Wordless Wednesday: the homeless apostrophe

I think Wordless Wednesday is a meme hosted somewhere, but I'm honestly not sure.  And as I'm having to post this via my telephone while I'm away in New Orleans (about which, more anon), I don't really have the time or the thumb technique to look up where, etc.

But I saw this photograph in a Shelf Awareness recently and it made me laugh, as apostrophes (and their proper uses) are causes dear to my heart.

Norwegian Wood Readalong: Part Deux

So, is it just me, or have the rest of y'all had "Norwegian Wood" stuck in your heads all week, too? I've been whistling and humming it at every turn.  And am I the last one to know about the film adaptation to be released in the US later this year?  I found it quite by accident today when looking for the Hunger Games trailer to watch.

All of this is to delay my discussion of the book, which I confess I find little pleasure in reading.    Though I did finish the reading this week, I found the two assigned chapters tedious, indeed, which makes me fear that perhaps I'm too pedestrian to appreciate Murakami's subtleties.  What I cannot determine is whether it's a lack of understanding the cultural differences or my lack of sophistication getting in the way.  

What's up with this passage in chapter 6: "I'm saying you shouldn't use yourself up in some unnatural form.  Do you see what I'm getting at? It would be such a waste. The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older. It's true."

And I noticed on the back cover of my edition that the LA Times Book Review said that this was "easily the most erotic of [his] novels." I wonder at that when there are passages like this in the book (and last week somebody else already pointed out Murakami's use of her "opening" in a sex scene): "If he wanted to play with my breasts or vagina, I didn't mind at all, or if he had semen he wanted to get rid of, I didn't helping with that, either." Erotic? I don't think so.

Still, the loony bin Ami Hotel was a pretty interesting place, though it's hard to imagine such a place here in the US.  And Reiko's piano student was a real piece of work (though the writing was on the wall for that one).

Basically I have three words for Murakami at this point: More Midori, please.

Sorry for being so down on the book this week; I hold out hope that by the time I come to the end that my opinion may change.  What about y'all?  What did you take away from this week's reading? 

Hey HEY Hey, New Orleans!

Okay, who can tell me the source of today's blogpost title?  I'll give you a hint: it's from an eminently quotable show from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

That's right--I head down to New Orleans, Nawlins, the Big Easy, the Crescent City next week, and what's more, I'm traveling there for work, which means very little out of pocket expense for me.  New Orleans is my favorite city in the US to visit, and it's one of my favorite places in the world.  Having grown up in MS, I was a frequent visitor there until I moved north.  I had friends in college who were from there and whose parents opened their home to all of us whenever we wanted to visit, including during the Mardi Gras season.  I'm pretty sure that there isn't any number of hostess gifts and thank you notes that could adequately express our gratitude for taking us in, so Betty and Jerry Cooper, this blog's for you!

You know what Betty and Jerry would do for us at Mardi Gras time?  Not only did they make large, nourishing breakfasts to fortify us during the day or welcome us back home at night with hot & hearty dishes like jambalaya, or allow us to play Mardi Gras music very loudly on the speakers at all hours of the day or night...each morning after breakfast they would drive two separate cars down to the parade routes and leave one there, then drive back to their house together while we were getting ready for the day.  Then one of them would round up all of us kids and drive us back to the parade route to drop us off--all so we could have a vehicle on hand after the parades and could drive home whenever we were ready. These are the kind of parents who have always enjoyed the company of their children and by extension their children's friends, and I've rarely met a family who were so universally generous or gracious.  While I certainly appreciated at the time everything that Betty and Jerry did for us, I was also wrapped up in that bubble of self-involvement that marks adolescence and young adulthood; it is now when I look back on those long-gone years that I marvel at their largess toward a rag-tag bunch of teens and college kids. Which is why it was all the more devastating when Hurricane Katrina destroyed that home I remember so fondly. 

