My dear friend Emily Wilson (writing at Slate) praises the new translations for the Loeb Classical Library, with one reservation:
Yet I admit a churlish part of me feels a tiny pang. I still wonder whether we really should be welcoming these splendid new translations with open arms. I, for one, would be extremely wary of recommending a Loeb in an undergraduate class in which the students were expected to read the original Latin or Greek. The temptation to rely too heavily on the translation would be all the greater now that the translations are so much better than they used to be. That's perhaps why I enjoyed the 500th volume of the series, a splendid edition by D.R. Shackleton Bailey of Quintilian's Lesser Declamations, as much as I did. It is a reminder that the old Loeb style is not entirely dead, after all. Shackleton Bailey is a senior and rightly respected Latinist whose English shows little danger of keeping up with the times.
Never before been translated into English, this latest addition to the collection gives us a vivid picture of the sensational topics that young Roman students, at the equivalent of college or law school, would be made to debate in the classroom, cases involving divorce, theft, property rights, rape, insanity, incest, murder, the glory due to war heroes, and adultery. Even those with no prior interest or knowledge of Roman law, education, rhetoric and social history may be surprised to find themselves gripped by Quintilian's school exercises.
But they may also be surprised by some rather fusty expressions, certainly for the 21st century. Here are a few sample sentences taken at random, which could have come from a Loeb at any moment in the past hundred years: "Surely she complains of Fortune in that she wasted her boon." ... "Perhaps he belittles me, but I shall venture." ... "Upon my word, if some munificent, or rather excellently deserving, citizen had been struck by lightning in the Forum, I should say all the same that some exceptions should be made." It will be a shame when this lovely old schoolboy stiffness is eliminated from the series altogether, as one day, it surely will be. For the time being, the Loeb series—despite all its revisions and makeovers—is still offering a version of Greek and Roman antiquity that harks back, however faintly, to a fantasy of Edwardian England. Perhaps some Loeb editions are still meant for the gentleman or lady amateur, just as they always were. Let's enjoy it while we can.
Now I so want to read Quintilian's Lesser Declamations! How excellent.... (Thanks to Bookslut for the link.)
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Melodramatic/businesslike
Angela Leighton reviews the latest volumes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's surprisingly businesslike letters at the TLS. Here's an account of DGR's decision to exhume the poetry manuscript he buried along with his dead wife Lizzie Siddal:
The emotional cost of that event can be gleaned only from the odd word here and there. Certainly, between 1865 and 1870 Lizzie was not entirely undisturbed. As a friend put it, she was “constantly appearing (that is, rapping out things) at the séances at Cheyne Walk – !”. On this topic Rosetti’s letters are silent. Whatever news he sought from the other world is kept to himself. The episode of the chaffinch, which has been taken as the turning point in his decision to recover the poems, is reported indirectly by a friend. On picking up the bird, Rossetti apparently cried out: “It is my wife, the spirit of my wife, the soul of her has taken this shape”. Lizzie, who is rarely mentioned in these letters, is evidently a restless lodger in his imagination. The actual exhumation of the grave, in October 1869, only gave that restlessness a wider and more complicated circulation. Rossetti did not attend the event, but followed its progress closely. The recovery of his poems, poems which are “as I may say, dead stock”, set loose a mix of morbid fear and guilt which would run for years. A briefly mooted, then suppressed, suggestion that he might dedicate the volume to Janey Morris reinforces the undercurrent of plunder and betrayal. These grave-goods, Rossetti knew at some level, were a way of stealing from one woman to give to another.
Little of this inner turmoil, however, is verbally apparent. Even during the event, the letters appear all sense and practicalities. The “rough grey calf” cover of the manuscript – not, Rossetti explained, to be confused with the copy of the Bible also in the grave – had to be recovered, disinfected and then carefully transcribed, in spite of, as he puts it, “a great worm-hole right through every page” of “Jenny”. He sends a vivid drawing of that hole to William Michael, showing the precise proportions. “It has a dreadful smell”, he warns him of the whole. The few friends in the know were sworn to secrecy, although, Dante Gabriel guessed, in a word which touches a bit too closely on the physics of the event, “the truth must ooze out in time”. It is as if the self-protective cloak of his matter-of-fact style is punctured, here and there, by words which mean more than they should. One of these becomes prominent through sheer repetition. Four days after the exhumation, he writes, with relieved satisfaction: “It, and all with it, was found quite perfect”.
