Ex Libris

The Sea

Title:  The Sea

Author:  John Banville

Rating:  5/5

I've come to the conclusion that Irish authors (the ones I've read, at least) are the most poetic prose writers on the face of the earth.  Writers such as John McGahern, Colm Toibin, and Sebastian Barry have left me mesmerized by the sheer beauty of their words - words that flow like a river and take me willingly along with them on whatever journey they are going.  I'm adding John Banville to that list today after finishing his Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea.

The Sea is told in first person by one Max Morden, an aging art critic/historian who, after the death of his wife Anna, returns to the place by the sea where he spent his childhood summers.  It is here that he reflects on the people and incidents that shaped his life.  We as readers join him as he reveals his thoughts on life, love, death, and the experiences of childhood that can take a lifetime to understand.  Max tells of his summers when his parents rented a "chalet" - more or less a shack and on the lowest rung of the village pecking order.  Higher up in that order was Cedars, a house that was rented out by the week or by the month.  Max's involvement with Cedars begins when he meets the Grace family - parents Carlo and Connie, teenager Rose, and twins Chloe and Myles.  It is with this family that Max becomes aware of adult feelings of lust and love, beginning with his infatuation with Connie Grace and eventually transferring to Chloe. 

"Happiness was different in childhood.  It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self." (pg. 108)

Max intersperses his childhood experiences with adult experiences  from his relationship with his wife Anna, as they come to grips with mortality via her battle with cancer:

"The truth is, it has all begun to run together, past and possible future and impossible present.  In the ashen weeks of daytime dread and nightly terror before Anna was forced at last to acknowledge the inevitability of Mr. Todd and his prods and potions, I seemed to inhabit a twilit netherworld in which it was scarcely possible to distinguish dream from waking, since both waking and dreaming had the same penetrable, darkly velutinous texture, and in which I was wafted this way and that in a state of feverish lethargy, as if it were I and not Anna who was destined soon to be another one among the already so numerous shades...On all sides there were portents of mortality.  I was plagued by coincidences; long-forgotten things were suddenly remembered; objects turned up that for years had been lost.  My life seemed to be passing before me, not in a flash as it is said to do for those about to drown, but in a sort of leisurely convulsion, emptying itself of secrets and it quotidian mysteries in preparation for the moment when I must step into the black boat on the shadowed river with the coin of passage cold in my already coldening hand...Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it." (pgs. 71-72)

Max's story is not necessarily dependent upon plot nor place, so if you enjoy plot-driven stories you might find this a little tedious.   Instead, the dramatic force of the story lies in the emotions derived by Max from his experiences by the sea, both at Cedars and at home with Anna, and his recounting of them as an older adult looking back at his life.

I urge you to read this book.   Banville's writing is breathtakingly beautiful.  The book is only 195 pages, but it took me as long to read it as a 300+ page novel.   I wanted to savor every sentence. 

Poetry Tuesday

I had every intention today of working on my review for Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourne.  That intention flew out the window when I sat down this morning and read some poetry from Selected Poems: 1931-2004 by Czeslaw Milosz, which I am reading for the Neustadt Challenge and also for the Read the Nobels project.  I don't read a lot of poetry and don't claim to understand it when I do read it, but there have been times when a poem has knocked me off my feet and really spoken to me.  The poem I read today was one of those.  Milosz was born in Lithuania in 1911 but lived in Warsaw during the German occupation during WWII.   The poem I read this morning, Campo dei Fiori, was written in Warsaw in 1943.  I'd like to share it and some of my thoughts about it with you.

Campo dei Fiori

In Rome  on the Campo dei Fiori

baskets of olives and lemons,

cobbles spattered with wine

and the wreckage of flowers.

Vendors cover the trestles

with rose-pink fish;

armfuls of grapes

heaped on peach-down.

The visual Milosz gives of baskets of fruits, wine-splattered cobbles, flowers and fish are just beautiful.  I see all these things in my head in technicolor.  It is beautiful, calm, and serene.  Then I read this:

On this same square

they burned Giordano Bruno.

