Rollicking, Russian rabble-raising confusion
Bulgakov, Mikhail ~ The Master and Margarita
When I selected this book I thought
There’s a big soft spot in my heart for Russian literature but a little empty spot as I haven’t read any of Bulgakov’s works.
50-word description
In an attack on Stalinism that was banned for more than 30 years, the devil disguised as a foreigner comes to Moscow with his merry and sadistic band of followers and with them havoc and terror reign.
150-word review
I still can’t decide if the book was trying too hard to be clever or if I’m just not clever enough to understand the book.
I devoured and wanted to be dazzled by Bulgakov’s slyness and dramatic tale telling but I didn’t finish because the storylines crashed like dodgem cars driven by children under the influence of red cordial. I looked for greater understanding – and wanted to understand the book’s many layers and scathing attack on Communism – but I was trying to convince myself to enjoy the book out of obligation.
One day I’ll hunt down a different translation with an introduction and footnotes and I’ll be back. Until then, The Master and Margarita is being shoved back into a shoe drawer, which is the only available space I have now for new books.
Found in
Home library B
Read
Oct 09
Links
Book’s Wiki page
Frankston Library doesn’t have a copy, but you search the totally excellent Library Link Victoria catalogue link
Rating
I don’t know
This is book 28 of the project.
The last books I’ll be buying for a while
The last purchase until income flows regularly again
Top to bottom:
David Eagleman ~ Sum. Stephen Fry apparently twittered that if people weren’t enchanted by this little book, he’d eat 40 hats. It was good enough recommendation for me and the first few chapters have issued stunning, clever challenges on what might happen when you die. Ever been bored by the mundane — prefer to try re-living your life having years of showers without break, eating a lifetime’s worth of food in one long sitting, sleeping your life’s sleep uninterrupted instead? Or if heaven was comprised of only your friends and chosen acquaintances? Consider the mundanity and lack of novelty. His cheeky take on if God were truly egalitarian is worth the cover price alone. I’m dipping into a chapter a day to make it last longer.
Pettina Gappah ~ An Elegy for Easterly. I can’t remember how I discovered this book, but I found a yellow sticky note with the title scrawled on it. This is a book of short stories about life in Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s influence and so far has been packed with eloquence, rage, dark humour and hope among fear.
Krissy Kneen ~ Affection. Most-publicised Australian memoir for some time. Can’t wait to dip into 40-year-old Krissy’s recollections of lived and unrequited desires before the invisibility of middle age sets in.
Bob Mason ~ Magic Circles. Bob did a PhD in the lyrics of the Beatles — that is enough street cred for me and a source of envy that I didn’t think of something so cool to study. This book is an accumulation of the music, lives and lyrics of the Beatles and their peers.
Kurt Vonnegut ~ Armageddon in Retrospect. I’ve been sitting on this book for a while: I’m wary of posthumously-produced works that the creator hasn’t had control over (Jeff Buckley’s estate, anyone?) but I’ll get around to reading the dozen stories and speech in this compilation.
Reluctantly lopping a tall poppy
Boyne, John ~ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
When I selected this book I thought
I fortunately read the book before the film’s marketing campaign (I don’t watch a lot of television and, yes, probably have been living on another planet) and my copy has the plain cover that doesn’t give away the theme.
50-word description
The story is told as an allegory about nine-year-old Bruno, who moves with his family far from the comforts of home. He meets a boy who lives on the other side of a high fence and forms a friendship despite differences that don’t often make sense to Bruno.
150-word review
Creating a fictional Holocaust tale with respect, imagination and a fresh perspective is a challenge reserved for the bold verging on foolhardy.
The author succeeds but with any great idea comes the risk of serious flaws. The last book by Boyne I read, The Thief of Time, was similarly ambitious (a man who can’t die and outlives generations of family) but fell over in its execution and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas follows suite.
Bruno’s character strays too far from innocent child to blinkered fool; with his father ranked highly in Hitler’s regime Bruno would have been a member of the Hitler Youth instead of professing ignorance about Jews. Bruno’s continued mispronunciation of vital German words (in English) grates and he would have been punished severely in a commandant’s household. The likelihood of meeting a boy on the other side of the fence with the freedom to meet daily for a year goes beyond suspension of disbelief.
