Author: BeverlyArmyWilliams

Ahh, winter break. That delightful time of year when I gorge on random reading. I start back to teaching tomorrow, and before I get bogged down in reading for my classes, I want to share the fun books I’ve been savoring.  Well, the first isn’t so much fun as interesting. The rest are fun in a sad sort of way. Ahem.

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande was loaned to me by a colleague. The author makes an argument for the simple tool long used in aviation: a checklist. He applies using checklists to the medical profession, and I was astounded by the results. Rae of Rae Would Rip (okay, she doesn’t actually write said blog, but she should, and I like to pretend she does) is a health care professional, and she confirmed the results shared in the book. While the concept is simple and elegant, the book could be an article and remain persuasive. I’m considering how I can use this in my life and with my students.

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is an excellent read. I saw the movie last year, and it was one of my favorites of the year. The novel is short, but the heroine remains with you for a long time. She is everything I’d want my daughter to admire, as opposed to some of the, how shall I say it?, more reliant-on-others heroines that are so popular. Ree is gutsy and determined without being a cliche. Woodrell’s prose is engrossing, despite a few over-written passages. I especially admire his development of the community; as awful as a meth-producing community may be, Woodrell makes the reader believe in the hierarchy and caring (of sorts) among the group. Why read it if the movie is so good? Ree’s character is more fully developed in the novel. A great book to read with older kids, too.

Certainly you’ve read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, right? If your high school or college English teachers didn’t thrill you with it, the link is to a full-text pdf of the story. It’s a classic. But I didn’t connect the short story to The Haunting of Hill House when I grabbed it from the town library. Only after Mona mentioned how much she enjoyed Shirley Jackson did I piece it together. Jackson’s symbolism speaks to a post World War II world and remains spooky and relevant. So, the novel. It’s the story of a group of disparate folks who gather at Hill House, a big mess of a mansion, to see if they can get in touch with any supernatural activity going on there. The novel is third person, closest to Eleanor, an early-30s unmarried woman who has spent most of her life timid and caring for others. Oh, boy! Does it all unravel once they’re in the mansion. Don’t read this one if you’re home alone!

Last night, while I silently bemoaned the football that was preventing my Sunday-night Downton Abbey fix, I finished David Benioff’s City of Thieves. Benioff is a screen writer (read the interview linked in the last sentence. He’s done some cool work!), which I wasn’t surprised to learn after I finished the novel. It’s a cinematic reading experience, with a just-right amount of detail. Here’s what I wrote about it on Goodreads:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the two forms most story takes: a stranger came to town or a (wo)man went on a journey. Randomly selecting this novel from my library’s bookshelves seems fortuitous in light of my recent thoughts. City of Thieves is set in WWII Russia. Two men, unlikely candidates for friendship, get thrown together to undertake a quest, the failure of which would result in their certain starvation. This is a first-person narrative with the narrative device of the protagonist’s grandson, David, asking about life during WWII. The narrative device may be the novel’s only mis-step, but a minor one at that. The writing is sharp and humorous, making the awful moments more cutting. I may read this with my students the next time I teach my war-themed composition class.

What are you reading this week?

My book club met in late December to select the books for 2012’s meetings. When the first group began a few years ago, we’d just email each other with a book title and meet at some point after we’d all read it. All, by the way, was three.

The group is much bigger now, and while we only have four to six people at most meetings, we clearly need better organization. After asking for ideas about best practices for an organized book group, we decided to select a year’s worth of books at one time, and to schedule the meeting dates. Since schedules fluctuate, we’re pretty easy about changing a date if needed, but we only had to do that a few times last year.

Since we have a private Facebook group, communication is easy. Neal is the only member not on FB, and I just give him whatever information he needs. A few weeks before we were to select books, I posted a bunch of lists. Since I’m militant about NOT reading crap, the lists are a useful jumping point. Here are some that I posted:

• Pulitzer Prize: Fiction
• 1001 Books to Read Before You Die
• MLA Top 100 Novels
• MLA Top 100 Non-fiction

Like most artwork lists, these are somewhat arbitrary, but they do help.

This year, I was asked to give “homework”: I assigned a list to a few group members, who each selected 3-5 books to bring to the group. At our meeting, everyone explains why they selected their books, and if anyone has read them, s/he adds feedback. After the book presentations, there’s a shuffling sort of time when we eliminate books or make firm claims that some books MUST be on the list. Is everyone happy with the list? Probably not, but at least we’ve all had a chance to participate in the selections.