Henchmen kindled the pyre

close-pressed by the mob.

Before the flames had died

the taverns were full again,

baskets of olives and lemons

again on the vendors’ shoulders.

 Again, the vivid imagery.  Only this time it is beyond ugly.  The two scenes - one peaceful and one violent - are at extreme odds, yet co-existing. 

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori

in Warsaw by the sky-carousel

one clear spring evening

to the strains of a carnival tune.

The bright melody drowned

the salvos from the ghetto wall,

and couples were flying

high in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning

would drift dark kites along

and riders on the carousel

caught petals in midair.

That same hot wind

blew open the skirts of the girls

and the crowds were laughing

on their beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

More comparisons of occupied Warsaw with Giordano's Rome.  The non-ghetto civilians are oblivious to  (or ignore) what is happening in their city, just as the Roman patrons filled the taverns and the vendors returned to selling their wares.

Someone will read as moral

that the people of Rome or Warsaw  

haggle, laugh, make love

as they pass by martyrs’ pyres.

Someone else will read

of the passing of things human,

of the oblivion

born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only

of the loneliness of the dying,

of how, when Giordano

climbed to his burning

he could not find

in any human tongue

words for mankind,

mankind who live on.

This just ripped at me.  I can't explain it or put it into better words.  It just simply ripped at me.

Already they were back at their wine

or peddled their white starfish,

baskets of olives and lemons

they had shouldered to the fair,

and he already distanced

as if centuries passed

while they paused just a moment

for his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely

forgotten by the world,

our tongue becomes for them

the language of an ancient planet.

Until when all is legend

and many years have passed,

on a new Campo dei Fiori

rage will kindle at a poet’s word.

(from 'Selected Poems:  1931-2004' by Czeslaw Milosz, pgs. 13-14)

This poem stayed with me all day.  All I could think of is how timeless it is.  This poem is as applicable today as it was in the 1940's.  How many of us have turned a blind eye or deaf ear to those who are persecuted near us?  We have already distanced ourselves "as if centuries passed".  Milosz put the unspeakable into his poetry, and the "rage" that "will kindle at a poet's word" comes through loud and clear. 

 

10 Out of 100 Out of 1001 Books

A couple of days ago I posted my list for 3M's 1% Well-Read Challenge.  Yesterday, I heard about the 10 Out of 100 Out of 1001 Books Challenge that is hosted by Mee at Books of Mee.  It is similar, yet different from 3M's challenge.  The two will go together nicely.

The object of the 10 Out of 100 Out of 1001 Books Challenge is to read at least 1 book from the first 100 books on the list within groups of 10.  If a reader has already read a book from one of the groupings, then it can be skipped.  The goal is to have a book from each group between May 1 and October 31, 2008. 

Here's how my list is evolving:

Group 1 (books 1-10) - skip (I've read #1 Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro Kazuo, #2 Saturday by Ian McEwen, and #9 The Master by Colm Toibin)

Group 2 (books 11-20) - skip (I've read #19 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon) or read #15 The Colour by Rose Tremain because I got it at the library sale last week.

Group 3 (books 21-30) - skip (I've read #21 Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee and #30 That They May Face the Rising Sun, known in the US as By the Lake, by John McGahern)

Group 4 (books 31-40) - read #31 In the Forest by Edna O'Brien

Group 5 (books 41-50) - skip (I've read #42 Atonement by Ian McEwan)

Group 6 (books 51-60) - read #59 Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy

Group 7 (books 61-70) - read #70 Timbuktu by Paul Auster

Group 8 (books 71-80) - read #74 Everything You Need by A. L. Kennedy

Group 9 (books 81-90) - skip (I've read #90 Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho)

Group 10 (books 91-100) - read #100 The Untouchable by John Banville

So actually, I will only need to read 5 books to complete the challenge - 6 if I include the Tremain.  Since this list of 1001 books will more than likely become a perpetual project for me at some point, I figure why not do both challenges and work in a few more.