I did not know that DGR kept such a menagerie in his house on Cheyne Walk, but he does not seem to have taken care of the animals very well. In the letters, the menagerie
which included a zebu (a small domestic ox), a parrot, a peacock, a dormouse, a wombat, a fawn, a woodchuck and a laughing jackass, . . . remains largely invisible. The beloved, much-sketched wombat survived only two months, the dormouse was found caught in a trap, “almost dead . . . but still gnawing at the wires”, the fawn pulled out all the peacock’s tail-feathers, and the jackass “drowned himself in a tub of water”. “My poor beasts have been dying fast”, Rossetti writes in 1871, and hurries on to other matters.
The emotional cost of that event can be gleaned only from the odd word here and there. Certainly, between 1865 and 1870 Lizzie was not entirely undisturbed. As a friend put it, she was “constantly appearing (that is, rapping out things) at the séances at Cheyne Walk – !”. On this topic Rosetti’s letters are silent. Whatever news he sought from the other world is kept to himself. The episode of the chaffinch, which has been taken as the turning point in his decision to recover the poems, is reported indirectly by a friend. On picking up the bird, Rossetti apparently cried out: “It is my wife, the spirit of my wife, the soul of her has taken this shape”. Lizzie, who is rarely mentioned in these letters, is evidently a restless lodger in his imagination. The actual exhumation of the grave, in October 1869, only gave that restlessness a wider and more complicated circulation. Rossetti did not attend the event, but followed its progress closely. The recovery of his poems, poems which are “as I may say, dead stock”, set loose a mix of morbid fear and guilt which would run for years. A briefly mooted, then suppressed, suggestion that he might dedicate the volume to Janey Morris reinforces the undercurrent of plunder and betrayal. These grave-goods, Rossetti knew at some level, were a way of stealing from one woman to give to another.
Little of this inner turmoil, however, is verbally apparent. Even during the event, the letters appear all sense and practicalities. The “rough grey calf” cover of the manuscript – not, Rossetti explained, to be confused with the copy of the Bible also in the grave – had to be recovered, disinfected and then carefully transcribed, in spite of, as he puts it, “a great worm-hole right through every page” of “Jenny”. He sends a vivid drawing of that hole to William Michael, showing the precise proportions. “It has a dreadful smell”, he warns him of the whole. The few friends in the know were sworn to secrecy, although, Dante Gabriel guessed, in a word which touches a bit too closely on the physics of the event, “the truth must ooze out in time”. It is as if the self-protective cloak of his matter-of-fact style is punctured, here and there, by words which mean more than they should. One of these becomes prominent through sheer repetition. Four days after the exhumation, he writes, with relieved satisfaction: “It, and all with it, was found quite perfect”.
I did not know that DGR kept such a menagerie in his house on Cheyne Walk, but he does not seem to have taken care of the animals very well. In the letters, the menagerie
which included a zebu (a small domestic ox), a parrot, a peacock, a dormouse, a wombat, a fawn, a woodchuck and a laughing jackass, . . . remains largely invisible. The beloved, much-sketched wombat survived only two months, the dormouse was found caught in a trap, “almost dead . . . but still gnawing at the wires”, the fawn pulled out all the peacock’s tail-feathers, and the jackass “drowned himself in a tub of water”. “My poor beasts have been dying fast”, Rossetti writes in 1871, and hurries on to other matters.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
I am just in love
with Locke, I have been ever since I first read him seriously in graduate school (in the context of a wonderful seminar on Milton, Marvell & Locke that put them all in the political context of Restoration England and that showed me--to speak more autobiographically--that what I really love to write about is something that this particular professor, with a nod to old-school intellectual history, called "the prose of thought), and now I'm rereading An Essay Concerning Human Understanding for the introduction to my breeding book and totally in love all over again.
