged to be able to read what I want, with no pop quizzes or deadlines other than the ones I set myself. If I start a book and it doesn't appeal to me after a chapter or two, I put it down and pick up another. But even remembering all those boring, pointless, and unreadable books I was compelled to read back in the day, I think I can honestly say I don't regret any of them. There might be many books I'd never read again, but I can't say there are any I wish I hadn't read.

Tuesday Thingers: What's Missing?

This week's Tuesday Thingers topic is another good one:

Is there anything you would like to see added to the Library Thing site? Is there something you like on another bookshelf style site that LT doesn't have?

In addition to my LT account, I have accounts with Good Reads and Shelfari; and I think for general cataloguing purposes LibraryThing is far superior to either of those. And basically, that's what I use LT for. Well, I also like the Early Reviewer program, of course, but that's an extra and not what originally attracted me to LT.

And I love the personal touch you get with Library Thing – Tim and Abby and the rest of the staff are always there ready to answer questions and solve problems. You always feel you're dealing with actual human beings, something you don't really get with most of the other "bookshelf" sites.

I was never all that taken with Shelfari, and I don't use it much. However, there are things about Good Reads that I like. I mainly use GR to keep track of my TBR list and the books I'm currently reading. One thing I like about GR is the little capsule synopses they have for each book – I'd like to see LibraryThing do something like that. You can get reviews at LT, of course, but if you just want to know a little about the plot of a book or what it's about, rather than readers' opinions, it's a little more difficult. And GR has such nice large photos of all the various book covers, instead of the tiny thumbnails at LT.

Also, I've found the discussion groups at Good Reads a little friendlier than those at LT. Maybe I just "hang out" in the wrong groups, but it seems some LT members can be quite prickly at times. It's probably just a result of the Good Reads groups having actual moderators who keep things from getting out of hand, but there does seems to be a lot less arguing and "flaming" there.

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.