Thanks, Mee!

Sunday Salon - Southern Reading Challenge and Literary Housekeeping

I'm not spending much time on reading today.  I desperately need to do some housekeeping, but not of the vacuuming kind.  I need to update my reading list/challenge spreadsheet and my blog.  It has become quite disorganized, and that isn't good.  I need to spend some time getting it into shape.  So that's today's project.  If I do work in some reading, I'll post about it later.  In the meantime, here's another irresistable challenge!

Maggie at Maggie Reads is once again hosting the Southern Reading Challenge.  I participated in this challenge last year and loved it!  The goal is to read 3 books in Southern settings by 3 Southern authors in 3 months.  The challenge begins May 15 and runs through August 15, 2008.

I looked through my 2008 reading list to see how many Southern setting books by Southern authors were on it, and I was surprised to find only one (The Grass Harp by Truman Capote).  I've been focusing on international literature this year, so US authors have taken a back seat.  However, for this challenge I will gladly add two more books to the pile.

Here's my list:

The Grass Harp by Truman Capote

I've been wanting to read this book since reading Other Voices, Other Rooms by Capote last year for this same challenge.  I'm also reading this book for the My Year of Reading Dangerously challenge.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

This is another book that has resided on my shelves for years and that I just haven't gotten around to reading yet.  I didn't realize that Kate Chopin was a Southern author until I read her name on a list of Southern women writers this morning.  So I'm adding this to the reading list!

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers has been a popular author lately in the blogosphere and, based on the blog posts I've read, with good reason.  It is past time that I read one of her books.  This is the perfect opportunity.

I'm really looking forward to this!  Thanks, Maggie!

1% Well-Read Challenge

Look!  Another way to make creative use out of my 2008 reading list!  3M (who comes up with great challenges that I simply can't refuse) has come up with the 1% Well-Read Challenge.  This challenge uses that wonderful tome, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, as a base.  The challenge began May 1 and runs through the end of February 2009, so it is 10 books in 10 months, which is 1% of the list.  The only rule is that the books are on the "1001 Books"  list.

I bought "1001 Books" when it first came out, and have been keeping a record of my progress.  To date, I have read 60 out of 1001, which (according to the nifty spreadsheet 3M has a link to) puts me at 5.99% complete.  According to that same spreadsheet, I will need to read 31 books a year from this list in order to complete it in my lifetime.  Well, that probably won't happen, but it is always fun to try. 

What I like about "1001 Books" is that they include many titles and authors that aren't necessarily on any of the prize lists.  This shakes things up and does, indeed, help to make one "well-read". 

What I like about this challenge is that 17 of the titles from the 1001 list were already on my 2008 reading list, which means I can participate guilt-free!  I will pick 10 from the following:

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Sea by John Banville
• Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• What Maisie Knew by Henry James
• New Grub Street by George Gissing
• The Drinking Den by Emile Zola (also known as "Drunkard", or "L'Assommoir")
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Thank you, 3M!

Whoopee!!

This is Adrianna, my 8 year old granddaughter who is an avid reader and now an avid baker!  She came over tonight to help me make these wonderful chocolate cookies with a marshmallow filling in the center known as "whoopee pies".   They're huge!  I'm not sure if you can tell how big they are from the pictures, but we only had enough dough to make 6 pies.  So decadent!!

This was totally Adrianna's idea.  She found the recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion cookbook and decided we would make them.  (They also have a recipe for pumpkin whoopee pies that I would like to try sometime.)

Here it is just a little bit closer:

Mmmmm.....

