Category: Literature

Studs Terkel

Posted on by Dana

I have not abandoned this blog, I promise you, but grad school has made it difficult for me to read as much as I’d like.  Not reading as much means no book reviews.  I’m finished with the semester, and I’m re-reading junk food favorite Twilight in addition to my new copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  I am enjoying a study of Macbeth with my juniors.  I begin Romeo and Juliet again in January, and I love teaching that play.  In addition, I also get to teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the second time ever and The Taming of the Shrew for the first, so I’m looking for some good times with Uncle Will.  I will probably blog about any experiences teaching these plays at my education blog rather than here.

I came upon the New York Times article about the memorial service for Studs Terkel today.  I listened to a long recording Terkel did with people who discussed the Great Depression, and it reminded me so much of what my grandfather did when he sent me a long letter about some of his experiences.  My life is richer for having heard his history, and now I can pass it on.  That’s what is valuable about the stories of the ordinary man in addition to politicians and famous folk, and that’s what Studs Terkel really understood about compelling stories — they are our stories and our voices, and our lives are richer when they are heard.  I listen to This American Life often as a subscriber of their podcast (which is where I heard the Terkel recording), and every week I find something new and enjoyable about the stories of people.

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Birthday Books 2008

Posted on by Dana

My parents, in their infinite wisdom regaring gift giving, have made it an annual practice to give me a bookstore gift card for my birthday.  I nearly let the month go by before I shared my purchases this month with you.

This year, my selections were heavy on the Shakespeare, probably due to the fact that I took a class on teaching Shakespeare through the Folger Shakespeare Library in June.

I only hope I get a chance to read it all soon.

I started a reading group at my school.  I was surprised by the reception!  We have a good 15 interested teachers, which at my school is approaching half the faculty!  We are reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  I need to get started on that one or I won’t be ready for our first meeting.

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Georgia Writers

Posted on by Dana

Omnivoracious, the Amazon Book Blog, has recently posted about Georgia writers as part of a series on the election and electoral votes.

The post has an impressive list of recommendations (though erroneously names the author of the Uncle Remus tales as Joel Chandler rather than Joel Chandler Harris.

Georgia has a rich literary history, as does much of the South.  When I was in undergrad, I took a course in Southern Literature, and it was a really excellent learning experience.

One or two suggestions I might add some of the following lesser known works to the list in the Omnivoriacious post:

  • Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes: my Southern Lit. professor wrote the introduction to the version I had in college
  • Coleman Barks‘ Gourd Seed (poetry): my UGA poetry professor and a wonderful poet mostly known for translating the poetry of Rumi (in fact, the New Georgia Encyclopedia article recounts him sleeping through his last final exam — that was my class — he wrote a poem about us*
  • Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Line of the Sun

Check out some of the other Georgia authors in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

* Here is a link to the poem.  He gave us all a copy of Gourd Seed, and I remember being so scared to ask him to sign it.  I worked up my nerve and brought it to the final exam, and then, well as the poem says, he didn’t come.  So, I mailed it to him with postage and asked that he sign it and send it back.  He did.  And he told me I would be a wonderful teacher with students who would be blessed to have me.

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Free Audio Book: Persuasion

Posted on by Dana

Through the Internet Archive’s audio offerings, I found LibriVox has a free audio version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which some of you might remember I’m currently reading.  The reader is Moira Fogarty.

Visit the site to download the book, or check out this embedded version:

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Well, I’m Persuaded… To Read Another Austen Novel

Posted on by Dana

I spent this morning watching Becoming Jane, and even though I know I might get my Janeite card taken away for saying this, I liked it.  Oh, I know it’s inaccurate, but it made for a good story.  Of course, I just love watching Austen-related movies because of the clothes.  I was surely born at the wrong time.  Take a look at some of the stills in this movie.

I just love, love, love Jane Austen.  At this point, I have read all but two of her novels: Persuasion and Mansfield Park.  I have started Persuasion twice and set aside for reasons I can’t remember.  I suspect it might be partly due to the fact that I’ve seen the excellent adaptation starring Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds.  I loved that movie, and it didn’t surprise me when I took a recent quiz and discovered Anne Elliot is the Austen heroine I am most like.  I felt that when I watched the movie, too.  Still, it’s shameful not to have finished the book, and I am turning back to it again.  I plan to read Mansfield Park as well, but I’m not sure when.  I’m definitely due for re-reads of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

I love immersing myself in her world, and if you do, too, you might check out Jane Austen’s World and Austen Blog.  Of course, there are many more wonderful Jane Austen’s blogs in their blogrolls, too, but I have to get going and that means I need to wrap up this post.