But the author writes an absorbing story that emphasises the lesson of the allegory with a breathtaking finale. A colleague asked if I had seen the film, and I replied, “No, I don’t want to risk ruining my memories of the book,” because the flaws are outweighed by the originality of Boyne’s undertaking.
john boyne ~ the boy in the striped pyjamas
Found in
Home library B
Read
Jul 09
Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Flawed brilliance
This is book 27 of the project.
The lush garden of insanity and death
Bird, Carmel ~ The White Garden
When I selected this book I thought
I cheated a little because I’ve read this book but wanted to read again to understand more fully the layers of literary and historical references in Bird’s story.
50-word description
Set in 1950s Australia, psychiatrist Ambrose Goddard experiments on female patients to further his landmark studies into the human mind. Patients’ delusions are encouraged, radical therapies experimented with and sexual abuse is rampant. The discovery of a dead woman in the clinic’s grounds helps unveil the true lunatic.
150-word review
Bird masterfully chronicles Goddard’s growing megalomania as his patients’ mental states crumble in the name of providing case studies for his book.
The White Garden is disarming with drugged patients describing abuse in dazed monologues, point of view shifts to the doctor’s and backgrounds of historical figures on whom some patients’ delusions are based. Cross-referencing was required occasionally (by me anyway) to hold the past and present together and understand how cleverly the author has constructed and tied up the story.
The book is an obscure but important piece of Australian literature and a reminder that quality doesn’t always equate with popularity.
carmel bird ~ the white garden
Found in
Home library
Read
Jul 09
Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link – n/a
Rating
Outstanding
This is book 26 of the project.
‘B’ isn’t starting with a bang
Baer, Martha ~ As Francesca
When I selected this book I thought
Wow, everything’s different in ‘B’. It’s darker and more mysterious and then I realised that’s because the ‘B’ shelves are further from the sunny northern window than ‘A’ *d’oh*. The book’s blurb sounded like an interesting foray into the muddling of professional and online lives.
50-word description
Elaine Botsch is a go-getter in a soulless corporation and in the night hours becomes Francesca, the online sexual plaything of a dominatrix named Inez. After ‘Francesca’ mistakenly logs in under her real name, Inez hints she knows the real-life Elaine, sending her into an emotional and professional tailspin.
150-word review
The premise of ‘real’ and online worlds colliding was daring at the time (the book’s release in 1997 was still in the early days of widespread popularity of internet chat rooms) but the novel’s execution fell flat.
Plot climaxes slipped by quietly, hidden in long and rarely insightful prose about identity. The overall theme of the book suffered from confusion between wanting to be a cautionary tale of who we share our secrets with, a mystery novel or a precursor to the darker chick lit genre.
I couldn’t identify with or be drawn into the corporate and virtual worlds created by the author because neither was tempting. Most of the characters were thinly rendered and didn’t evolve past initial glimmers of interest.
I kept reading out of curiosity to learn which character was behind Inez’s user name. However, by the end it didn’t really matter because most of the suspects had been discounted too early in the text.
martha baer ~ as francesca
Found in
Fiction B
Read
Jul 09
Links
Random House book blurb
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Underwhelming
This is book 25 of the project.
I lied, there’s another ‘A’ book
Austen, Jane and Grahame-Smith, Seth ~ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
When I selected this book I thought
The book was available, I was in the mood for an impulse loan and I was curious about whether I’d be reviled or impressed with a mash-up of Regency life and zombie unlife.
50-word description
Zombies roaming the English countryside threaten to convert new legions of the undead and, indeed, threaten plotlines in Jane Austen’s most popular book. Keeping much of Austen’s text intact, the Bennet sisters turn their priorities from searching for eligible young men towards mastering weapons and slaying unmentionables.
150-word review
The scene setting cleverly weaves original text with changes to the characters’ lives because of the presence of zombies. Take the introduction of Mr Bingley and his sisters:
Mr Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion, but little in the way of combat training.
After a couple of chapters the novelty wore and I fluctuated between joy from clever one-liners and skimming out of obligation to know how it all ends. Boundaries were occasionally pushed perfectly but too often stretched into sloppy parody. For instance, Jane and Elizabeth’s zombie hunting skills and teamwork aligned well with the original, but the showdown between Elizabeth and Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s trained ninjas was farcical.
