I Take a Break from the Twenty-First Century

I have completely abandoned all hope of keeping up with all the new books I want to read. This week I am catching up on the classics; very exciting when there are so many books that have been adored and kept alive-and in print- for ages and are just waiting for you to discover them. Many thanks to Anne for recommending the first book:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

This book is an amazing place to inhabit for a couple of days; I found reading its first chapters to be as comforting and dreamy as a hot bath on a cold night with a cup of hot chocolate. Sheer bliss. Dodie Smith has my eternal respect for taking this perfectly straightforward romantic and amusing tale and twisting it, almost painfully, in its second movement into a terrific complex literary tangle that kept me guessing till the last page. I don’t think I’m alone in the feeling of actually becoming the enchanting narrator, Cassandra Mortmain, as she dutifully stretches her writing muscles by describing her eccentric home (the dilapidated castle itself is one of my favorite characters in the book) and those who inhabit it: her father, James Mortmain, struggling with insurmountable writers block after his stunning debut novel, her stepmother, Topaz, the stunning artist’s model whose greatest pleasure in life, apart from inspiring others, involves running naked through the woods, her sister, Rose, who offers her soul to the devil to end her poverty, her brother, Thomas, ever affable, and Stephen Colley, the farm worker who refuses pay for his efforts and loves Cassandra unconditionally. Seventeen year old Cassandra tells us, early in the novel, of her dislike for the happily-ever-after ending of so many stories, preferring instead the more realistic open ending with loose ends and infinite outcomes the reader is left to wonder about. Dodie Smith herself leaves an ending which extends far beyond the book’s pages, which even now, a week later, I still find myself mulling over.

A Little Princess by Frances Burnett

The story of precocious seven-year-old Sara Crewe is pure escapism. After watching the 1995 adaptation by Alfonso Cuaron and hearing Guillermo Del Toro wax nostalgic over the 1939 adaptation starring Shirley Temple I finally allowed myself to read this sweet little story. Burnett’s writing is close to perfect. The book walks a very fine line between impossibly far-fetched imaginings and the gritty grounded world of London in 1888. Sara’s compassion throughout is so thoroughly imagined and explored that it kept me believing her wonderful stories far beyond the book’s (mostly) happy end.

The Importance of Browsing

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk

I am stunned, on occasion, to look at my teetering stack of books to be read and find very few that I have selected for myself. In a fit of organization, sequestered very strictly to this area of my messy abode, I sorted and bookmarked each volume with a bit of paper noting who recommended it to me, so that in time I can be sure to thank and discuss with the appropriate person. I am extremely grateful for every idea and perspective to be shared, and to be thought of by people I so respect.

Then there are times that I find it necessary to wander through the Easy Chair’s bookshelves completely free from any reading responsibility, picking out only things that I would like to read for myself. It’s almost a guilty pleasure to neglect my ever-growing list and select a book I’ve never heard of before, so that the experience becomes mine alone. Finding your next read for yourself may seem like a small thing, but when so many of the people I meet here are looking for that one specific title, and nothing else, it makes me think that too often we deny ourselves the pleasure of discovery.

For example, I recently finished The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk. This 63-page essay may not be to your taste, as it is written in ye olde English and for the most part dry as… well, a seventeenth-century essay. Still, I found this book to be a delight to read, and a testament to the magic of meandering through a bookstore that stocks unique and odd titles and the joy of finding a jewel of a book, destined to be a part of your home forever.

Four Letter Word

Four Letter Word

Invented Correspondence from the Edge of Modern Romance
Edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter

Who doesn’t like to receive a love letter? Better yet, who wouldn’t like to read a love letter written by their favorite author? This collection grabbed my attention as soon as it came into the bookstore, as it features several of my favorite writers: Margaret Atwood; Leonard Cohen; Jeanette Winterson; and Neil Gaiman just to name a few. Be forwarned, reader, if you dare to look at these letters for any period of time, this book will demand to be taken home with you.

I really like the idea of an anthology like this. I bought it for the authors I knew, and ended up being introduced to several new voices. These writers examine love from many angles, at times funny (Graham Roumieu), ironic (Tessa Brown), chilling (Mandy Sayer), romantic (Jan Morris), and heart-breaking (Joseph Boyden).

The cohesive idea is stretched by talented hands until virtually everything ever written, by anyone, seemed, to me, to be a love letter to the world: a sharing of perspective and ideas desined to annihilate alienation and enhance a sense of understanding and enchantment with the author. If that’s not love, what is?

Hallowmere

The Hallowmere Series by Tiffany Trent

*In the Serpent’s Coils * By Venom’s Sweet Sting * Between Golden Jaws * Maiden of the Wolf * Queen of the Masquerade * Oracle of the Morrigan * (More Coming…)

First of all, I have a confession to make: I have read only the first two books. That is because, at the time I’m writing this, they are the only ones available. I’m recommending them now for a variety of reasons. First of all because these books are a well-written, fast-paced, exciting series, full of surprises. Secondly, author Tiffany Trent is a professor at Virginia Tech, and as Blacksburg’s independent bookstore we are always eager to support those who share the voice of our community with the world. Third and last, these books are set to come out very quickly, combining in a most wonderful way anticipation and instant gratification. The rapid publication set for the remaining books in the series is delicious- particularly if you, like me, have had a beloved author keep you waiting for five years or more between each volume of their series (I’m looking at you, Jean M. Auel…)

The story centers around an fifteen year old girl at the end of the civil war. Corrine’s plight is familiar to all lovers of fantasy: parents dead (or are they?) she is left in unfamiliar and unfriendly territory, living first with an emotionally unavailable uncle, then shipped off to the satisfyingly creepy Falston Academy. The first book dragged a bit for me, in places, primarily because of the staunch propriety of its characters, which leads them into multiple life-threatening situations, all of which could have (it seems to me) been easily avoided with a bit of communication. Still, the characters were compelling enough to stick with through the tragic end of Serpent’s Coils, and I found Venom’s Sweet Sting to be a very nice follow up.

