ABAW August Edition

I had a bit of a reading slump in August.  It was too hot to hold a book.  Or something.  I’m not convinced that that the slump iss over. Very few things are holding my attention.

Books I read out-loud to the kids: 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

This was our second time reading these books out-loud.  We’ve read through the whole series once together.  I think it’s the fourth time I read Sorcerer’s Stone and the third time for Chamber of Secrets.  I’m not sure what prompted the Sonars to choose these this summer. Perhaps a bit of nostalgia after we caught one of the movies randomly.  The kids have all changed so much in the two years since we read them last time.  These lovely stories hold up to rereading beautifully. I took great delight in watching as the Sonars noticed things they’d missed the first time, as well as details that become important later in the series. So much fun.   

Books I read silently to myself:

Walks with Men by Ann Beattie

This small novel surprised me.  I sometimes found it hard to breathe as I read it, I was pulled in so close alongside the narrator.  I had to stop frequently and stare out the window, wondering, like the narrator, just exactly what was happening.  That’s not to say that the prose isn’t incredibly crisp, just that life is often deliriously confusing.  Jane is a young and talented writer who begins an affair with an older married man in the early eighties.  The story follows the course of that relationship.  Neil is, of course, a total jerk. Beattie contrasts Neil with Jane’s former lover and her father.  I’m not sure whether I liked this story or not.  I can’t figure out quite how Jane is changed, her emotional reaction is often very distant and we see what she does, not what she thinks.  I loved the words though.  Beattie’s words wrapped me up, blocking out the things around me.    

My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro edited by Jeffrey Eugenides

I’m misleading you by including this book in the list.  I didn’t read the whole thing.  I’m having an on-again, off-again romance with this book.  It’s been going on for months.  I’ll bring it home from the library, delight in a few stories, then return it.  Later, I’ll see the book, peeking coyly down at me from the shelf, and I’ll bring it home to flirt with a few more stories.  The title refers to Lesbia’s sparrow in the poems of Catullus.  This book is filled with love stories that hit all along the life-cycle of love, by many different authors. You can check the contents somewhere. I won’t bore you with a list.  I was enchanted and heartbroken by the Chekhov this time.  My favorite bit: “Closing his eyes, he saw her as if alive, and she seemed younger, more beautiful, more tender than she was; and he also seemed better to himself than he had been then, in Yalta.”  Like any very good collection of short stories, there are lessons to be learned by writers.  If you read no other part of this book though, read the Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides.  He will instruct you in the ways of understanding the love story.  I quoted him a few weeks ago, here. 

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

“For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a Reserved sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I’d never see her again.”  Except that he (Hajime) does see her (Shimamoto) again.  They are essentially strangers.  Strangers with a connection in the distant past, when they were both just twelve years old.  When they meet again they try to build a connection out of those fossils.  But friendship cannot contain the intensity of his desire for her.  She isn’t even a whole person.  She is a beautiful and fragile image.  She says she destroys everything she touches.  His deterioration is internal.  His exterior life remains largely unchanged.  His business seems fine.  He has money saved up.  He loves his family.  Someone called this book Murakami’s “existential romance,” and I have to agree.  I’m never quite sure whether Shimamoto is really there in Hajime’s life, or if he has created her in his mind, some secret sharer to manifest his internal turmoil about his guilt and dissatisfaction.  Expect moments right at the edges of the fabric of reality, with incidents left unexplained or unexplainable.  Like Sputnik Sweetheart, someone disappears, someone is broken.  Each character echoes the next as Hajime tries to return to the person he was before he hurt others.  All of the women become some version of the first woman he hurt—Izumi.  All of the men become some version of himself.  The two most compelling ideas in this story are the Hysteria Siberiana, mentioned by Shimamoto, and the differences between only children and their peers with siblings.  Lovely story.  Haunting.  Probably because I read it so recently, I was struck by similarities between this novel and Ethan Frome.  SotBWotS is Ethan Frome without the oppressive misery or the suicide attempt, though there is one moment when Shimamoto considers a suicidal path. 

What I’m reading now:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

What I plan to read next:

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman