Listen to me on That's How I Blog!

Did you know that I was last week's guest on That's How I Blog? If yes, kudos to you for being a frequent listener of Nicole's awesome show. If no, don't fret...I'm telling you about it now!

You can listen to our hour-long discussion about fountain Cokes, cats, and Harriet the Spy at this link.

The Idlewild Discussion on why Palace Walk reads like a European romance novel

Last night's Idlewild book club meeting was on the epic-ly long novel Palace Walk, which is part one of a literal epic—a three-parter titled The Cairo Trilogy for which author Naguib Mafouz won the Nobel Prize of Literature. The impression I get from this book is that some people find out amazing and some just find it "meh."

Initially upon finishing, and during book discussion, I generally found it "meh." Palace Walk focuses on one family living in Cairo before Egypt's Independence from Britain in the early 1900s (around the time of World War I). The father is domineering; the mother is submissive; the daughters race to get married first; the older sons try to build their own lives while really just following the path of male stereotypes of the time; and then there's little Kamal, the youngest, the most innocent, the ray of sunshine in an oppressive household (oppressive thanks completely to Papa Bear).

The book's 500 pages tell little more than that. It's simply a day-to-day portrait of ordinary individuals (or, as I'm guessing for the time, what would be middle- to upper-class individuals). The characters, with the exception of the eldest son, are all one-sided and completely stagnant in terms of growth or development. They each fit a stereotype. Al-Sayyid Ahmad, the father, is overbearing and harsh—the villain of the novel—but those are expected characteristics based on the historical setting. Likewise, the mother, like all other women in the story, have no role in society outside the home, as expected based on this society's treatment and opinion of women 100 years ago. To me this seemed somewhat soap-operatic, somewhat a European character novel. It seemed so full of stereotype that I felt it lacked authenticity. I didn't really learn anything about Egyptian society of 1917 beyond what I could have inferred from history lessons.

But,

• The father was the villain, but unlike Disney movie villains, we understood his mentality and his thought-processes. He wasn't just "the villain." Strict inside the home and lighthearted outside seemed to be his modus operandi. Points to the author for creating transparent characters. 
• Kamal just never matured in two years. Not sure what that was supposed to represent. Think this was mentioned in discussion but was probably distracted by wine/pita chips.
•  The daughters marry and become property of their husbands' home, thus virtually eliminating them from this story of Al-Sayyid Ahmad's household. Typical of society?
• Why has this not been a BBC or Masterpiece Theater production? Much discussion of this during book club.

I'm not too motivated to read the other two in the trilogy until reading some basic bios on the author. His politics seemed to so highly influence his writing that I wonder if all I mentioned early about the style seeming European and full of stereotypes was his method of criticizing Egyptian culture. Knowing this historical context makes the writing somewhat more interesting. [Apparently Mahfouz was stabbed in the back (literally, not metaphorically!) in the 90s by a fundamentalist because of his support of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. And he was 82 years old!] Maybe this story was more "shocking" in the 1950s when it was written (thought it wasn't translated to English until the 80s), but it seems a little run-of-the-mill now.

BBAW: Unexpected Treasure

Today's topic for Book Blogger Appreciation Week is to write about a book or genre you have tried thanks to the influence of another book blogger.

Well, hmm.

My reading tastes are scattered anyway, that it doesn't take much to inspire me to read out of my comfort zone. This past year has probably been my most diverse, genre-wise, thanks partly to my "world-lit" book club and partly to a recent increased thirst for knowledge. Looking back on my 'read' list of 2010, there are a couple of things on there that were inspired by another blogger. After all, the number one thing book blogs give me are new recommendations!

Early in 2010, I was looking to try some graphic novels but didn't really know where to start. I don't like the fantasy/action stories that I'd always thought most graphic novels were, but then I read a review for Craig Thompson's Blankets over on write meg! While I didn't exactly agree with Meg's opinions of the book, it did jumpstart my graphic novel kick. Since Blankets, I've read French Milk, Carnet de Voyage—both of which I enjoyed more than Blankets—and Fun Home, which is one of my favorite reads of the year.

Another series I started thanks to bloggers is Betsy-Tacy! Quite frankly, I was surprised I'd never heard of these in my childhood, but better late than never, right? I breezed through the first four back in July before getting bogged down with reading assignments. But have no fear, numbers five and six are patiently waiting on my shelf and next in my queue after I finish my current book club book. I also discovered that the Betsy-Tacy community is quite welcoming!

And most recently, I devoured Vestal McIntyre's Lake Overturn, thanks to a raving recommendation from Erica at Harper Perennial. I love reading books about places I know little about or don't experience in my day to day life, and when she described this one as taking place in small-town Idaho, I was immediately intrigued. That's all it took, because Idaho...well, I have zero connection to that state and have no idea what it's like. I loved it, and look for my comments on it next week.

Who else has had some fabulous finds thanks to blogger recommendations?

BBAW: Meet Jenny!