Locke thinks and writes so clearly (and quite colloquially too) that it really feels as though he's just in the next room, I love that sensation. Here's a taste, in any case:
The memory in some Men, 'tis true, is very tenacious, even to a Miracle: But yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our Ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in Minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated Exercise of the Senses, or Reflection on those kind of Objects, which at first occasioned them, the Print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen. Thus the Ideas, as well as Children, of our Youth, often die before us: And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by time, and the Imagery moulders away. The Pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the Constitution of our Bodies, and the make of our animal Spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the Temper of the Brain make this difference, that in some it retains the Characters drawn on it like Marble, in others like Free-stone, and in others little better than Sand, I shall not here enquire, though it may seem probable, that the Constitution of the Body does sometimes influence the Memory; since we oftentimes find a Disease quite strip the Mind of all its Ideas, and the flames of a Fever, in a few days, calcine all those Images to dust and confusion, which seem'd to be as lasting, as if graved in Marble. (II.x.5)
For me it's the verb "calcine" that's the clincher, isn't that amazing?
Locke thinks and writes so clearly (and quite colloquially too) that it really feels as though he's just in the next room, I love that sensation. Here's a taste, in any case:
The memory in some Men, 'tis true, is very tenacious, even to a Miracle: But yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our Ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in Minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated Exercise of the Senses, or Reflection on those kind of Objects, which at first occasioned them, the Print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen. Thus the Ideas, as well as Children, of our Youth, often die before us: And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by time, and the Imagery moulders away. The Pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the Constitution of our Bodies, and the make of our animal Spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the Temper of the Brain make this difference, that in some it retains the Characters drawn on it like Marble, in others like Free-stone, and in others little better than Sand, I shall not here enquire, though it may seem probable, that the Constitution of the Body does sometimes influence the Memory; since we oftentimes find a Disease quite strip the Mind of all its Ideas, and the flames of a Fever, in a few days, calcine all those Images to dust and confusion, which seem'd to be as lasting, as if graved in Marble. (II.x.5)
For me it's the verb "calcine" that's the clincher, isn't that amazing?
Monday, August 14, 2006
I've got nothing much to say
about the Booker Prize longlist:
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Grenville, Kate The Secret River
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights
Lasdun, James Seven Lies
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men
Messud, Claire The Emperor's Children
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man
O'Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack
St Aubyn, Edward Mother's Milk
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch
In fact it seems to be full of books I haven't really heard of at all! But this is probably a good thing, it's boring when it's all people who are famous already.
I have only read two of the books on the list, Lasdun and Mitchell (out of those two it would be easy for me to pick Lasdun, I think he is a great genius and not as famous as he should be); I've read other novels by Peter Carey, Nadine Gordimer, Claire Messud, Andrew O'Hagan, Barry Unsworth and Sarah Waters, though not these ones, and can also say that I am eager to read Messud, O'Hagan and Waters but not so much the others (more because of the nature of my tastes, though, than because of any beliefs I might hold about their quality). Wouldn't mind reading Kiran Desai. Have been meaning to read St Aubyn but stalled on one of his previous books.
Last year I was having a fantasy about blogging the Booker longlist between its announcement and the actual award-giving, but given how incredibly busy I am right now with reading and writing-type stuff it's just as well I didn't set anything like that up. However, for next year it seems like it might be a good idea....
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Grenville, Kate The Secret River
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights
Lasdun, James Seven Lies
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men
Messud, Claire The Emperor's Children
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man
O'Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack
St Aubyn, Edward Mother's Milk
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch
In fact it seems to be full of books I haven't really heard of at all! But this is probably a good thing, it's boring when it's all people who are famous already.
I have only read two of the books on the list, Lasdun and Mitchell (out of those two it would be easy for me to pick Lasdun, I think he is a great genius and not as famous as he should be); I've read other novels by Peter Carey, Nadine Gordimer, Claire Messud, Andrew O'Hagan, Barry Unsworth and Sarah Waters, though not these ones, and can also say that I am eager to read Messud, O'Hagan and Waters but not so much the others (more because of the nature of my tastes, though, than because of any beliefs I might hold about their quality). Wouldn't mind reading Kiran Desai. Have been meaning to read St Aubyn but stalled on one of his previous books.
Last year I was having a fantasy about blogging the Booker longlist between its announcement and the actual award-giving, but given how incredibly busy I am right now with reading and writing-type stuff it's just as well I didn't set anything like that up. However, for next year it seems like it might be a good idea....
