Oh Leo-oh

Hey All,

I really like Anna Karenina.  I know, right?  After all of my quibbling and complaints about it before I had even started reading it, I turn around and say I like it?  What gives?  Well, Leo Tolstoy gives.  History gives.  The weight of time gives.  Quite simply, a book doesn't last this long as a classic without due merit.  I kinda knew this all along, but was daunted by the weight of the book.  But Curtis, my dear friend Curtis Maloley, that cunning, handsome devil with the rapist's wit (points if you get the reference), knew what he was doing when he recommended this book.

It was written in the 1870s, and concerns the upper classes in Russian society.  Clearly, I have absolutely no connection with the lifestyle and mindset of Tolstoy's characters, but that really does not seem to matter.  Love is a large theme throughout the book, and, perhaps because of the age in which it was written, romance, and romantic notions of love, appear on many pages.  Silly things about romantic love, like men falling in love at the sight of a woman who passes them in a carriage.  As if that really happens.  I now blame Tolstoy for the existence of Cosmo and other such inane things (Rom-coms, diet pills, and nuclear war, to name a few).

It's a great book to be reading in the middle of winter, too.  Russia is cold.  Canada is colder (Of course; we're better at everything).  I don't want to put it down, and I don't have anything else worthwhile to write about it at the moment, so I'll end this post here, and get back to reading.

-Bryan

Lime(y)s for Everyone

Hey All,

The Englishman's Boy is, in my opinion, a good book.  Not great, but good.  For a while there, while reading it, I thought it was great.  And parts of it - most of it, actually - is great.  I told Chaz (Sullivan, who recommended it to me) that I loved it, when I was about half way through.  That wasn't a lie, Chaz, I was loving it.  But then it ended.  And the end just isn't for me.

The book is about two things, really: the struggle for one character, Harry Vincent to make his way in Hollywood during the 1920s.   The real story, however, revolves around Shorty McAdoo, and his involvement in the Cypress Hills Massacre (I won't testify to the veracity of that link, but offer it merely as a synopsis of what some people offer up as the history of that event).  Guy Vanderhaeghe is a glorious storyteller, and he weaves those two stories together in amazing fashion.  As one of my friends put it earlier this week, it's as if you aren't even reading, the words, paragraphs, and sections of the book flow together so seamlessly.  I did not ever want to put the book down and, magically, it is one of those books that has great depth of meaning, and great length to it; it never seemed to end.

Ah, the end.  My problem with the book lies in it's beginning, really, but I didn't know it until the end.  I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who might end up reading the book.  For those who have, I'll say this: while the beginning and end are tied, and while they anchor the entire story, I feel that they are too disparate from the rest of the novel to really work.  Throughout the entire time I was reading the book, I expected to the plot to eventually come back to those two Assiniboine, to relate that beginning part of the story to the overall narrative.  Vanderhaege does, but not until the very end, and not very well.  I hate myself for saying this, but if he had woven the beginning of the book back into Shorty McAdoo's tale, I would be much happier.  Instead, I feel as though I am being told a fable, one that I really don't get, and one that has nothing at all to do with the other nearly 300 pages I read.


If you've read this blog all along, you might know that I cherish an ending.  I was sad that this novel ended the way it did.  I really did enjoy it otherwise.  The characters are rich, the plot compelling.  Vanderhaege's writing is exactly the style that I tend to enjoy right now (great recommendation, Chaz).  Which brings me to one of my next two novels, The Cave, by Jose Saramago.


One of my favourite books ever is Blindness, by Saramago.  My friend, Ines Ortiz, recommended The Cave to me, knowing this.  I've started it, but already I am bothered by his writing style.  He does not use quotations when his characters speak, and paragraphs can go on for pages at a time.  This technique really worked in Blindness, as I think it helped put the reader in the mindset of the characters.  In The Cave, however, I just find it irritating.  I'll push through it, though, Ines.

I'm doing something new for this project again: reading two books at a time.  I said that I was going to start Anna Karenina after The Englishman's Boy, and I have.  I just don't want to carry it on the subway with me.  So my plan right now is to read The Cave throughout the day, and Anna Karenina in the evenings.  Obviously, this latter book will likely take me some time to read, and will carry over into other books besides The Cave.  Which is fine with me.  Curtis Maloley is a jerk for recommending it, anyway.  I know he had malicious intentions when he did.  But I'm also thankful for the recommendation, as it's a book that I really ought to read and, had I not put myself in this situation (and he not recommended it), there is no chance I would ever have read it on my own.

That's it for now.  Happy New Year.  Nine more months of this to go!

-Bryan

Chicago, Chicago

Hey All,

Whoa.  It's been too long.  No excuses.  I just haven't been into blogging.  I'm still reading, but couldn't get myself into writing.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have finished The Devil in the White City, and am now nearly finished The Englishman's Boy.  I'll write this post about the book I've already read, then move on to the one I'm reading in my next post.

I don't know if it's the book (The Devil in the White City), or the stupid Canadian weather.  I was pretty engrossed in the book while reading it, but I was grossed out by the weather (in early December).  This is the first book that I haven't blogged about while reading it.  I won't go into the reasons, but it's not because I don't like it.