This week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and in my inaugural post to join the festivities, I'm happy to introduce to you Jenny from Supernatural Snark! Jenny started her blog just this past June and already has quite a following. I've had the pleasure of speaking with her, and she's answered a few questions so we can all get to know her a little better.

Describe yourself in a sentence.

I’m a twenty-something girl who loves reading, graphic design, boxer dogs, and a well-developed sense of sarcasm.

Top three pet peeves?

Being late without so much as a phone call. I can’t adequately express in words how much it drives me crazy when people are late and don’t call or even bother to apologize when they finally show up. Sometimes things happen and that’s understandable, but please call and let me know!

Entitlement – having more money, a better job, better looks, etc. does not make you better than someone else. A little humility goes a long way.

This is more of a personal one directed solely at my husband. He says “ribbit” (think frog) when he belches and it’s nauseating.

Who’s on the top of your list for a dinner date?

Hmmm. Are we talking real or fictional dinner dates? Real I’d have to say my husband. Or Gerard Butler. Or Hugh Jackman. One of those three for sure. Fictional I’d have to say Bones from Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series.

What is your favorite language other than your native one?

Probably Spanish because that’s the one with which I’m most familiar after English, though I can read it far better than I can speak it.

Do you have any bad habits?

I would like to answer no, but that would most likely be a lie. My husband tells me I have a terrible habit of relocating things he needs. He says I lose them. I say I put them someplace that later eludes me. I like things to be neat and organized and he doesn’t mind putting things wherever, so I have a tendency to move his items in an effort to tidy up and I don’t always recall where I put them.

Are you a morning or night person?

Definitely night. I would much rather stay up late reading or working than waking up early to do those same things.

One place you could go and live forever and be perfectly happy.

I think I could be perfectly happy in Italy. It’s gorgeous and they have delicious food. I’m pretty sure I could live forever on pasta and gelato.

Are you a spring, summer, fall, or winter girl?

I’m a winter girl. I love snow. I’m always the person rooting for snow when everyone else is praying it stays away so they can drive to work in under an hour. Perhaps it’s because I work from home and therefore don’t have to go anywhere in the snow, but instead can stay warm inside and watch it come down. I have 2 dogs that adore it as well and it’s hilarious to watch them hop through huge snowdrifts.

Have any guilty pleasures?

Paranormal romance novels. I love them and I’m not embarrassed to read them in public. I see people give me the double take when they see the title or cover image, but I think they’re great reads.

Tell me your token “funny story”!

I think I’ve told everyone I’ve ever met this story in addition to posting it on my blog, but it always makes me laugh when I tell it:

My dogs and I are going on our daily walk down a neighboring street where a house recently had some severe fire damage and was under construction. The house is swarming with shirtless, sweaty construction workers and as I'm walking by a loud whistle rings out. I do a quick once over of myself and determine that I must be having a "pretty" day (aside from the bag of poo I'm holding. Poo is most definitely not sexy). Go me. Then I hear this:

"Wow, those are really beautiful dogs."

Huh.

Clearly, my self-assessment a minute earlier wasn't entirely accurate, and I was not, in fact, having a "pretty" day. We continue on our walk and I get home and call my husband to fish for a compliment. Nothing fancy. Something along the lines of "I think you're better looking than the dogs" will do. Instead, peals of laughter come through the phone. Apparently my husband thinks this is the funniest thing he's heard, well, ever.

What’s your dream job? What’s your real job?

My dream job would be to work for Disney Pixar on their animated films. I adore those movies and think it would be a blast to watch the story come to life and know I had something to do with it.

My real job is graphic design. I primarily design wedding invitations and related stationery, but do the occasional corporate branding job (logo design, business card/brochure design).

Very Important!! Coke or Pepsi?

Coke!

What book would you like to be a character in?

I would love to be a character in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments/Infernal Devices series. She does a beautiful job with her world building and her characters are full of humor and depth and I would love to meet any one of them.

Top 3 favorite books ever.

I’m going to have to alter this question slightly and do my favorite book series ever, because I don’t think I could narrow it down to just 3 books! I can barely limit it to 3 book series.

1. The Black Dagger Brotherhood by JR Ward
2. The Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning
3. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

What are some of your interests OUTSIDE of books?

I’m a big movie buff. I actually went to school to study film and photography, so Hollywood has always been fascinating for me. I also used to ride horses when I was younger and did so competitively all through college, but haven’t been able to lately as much. Horses will always be a passion of mine though!

It's such a relief to know that Jenny, too, prefers Coke over a Pepsi...makes her a winner in my book! Go check out her blog, Supernatural Snark, and welcome her to the book blogging community!

In Conclusion: An Angsty Anthropology

Hilary Thayer Hamann's Anthropology of an American Girl is one of those books you pick up and are like, "Whoa. This will be a challenge." Because it's 600 pages and hardbound...mega heavy and not small purse friendly.

But, it's also the kind you start and hope will be a great, long ride. A chunkster by its very definition.

