L Reads a Classic: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a timeless classic and very fun read.  Part Gothic tale, part morality lesson, part social commentary, Dorian Gray has a little something for everyone, and certainly a lesson to be learned about the pitfalls of vanity.

 

Young Dorian Gray sits for painter Basil Hallward, who puts his all into the portrait of his friend.  Upon seeing the completed picture, Dorian Gray is overcome with vanity – is he really that strikingly handsome?  He immediately makes wish that becomes a pact with the devil: his soul for the chance to stay forever young.  We all know the story, made famous by the 1945 Hollywood movie, where the image in the portrait ages while real-life Dorian Gray stays youthful, untouched by time. 

 

Perhaps it is his loss of soul that results in Dorian Gray developing rather questionable morals.  Perhaps it is merely the influence of the men he chooses to surround himself with, like the irascible Lord Henry “Harry” Wotton.  Whatever it is, all of Dorian Gray’s deeds show themselves in the twisted, evil visage of the portrait, but mars not his youthful, golden-locked self.

 

Conscience is an interesting thing.  One can never seem to escape it and for all Dorian’s pleasure-taking in his evil ways, he can never truly escape the ugliness his life has become because he can never escape his portrait.  It haunts him, as does its possible discovery by servants, or anyone who enters his house.

 

In the end, desperate to destroy the albatross the painting has become, he inevitably destroys himself.

 

A fascinating read, one I very much enjoyed on a sunny, lazy, vacation afternoon.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

 

TBR = 9

WPL = 23

L Reads a Classic Part II

I finally got around to finishing reading Bunyan’s sequel to his seminal work The Pilgrim’s Progress in which Christian’s wife, Christiana follows his pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.  Published in 1684, The Pilgrim’s Progress The Second Part is less interesting a tale.  Unlike Christian, who encountered many foes and obstacles along his Way, Christiana and her children are accompanied by Mr. Great-Heart, a protector, who explains Christian’s journey and slays the last of the evil dwellers along the Way, giving the women and children easier passage.

 

I’m not sure if this is meant as a discourse on the weaker sex, or if Bunyan was merely using The Second Part as a vehicle to further explain his vision and message.  Quite frankly I would have preferred to have Christiana battle some of these demons on her own, but I guess her husband, having gone before, helped pave the Way for her own salvation.  Puh-lease!  Bunyan’s work is clearly a product of its time.

 

Worth reading if for nothing more than it’s a well-known classic.  Those more religious than I may get more out of it than I did.

 

Till next time, happy reading,

L :)

 

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

            ~ Mark Twain

 

L Dishes about The Book Thief With the Windsor Book Club

 

This is going to sound like an odd statement, but: I love Holocaust fiction.

 

It’s so emotionally charged and character driven, two elements I look for in novels, and is what makes a book good in my opinion.

 

Most Holocaust fiction focuses on the atrocity experienced by Jews or witnessed by foreigners.  In Australian author Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, we experience WWII from the perspective of a 10-year old German girl and her friend.  Set in Molching, Germany, Liesel Meminger is sent to live with foster parents Hans and Rosa Huberman because her parents are Communists.  On the train ride to Molching, Liesal watches her younger brother die and is haunted by this image, plagued by recurring nightmares. 

 

Growing up on Himmel Street in a poorer part of town, in the days leading up to WWII, Liesel is befriended by Rudy Steiner and together they join Hitler Youth, steal food, and otherwise try to survive this world gone mad.  There is one other thing Liesel steals:  books.  Yearning for the knowledge to make sense of the tragedies of life, Liesel steals her first book at the grave of her dead brother.  Later, books, and the words they carry will prove to be lifesavers.

 

As war breaks out, another friend enters Liesel’s life in the form of a promise kept by Hans Huberman.  Years before, in WWI, Hans life was spared thanks to the actions of friend Eric Vandenberg.  After the war, Hans visits Eric’s widow and son, promising to be of service should they ever require his assistance.  Young Max Vandenberg, a Jew, is smuggled to Hans’ home in Molching one night, where he takes up residence in their basement and Liesel and her adoptive parents become Jew rescuers.

 

Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is a beautifully written novel about the Holocaust told from the perspective of everyday Germans.  It is so easy to hold the country and its people as a whole accountable for the atrocities committed against the Jewish peoples during WWII, yet we must remember so many Germans were sympathetic to the Jewish plight, but were powerless to stop it.  They lived in a police state where any outward sign of rebellion or anarchy was punishable by death, the same death they witnessed  occurring to their Jewish friends and neighbours.