P&P&Z was a daring exercise but should have focused more on the concept’s cleverness within constraints of the period and a little less on being outrageous for its own sake.
pride and prejudice and zombies
Found in
Fiction A
Read
Jun 09
Links
Interview with Seth Grahame-Smith
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Inconsistent
This is book 24 of the project.
Austen in the abbey
Austen, Jane ~ Northanger Abbey
When I selected this book I thought
I’d have a whole bevy of trollops hunting me down if I didn’t include an Austen book in the blog. This is not such a bad thing in itself, but I’d rather a high tea than a lynching.
50-word description
Catherine Morland is a parson’s daughter of marrying age but modest looks, wealth and talents. She accompanies family friends on a trip to Bath and encounters society, real and false friendships, romance and an alarming mystery.
150-word review
Northanger Abbey has been described as Austen’s Gothic novel, her most satirical book and her practice work. It’s all of those in small quantities but is a lot more when the surface is scratched, rather like the character of the everygirl heroine within its pages.
I felt most deeply for the naive Catherine departing her country life for entrance into Bath’s society, and the loneliness and social awkwardness of herself and her patron, who was also lacking acquaintances. Until a serendipitous encounter saved them from a lonely season, I had flashbacks for all of us who have been last picked for teams at school gym classes and pondered our need to belong, regardless of the century.
Interrupting the developing love story is Catherine’s veering into a fanciful Gothic horror tale of her own creation. Fans of the genre will appreciate the subtelties and wit of Austen’s experimentation with the literary craze of her era in both the narrative and Catherine’s beloved hobby, but for me the most endearing theme was Catherine’s coming of age and learning that people are not as they seem.
jane austen ~ northanger abbey
Found in
Fiction A
Read
May 09
Links
Jane Austen Society of Australia web site
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Engaging
This is book 23 of the project.
To the next shelf?
Should I change from A to B?
I consulted the Magic Eight Ball.
It’s time to acquaint myself with the contents of the ‘B’ shelves. I am feeling a few pangs of guilt about missing prolific and popular writers including Cecelia Ahern and Piers Anthony, but the power of books and libraries is that they’ll be there for another time.
There is one beloved ‘A’ author who cannot go unacknowledged, and I shall finish this letter of the alphabet with her in the next post.
Unresolved bedroom battles
Arndt, Bettina ~ The Sex Diaries
When I selected this book I thought
After a couple of decades of naïveté, ignorance, heartbreak, frustration, an ‘is that all there is’ attitude towards sex and finally understanding what works for me, I’m voraciously curious about how others live – and don’t live — their personal lives.
50-word description
Therapist, media commentator and author Bettina Arndt advertised for couples to diarise their sexual lives for up to a year. Ninety-eight couples and individuals in relationships corresponded about the daily negotiations, power plays, battles and rare triumphs with their desire and satisfaction levels.
(Many more than) 150-word review
Allowing diarists to effectively own the book’s contents has inevitably placed focus on repetitive, time-worn problems in long-term relationships. Arndt’s suggested solutions to resolve desire and libido incompatibilities are simple but never easy and her subjects read predominantly as frustrated and confused men and bitter and angry women. The few women whose libidos out-grunt their partners’ and the couples who share satisfying sex lives are displayed proudly like endangered parrots – admired by those who appreciate their beauty but are targets to be shot down by a resentful adult population based on diarists’ convictions of the desire chasm between men and women.
Media commentary has honed in on Arndt’s suggestion that partners with the lowest sex drive — almost always intending women — ‘gift’ sex to their more highly-driven partners more often and, by having more sex, will realise it’s not so bad after all and garner enthusiasm. Exploration of consent issues and a discussion of rape versus obligation are sadly ignored. Why would – or should — a woman lie back and think of tomorrow’s schedule while her partner gets his fill in a half-hearted, barely-better-than-nothing way? ‘Should’ instead of ‘want’ advances neither gender’s sexual progress.
Arndt complements correspondents’ diary notes with interesting research into human sexuality, useful anatomy primers and extensive quotes from other works of a similar sphere. While the book at its onset takes a male-centric view of sexual frustration, Arndt is brave enough to call the bluffs of some women who blame busy lives and housework for low libidos but who admit they’d avoid sex if the house was sparkling. She also takes task with men who don’t learn that if one behaviour doesn’t work then trying it more frequently is self defeating, and shows that while monogamy is a societal expectation, affairs can have the side effect of invigorating desire.