Eveline Auerbach is the "American Girl" of this novel—a high school student of the late 1970s. Hamann takes us through a handful of Eveline's adolescent/young adult years as she finishes high school, attends NYU (shout out!), and, essentially, grows up in the pre-technological early 1980s.

I say Eveline "grows up" in this novel because she does. But it's not that first foray into maturity that comes in your mid-teens...its that second big jump that doesn't feel as monumental because it doesn't come with a driver's license or the ability to vote. This is the "growing up" that comes with emotional turbulence, when your little bubble bursts and the world suddenly seems bigger and scarier and everything seems more real, when you suddenly realize that you are living as part of the world and not just observing it. For Eveline, this came through her relationship with Rourke, a college age-ish guy who helped with the yearly high school drama production.

Eveline seems to me to be the kind of girl that claims to be soooooo misunderstood, that is, if she cared enough about herself to self-identify. She's introspective and notices everything. For the span of the novel, it's like she's trying to find her own identity but finds it easier to just meld with the people around her. From the author's tone, Eveline constantly sounds mopey. She seems depressed to the point where she's just apathetic, rolling with life rather than actively living it. For this reason, I never really liked Eveline. It took her about 580 pages to stand up and participate in her life. She reminded me a lot of Noa Weber who just couldn't get over a guy she was never really with. I never understood how Eveline's life could be so affected by this relationship, because it was never described in great detail...or at least great enough detail that made me care and sympathize with her.

But oh, you know what was lovely? Hamann's language. Her words cause you to gently drift through this novel.

"He wanted me to know he regretted using words on me so soon after using words on them and that the words reserved for me were different words" (p 176).

"Being in love is like leaning on a broken reed. It is to be precariously balanced, to teeter between the vertical and the horizontal. It's like war: it's to demand of one's sensibilities the impossible—to expect paranoia to coexist with faith, chance with design, to enlist suspicion insensibly in certain regards and suppress it blindly in others" (p. 276).

"Maybe a deer has feelings, maybe the origin of a child is in the protoplasm; frankly, it's impossible to know. And yet, people keep trying to assign logic to sensation and consciousness in beings and entities other than themselves" (p. 377).

Also, you know what else is cool? This novel was originally self-published and was more recently picked up by Random House. Sweet little success story there.

I did enjoy this one. Quite a lot. Despite not really liking Eveline, I wanted to know how it all turned out. A worthwhile chunkster.

A bit of absence...

It's been a while because of....NEW BABY! Not mine, but my sister's! I spent a long weekend in Nashville, arriving just in time for Andrew Luke at a whopping 10lb 13oz. Exciting beginning to what was a fabulous trip home.

I'm trying to hop back on the reading wagon, but between soccer training, nice weather, and trying to coordinate an apartment move, my time seems to fill up a lot faster.

In Conclusion: Can being run over by a truck make you a happier person?

Remember when I was talking about memoirs and how they seem to fall into two categories: self-indulgent and...not as self-indulgent? Well after reading a pretty self-indulgent one, I found one in my huge to-read queue that is taking over my work desk that seemed to have a more interesting premise. And that's what usually draws me to memoirs in the first place—the setting or circumstance has to sound like it can just naturally make for an entertaining story.

So I settled down with Heather Lende's second memoir, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friends, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska. [Apparently you're allowed to write more than one memoir, seeing as how Rachel Shukert did the same. I should start writing my own series of memoirs.] Her first one—If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name—introduced the reading audience to the tiny Haines, Alaska, where Lende lives with her husband and children (though it didn't introduce me, because I haven't read it). Her newest one chronicles various aspects of small-town life after a serious accident, namely, her own—getting run over by a truck while out for a bike ride.

I liked this. It's kind of a "mom" book, one of those that's thoughtful and inspiring. And despite my aversion to religious brouhaha in literature, I actually didn't really mind the Bible quotes and references, because...well, I guess I just tried to view it from her perspective. She was giving her own account of an incident and what helped her, personally, get through it. Who am I to shrug off religion in that case? And she threw out the word "fuck" a few times when talking about her "fucking broken pelvis," so I really enjoyed the balance there. I kinda want to hang out with her now.

But that whole bike incident thing...yes, MAJOR deal, but it didn't, by any means, take over the novel. Lende uses it as a jumping off point to highlight life and faith in a very small-town...a very small-town way the hell out in Alaska. Where life is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE to me. Like how she kills a freaking bear from a treetop, preserves fish and stuffs them in jars (...yuck?), and makes her own jam (ok, that one may not be that strange...). And how the community is strongly tied to tradition and custom (which is really interesting), as seen in her anecdote of townspeople raising a ginormous totem pole carved by a local Chilkat (Native Alaskan). And how people come from different places but feel the same range of emotion. Dealing with shit—it's kind of a community builder.

Alaska. Jesus, I can't imagine living there. I'm glad someone can handle it with aplomb.

Review copy provided by the publisher.