?RUReading?

[Ken Egan]

[posted for Kim Anderson, luxuriating in the Napa Valley out of range of the Internet]

What are you reading right now and why?

Kim recently read A. S. Byatt's "The Children's Book" and couldn't get enough of it. According to New York Times, this novel "was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize awarded on Tuesday, is 675 pages long and has a Trollopean heft and sweep; it starts in 1895 and ends after World War I." She'll no doubt share more thoughts as time and access allow.

But again, what are you reading and why?

[Jason Neal]

McCarthy's Blood Meridian. It's one of those books that I've been intending to read for probably 10 years, but didn't for one reason or another. (I find that I sometimes resist reading novels with "big" reputations, I guess because I develop preconceived notions of what they'll be like, although those notions often end up being wrong or reductive....)

I finally picked it up because I was recently browsing the archives of one of my favorite sites—A.V. Club—and came across an interesting interview with Harold Bloom about BM. Also, I attended one of the UM English Dept.'s LARCs (Learning And Research Colloquium), where a grad student was discussing his dissertation on McCarthy (although not much about BM specifically), and that re-sparked my interest a little. And I was between books. Voilà!

Needless to say, it really is a remarkable novel. McCarthy commits so thoroughly that singular, rather narrow but ultimately brilliant narrative mode. "Haunting" is an over-used term in the description of novels, but for this one it may be spot on.

[Ken Egan]

Derek Walcott's Omeros. Like Jason's experience, this is one of those books I've been meaning to read for a long time. Walcott is one of my favorite poets, but I was intimidated by the novel-length book. And a glance told me the poet was working in terza rima--terza rima? Seemed a little precious, a little over the top.

I couldn't have been more wrong. What a wonderful ride. Omeros takes the reader inside the lives of three characters in particular, a fisherman, a white landowner, and a poet living on St. Lucia in the Caribbean. These three perspectives allow the reader contrasting views the contemporary island and its colonial past. I'm struck by the narrator's refusal to judge them. And Walcott's deep love for his home sings through the verse in image and sound.

And yes, there are the Homeric echoes, perhaps overdone for effect. Yet there is a kind of pleasure in asking how the white landowner might be a kind of Odysseus, and why the fisherman's name is Achille, and how a female character Helen is like her namesake, and how Homer's language informs or shapes Walcott's. I'm led to wonder about the relevance of the past--including past literature--to our present.

[Kim Anderson]

Kim here, still luxuriating in Napa. I thought when we broached this idea for a forum we shoulld call it
?RUReading. To help boost my geek bona fides.

What I just finished reading, on the plane, is A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. You must all run out and buy it in hardcover. Disclaimer: I love Byatt, her wonderful ability to explain and play with historical ideas in novels, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea (sorry). Still this is one of her best--set in late Victorian and early Edwardian England, the rise of William Morris and the arts and crafts movement in England, moving from the City to the country where "communes" of nature-loving Victorians played at child-rearing and rural simplicity. The novel is a moving portrayal of parents and children, and the creation of the late-Victorian ideal of the child. A dozen or so characters dance through 30 years of coming together and parting. And then, shockingly, the book culminates in World War I, and a sort of horrific refutation of all that's come before. It's harrowing, but then, Byatt, leads us back out, and shows us the world changed, yes, forever, but not totally devastated, and with some glimmers of hope. Loved it.
Back later this week, once I've finished Marianne Wiggins' Evidence of Things Unseen. Until then, I toast you all with a Silverado Sauvignon Blanc!

[Noelle Sullivan]

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, which just won the National Book Award for Fiction last night. There's a hidden Montana connection--when he speaks of the aerialist Phillipe Petit (though not by name), he describes how he trained for the World Trade Center stunt, at a remote cabin in Montana, above deep snow. The book's a fine one. Congrats to Colin.

[Kim Anderson]

Noelle, thanks for the great suggestion--I've never heard of the author, and I'm excited to find out more. Finished Evidence of Things Unseen (M. Wiggins) midway through vacation, but had an unreliable internet connection. So, a belated mini-review:

For the first third of this book, I wasn't sure I liked it. Wiggins' writing can be very stylized and she uses a semi-phonetic rendering of her mid-Southern characters' dialogue, which initially drove me crazy. But I got used to it. And I began to fall in love with the story and the characters--this is probably one of the most honest portrayals of a marriage I've read in years, and the storyline--rural Tennessee between the two great wars experiencing the move from gas and coal and horse drawn carriages to the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge--is fascinating. At the Montana FEstival of the Book Wiggins told me this was her favorite of her novels, and certainly it is a book with a huge, huge heart. I hope one of you on the Roundtable picks it up--I'd love to discuss!