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Doling out small amounts of fiction to myself
to pace myself on the work stuff (I'm gearing up for one more minor/massive stint of work-related reading, but I think I must have one more novel this weekend too): after thinking about it the other day I'd worked myself into such a pitch of excitement that I had to read Kit Whitfield's Benighted (UK Bareback, I wish they'd kept that title for the US edition but that's pretty much my only complaint, this novel is excellent).
It's a novel with werewolves rather than a werewolf novel, if the distinction makes sense; and the thing that really makes it work is the amazingly satisfying first-person voice. The narrator is irritable, badly behaved, stubborn, rude, unethical and altogether rather irresistible, in a complete-downer kind of way; in fact, my suspicion is that the only thing that might stop this book reaching the huge readership it deserves is the darkness of the world Whitfield imagines. It's a thought-experiment kind of book, in a good way; I was most closely reminded of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, a book I loved (and strange to say this heroine is not just quite similar to that one but they even have almost the same name, Lila Mae Watson for Whitehead's book and Lola May Galley for Whitfield's), and also of Frances Fyfield's solicitor heroines/gritty urban crime mode, with a bit of the feel of Louise Welsh. Although a lot of what you read in the paranormal/urban fantasy vein is built on the bones of fantasy or romance genre fiction, this one (and despite the speculative alternate history thought-experiment-y feel--in this society, "normal" is werewolf and the non-lycanthrope minority are enlisted for poorly paid and extremely dangerous duty with the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activities to deal with lycanthropes who break the curfew on the night of the full moon) is definitely more noir: think Richard Paul Russo's dystopian near-future San Francisco, or even the Philip K. Dick/Blade Runner kind of vibe. A serious novel about discrimination and tolerance, beautifully well written and with some very good shape-changing descriptions too: this one's a great read, it's definitely making my year-end best-book list even though it lacks that comfort-reading aspect I always secretly hope for in a vampire/shapeshifter book (see Robin McKinley's Sunshine if you want an equally well-written but ultimately far sunnier book than this one--but really you should read both--oh, and this one doesn't have vampires, that was misleading wording on my part, but don't let it stop you...).
It's a novel with werewolves rather than a werewolf novel, if the distinction makes sense; and the thing that really makes it work is the amazingly satisfying first-person voice. The narrator is irritable, badly behaved, stubborn, rude, unethical and altogether rather irresistible, in a complete-downer kind of way; in fact, my suspicion is that the only thing that might stop this book reaching the huge readership it deserves is the darkness of the world Whitfield imagines. It's a thought-experiment kind of book, in a good way; I was most closely reminded of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, a book I loved (and strange to say this heroine is not just quite similar to that one but they even have almost the same name, Lila Mae Watson for Whitehead's book and Lola May Galley for Whitfield's), and also of Frances Fyfield's solicitor heroines/gritty urban crime mode, with a bit of the feel of Louise Welsh. Although a lot of what you read in the paranormal/urban fantasy vein is built on the bones of fantasy or romance genre fiction, this one (and despite the speculative alternate history thought-experiment-y feel--in this society, "normal" is werewolf and the non-lycanthrope minority are enlisted for poorly paid and extremely dangerous duty with the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activities to deal with lycanthropes who break the curfew on the night of the full moon) is definitely more noir: think Richard Paul Russo's dystopian near-future San Francisco, or even the Philip K. Dick/Blade Runner kind of vibe. A serious novel about discrimination and tolerance, beautifully well written and with some very good shape-changing descriptions too: this one's a great read, it's definitely making my year-end best-book list even though it lacks that comfort-reading aspect I always secretly hope for in a vampire/shapeshifter book (see Robin McKinley's Sunshine if you want an equally well-written but ultimately far sunnier book than this one--but really you should read both--oh, and this one doesn't have vampires, that was misleading wording on my part, but don't let it stop you...).
I have just read
the most delightful and perfect little book, Catherine Murdock's Dairy Queen--it was Colleen Mondor's recommendation after I rhapsodized over Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love, Murdock and Gilbert are sisters and all I can say is that they have both written quite excellent books.
This one's more formally perfect than the other, as befits its being a novel; it is an unjust world if this is really the first novel she's written as opposed to just published, everything about the voice and the pacing and the story is absolutely lovely. Mmmm.... I like it that now I'm sort of a young-adult writer myself I can indulge myself in this most excellent form of reading and feel like I'm obliquely at work.