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The Lace Reader: A Re-Read

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The Lace Reader

Posted on by Dana

Brunonia Barry’s novel The Lace Reader is an intricate and fascinating read.  Barry’s description evokes a setting that is easy for the reader to picture and her characters are memorable.  Towner Whitney narrates most of the novel, and readers would do well to pay particular to the first two sentences in which she introduces herself.  I make a habit of checking a book to see how many chapters, parts, and pages it has, and I inadvertently saw something on a page near the end that gave away the ending, but I enjoyed seeing it unravel nonetheless.  Do yourself a favor if you read it, and don’t peek.  The surprise is better.

Towner returns to Salem after 15 years when she discovers Eva, whom Towner refers to as her aunt, is missing.  As the novel progresses, the reader learns that Towner has stayed away to escape some horrible memories from her past, when her twin Lyndley committed suicide at the age of 17 and Towner herself confessed to a murder that had not taken place.  She meets and becomes close to Rafferty, the detective assigned to look into Eva’s death and also into subsequent events.

My favorite character was Ann Chase, whom Barry describes as the second most famous witch in Salem after Laurie Cabot.  She was no-nonsense, funny, and strong.  I also liked Eva, who has died by the time the narrative begins, but whose personality is revealed through other characters’ memories of her.

The title comes from a fictional means of divination called lace reading, which is practiced by Eva, May, and occasionally Towner, though Towner blames her sister’s death on lace reading and refuses to practice it afterward.

More than anything else, this novel is about abuse and its toll on the human psyche.  I found the book to be really interesting, and it wouldn’t surprise me if lace reading becomes a popular means of fortune telling as a result of the novel.  Barry says that she wrote the novel as a “heroine’s journey,” influenced by the ideas of Joseph Campbell.  She wondered how the woman’s journey as a hero would be different from that of the man.  I’m not sure, after reading it, that I see Joseph Campbell’s monomyth in the novel.  However, I do see a sort of journey in it, and I’m glad I went on that trip.

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The Plague of Doves

Posted on by Dana

The Plague of DovesLouise Erdrich’s latest novel A Plague of Doves might be the best book I’ve read this year.  I kept turning the pages as the drama that affected an entire town unravels showing the degree to which the traumatic murder of a family and subsequent lynching of innocent parties binds the townspeople together in a fascinating web of history.

A Plague of Doves is often compared to Faulkner.  Erdrich’s use of multiple narrators as well as the imagery, symbolism, and characters of her novel certainly evoke Faulkner, but readers daunted by Faulkner’s style need not be afraid.  A Plague of Doves contains no page-length sentences or stream-of-consciousness meanderings that make it difficult to follow.  This story is told from the viewpoint of four different narrators who are all connected to the town’s tragic past in various ways.  One of the narrators, Evelina Harp, attempts to parse the connections upon first hearing about the story of the lynching:

The story Mooshum told us had its repercussions — the first being that I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore.  I became obsessed with lineage.  As I came to the end of my small leopard-print diary (its key useless as my brother had broken the clasp), I wrote down as much of Mooshum’s story as I could remember, and then the relatives of everyone I knew — parents, grandparents, way on back in time.  I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles.  I drew in pencil.  There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper. (86)

I drew my own family tree chart in the back of my book and added to it as I read and discovered new connections.  After finishing the book, I wish I had thought to make index note cards, as one reviewer did, because the web of relations is so complicated.  For all its complexity the story is that much richer and more real.

Several sections of Erdrich’s novel could stand alone as short stories, and indeed, parts of it have been published as short fiction, as I learned on reading Erdrich’s acknowledgments at the end of the book.  If parts of the novel feel somewhat digressive as a result, I think Erdrich can be forgiven, for when the reader reaches the last few pages, all the digressions are shown to be pieces of a complex puzzle — the reader doesn’t know what the picture is until the last piece is put in place.