It's been a couple of years since I was last in New Orleans, incidentally for standing up in the wedding for Betty and Jerry's daughter, Elizabeth, which was one of the loveliest weddings I've ever had the pleasure of attending. (Sidebar: we had our hair done at 7:30 that morning and the stylist offered us our choice of daiquiris, strawberry or eggnog. Would that all hairdresers had multiple daiquiri machines in their back rooms to offer their clientele)

Next week will be completely different, for I'm heading down for Winter Institute, an industry trade show for independent booksellers, capped at a 500-person attendance to maintain a sense of intimacy.  We attend educational sessions and panels, listen to speakers on the state of the industry, attend wine receptions with various authors, generally mingle with other folks in the bidness, and GET FREE BOOKS.  It's the coolest gig around, and this year on top of everything else I've been invited to a couple of publisher's soirees, so color me stoked.  Wednesday night is a large dinner party hosted by Algonquin, one of my favorite independent publishers, at the home of a famed New Orleans bookseller known for his swanky Garden District Bookshop.  We'll ride the streetcar (do not call it a trolley, please) from our hotel in the Quarter to his home and enjoy some Abita beer and boudin balls and other traditional comestibles.

Friday night I get to attend the Simon & Schuster dinner where I'll meet authors Carol Anshaw, who wrote Carry the One, and Chris Cleave, whom most readers will know from Little Bee, but who will be promoting his forthcoming novel Gold.  (I liked both books very much and the links will take you to my reviews.) Dinner will be held at the Red Fish Grill, which I believe opened since I left the South, but it's a Brennan establishment so let's just say I feel pretty good about it!

My husband would disown me if I forsook the Acme Oyster Bar while down there, and for me, no visit to that august city is complete without a visit (or several) to Cafe du Monde.  One of my favorite visits there was a spur-of-the-moment roadtrip in my freshman year of college, three hours away by car.  I reckon it was around 8:00 that night when we decided we were craving beignets and that nothing else would do.  So we piled into my boyfriend's roommate's car and headed down.  We started and ended at Cafe du Monde and in between times we walked the Quarter, stopped in at Pat O's (yup, touristy, but who can possibly resist the alluring combination of fire fountains and Hurricanes-a-gogo?), and sang some karaoke at The Cat's Meow (Love Shack. That's right. We rocked that tin roof.).  I seem to recall we made it back to Jackson in time to go to church the next morning. 'Cause we were bad-ass renegades like that.

So, umm, yeah.  New Orleans.  Gonna be there soon.  Which makes this post travel related and thus totes legitimate.

NB: Only the photos of people belong to me. The others were found on an obliging tourist promotional website.  I used to have very similar photos of my own, but I lost them when my hard drive fried last year.

Norwegian Wood Readalong

I've never participated in a readalong before, but I rather obnoxiously commented on the posts for everybody who participated in the Help! I Haven't Read The Help Readalong, sponsored by Reading Rambo. This month she's sponsoring a new one for Haruki Murakmi's Norwegian Wood, which nobody doubts will be a more elevated selection.  However, my book just arrived at the bookshop yesterday and the first posting deadline is today, so I am a little behind.  Woe is I. But I will buck up, suck it up, and give it the ol' college try (and any other cliche you can think of that is suitable).  I've already missed out on the introductory post, in which we are to elaborate on our feelings of reading Murakami: to sum up, a little bit intimidated because I've read two of his books before and one of them kicked my ass & I didn't finish it, and the other was slim and dreamlike and carried me along on its gentle current. Which one will Norwegian Wood resemble, or will it be something entirely its own?

Okey-dokey.  Here are my almighty thoughts about chapters one through four two.  In a readalong, I'm not sure which is more important: finishing the reading and posting late, or posting on time what you've had the chance to read. I'm erring on the side of the latter for this week until informed otherwise.

I'm not sure if it's a cultural difference or what, but the conversation between Toru and Naoko seems completely stilted.  The relationship itself and the way they interact feel natural, but any verbal exchange leaves me feeling dissatisfied.  On the other hand, the same dream-like quality that I liked about After Dark seems to be developing here, and I'm all for that.

I love the meditation on memory and clarity at the end of chapter one: it's almost like a prose version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the closer in time he is to Naoko, the less clear she seems, and conversely, "the more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her." Maybe it's just the old physics nerd in me resurfacing, but I was completely drawn to the last two paragraphs in the chapter.

Cicadas--who knew that they were in Japan?  Of the four places I've lived in the US (MA, NC, MS, and WI), I have only ever known them in MS.  I wouldn't have expected them to show up in Japan, what with the wildly divergent climates.

Boys' dormitories--I guess that's a cross-culture disgusting thing.  I was an RA in college and had to make several, ahem, official visits to the boys' dorms after hours and they were always appaling.  I love Murakami's description of mattresses here: "sweat-impregnated pads would give off odors beyond redemption." So true, so true.