This one's more formally perfect than the other, as befits its being a novel; it is an unjust world if this is really the first novel she's written as opposed to just published, everything about the voice and the pacing and the story is absolutely lovely. Mmmm.... I like it that now I'm sort of a young-adult writer myself I can indulge myself in this most excellent form of reading and feel like I'm obliquely at work.
The Sixth World Conference on Animal Breeding
David Bellamy on Gerald Durrell at the Times Online. I was completely in love with My Family and Other Animals when I was a child, Durrell and Jane Goodall were my heroes and this book in particular just reduced me to tears of laughter & wishful thinking about the animals I would like to have if I lived in a villa on Corfu. It is really an altogether delightful book (when I was a teenager I read a ton of Lawrence Durrell too, but I think his stuff has dated rather more drastically, and also I was horrified by various revelations about his family life in an issue of Granta that printed some letters written by his daughter Sappho, who committed suicide; and of course LD was completely scathing about GD's populism & humor, he was a modernist-leaning literary snob); I must get it and read it again....
Thursday, August 10, 2006
At the LRB
Andrew O'Hagan has a great little essay on the trial that's riveted Scotland recently; also, August Kleinzahler on what's in the news and Steven Shapin on Bill Buford's culinary adventures. I should really get an actual subscription to the LRB, the stuff they put up for free on the website is consistently excellent (I think of Jenny Diski as the ultimate LRB contributor).
Strong words
John Sutherland calls the new British recommendations for school reading lists "a weak-kneed spasm of a curriculum". I haven't looked at the actual lists, but what he says seems very sensible if splenetic.
On fidelity
I saw an absolutely fabulous play last night, a real gem: The National Asian American Theatre Company's production of Marivaux's The Dispute (here's the clever blurb from the website: "Long before the Marquis de Sade and reality TV, an enlightened Prince runs an experiment into the nature of sex. Four foundlings are raised in isolated confinement in an artificial Eden. Now it's show time and they will be unleashed. Will the serpent appear in the garden? And if so, will the man, or the woman, be the first to fall?"). So it's sort of even related to my book, though I have to admit that the raised-in-isolation part is incidental to the are-men-or-women-more-unfaithful thing.
But the production's a real gem, just perfect in every particular: witty set, excellent translation (funny and smart but also unobtrusive, no jarring anachronisms and yet perfectly colloquial), and absolutely perfect acting. Jennifer Chang was particularly amazing, but really everyone was perfect: some very good physical comedy, too, I felt the level of attention to bodies as well as, you know, heads was much higher than in anything you usually see. Part of the reason the play works so well is that the raised-in-isolation thing just comically heightens something universal about the reality of being a teenager and having to learn how to deal with sex--I was totally reminded of the best teen TV series, My So-Called Life in particular.
In short, it was completely delightful. I must see more of this company's shows! But more to the point, if you are in New York and you ever do such a thing as go to see a play, please go and see this one, I promise you that you will not regret it--it's hilarious, but also quite adorable. (Also it's barely more than an hour long: I don't know why a short play should seem like better value than a long play, but it does. We've all been to plays, in any case, where you'd pay extra money to be allowed to leave during the intermission, depressing as that is for the actors....) It's only got a very limited run till the 26th of August; tickets are $19, but there seems to be a student discount.
I made a fatal little detour the other day into the public library; I had ten minutes to kill before meeting a student, and I haven't checked a book out of that branch for almost a year. The relevance of that fact is that it's a fairly pitiful little branch with a ludicrously small and off-putting new books section (I do not know how they ever think they are going to cultivate readers this way, if I ever get rich I am going to make a massive donation to the public library and also get more involved there in some sort of ambitious volunteer project, I feel that this is my secret mission in life); you really have to wait six months between serious visits or else it's all things you've either read already or don't want to read at all, and the meaning of the word "new" is certainly stretched to its very limits. However they seemed to have actually got a few things since I last looked in May, and the one I had to read at once was the latest installment in Charlaine Harris's vampire series, Definitely Dead.
