Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (TBR Challenge Book 3)

Leaving on a jet plane in a little while, so this will be short!


I always think Atwood is going to be harder to read than she actually is, though this might be because I gravitate toward her books about women and their complicated, often hurtful, relationships with each other.

However, because of this, it was also emotionally wearing to read. I was bullied as a child when I was around Elaine's age and there were times when I had to put the book down because my skin was crawling at the spot-on voices of Elaine's friends, the things they said to and *how* they said it, the way they used niceties to police her in really not-nice ways.

And yet, the sections about her life as a child were the most vivid, the most interesting to me - the descriptions of her unusual family, their trips away, the day-to-day minutae of being a child and finding out piece-by-piece how the world works. Elaine the grown woman, the artist, while she continues to talk in first person, seemed to become more and more distanced from the reader, from the world around her, as she reveals more about her past, revels more in the stories of the past than in her present.

But in the end, I liked it - couldn't say I enjoyed it, but I liked it. And hopefully this makes me more willing to read more Atwood.

**

Also, RIP Diana Wynne Jones. My first DWJ book was Black Maria (which hardly anyone mentions anymore) at around age 9 and it was creepy and wonderful and made me want to read more about magic worlds. I then went on to read Magicians of Caprona, then in quick succession all the Chrestomanci books. I will miss the joy of coming across new DWJ books in Kino - I will continue to look out for those books of hers I haven't managed to read yet.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (TBR Challenge Book 2)

On the Road is jazz music; it's made up of riffs and improvisations. It sprawls at times - over space, time, form - but it can also seem rather hermetic at other moments, sealed in the repetition of yet another drifting/madcap travail from one end of America to the other, narrator Sal once again towed along by his best friend Dean. Or more correctly, by Dean's manic energy and his endless dreams - both in his limitless capacity for dreaming, and foor the fact that these dreams never come to fruition, never reach the end.

It's Dean that's the pulsing heart of this book - he's fascinating, and at the same time, you can't help be aware that if he were real he would the most infuriating person to be around. And then you realise he *was* real, that the beauty of the book in part is the way Kerouac has captured this portrait of his friend Neal Cassady, the way he manages to make music out of his character who leaps off the page, burning so bright that you can see why Sal/Jack stuck with him for so long, why he was drawn into Dean's schemes again and again.

It's actually taken me around five goes to finish reading this book. Some of the writing - oh, perfect in its poetry, its precise story-telling.

Marylou was watching Dean as she watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye - with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of her tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew woulld never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad.

But some other sections I couldn't leaf through fast enough, bored, frustrated. I'm not sure if I ever will attempt to give it a solid read through again - it seems to me such a rich text that it's best served in small bites, snatches of music, bursts of life at its most haphazard.

TBR Challenge - my 12 books for 2011

related reading

On the Road, Revisited
Loved reading this back and forth discussion between Megan O'Rourke and Walter Kirn on Slate about their reading of On the Road. I particularly enjoyed O'Rourke's response to the book, the way it expresses an idea of an America that was and never was and could've been.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (TBR Challenge Book 1)

It all starts at that well-known symbol of the Australian summer, the suburban backyard BBQ. In attendance at Hector and Aisha’s house one hot summer afternoon is a party doubles as a cross-section of modern Australian society - young and old; friends, family and colleagues; and a mix of races and cultures. Then in one heated moment, Hector’s brother slaps the recalcitrant child of another guest. The Slap then follows the story of ten people at the BBQ that afternoon as they navigate and weather the repercussions of that moment in their own lives.

If you’ve never encountered Tsiolkas’ writing before, The Slap may be the place to start – it’s his most accessible novel to date. He leaves behind in-your-face tales of the marginal and the grotesque that so marked Dead Europe and Loaded and focuses on the heart of the suburbs, that bubbling cauldron of fidelity, friendship, family tension and race relations in every day Australian life. The characters he draws are so vivid, so human; presented with myriad flaws that can make them hard to like, but Tsiolkas is smart enough to flesh out their motivations that you can never fully condemn each person for their apparent sins.