 

 I got to sit down with the Windsor Book Club this past Wednesday at delightful Evolve Cafe, who were incredibly kind to open especially for us, and we chatted about this book.  The overall consensus was that the book was really very good.  Where I thought it may have dragged in places and been a bit slow, I was quickly shot down as everyone else thought it was a quick read.  Go figure.  One good point was made that it isn’t exactly a suspenseful novel, so that may have been what I was missing.  The book is based on many actual events that happened in Germany to the author’s parents or witnessed by them, and this made the book resonate with readers.  Some members mentioned stories they’d heard growing up from grandparents and parents who’d been in the war, and how the novel brought back memories of those stories.

 

Another interesting point that was made, and that speaks to the literacy advocate in me, is how important words, books and reading are to the characters in this novel.  Scenes like book burnings were offset by townsfolk huddled in bomb shelters being read to by Liesel which very much helped to pass the time and ease fears and worries.  The juxtaposition of Hilter burning books or using words to kill was nicely offset by Liesel using books and words to save friends and neighbours. 

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 23

 

 

 

L Reads New CanLit for June

What Boys Like is a collection of short stories by promising Canadian author Amy Jones.  Although vividly and beautifully written, each story tackles such similar themes that the collection becomes a bit of a bore by the middle.  However, the final three stories are stellar and really worth reading.

 

I particularly liked Where You Are, which is about a woman who talks to the daughter she might have had, planning out what her life might have been like had things turned out differently ten years previously.  Speaking to this imaginary daughter whom she has christened Natalie, she describes the kind of young woman she would become, the life they would have, the relationships she would form with her father and step-father.   Alternatively filled with regrets, yet much promise and hope, it is a heartbreaking read to know this beautiful 10-year girl doesn’t really exist.

 

Then there was Post Mortem, about a family travelling to the site of the car crash that killed their son, brother and husband.  The story is told from the perspective of two family members, Jeremy and his sister-in-law Theresa and they are coping in the aftermath of tragedy.

 

Finishing up the collection is Church of the Latter-Day Peaches, about a young pregnant widow attending her husband’s funeral.  Jones is very adept at drawing our attention to the minutiae of life; all the quirks and foibles that make us uniquely human and that make life as fascinating as it is.

 

The other stories in the collection tackle the same relational themes:  Mother/daughter, sisters, husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend.  Jones explores what it means to connect with each other in urban landscapes that shift from Toronto to Halifax, and that play as much a part of these stories as the characters themselves.

 

Jones is a talented writer with a unique voice, and on their own, these stories are powerful.  Tied together in a collection, many of them read too similarly and I would have preferred more variety.  By halfway, the stories started to blend into one another rather than standing apart on the strength of their uniqueness from each other (I’m thinking here of Selecky’s This Cake is for the Party which covered the same relational subject matter, but with varied characters, settings and situations which helped to differ one story from another).  Jones tends to place similar characters in similar urban settings dealing with similar relationship problems.  After awhile, it just gets boring.

 

Definitely check this book out, but don’t read it in one sitting like a novel.  Space yourself through the stories and you’ll likely get more out of it than I did, who naively read it cover to cover as quickly as possible.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

 

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 22

 

10th Anniversary

Ah James Patterson, will I never learn?

 

After a rocky start with his early books in the Women’s Murder Club series, I’ve come to really enjoy the books, so was looking forward to the tenth installment, 10^th Anniversary, with much anticipation.  Unfortunately, the book did not live up to my expectations.  It was, quite frankly, a mess!  All over the place, with not one decent storyline to follow from beginning to end.  Sigh.

 

Once again the four ladies who make up the Women’s Murder Club are back.  We have Lindsey Boxer, a detective with the SFPD’s homicide division, returning to work fresh from her honeymoon where she is handed the case of a young girl found bleeding near Lake Merced, who’s just given birth and claims she doesn’t remember a thing beyond getting into a car with two men.  Where is the baby?!?!?  Lindsey is hot on the trail.  – Wait a second, she’s homicide right?  There’s no murder, there’s no killer to catch, so why is she running around looking for a kidnapped/sold baby?  Oh, yeah, because she’s just gotten married and her baby clock is tick tocking away, and this is the only way Patterson can tie in Lindsey’s screeching biological clock with the job she does.  Um, okay….