After that, we set dates. The person who presents the book is responsible for arranging the location and time of the meeting. We’ve had some fun choices: we met at an Ethiopian restaurant when we discussed Cutting for Stone, and an Indian restaurant for White Teeth.  I take everyone’s month requests into consideration (“my book is set in the south; give me a hot month”; “I don’t want to commit to a Friday”; “Friday is best, so I can Skype” [our overseas member, Sara] “No cold months for me”…you get the idea) and match books to a date. I love working out that little piece of the puzzle.

Curious about our 2012 list?

• February: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• March:Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• April: Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
• May: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• June: Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
• July: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• August: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
•  September: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
• October: At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
• December: Radical Son by David Horowitz

Are you in a book club? How does your group select its books?

After breakfast, I spent time sharpening a set of colored pencils. I’m making a daily sketch of each of my 52/52 outfits, which of course makes a good excuse for fresh art supplies. As I twirled each pencil around and around in the sharpener, aiming for the crispest point imaginable, I also turned my first finished book of 2012 around and around in my head.

Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin won the 2009 National Book Award. I read it for my book club’s January discussion, and it may be one of my favorite books our group has read.

The novel is set in New York City in 1974, at the time of the infamous tight rope walk across the Twin Towers. Every time I think the scar from 9/11 is fading, it rips open anew, which is what happened when I read this beautifully-crafted novel. McCann employs a large cast of characters who are entwined in each others’ lives, sometimes in surprising ways. Each character has a unique voice and personality–there is no lumping together of prostitutes, for instance, although that would be easy for any writer to do. While I am still puzzling out the choices of point-of-view shifts (between third and first), I’m confident that when I create a chart to analyze these changes (oh, yes, I shall be creating a chart; how else will I understand?), I’ll find clarification that resonates with the novel’s theme.

Foremost, though, is McCann’s use of language. He is subtle in his writing, yet over and over, he selects words that keep the Towers in front of the reader. Central image prevails, and this novel is an excellent reminder of how it may be effectively used.

This is a novel written by an author who deeply loves his characters. While bad, even horrific, things happen to some of them, he writes with love and understanding of human frailty. This book may tear at the 9/11 scar, but it also soothes the pain.

What have you read lately with language that you admire?

I know many avid readers, both in person and virtually. I’m an English professor, after all, with three degrees that center around English, literature, and writing. It is not surprising that most of my friends like to read, too. Frankly, a person who “lacks time to read” or dislikes reading loses my respect. Perhaps it is unfair of me, but this is one of my truths.

Among my pleasures in this too-brief life is not only to read, but to discuss what I’ve read. I started a reading group after I finished my BA, worried about losing the intellectual conversations I’d grown to love. We focused on reading classics, determined to fill our reading gaps. My mind stretched, my reading improved, my joy in books grew.

When I left New York for New Mexico, I was sad to give up my monthly reading group. Graduate school meant little time to organize a reading group, although I managed to do plenty of reading. Classroom discussions kept me from missing my New York group too much, and I learned what had been an elusive skill for me: reading like a writer.*

This skill changed my life. It meant that I could dig into any text like a mechanic into the engine of a vintage car. I could tinker and analyze and map and chart and learn.

I don’t turn off this skill. I relish it. It informs all of my reading, even my blog and newspaper reading.

Two years ago, missing graduate school discussions and my New York book group, I started a new group. We’ve read a variety of books, mostly novels, and had some fun conversations. Recently, a member of my club said that I like to “rip books apart,” and while I’m not sure how to take that comment, I do go to our meetings with the intention of tinkering with the book, of taking a wrench to it, seeing how it works, and why it does or does not work well. I am critical in my reading, but I am critical because I want to write better; I want to know how to help others write better. I am compelled to articulate my reactions to a book.

It occurred to me that while I read for entertainment, that is not my primary reason to read. I enjoy good stories, whether comic or tragic, but I crave beautiful writing. I want to linger in a sentence, wonder at a word choice. I want characters to gut me with the decisions they must make. I want to learn how to be a better human, more human, even. I want to be haunted by a book’s ideas. Perhaps that is simply what we readers consider entertainment?

So why has all of this been on my mind today? Well, for one thing, my club (The Tobacco Valley Inklings, no less) selected our 2012 books last week, and I’m really excited about the list. For another thing, last night I completed our January book, and I decided I should bring book reviews back to the blog. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my reviews here, and I enjoy comments with your thoughts on a book or telling me what you’re reading.

There you have it. I’m committing to blog book reviews again, and I can’t wait to write about the first book I finished in 2012. This leads me to the question: what do you like in a book review?

*I learned this in a class with Dan Mueller about central image while reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Francine Prose’s book is a good substitute for such a class.