My main issue with the book is that the divergent character points-of-view never quite gel together as one narrative for me. ‘The slap’ ties all the characters together but not their stories, and the exploration into the personal life of each character takes away from the overall narrative drive. But as standalone character pieces, they’re each an interesting commentary on romantic, familial and platonic relationships in contemporary Australia, though some are arguable more successful than others in their critique and/or emotional impact. The sections that struck me the most were Manolis’ bittersweet elegy on ageing, as Hector’s father reconnects with his past, with the brothers-in-arms who immigrated to Australian alongside him, who supported each other through those early days in an unfamiliar clime; and the joy of being young and alive in the tender, surprisingly hopeful ending section seen through Richie’s eyes.

Tsiolkas is such a powerful, angry writer that in the end, it doesn’t really matter that this ambitious, sprawling novel doesn’t completely hold together. I appreciate that it’s a good, uncomfortable read, a book that challenges, repels, and provokes thoughts about the ugly truths and issues that are too often kept hidden under the facade of polite and respectable society.

TBR Challenge - my 12 books for 2011

2010 reading round-up / The 2011 TBR Pile Challenge

So in 2010, I read 113 books, which was a fair bit up on last year's total (of 68). Yay for public transport time once more!

My top 3 books from last year were:

Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
This is such a rich, wonderful book - in story, in themes, in the storytelling. It’s a memoir in comic form, tracing Alison Bechdel’s childhood to her early twenties, her relationship with her somewhat distant father, and the complex, related issue of sexuality. It’s beautifully written and drawn, funny and heartrending in turn, as she circles closer and closer to an understanding of childhood memories that seem to gain more sinister meanings in the wake of her father’s death a few weeks after she comes out to her parents. Beautifully written and drawn, funny and heartrending in turn.

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
I started one morning before work in April, thought about it all day when I wasn't reading it, and finished by that night. And months later, I still find myself thinking over it every now and then. I loved so much about this - the different voices, the different genres he plays with, the fantastic structure folding into each other.

The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean
This was such a fascinating, beautifully written piece of journalism, thoughful and detailed and somehow quite loving about the very insular, slightly crazy world of orchid breeding and collecting. I definitely looked at orchids in a different light after reading it - and I don't even *like* orchids.

rounding out my top 10:

The Fall of Kings – Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
Perfect Circle – Sean Stewart
The Cutting Room – Louise Welsh
The Monkey's Mask – Dorothy Porter
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Magic for Beginners – Kelly Link
Hikaru no Go (manga series)

Where do I get all these books from?! Well, every year I love seeing where and how I economically acquired each year's reads. As always, Alison is my greatest single book enabler...

47 borrowed from Alison (which includes 29 volumes of manga)
22 bought from secondhand bookshops, Book Basement and other discount book sellers
13 from the library
11 from Bookmooch
10 read for free at bookshops
4 borrowed from other friends
2 bought full price

This brings me to The 2011 TBR Pile Challenge. I may read a fair bit, but it's safe to say that I acquire even more books each year - and a large number of these then sit forever on my 'to be read' shelves (and I literally have four shelves of books TBR). Hence, the TBR Pile Challenge:



The Goal:
To finally read 12 books from your "to be read" pile, within 12 months.

Each of these 12 books (plus 2 alternates, just in case you can't finish one or two of the original 12) must have been on your bookshelf or "To Be Read" list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2010 or later (any book published in the year 2009 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile).

So I went through the pile and decided on:

1. The Slap - Christos Tsolkas
2. Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (see Alternate no. 14)
3. Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood*
4. A Contract with God - Will Eisner
5. We So Seldom Look on Love - Barbara Gowdy
6. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
7. The Flight From the Enchanter - Iris Murdoch*
8. Nekropolis - Maureen McHugh
9. Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
10. Beauty - Shari S. Tepper
11. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy*
12. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon*

alternates
13. Beauty - Robin McKinley*
14. On the Road - Jack Kerouac

* indicates a book I've borrowed from Al, most likely for years

One of the requirements of the challenge is to post book reviews as I go, so that should ensure that I blog at least 12 times this year...which would probably double the amount of posts, ahahahasigh. So watch this space!