Re-read. Our April challenge book.

Speaking of academia (as we were when reading Davies)…very dazzling. Funny and wicked about the academy and these kind of blighted lives; people that love literature and get trapped where they’re just drudges to this work–in this case especially, the woman with the index cards about the wife. Such a miserable life, inflicting misery on each other.

Really makes us laugh when the American woman sweeps in and creates all this sturm und drang–of course that’s how the Brits see us. We come in and just start breaking stuff!!

Maude = very well-written character. Interesting person with her own hurts and wounds, but a really good person. Always think it’s cool that they got together in a way.

The book itself is really a literary tour de force when you think about all the stuff Byatt wrote for it! Not just the book itself, but also Ash’s poetry, Christabel’s poetry, their letters, his wife’s diary, Sabine’s diary, various letters. Re-reading it though, we find ourselves skimming some parts. Artistically great, but do we need to read 8 pages of a Spenserian poem before moving on to the next chapter? Even in earlier readings, we remembered being kind of impatient at some parts–want to go on with the story. Didn’t need that much extra to see the ability–sometimes clogged the narrative flow. And the characters give you the exposition so you don’t need to have the whole thing.

Always knocked out by that connection with the mystical weirdness, the seance–when you realized she made him think the kid was dead. Very moving at the end–when you see he did get to meet the kid and realize the truth / and watching his wife thinking she’s hiding it from him. Byatt really projected you back into this other story–the modern story in a way was a happier one. This is one of those books that breaks my heart every time I read it.

Some scenes such a rush, and have a great mystery feel, as when Maude figures out the letters are hidden.

Verdict: still really good. So worth re-reading.

Re-read for Dad; new to me. Our May challenge book.

Total black comedy with incredibly (surprisingly) sad moments; you get to like the guy more than you ever though you could. The first chapter is just outright hilarious. Dad remembers hearing about Abbey at a reading once, picking that chapter, and apparently some women walked out. Personally, I feel you have to be able to enjoy well-written things (or even to apply this broader, well-done art in any genre) without imposing your filter. If you can never enjoy writing that doesn’t agree with your (for example) feminist viewpoints, you’re shutting out a huge portion of the world.

Abbey just reallys wrings out the in your face redneck stuff; takes a hard look at the mess a person can make of their life. He’s pretty hard on the guy for making dumb choices. But there’s always this underlying hopeful place–“maybe we’ll find a way to make it work” enthusiasm.

Dad has been going back and reading biographies of Abbey, trying to parse out which bits are autobioraphical and which aren’t–all the wild stories about Abbey and women stop the day he married his last wife. Both Abbey and the main character here are so involved with people: so much fun, so attractive, so adventurous, but (until the end) not a long-term guy.

Dad felt that on his second time reading it, some of it got a little tedious: got kinda tired of the trip, didn’t always enjoy the flashbacks–felt like they were always pulling you out of something you were enjoying (the current trip more engaging than the past memories).

A lot of individual scenes were so much fun. Love how he has all these horrifically failed relationships but also has friends pretty much everywhere he goes. Clearly this guy is bringing something to the table that makes keeping him around worthwhile.

For me, it’s reminisicent of Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater–the dark, dark humor of it, a voice you’re not going to meet a lot in literature, a part of America that doesn’t get chronicled a lot.

Verdict: both enjoyed it a LOT.

Re-read. Our March challenge book.

Love reading novels as saturated in the world of academia as this one. Also adds something to the mix that there are people that weren’t quite in that world–Maria and her crazy gypsy relatives; Parlabane. Great mixture.

Davies is really funny about the academic stuff–and then the mystical stuff is his own spice. Very much a social comedy, like Trollope or someone; reading this right after reading Gatsby (with that veneer that social class matters), you do kind of live and die with Maria and those people, they become important to you. Maria’s so smart that when she gets pulled back into the gypsy world she’s pissed off.

Thinking about wacko Parlabane’s ability to just be in and around academia even though he’s so beyond the range of it; is it still like that? (Academics more tolerant of nutters in their midst?)