There's certainly no shortage of things to write about with The Devil in the White City.  It's the most well-written piece of history I have ever read, and that's a lot of history.  As I mentioned in my last post, I majored in History while at university.  In my last undergraduate year, I wrote a thesis on a particular author's body of work, analyzing it from a critical historical viewpoint.  That author is Thomas Raddall, a Nova Scotian who wrote stories about that province in the first half of the twentieth century.  His books were not works of history in the academic sense, as his audience was more populist.  He didn't footnote, or cite references in his books, but he was very popular, and his body of work influenced the modern view of Nova Scotia and it's history, for better or worse.  Erik Larson, the author of The Devil in the White City, while not as popular as Raddall was in his time, is a much better historian.  In this case, I judge it from the academic viewpoint, and not necessarily from the sellable viewpoint.  What I mean by "sellable" is a work's value to the reading, and therefore buying, public.  I guess I could call it a work's marketability.  

My Masters degree is in Public History, which is exactly what Erik Larson has created in this book.  It is also what Thomas Raddall wrote when he wrote most of his works, but, I would argue, with a different scale and value to them.  Any book (or movie, or television show, for that matter) that purports to depict a part of history, with at least an attempt to be accurate to history, is a work of public history ("Public history" is a difficult term, in and of itself.  While in graduate school, we debated it, and many historians still can't come to a consensus).

What I like about The Devil in the White City is that Larson is both very accurate (I have no reason to doubt the veracity of his historical claims) and a really good writer.  I was drawn into the multiple plots that took place over the course of the book (one, about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, another about a serial killer, and still another about a man in Chicago at the same time who was delusional).  Knowing how difficult it is to weave a story out of the bits and pieces of history, I marvel, too, at Larson's research and ability to spin those bits and pieces into such a cohesive tale.

That's not to say the book is faultless.  As a writer, he used the same writing tricks over and over (too complicated to explain.  Errrr, maybe I'm just too lazy.  Either way, you don't get an example this time), and, rather than flowing paragraphs, he broke up sections where he wants to change topics with paragraph dividers.  Weak.  Plus, the book went on a little too long for my liking, which happens a lot when you get into history. For one, with history, academically speaking, to be accurate, one needs to be thorough.  Thoroughness can lead to length, for sure, which, for many of us nowadays, can be tedious.  I count myself among the group of people who has a short attention span.  

I like history, but I'm not a history buff; I recognized a long time ago that what I like about history is the second part of the work, "story".  I have always loved being told, listening to, reading, and watching stories.  I am happy to go along on a ride, if that ride adds to the thrill of the story.  Often, however, there's lots of prattling on in history books (and other kinds, too) that doesn't add to the overall effectiveness of the story.  Larson did a good job of trimming much of the fat, in The Devil in the White City, but he didn't get all of it.  At over 400 pages, it's just too long for my taste.

Enough with that book.  Great recommendation, Keltie.  I'm glad I read it, and sorry I didn't blog about it more.  It gave me an opportunity to talk about my specialty, though, which was a nice change.  On to The Englishman's Boy, but not until my next post.

I have just two quick side notes about my blogging: first, I still, happily, have my bookmark.  Secondly, I'm way behind schedule now.  WAY.  And once I'm done The Englishman's Boy, I'm taking on Anna Karenina, which won't help.  But I should have a lot more time on my hands in the new year, at least the first few months, so hopefully I can catch up a little bit.

-Bryan

Friggin' Hornby

Hey All,

I'm miffed at Nick Hornby, or maybe it's his publishers I ought to hate right now.  I'm very careful, always, about having a book with me whenever there is a chance I could read.  Especially when I'm on public transit, which I take (if I'm not driving to work with my girlfriend) for about two hours each day.  Never do I want to be stuck on the dirtly hole that is the TTC without the distraction of a book to take my mind off the filth and stale air that lurks on the trains and buses I have to take.

So when Hornby's Songbook abruptly ended on me, with still about another fifty pages (it seemed) left, while I was on the TTC one morning this past week, well, I was beside myself.

A little explanation is likely in order, as you're probably asking yourself, "How can it end, with fifty pages still to go?"  It's like this: Hornby wrote Songbook as a number of chapters, each chapter about a song (or songs).  That's how the book was originally conceived and written.  The version of the book that I'm reading, however, has an additional five essays about albums.  I knew about the additional chapters before starting the book, as their existence is clearly stated on the cover and in the Table of Contents.  Still, it caught me off guard, as I took it as my right to stop this book after the chapters on the songs were over, since that isn't how he'd originally written the book.  Kind of like skipping the Afterword, if you will, or the notes the publisher (or writer) adds to a later edition of a book: they might be a nice addition to the text you've just read, but not absolutely necessary.  Plus, I feel that once a piece of art is completed and submitted (in this case Hornby submitted his manuscript to his publisher), that ought to be it.  No more additions.  When I wrote my essays in university, once I handed them in, that was the work upon which I would be marked.  So it is that a writer of fiction ought to be judged: on the work they first publish.  Certainly, Songbook doesn't fall under fiction, but it's not exactly the type of work that needs more added to it.

Reading this book just strengthened my opinion that the novel is a great format for reading.  I found Hornby's approach to his book new and interesting at first.  After about halfway through, though, I lost that interest, and just wanted the book to be over, which shouldn't have happened, considering my short attention span and the fairly short chapters that he wrote.  Those two factors, mashed together as they were, ought to have produced in me a quick read, and one that I enjoyed.  I found, instead, that I missed the long narrative, the arc, of a good tale.

I did not complete Songbook in it's entirety.  I was too mad and too bored with it to read the rest of Hornby's blather.  I've since moved on to The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, the book recommended to me by Keltie Neville.  It's a work of history, and so far probably the best such piece I've ever read.  Seriously.  This is the stuff I studied, in depth, while at university, and about which I wrote my thesis.  It's good stuff from a reader's perspective.

-Bryan