National anthem--"until pebbles turn to boulders" seemed like the phrase should be reversed to me until I looked up the rest of the lyrics online.  Now I suppose I just find it creepy, because if it were "boulders turn to pebbles," then it's just a really long time on a geologic time scale.  But waiting for pebbles to turn to boulders is not going to happen, ever. And then I had the irreverent thought that it would be a better national anthem for North Korea. And then I realized that I don't really want to inspect too closely the words of my own national anthem and I left it alone.

And how 'bout that suicide, eh? Can't wait to move on 'cause in retrospect it makes the convo in chapter one a little less stilted.

Shoot, this makes me feel stoopid.  Can't wait to read everybody else's response so that I can learn better how to do this.  'Til next time, y'all.

As the Crowe Flies and EATS

Last weekend my husband and I left on a jet plane to visit my family in Wisconsin over New Year's.  Traveling in New England is always a little dicey in the winter, and traveling to Wisconsin at that time of year isn't exactly for the faint of heart.  I find it almost impossible to believe that I was born there, such is the thinness of my blood today.  My brother, in contrast, thinks there's nothing at all wrong with wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt to shovel snow; his heavy winter coat is very similar to the light jacket I wear in the summer when it rains.

Our driveway in snow (& deer tracks)

But I digress.  When traveling in winter, my husband and I always allow plenty of time for layovers in case our departing flights are delayed, and if the forecast predicts even a dusting of snow the night before or the morning of a departure, we hie ourselves to an airport motel to avoid what happened one time on our way to MS in February: the forecast promised less than an inch of snow accumulation overnight, but when we tried to navigate our hilly, curvy driveway, our 4-wheel drive car slid downhill on the black ice.  At one point the car did a 180-degree turn and thus we slid the last bit backwards.  How we ended up not hitting a boulder on the way down or avoiding other cars when we slid into the street below is a matter left to speculation, but we were so shaken that we barely made the drive to the airport on time. We are now thusly over-cautious when it comes to winter travel.

On the bright side, our layovers in winter are also long enough to accommodate meals more leisurely than grabbing takeout from the various fast food chains that define the airport landscape.  In Minneapolis (MSP) we have a favorite place to nosh when the timing works: Surdyk's Flights, which is a full wine shop (thus the punny name for an airport eatery) with a small bistro attached. If you're in a hurry, you can grab a sandwich or homemade pastry to go, but I recommend grabbing one of the booths to settle in for a meal when it's feasible. 

The bar/counter at Surdyk's

Books & cappuccino: so very civilized in an airport

We settled into a cozy booth for two, where our first order of bidness was to turn off the small screen tv, but close on the heels of that, we ordered a couple of cappuccinos (cappuccini?).  I opted for breakfast and chose the egg & swiss panino with a side of fruit while DH selected the prosciutto and pecorino sandwich accompanied by a tarragon potato salad.  Both were excellent, ample, and at $7 and $12, respectively, not out of line in terms of price. Although we didn't partake on this particular visit, Surdyk's also has a full bar with nothing but top shelf liquor.  It's one of the rare places outside the Caribbean or a specialty bar where you can find a really good rum (my friends, Bacardi is rotgut as far as I'm concerned).  They happen to pour Matusalem, or at least did the last time we were there.

My breakfast panino

DH's sandwich

Close up of their made-daily muffins, brioches, and other pastries.

Feeling refreshed and oh-so-very-civilized after lingering over coffee and our books, we soon settled in for our flight to Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA), nestled in the heart of the state.  I've never seen so little snow on the ground in December or January as I did on this trip.  Wisconsin is not at its best in the winter, especially when there's no coat of snow to gently mask the drably harsh features of the landscape, but there is still a kind of stark beauty there.  These are some photos of farmland between the airport and the small, dying mill town where I spent my earliest years:

This photo reminds me quite viscerally of Mississippi

The stories this abandoned house could tell

What else would you name your welding company?

Our visit to Wisconsin was splendid but entirely too short.  It's never enough time to visit with family, whom I only see once or twice a year, but it's a difficult time for me to get away.  There's a fairly short window between the end of the holiday retail season/end of year returns and the gearing up for Winter Institute and textbook rush.  Still, you might be amazed at the sheer amounts of baked goods and liquor that my family and I were able to put away in those brief days.  For once I held my own against my DH, brother, and sister-in-law, but suffice it to say that it will be a long while before I want to get friendly with another bottle of Zacapa.