[Ken Stolz]

I've just started reading David Orr's "Down to the Wire" - about Global Climate Destabilization (his suggestion for a better label for the issue/risk). Based upon his lecture last week, it will have a strong scientific basis, but quite a bit of humanities perspective as well.

Which reminds me (this might need to be a whole separate thread), what were the most influential "environmental" books in your formative years? . Mine were: Silent Spring, The Population Bomb, Small is Beautiful, and Wilderness and the American Mind. Of course, you know can pretty well guess how old I am.

[Ken Egan]

Good question, Ken. My three favorites were Monkey Wrench Gang, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and some of Thoreau's writings (I loved "Walking" and parts of Walden). In some ways very different books with very different tones. I wonder if Abbey's wild, miltant novel would hold up for me today (haven't read it in about 25 years).

[Ken Stolz]

Of course, having listed the above, plus yours, my unread/un-reread list grows longer. And I forgot Sand County Almanac.

[Clair Leonard]

I am reading Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren. I remember thoroughly enjoying the book the first time around many years ago. I was wondering what was so fascinating about the book as a child. I am in the middle of it at the moment and it still makes me laugh. 'Definitely worth the read. There's a lot to love about Pippi, it's light, colorful and amusing. It's all about fun.

[Clair Leonard]

Can I fudge on an answer for this week? Here's what I would be reading if I could get my hands on it: Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It was part of the English curriculum at Crescent College Comprehensive, Limerick, a Jesuit secondary school in Eire (Ireland). About five years ago I came across an audio copy at the Bookstore (UM). I listened to the tapes for five years until they wore out. Every Winter, driving to Butte, Helena, Seeley, wherever, if we were in the car in December, Dylan Thomas was the cassette of choice, when it was my turn. I discovered the children liked it too.

I haven't physically read the piece since I was in my teens in Limerick. I vividly remember the language. I recall being compelled to read it aloud. There was a wonderful anthology series called "Exploring English." One volume was prose, another poetry and the plays and novels we read as separate works. I never threw these books away, because the Exploring English anthologies were full of treasures, many Anglo-Irish writers of world renown. I bet you a fiver they are still upstairs on a dusty bookshelf or stuffed in the bedside locker in the old room I shared with my sisters in Dooradoyle. What I wouldn't give for a shot of "Exploring English" this minute.

When I found the tapes on campus at the Bookstore, I had to buy two, one for my family and one for my mother-in-law. I was pleasantly surprised. I had never heard Dylan Thomas recite his own work and it was an aural feast of language. Thomas delivers drama in his recitation, his choice of words are magic, and the pictures he creates are alive. I see a shopping spree on the cards, a book and tape/dvd to replace a lost childhood treasure. It's probably ok if I only buy one little pressie for me...

[Kathleen Ralph]

I, too, love listening to Dylan Thomas' own reading of "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It's a Christmas tradition at our house, along with watching "White Christmas."

As for what I'm reading, I just finished "Lark and Termite," by Jayne Anne Phillips. It takes a while getting used to the change in voices, especially that of Termite. But it is rewarding. This novel flips back and forth between times and places (Korea and small town U.S.), a tunnel at No Gun Ri in Korea where the father of Lark & Termite dies, and the small town where the two children are living nine years later. (There's also a tunnel in the U.S., where the two spend a lot of time.) It's a bit fey, especially at the end, but definitely a good read.

[Clair Leonard]

I was over at the Book Exchange about two weeks ago and the following book just fell into my hand, "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," a collection of early stories by Roald Dahl. I only got as far as the introduction which was class, as my voracious-reading-daughter Brighid keeps handing me children's books and asking me to read them. Every morning she quizzes me, "Well, did you read The Wanderer? And what did you think?" See, I'm on the spot and if I say I didn't read it, she replies, "Oh, that's ok Mammy," with a broad sympathetic smile. Then I feel bad, it's like she's the Mammy and I'm the girl. Maybe over the holidays I will fit Roald in and finish The Wanderer as well and listen to Dylan Thomas at least three times and read the read book too when the audio/cd and book are delivered next week.

I am hoping the "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," is light, it seems like it should be from reading the intro, but you just never know...