In addition to being a fairly good murder mystery, the novel is rich in imagery, symbolism, and well-drawn characters, and by the end of the novel, I felt like a resident of Pluto, North Dakota and felt sure that I had truly known all of these people and uncovered their bloody history myself.   And that, after all, is what a good book should do for us.  Go right out and get this book now!  It’s amazing!  I don’t often post Amazon reviews, but I loved this book so much I want everyone to read it, so this review will be cross-posted at Amazon.

My next book is Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader.

Update, 9/12/09: I managed to make my tree look sort of readable using Inspiration. Download it by clicking this link. I hope it’s useful. It probably goes without saying that unless you’ve read the book, you shouldn’t look at it because it reveals the ending.

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The Lace Reader Received

Posted on by Dana

I received an advance reading copy of Brunonia Bryant’s The Lace Reader.  I’m looking forward to being one of the first bloggers to be able to review this novel, so I will begin it as soon as I finish The Plague of Doves (which is really, really good so far).

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My Next Read and Clarification on DailyLit

Posted on by Dana

I have decided (since I received my Amazon package) to read Louise Erdrich’s A Plague of Doves. If you would like to learn more about this book, listen to this interview with Valerie Jackson on Between the Lines:

Between the Lines: Louise Erdrich

Because I received such a nice e-mail from a representative of DailyLit about my concerns regarding Emma, I feel the need to clarify a couple of things. I have been and remain a huge fan of DailyLit. I think it has enabled me to read some books I otherwise might not have read. I complained that Emma was broken up in some odd places, and DailyLit’s representative assured me they are taking steps to fix problems like this. I don’t want to discourage anyone from using the service, and I would be grieved if anything I said in my review of Emma influenced anyone not to try it.

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Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader

Posted on by Dana

I heard about Brunonia Barry’s novel The Lace Reader yesterday via Book Club Girl’s blog.  Book Club Girl has an interview with Barry that really intrigued me, and you ought to give it a listen if my description of the novel intrigues you.  I was lucky to be one of the first ten commenters, which means Book Club Girl will be sending me a free advance reader edition of The Lace Reader.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the novel is how it came to be published.  Trying to get a book published is hard, trying, and often disheartening work.  Rather than spend years trying to find a publisher, Barry published her book herself.  The book became popular with readers and book clubs, and it attracted the attention of publishers who then had to bid for her book.  I love that part of the story.  Barry was able to score a $2 million book deal; the novel will be published by William Morrow and has already generated film industry buzz.

The novel is the story of Towner Whitney, a native of Salem, MA who can read the future in patterns of Ipswich lace.  She returns to her hometown after the murder of two women.  Barry says that her inspiration for the story was Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth, around which I built a senior English elective at my school.  Needless to say, a new book deliberately written with the Hero’s Journey in mind intrigued me.  Barry explains that “Most stories that follow this pattern have a decidedly male orientation: a lone individual acts heroically and saves the day. I wondered if there might be an alternate form, a feminine Hero’s Journey.”  Barry is right.  Of the books I chose, all of them had a male protagonist, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to find a book that had a female protagonist — I couldn’t.  I chose books like The Iliad, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte D’Arthur, The Ramayana, The Hobbit, Star Wars, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which was nixed by my principal), among a few other selected texts.  In part I am intrigued by this book for possible inclusion in my course.

I am about one-quarter into Northanger Abbey, and it’s been a delight.  I love the “heroine” Catherine, and I am looking forward to discovering what the Editrix of Austen Blog loves about Mr. Tilney (I’ve only seen him twice so far).  Austen, as always, has a pitch-perfect ear for conversation, and I was completely charmed by chapter six, in which she recounts a dialogue between Catherine and Isabella Thorpe (whom I also adore).  I should be finishing Emma this weekend, so please look for a review some time on Sunday.  I have decided I will read Charles Dickens next on DailyLit, but I am having trouble choosing a book.  I have narrowed down the list to three selections, and if you have thoughts about which one I should choose, please leave me a comment.

David Copperfield would take me more than a year in 447 daily installments, but A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are broken into 170 and 231 parts respectively.  When selecting novels for DailyLit, I try to choose books that I think I would otherwise not read, and all three books fit that description, so if you don’t help me, I’m afraid I’ll have to rely on eenie, meenie, miney, and moe for assistance.  Here’s incentive for you: if you successfully convince me to read the book of your choice, I will send you a DailyLit subscription to the book of your choice (so long as it’s free), and you can enjoy a bit of DailyLit in your own inbox.  What do you say?

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