Before we knew it, it was time to head for the airport again, this time on our way to Detroit (DTW), which is one of my favorite airports.  There's a good Japanese restaurant on the main concourse, and after you've filled up on sushi or noodles, you can entertain AND refresh yourself at the water fountain display.  The water itself can be mesmerizing, but as it shoots and leaps in patterns, it's also ionizing the air around it, so I suggest that you pause to take a few deep breaths.  I also love what I call the Rainbow Connection (someday we'll find it!), the underground tunnel that connects the main concourse with the two smaller ones.  Here are a few more photos in parting:

Sometimes there's music playing, too.

Imagine what it'd be like if you were tripping...

The pause that refreshes

Frost on my mom's window

Literary Blog Hop: Supplementary Reading & Secondary Sources

It's the first Literary Blog Hop of the year!  This weekend, the good folks at The Blue Bookcase have asked us whether we supplement our reading with outside sources. 

My first reaction to this question was a resounding "no" because I was thinking mostly along scholarly lines. But upon reflection it becomes a qualified yes.  I don't seek secondary sources very often because I'm mostly driven just to go on to the next book, but it does happen occasionally--usually when I'm reading a work of historical fiction and I want to know where the history leaves off and the fiction begins. Not dissimilarly, when I'm reading works of non-fiction and I want to know more about a particular item/concept/theory/place, I'll go to secondary sources to learn more.  One of the last times I did this was after reading Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, the excellent memoir by Alexandra Fuller.  I spent a little time reading more about Rhodesia online after being appalled by the little bit of Rhodesian history that Fuller provides.  I didn't spend a lot of time on it, admittedly, but I was curious enough to want to know more. 

What about y'all?  How often, if at all, do you turn to secondary sources for your reading?

Book Preview: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Bethany Griffin's first installment of her proposed trilogy will find many fans.  At this point, I think I'm one of them.  Here's the Good Reads summary: Everything is in ruins. A devastating plague has decimated [sic: it's actually much higher than that, but most people use this word, which means one in ten, carelessly, including this summary] the population and those who are left are in fear of catching it as the city crumbles to pieces around them. So what does Araby Worth have to live for? Nights in the Debauchery Club, beautiful dresses, glittery make-up . . . and tantalizing ways to forget it all. But in the depths of the club—in the depths of her own despair—Araby will find more than oblivion. She will find Will, the terribly handsome proprietor of the club. And Elliott, the wickedly smart aristocrat. Neither boy is what he seems. Both have secrets. Everyone does. And Araby may find something not just to live for, but to fight for—no matter what it costs her. 

Finally, a steampunk post-apocalyptic, dystopian love triangle trilogy I can get behind!  I'm sort of kidding.  I've actually grown weary of the trilogy/love triangle/dystopian ideas.  Why can't we have one great, big book instead of three pretty good-but-incomplete books these days?  Why can't our heroines be faced with impossible life choices instead of impossible love choices?

But beyond those generic criticisms (which I seem to have with almost *every* YA book/franchise these days) I really liked the atmosphere of this book, though I wouldn't call it New Orleans-meets-fin de seicle-Paris as the author's note suggests.  I enjoy both the limitations and the limitless imagination that go hand in hand with steampunk.  Araby is an interesting character, as are her friend April, and the two boys in her life.

This book isn't out for another several months (July '12), but it's got the kind of cover and conceit that marketers love and I feel that we'll be seeing a LOT about this book in the lead up to its publication. I received an ARC of this book from our Harper sales rep, Anne DeCourcey, because she is beyond diligent when it comes to keeping me in books. Masque of the Red Death qualifies for the New Authors Challenge hosted by Literary Escapism.  Two down, thirty-eight more to go!

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have a confession to make.  Up until now, I have never read The Great Gatsby, but the reasons I just read it are fairly roundabout.  My husband read it a couple of months ago for the first time, and last month I commented on a Top Ten Tuesday post that it would be a book that I'd like to receive for Christmas.  In that same TTT post, I lamented the fact that nobody gives me books any longer, now that I work as an independent bookseller.  My mom in turn read that post and determined to make me eat my words, so she gifted me with her personal copy of Gatsby this past weekend when I was visiting her in Wisconsin over the New Year.

I remember watching the Robert-Redford-as-Gatsby film adaptation more than 20 years ago with my mom, who is positively gaga for Redford, but I'm afraid that my mind retained only a couple of images: the car accident scene and the final scene in the swimming pool.  I came to the book with a similar tabula rasa in terms of the story, but I'm not sure whether it's to my family or the literary culture of the places I've worked that I owe the fact that all of the names and places were already familiar to me by the time I picked up the book. 