Library Sale

My public library's book sale is going on this weekend.  Today was a preview day for "friends of the library" (of which I am one) so I stopped on my way home from work.  Usually on library sale day I take off early from work in order to stand in line with the other bookaholics and get in the door when it opens, but we had an important shindig today that I wasn't able to get out of.  So I got there an hour and a half later, expecting the worst in terms of books being cleaned out before I had a chance to look at them.  To my amazement, the selection was still decent.  I managed to fill two paper grocery sacks with books.  Here is what I brought home:

• Mao II by Don DeLillo (hardback)
• The Wild Country by Louis Bromfield (hardback)
• The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt (hardback)
• Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer (hardback)
• The Turning of the Tide by Reginald Hill (hardback)
• Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler (hardback)
• The Comedians by Graham Greene (hardback)
• The Republic of Love by Carol Shields (hardback)
• Summerland by Michael Chabon (hardback)
• Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley (hardback)
• The Stranger House by Reginald Hill (hardback)
• The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright (hardback)
• Battles at Thrush Green by Miss Read (hardback)
• Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard (hardback)
• Image of Josephine by Booth Tarkington (hardback)
• Hotel Sarajevo by Jack Kersh (trade paperback)
• All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner (hardback)
• Sacred Country by Rose Tremain (hardback)
• The Colour by Rose Tremain (hardback)
• Shaking a Leg by Angela Carter (trade paperback)
• A Pagan Place by Edna O'Brien (hardback)
• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (trade paperback)
• Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin (hardback)

Now for the best part.  Total amount spent = $10!

Sunday Salon - Straying Off the Path

I confess, I've strayed off my designated reading path somewhat.  I've spent the entire week reading books that were not originally on my list of books to read this year.  Some are for review and some are just because I felt like it.

I've been making weekly trips to the library - usually on Saturdays when I take my mom to her hair appointment.  It gives me something to do while I'm waiting for her if I don't have other errands to run.  Sometimes I stop in the library on my way home from work during the week, too.  What happens is that I find all sorts of books I think I would like to read so I (impulsive person that I am) bring home a stack.  I don't always read the books before I have to take them back, but sometimes I do.  That was the case with a book I brought home and read this past week:

The Outcast by Sadie Jones

This is a disturbing yet riveting novel that takes place in post-WWII England and focuses on a boy who, when he loses his mother at a young age, sets off a chain of events that casts him further and further away from his father and their neighbors.  In spinning this tale that has the boy in a downward spiral as he approaches adulthood, Jones also uncovers and examines physical and psychological abuse in middle class, post-war England.  The boy serves almost as an anti-hero - you don't know whether to like or despise him. 

The writing is very good and the story is riveting.  I couldn't stop reading, even though I found some of the content disturbing.   I gave this book a 5/5 rating.

Other books I am reading include Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn, a Victorian mystery which I am reading for review.  I am half-way through the book,  but am not sure what my thoughts are on it yet.  I hope to finish it in the next few days.

I'm also reading a non-fiction book for review:

Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life by Joseph Persico.  This is a biography of FDR that focuses on the women in his life (his mother, his wife, his mistresses) and their effect on his personality as well as his political career.  This book is very well written and is a pleasure to read.

So even though I've strayed off the path somewhat, I will get back on at some point.  Maybe next week.

 

Good Morning!

Apple Strudel muffins fresh from the oven (about 10 minutes ago!).  Coffee, anyone?

The Neustadt Challenge - Selections

A few months ago, Alisia at Book Haven announced The Neustadt Challenge - a challenge designed to introduce readers to the winners of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature by reading either 1) three books by one of the winning authors, or 2) one book by three winning authors.  The challenge begins May 1, 2008  and continues through August 2008.

When I signed up for the challenge, my intent was to read three books by Czeslaw Milosz (two books of poetry and a memoir).  Now, however, I have decided to read three books by different winning authors.  My selections are:

The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987 by Octavio Paz (Mexico)

Czeslaw Milosz: Selected Poems 1931-2004 by Czeslaw Milosz (Poland)

Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop (USA)

I chose three volumes of poetry because I don't read enough of it.  As a matter of fact, I don't think I've read any poetry in 2008.  So poetry it is.

Thanks, Alisia, for hosting a great challenge!  I'm really looking forward to it.