I recommend the book to be read as a compilation of common relationship problems, and explored in conjunction with Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity for its analysis of human desire and heartening and occasionally radical exploration of maintaining satisfying relationships.
Then again, a million books can suggest change but nothing will occur unless everyone takes a stand against gender and sexual inequity in society. We have unprecedented permission to blossom and engage in fulfilling sexual lives but are defeated from the outset in myriad other ways. Women don’t hit their supposed sexual peaks in their late 30s-early 40s for physical reasons; it’s often because they’ve finally learned enough about their sexuality to know what works and the pending invisibility of middle age creeps up and accelerates the urge to screw without caring what others think. Remove every piece of advertising that objectifies women sexually and portrays men as simple dolts who don’t do housework. Kill off the alive-and-well double standard that sexually active and skilled men have experience but their female equivalents are sluts. Bin the women’s magazines that feature unusually beautiful women on the covers and that prey on and encourage physical insecurity within their pages. Throw out the adult movies with grossly unrepresentative and passive women and use the web for home-made videos with real people enjoying themselves. Continue teaching young people about sex education, health and pregnancy but allow them to learn about the lifelong pleasures of their bodies. Stop treating lesbian sex as less authentic as gay or heterosexual sex and drop the “she just hasn’t met the right man” ethos. Do something nice for a partner every day and engender the relationship triad of love, lust and like. Acknowledge and encourage the awesome power of a woman in sexual flight. Many men do not understand the female anatomy and pathways to orgasm and many women remain equally ignorant of their own bodies; women cannot expect men to find their way around if they do not themselves have the knowledge, confidence and freedom from judgement to know and say what they want. Be open to considering non-traditional arrangements such as polyamory to inject new interest and sexual charge to long-term relationships.
Then, and only then, will a book start making a difference.
bettina arndt ~ the sex diaries
Found in
Home library non-fiction A
Read
Apr 09
Links
Bettina Arndt web site
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Worthwhile
This is book 22 of the project.
Don’t nominate me for a trip to Mars though
Asimov, Isaac (edited by Carl Freedman) ~ Conversations with Isaac Asimov
When I selected this book I thought
Isaac Asimov was difficult to drag from his typewriter for family holidays, let alone be tied down for an interview, and this volume pulls together interviews from 1968 to 1990. Topics focus on science fiction with wads of technology, science, life and human behaviour thrown in for good measure.
50-word description
I grabbed the book because it’s simpler than deciding between Asimov’s prodigious output in science fiction and other fields of study: I tried but couldn’t locate his book of bawdy limericks. Also, there are few non-fiction titles in the ‘A’ section. If you have an ‘A’ surname you’re unlikely to feature in any non-fiction section — sorry.
150-word review
I must confess I left this book neglected in my library bag (yeah, I’m a nerd). Someone please wipe the egg from my face because I was hooked on his self-deprecating daring in the first interview at a science fiction forum in 1968:
“Dr Franklin and Mr Pohl, everybody, everybody. As is usual I come unprepared, which doesn’t matter, because I am always unprepared. No one can tell the difference. Right?”
Throughout the interviews, Asimov illuminate his theories and visions of science fiction, the restricting flaws of unimaginative scientists and his dreams of space travel and habitation of planets beyond Earth. Freedman includes essays of rare visits to Asimov’s home to build the profile of the man behind an almost-500 book bibliography.
There is some duplication, as the editor notes, but the sensible route was chosen to publish interviews in their entirety and risk some overlap or – to look positively – show the subtle differences in questions and Asimov’s responses at different times.
Asimov was sometimes pessimistic (or just decades too early in his prophecy) about the end of human life on our planet but has proven correct in most of his opinions and predictions. If there was one person who could be revived every 20 years to study and discuss the state of humanity, I’d vote for him.
isaac asimov (edited by carl freeman) ~ conversations with isaac asimov
Found in
Non-fiction A
Read
Mar 09
Links
Isaac Asimov FAQ
Frankston Library catalogue link
Rating
Fascinating
This is book 21 of the project.