Harris has that gift that so few authors have, of writing very widely accessible books that are also incredibly charming--the first-person voice she's got for these books is really incredibly attractive, and the characterization and settings and stuff make the books particularly enjoyable to read. I find it heartening to read a best-seller that really is so much exactly what a book like this should be--this is what you need if you accidentally read a Dan Brown novel on your summer vacation and need to take away the taste. (Even Dan Brown has his virtues, he's got really excellent pacing/storytelling skills, just a very wooden prose style that makes his books not what I would want to read.)
But the production's a real gem, just perfect in every particular: witty set, excellent translation (funny and smart but also unobtrusive, no jarring anachronisms and yet perfectly colloquial), and absolutely perfect acting. Jennifer Chang was particularly amazing, but really everyone was perfect: some very good physical comedy, too, I felt the level of attention to bodies as well as, you know, heads was much higher than in anything you usually see. Part of the reason the play works so well is that the raised-in-isolation thing just comically heightens something universal about the reality of being a teenager and having to learn how to deal with sex--I was totally reminded of the best teen TV series, My So-Called Life in particular.
In short, it was completely delightful. I must see more of this company's shows! But more to the point, if you are in New York and you ever do such a thing as go to see a play, please go and see this one, I promise you that you will not regret it--it's hilarious, but also quite adorable. (Also it's barely more than an hour long: I don't know why a short play should seem like better value than a long play, but it does. We've all been to plays, in any case, where you'd pay extra money to be allowed to leave during the intermission, depressing as that is for the actors....) It's only got a very limited run till the 26th of August; tickets are $19, but there seems to be a student discount.
I made a fatal little detour the other day into the public library; I had ten minutes to kill before meeting a student, and I haven't checked a book out of that branch for almost a year. The relevance of that fact is that it's a fairly pitiful little branch with a ludicrously small and off-putting new books section (I do not know how they ever think they are going to cultivate readers this way, if I ever get rich I am going to make a massive donation to the public library and also get more involved there in some sort of ambitious volunteer project, I feel that this is my secret mission in life); you really have to wait six months between serious visits or else it's all things you've either read already or don't want to read at all, and the meaning of the word "new" is certainly stretched to its very limits. However they seemed to have actually got a few things since I last looked in May, and the one I had to read at once was the latest installment in Charlaine Harris's vampire series, Definitely Dead.
Harris has that gift that so few authors have, of writing very widely accessible books that are also incredibly charming--the first-person voice she's got for these books is really incredibly attractive, and the characterization and settings and stuff make the books particularly enjoyable to read. I find it heartening to read a best-seller that really is so much exactly what a book like this should be--this is what you need if you accidentally read a Dan Brown novel on your summer vacation and need to take away the taste. (Even Dan Brown has his virtues, he's got really excellent pacing/storytelling skills, just a very wooden prose style that makes his books not what I would want to read.)
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
It is like magic....
David Bell (at the New Republic) answers exactly the question I asked the other day about electronic reading devices. I still want to know about that Sony Reader, though (I hadn't realized it was only being released this fall--hmmm....).
Top ten genre-defying novels
Kit Whitfield lists her top-ten genre-defying novels at the Guardian, and it's a most appealing assortment (she's got one of my particular favorite Margaret Atwood novels, and Gillian Bradshaw, and Ira Levin, and an Antonia White novel that I've always meant to read and will certainly now get hold of on the basis of its description here).
I find these lists-with-commentary very revealing, I often decide that I will or won't read someone's novel based on how congruent or not a list like this is with my own tastes. As it happens (thanks, A.!), I've already got an advance copy of Whitefield's novel Benighted on the to-be-read pile, perhaps it should go up to the top now.
(NB this is one of those books that seems to have different titles for US and UK release--I suppose prudery says you can't have Bareback as your US title. I am opposed to alternate titles, I have too often been heartbroken at the library after having requested and eagerly awaited an unread book by a favorite author to realize it's actually something I have already read under another name.)
I find these lists-with-commentary very revealing, I often decide that I will or won't read someone's novel based on how congruent or not a list like this is with my own tastes. As it happens (thanks, A.!), I've already got an advance copy of Whitefield's novel Benighted on the to-be-read pile, perhaps it should go up to the top now.
(NB this is one of those books that seems to have different titles for US and UK release--I suppose prudery says you can't have Bareback as your US title. I am opposed to alternate titles, I have too often been heartbroken at the library after having requested and eagerly awaited an unread book by a favorite author to realize it's actually something I have already read under another name.)
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