 

Then we have intrepid reporter Cindy Thomas who stumbles across a story about women being drugged, raped, and waking up with no memory of the incident.  But other than this story serving to give us about 25 pages of splash and dash near the end of the book when Cindy is abducted by said rapist, this plotline pretty much fizzles out.  It’s especially disbelievable since although Cindy’s paper prints the story, there’s no police investigation whatsoever.  Yeah, right!

 

Next is lovable medical examiner Claire Washburn who plays an incredibly brief role, popping up only when Lindsey needs someone to dish baby with.  An incredible disappointment that Claire has so little ink time.

 

Finally, the only interesting plotline in the entire book, is struggling Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano’s murder trial of Dr. Candace Martin, accused of killing her husband.  Now this is some good ink, with suitable plot twists to keep a reader interested.  Frankly I would have preferred the focus of the book be on this trial and have the four women working together to uncover the truth, not going off in ten different, incoherent directions.

 

Overall, the book was disappointing and I can only hope book eleven has a better thought out, cohesive plot that engages all four beloved characters.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 21

 

 

The Land of Painted Caves

In the sixth and final book of the Earth’s Children Series, Auel returns to her roots, offering a read rich in historic detail.  Set in prehistoric times, around 35,000 – 25,000 BCE, Auel writes about the daily lives of early man in a story that has spanned six books published over 3 decades.  Her novels are steeped with detail that can only come from a life-time of research, making Auel revered by archeologists and anthropologists the world over.

 

Ayla was first introduced in The Clan of the Cave Bear, published in 1980.  An orphan who lost her family in an earthquake, Ayla is found by a Clan of Neanderthals and raised by their medicine woman, Iza.  She learns the art of healing from her adopted mother, but is forever branded as an outcast because she was born to the Others.  Ayla is Cro-Magnon, or Modern Man, with all the inherent abilities this superior species possesses, namely the ability to speak, to learn new skills, and puzzle out and solve a problem.  As the novel closes, she is cast out of the Clan and bidden to find her own peoples.

 

The follow-up Valley of Horses finds Ayla living a solitary existence, hunting and fending for herself in the harsh land.  Quite by accident, she befriends a young horse, then a baby cave lion, who become her friends and helpers, and highlight the mental abilities modern man has over the Neanderthal, which is purportedly why Neanderthal died out and we descended from Cro-Magnon.  It is in this novel that Ayla meets Jondalar, the love of her life.

 

The subsequent novels detail their journey, adventures, perils, and the peoples they meet as Ayla and Jondalar leave her valley and make the return trip to Jondalar’s home among the Zelandonii, a large group of semi-nomadic cave dwellers settled in the region that is now modern France.

 

In The Land of Painted Caves, Auel brings Ayla’s story to a conclusion.  It is summer and time for the Zelandonii peoples Summer Meeting.  Ayla is continuing her studies with the zelandonia, the group of healers and spiritual leaders who have recognized her unique gifts with herbs and animals.  She is mated to Jondalar and has a young child and must balance home life with her training.  Orphaned at the age of five, and raised by a Clan of Neanderthals, Ayla has only ever wanted to find and be accepted by her own peoples.  She has finally found acceptance among Jondalar’s family, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii.  But the life of a zelandonia, a healer, is not an easy one and she must make many sacrifices that threaten her family’s happiness.

 

The relationship between Ayla and Jondalar is a secondary story thread, one that ties the books together.  What brings such richness to the novels is Auel’s minute descriptions of early man’s existence – the food they gathered, hunted and ate.  How they prepared it.  The clothing they wore, their ceremonies and burial methods, and most importantly in this novel, their cave art.  Much of this is conjecture, but more is based on archeological research from digs that have taken place in Europe and Africa.  The archeological discovery of early man, how and where he lived has greatly enriched Auel’s work, and she is a true historian, punctuating her fiction with fascinating factual data.

 

In The Land of Painted Caves, Ayla embarkes on a Donier Tour, visiting all of the region’s sacred sites, namely painted caves.  Auel visited these existing caves while researching her novels, and the detail provided in the book is a wonderful tribute to this period in history.

