What I've been reading, Australia edition

Its been a slow reading month so far. I went to Australia hoping to get a ton of reading done, and buying way too many kindle books in anticipation, but unfortunately I wasn't as successful as I expected.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
I was most excited for this one out of all my kindle purchases, so I decided to tackle it first. I know everyone was reviewing this late last year, so I'm a bit late, but it still felt pretty new and exciting to me. I'm sad to say I was a little disappointed overall. I loved the setting (in the New York parts at least), particularly the antique shop, and I always enjoy references to art and literature, but here they felt a little unnatural. I can easily forgive a writer for making a lot of references to other writers (Donna Tartt did this in her other two books as well, but in both it made more sense) if the plot is good. Unfortunately I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. Without giving too much away, I thought that the big event at the beginning wasn't done very well (I know that sounds very vague). I understand that Theo is young at the time (around 13), and Tartt is trying to express that with her narration. As the book progresses the writing style definitely improves, and older Theo is more interesting anyway. But still, I wasn't enthralled by the story, the characters or the writing. I found it empty. Themes were touched upon in various discussions between characters at the end of the book: our relationships with objects, our struggle to be good. It all felt much too straightforward, like telling the reader how one should feel about it.

Maybe its because I enjoyed The Secret History so much, or maybe because I knew Donna Tartt took 10 years to write this, I expected more. The Secret History actually affected me more after reading it, when I was left to consider it as a whole. Weeks after reading The Goldfinch, I haven't really thought about it at all. I feel like maybe I'm missing out on something- other people seem to have had really great experiences with The Goldfinch.


Some other books I read:
The Other Typist, by Suzanne Rindell, an impulse buy, purely because it seemed like a fun holiday read (or my idea of a fun holiday read). Much has been said about the 'twist' in the book, which surprises me because its not really a twist at all. Rose, relating the story after it has happened, as much as tells the reader what's going to happen. Only the last paragraph undercuts that, leaving many readers, including myself, confused.

The Woman Upstairs, by Clare Mussad, which I loved it because it made me think a lot more about art than The Goldfinch did. It's partly about what it means to be a female artist and a contemporary artist, but also an engrossing character study. Although I wasn't overwhelmed when I finished it, I'd still recommend it.

Nightfilm, by Merisha Pessl, which I hope I'll be writing more about in future. Strangely enough it was a negative review that made me want to read this book. The detective story was criticised, and I can see why, although, like others, I was seduced by the mystery at first. Even if the ending wasn't entirely satisfactory and the murder mystery format didn't really work, I loved learning about the fictional director, Cordova. I definitely want to explore film more in the future.

All of these were kindle books- I feel like I haven't read a physical book in an age. I'm in a bit of a slump at the moment, but I'm looking forward to getting back to reading.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Synopsis: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

"Anything dead coming back to life hurts"

'Beloved' was not what I expected. For one thing, I couldn't have been prepared for how devastating it was. It took me a while for me to gather my thoughts into something mildly coherent. Therefore this isn't really a review, just some of my reactions.

I was surprised by the 'magic realism' element, i.e. Beloved coming back to life (I know its ambiguous as to whether Beloved actually is that same child). I like ghost stories, not because I like being scared but because the appearance of a ghost is a good way for a writer to explore the living characters' relationships with the dead, and how the past connects to the future. In Rebecca, for example, Mrs. de Winter believing she hears Rebecca's ghost reflects her own anxiety about her predecessor. This quote from The Secret History sticks with me:

"There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that, and we believe them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious." 

And memory is definitely a theme in 'Beloved'. How could it not be, with the narrative shifts between characters, times and places? This structure put me off at first, and I think its one of the main reasons people dislike the book. But if you're struggling with it, I'd say stick with it: the story comes together, and it makes sense for the narrative to be jumbled. Sethe talks about the concept of "rememory", which involves reliving the past. The past is unbearable for most of the characters,and they find various ways of repressing it, but it is never gone. Sethe warns her daughter Denver about "rememory" by telling her:

"if you go there--you who never was there-- if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there."

But part of Sethe's tragedy is that the past is undeniable. And Sethe does "go there" at the end of the novel, with catastrophic results which mirror the first tragedy.

Do you have any thoughts on 'Beloved'? I think its a very multi-layered novel, and I've only really touched on one element of that here, but if you have anything to add I'd be glad to hear it.

Reading in 2013

I have a terrible memory, but I think 2013 has been a good year for reading overall. It was really the year I got 'back in' to reading. My interests at the beginning of the year were more science and anthropology, so I was reading books about those subjects. But they just didn't grip me as much as fiction books do, and I ended up not finishing many of them. Now I see that phase as a positive thing: I'm sure that I'm better off studying literature than social sciences.

I'm not sure when I really started reading, and I'm also not sure what made me suddenly more interested than I was before. This in itself is a good reason to document the year, and my current reading. I've tried to group books I've read this year into main categories, but of course there are ones which don't quite fit.

1. Classics
My renewed passion for reading led me to some of the books I was ashamed I had never read, but I'm glad I can say I have tried them now. For example, I had never read To Kill a Mockingbird before this year, although I have no idea why. It was not particularly challenging and I feel like it might have had a greater impact on me had I been younger. At least having read it I no longer feel like I have missed out on something fundamental. I'm glad I made it through other books as well, like Catch-22, which seems like one of those books people are always intending to read, and The Brothers Karamazov.
Other classics I've read this year:

• Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
• Howards End, E. M. Forster
• The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
• Adam Bede, George Eliot
• Fankenstein, Mary Shelley
• The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde

There are many, many more classics to read. There are probably more than I could read in a lifetime, let alone in 2014. Just thinking about the books I haven't read but have to read makes me nervous. In 2014 (off the top of my head) I want to read:

• Middlemarch, George Eliot
• Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer

2. Virginia Woolf
For some reason I picked up To the Lighthouse in the library and I was hooked on Woolf's writing style. To the Lighthouse remains one of the few books that really blew me away, and I think I will be able to read it again and again and find new things in it. Following this I read her major works and was inspired to look at some other modernist fiction by female authors. Mrs Dalloway lead me to the novel and film of The Hours, which I loved on fist viewing but now I'm unsure about. I read:

• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones Own, Virginia Woolf
• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
• The Hours, Michael Cunningham
• The Waves, Virginia Woolf
• Orlando, Virginia Woolf
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
• The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There's still more Woolf to read- her lesser known fiction and her diaries, for example. Of course I want to read more around modernism, but I'm probably not going to be attempting Ulysses. A Portrait of the Artist, maybe. Short fiction has been interesting me more towards the end of this year, so I'm interested to see what Woolf does with the form.

3. Women writers
I think I probably stumbled on to Virginia Woolf through my growing interest in women writers. Earlier this year I became absorbed in Edith Wharton novels, after visiting New York. I'm not sure if I took The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome entirely seriously, but there was a certain harshness about them I liked. I felt guilty about reading too many books by women, but I later decided this wasn't such a bad thing. I decided to read what I felt like reading rather than focusing on her sex of the author, and I think that's the best way to go about it.

 

 Many of the contemporary authors I'm interested in are women, for example Margaret Atwood, who I've read a lot of. I also discovered Donna Tartt's The Secret History and The Little Friend. Other contemporary books by women I read this year include Oranges are not the only fruit, On beauty and Too much happiness.

Next year I'm looking forward to reading:

• The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
• The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
• The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

The main thing missing from this list is authors who are not from England or America- something I am looking forward to rectifying next year. I already feel like I've set myself a lot of books to read next year, and while a year is a long time in terms of reading, I may be being a little optimistic about what I can achieve. I guess I'll have to wait and see!