All the art stuff is so vivid that you’re picturing those drawings in your head, Davies really brings that stuff to life. (And in the third book of this trilogy, they do an opera that makes you believe that this thing exists. Same is true of Francis’ paintings in book 2.)

In this first book, Francis is like one of those planets exerting all this force, everything sort of orbiting around him, this figure you can’t quite picture.

Davies is more than a clever writer–very wise.

Verdict: Very enthusiastic double thumbs-up, both in previous reads and now.

Re-read. Our February challenge book.

Dad comments that he always enjoys it when he’s reading it, but later he never remembers what it was about: a year from now he’ll think: “What was the plot of the Great Gatsby? I know it’s in the ’20s…” My friend Cathy loves this book…but she always teaches it to her high schoolers every year–the plot would definitely stay in your memory if you were doing that! 🙂

It’s well written, nice voice, really easy to pick up and read, has a nice conversational tone, Nick is really likable. But doesn’t necessarily take you somewhere. Similar to Austen it has that veneer of society being worthwhile. Very cool tone to it.

Easy to forget the hollowness in Gatsby–it’s so much all show. All the characters are so shallow, see, for example, Gatsby putting up a huge facade to chase this really childish illusion of the perfect romance, the kind of thing you believe when you’re 12. Everybody’s living a fake life, cruising along as if, if they keep moving, nothing’s going to catch with up them. Even Nick’s psuedo relationship with the tennis player. She’s a real slippery character.

Dad remembered the movie from 40 years ago – just a clunker. Robert Redford played Gatbsy, Sam Waterston played Nick – it was a huge flop.

A very Midwestern exchange:
Me: I found all the MN stuff really surprising. didn’t remember that at all.
Dad: The Great Gatsby is like War & Peace to Minnesotans. Once heard a professor at a conference in Minnesota being asked how wonderful it was and he gave a very careful answer: “Well, you know it’s one of those essential works of a period where, in America, you just can’t approach the ’20s without reading the Great Gatsby” i.e., worth reading for its picture of a time and place, but not putting it up with the great novels.

Verdict: Thumbs up for an enjoyable easy read, but would not appear on our Greatest Hits list.

Re-read. Our January challenge book.

Having both seen the movie and, while agreeing that it is a decent action flick, both agreeing that it really wasn’t our Sherlock Holmes, it seemed like a good time to go back for a re-read, this being the very first SH book (and ACD wasn’t even sure he was going to continue with Holmes–this could have been the only one!!).

Interesting to go back and read — we all come to it knowing the character already, whether through RDJ or Basil Rathbone, or memories of other stories… Fun watching Holmes and Watson bond on the page in front of you. Always think back on these as “Holmes stories” but in re-reading, really realize how much of the OTHER story you get here: the Westward expansion story, the spooky cult aspect of the Mormon setting, the hero who becomes an anti-hero–he becomes such a different person, an unstoppable avenger, and his heartbreak defines the rest of his life. You’re almost sad when Holmes catches him; the people he murdered deserved it!!

Full of dark sharp bitter elements, this is not a POP book. The hero goes down. In memory, you often soften Holmes a bit; you meet him here again as acerbic, rougher, dismissive (of Watson, among others), boxing. Watson always comes off a bit of a bumbler in the Rathbone films–really he’s “normal” right? He’s the “us” or “you” in these stories.

As with other Holmes’ stories, the everpresent suggestion of a ghost / pushed aside by Holmes who is always the one pointing out the physical evidence. Thought this was a weakness of the RDJ film as well–seemed like Holmes was falling for the mystical a bit too much.

According to an article in the Smithsonian (awhile back), Holmes was partly based on a doctor ACD knew and the bohemian / nonconformist aspect was based on Oscar Wilde (note that Dorian Gray and Study in Scarlet were put out by the same publisher). Holyroyd thinks the actor Henry Irving was one of influences for the illustrations of Holmes (haunted police courts, played lurid characters on stage).

Favorite new (to me) expression I had to ask Dad to define: “sere and yellow” = late autumn (here, of life).

Verdict: thumbs up from both Girl and Dad.