Now I'm sitting in the Detroit airport, moments after turning the last page of Fitzgerald's book.  I'm not sure what to say about this book, other than I know I have absolutely nothing new to bring to the conversation.  There are some really, really lovely turns of phrase throughout, and I suppose I see why it has become an American classic, but for me it falls mostly under the heading of Pretty Good rather than Great.  I like the book for its tightness (I can think of a few writers who should take that lesson to heart), and I especially admire the way Fitzgerald allows the reader to make those mental mini-leaps during the lapses in narration instead of filling in every single blank the way modern writers need to do.  But I can't help feeling that I'm missing out on a lot of subtext in this book, both cultural and historical, and it makes me wish I had read this book in an academic setting so that I might have a fuller appreciation of it. 

What about you?  Have you read Gatsby?  What is the one thing you feel I should take away from this book?  If you're an avid Fitzgerald fan, what should come next for me?

Believe it or not, this book qualifies for the New Authors challenge hosted by Literary Escapism.  I have never read F. Scott Fitzgerald before.  One down, 39 more to go for the year.

Book Teaser: Gold by Chris Cleave

While I thought the plot of Gold was overall a slightly less interesting read than Chris Cleave's previous Little Bee (whose central questions still haunt me: how far would you go to save the life of a stranger? how would that bind you to that stranger for the rest of your lives?), the character development and plotting are stronger here with Gold.   Cleave is certainly bold in his approach to characters--he doesn't seem to care if the reader likes his characters or not, which frees him from quite a few constructs and constraints. I didn't especially like the characters in Little Bee, and I didn't especially like the characters in Gold, but unusually that didn't make a difference in my devouring this book, which was a really fast read.

In this book, however, the writing itself is a few notches above his other books.  I've got so many dog-eared pages and I shared so many passages out loud with my husband and my extended family that my ARC is starting to look a little ragged.  I look forward to meeting Chris Cleave at Winter Institute in a few weeks! This book pubs in July 2012 and I received an ARC of it from Wendy Sheanin at Simon & Schuster--I'll be attending dinner in New Orleans with Chris Cleave and with Carol Anshaw, author of Carry the One.  Can't wait!

Here are some of the passages I marked:

On watching her competitor on television: "Kate hated the way her body still readied itself to race like this, the way a widow's exhausted heart must still leap at a photo of her dead lover."

On a sick child's trying to read the mood of her mother in Star Wars costume: "This was the thing with Stormtroopers: they only showed the multipurpose expression molded into the face plates of their helmets--a hard-wearing, wipe-clean semimournful expression equally appropriate for learning that one's souffle, or one's empire, had fallen."

On describing a falling out between friends: "In the weeks that followed, Zoe had been incandescent with remorse. That was how it had seemed to Kate--that her friend had actually flickered with a pale and anxious light that sought to expel the shadows cast by her behavior."

On the nature of time in a modern world: "Time had been restructured like bad debt. The long languid hour had been atomized. Manifestos were shrunk to memes and speeches were pressed into sound bites [sic]..."

Last Month in Review: December 2011

December was a slower reading month for me. Between the extra hours at work and the demands of the holiday season, and somehow just not being that interested in reading, I couldn't seem to break into the double digits. 

1. Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver.  I really, really liked this sequel to Delirium, which I could barely make myself finish.  Review here.

2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander.  Didn't love it, didn't hate it.  Writing is good, wish it was less self-conscious.  Review here. 

3. Quarantine by Rahul Mehta.  Another story collection.  Review here.

4. White Truffles in Winter by N. M. Kelby.  Review here.

5. Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James.  Didn't review this one, but suffice it to say that it's a pretty decent Austen "sequel," as far as they go.  Come on, it's P. D. James!

6. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly.  This was a gift from my Secret Santa at Broke & Bookish.  Loved it!  Hope to get a review written when I return home from visiting my family in Wisconsin over New Year's.

7. Home Front by Kristin Hannah (audio).  I didn't like this one much because I think it fell way short of what it could have been.  Review here.

I came really, really close to completing my first e-book of the year, but I didn't want to push it and so it will be in my 2012 roster.  I've been reading Pride & Prejudice on my phone a few pages at a time.  Started it last January and took a full year 'cause I read it mostly when I'm in waiting situations: stopped for a train in traffic, waiting for my husband to meet me at a restaurant, etc.