 

Anyone fascinated by early man and our human origins, as I am, will find these books steeped in historic fact and rich in detail.  Auel fleshes out the facts to create believable characters and situations you’ll remember long after closing the cover on the final page.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 20

The post where L reveals a new TBR bookcase*

*and admits she really does have a problem. So this is how it all went down.  I arrived at work on Monday with an assortment of flyers that had been dropped off at my mailbox after I’d done my weekly grocery shopping, thus making the flyers irrelevant, but still fun to browse through.  Plus, I like to share with a co-worker who’s much more of a sale fiend than I am.  It also helps the day go by faster, because let’s face it, working in an academic library isn’t exactly a party.  I pass most of the ads on to my co-worker sight unseen anyway because flipping through adverts for things I have no interest in purchasing doesn’t exactly turn me on....  For some strange reason, though, the Tepperman’s ad caught my eye.  I couldn’t even tell you why, but there I was, turning its pages when I reached their Bargain Annex sales.  There, at a ridiculously low price, was a 5-shelf bookcase.  Perfect for my library.  The sale was limited quantity and first come first served.  I immediately called to see if they had any left.  They didn’t, but the saleswoman tipped me off to more sales the coming two weekends with different style bookcases.  I waited all week for Friday to arrive. Which it finally did, and as I was walking Lily in the morning, I stopped to pick up a copy of the week’s ads from the piles dropped at the curb a couple blocks from home.  When we got back to the house, Lily waited not so patiently for her food while I pulled out the Tepperman’s ad and flipped to the Bargain Annex page.  There it was, the same bookcase with doors that was featured last week, but no 5-shelf bookcase beside it.  Harumph.  I didn’t particularly want a quasi bookcase with doors for my library – I’m a traditionalist after all.

 

 

Lily finally got her food and I headed off to work to bitch and moan to above mentioned co-worker, talking myself around to checking out the great deal.  I mean, it was advertised for $40.  When would I ever see that price again?  And so what if it had doors?  I didn’t have to use it in the library.  I have so little furniture after moving from a one bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house, that I could use it anywhere:  the living room, the office.  Endless possibilities.  I had myself convinced to stop in after work and pick one up.

I got to Tepperman’s around 1:30 having used some banked vacation time to leave early that Friday.  I sailed right past the showroom salesman who commented that I had my Bargain Annex flyer ready.  “Yup and I know just what I want,” I exclaimed, thinking: so don’t try to distract me and put the hard sell on me.  Just give me my bookcase and no one gets hurt.

Just inside the Annex entrance was my bookcase with doors.  I paused to look it over.  Yup, it’s good quality for $40.  Definitely want one.  I made my way over to the saleswoman, Kari, and asked if they had any left.  We walked back to the bookcase so she could write down the stock number. “How much was it originally?”  The bargain hunter in me wanted to know.  Kari pulled back the sale sticker to reveal the original price: $169.75.  Holy crap!  I’d be paying like a quarter of the regular price.  Cha-ching!  I happened to mention I wasn’t keen on the doors, but for that price, I guess I couldn’t quibble.  “Oh,” said Kari, “I think you can leave them off.  There’s nothing special about the doors and it would look like just a regular bookcase without them.”  We opened the doors and checked them out.  Sure enough, other than the hinges that didn’t need to be installed, there was nothing structurally requiring me to have the doors on the bookcase.  Hello!

I walked out of Tepperman’s that day with not one, but two beautiful and cheap, but not cheaply made, bookcases. 

The next step was to get them home and assembled, which caused me much bruising and aching muscles, cause I mean six-foot high, five-shelf, Sauder bookcases are not light!  But assembled them I did, and now I have five, count’em, bookcases in my library.  I definitely have a problem.  And because the new bookcases are so huge, and the floor in my house is somewhat uneven at the wall and my carpet so thick, I had to move out my original TBR bookcase and replace it with one of the new ones, which fit better against that wall (snug up against the wall instead of sitting several inches out of it...my worst nightmare is waking up one night to a big crash as the bookcase and books comes tumbling down).  The pic at the top of this post shows you the new TBR bookcase in all its finely filled glory.

So, here are my TBR books, after bookcase removal.  The only spot for them, piled into my chair:

Just like my reading tastes, they are one big messy pile of mixed genres.

This is where the old TBR bookcase now sits, empty and forlorn, though I don’t imagine I will have much trouble filling it up:  

The other new bookcase, I’m currently using for my unread magazines, of which I have loads, oh, and my waiting to be read library books.  Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of it filled, but to give you an idea of the size of these beautiful suckers: 

See, it’s so huge I can’t fit it in the entire frame!   

And finally, what’s a library without a furry friend in it?  In this case, my sweet doggie, Lily: 

I think she’s as concerned as I am at the size of these new things, and how I will fill them.  Either that or she needs to piddle and I’ve been too busy assembling bookcases and re-organizing my library to notice.

Guess it’s time for walkies!

Till next time, happy reading. 

L :)