Go ahead, let yourself get excited about this series. You won’t regret it. Particularly if you think Scottish accents are hot.

Check our Tiffany Trent’s website at www.tiffany-trent.com

Jane Austen

The Complete Jane Austen

Including: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan.

Masterpiece Theater on PBS is currently broadcasting adaptations of all of Jane Austen’s novels. I have made it my goal to keep up, rereading each before the film version is broadcast.

Let me shout it from the hilltops, heedless of rolling eyes and placating sighs: I love Jane Austen! In the midst of my contemporaries, many of whom dismiss Austen’s novels as shallow romances or (worse?) frilly period pieces that are dense and unreadable, let me share my own experiences in reading her work.

I think I first started reading these books because of the wondrous quality for which they are most often disparaged: the romance.  I mean the guy-and-gal, will-they-won’t-they romance. There really aren’t that many surprises in the basic love story structure Austen normally employs.  Boy will meet girl, less worthy suitors will appear for both, true love will conquer all and less worthy characters will be eaten by bears (or otherwise punished and/or humiliated) and I found that all to be great fun.

Later, though, the name of the game in really enjoying a Jane Austen novel lay, for me, in embracing the subtleties. In each novel there lies its own set of undercurrents, social satire, and karmic justice, all of which I still find immensely appealing, even without delving too deep into what exactly Miss Austen might have been saying about the world she inhabited (for that I recommend Jane Austen by Carol Shields, 2005 Penguin Books).

The romance is still my favorite part of any of her books, but perhaps surprisingly it is not the story between the (noble) man and the (desperate) woman that I find so enticing. There is another side, existing in each and every one of Jane Austen’s books that I find to be much more satisfying.  In each tale there comes a critical point in which everything in the central heroine’s life will be made much easier if she compromises herself, settles for less than happiness, and sells out. It never happens, except to ansillary characters in cautionary side stories. This is what keeps me coming back to Jane; the fact that all of her heroines, from Elizabeth Bennett to Fanny Price, fall deeply and madly in love with themselves.

His Dark Materials

The Golden Compass * The Subtle Knife * The Amber Spyglass

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

This three volume series and its controversial themes have caused a furor, particularly with the recent release of the film adaptation of the first book, The Golden Compass (that’s Northern Lights for the Brits out there, though for once it’s America that’s using the author’s original title).

I love these books dearly. I have read the series three times total, at different stages in my life. I believe it is a testament to the greatness of Mr. Pullman’s literary prowess that with each reading I have been changed, enchanted, and stimulated in entirely new ways.

The first time was just after the release of the third and final installment. Oh, how I sped through The Amber Spyglass, too eager to complete the story of Lyra, who I’d come to love dearly three years before. I had not yet read Milton’s Paradise Lost (the source of the series’ title, by the way) but I gorged myself on fantasy. At that time the books read as an enhanced and vibrantly relevant retelling of The Lord of the Rings. They were Harry Potter with teeth. I glossed over many aspects in my reading because I was so focused by the sparkling character studies of Will and Lyra. The experience left me dazzled by fantastic worlds, understood and explained so competently by the author that, to me, they made the most perfect sense.

A few years later I read them again. A curious phenomena I’ve noticed , with myself and others, is how imminently re-readable these books are so multi-faceted and dense, yet they have a brisk and exciting pace, and I found it difficult to recall specific information. Hence my second reading held surprises as exhilarating as the first. This time I was more conscious of the author’s artful blasphemy, and my careful dissection of the plot was punctuated by actual gasps of shock. The author’s gentle narrative this time felt rebellious and a bit angry, especially through characters like Lord Asriel and the witch Ruta Skadi . I was less naive, I guess, and I better understood now that subject matter like homosexual angels involved in a revolution against the omnipotent Authority was a little bit upsetting to some religious groups. I was grateful for Philip Pullman’s fearlessness and honesty, for without those two characteristics what is ever really worth reading?

So now, today, I’ve just finished reading these books for the third time. They were, as ever, extraordinary. I cried at the end, as I always do, for its conclusion is a sad one in some ways. This time, though, I was left with a very strong feeling, something much harder to inspire in people than excitement, or fear, or rage. I felt hope. These books are the most stunningly hopeful works I’ve read, ever. This hope is all the more powerful for the fact that it stems not from obeying and trusting blindly but from free thought, curiousity, awareness, and consciousness. It is the type of hope I feel is needed now more than ever.

I can say that, as a reader, this book has imparted upon me the most precious gift imaginable: each time I opened these books I found what I needed. Thank you, Philip Pullman.

Now would you hurry up and finish the Book of Dust?! We’ve been waiting forever!

Lyra’s Oxford is a short companion story. I highly recommend it.

We Still Read!

Hello, Cyberspace,

This is just a short post to express greetings and salutations. This will be a space for me to recommend book titles, share my opinions, and most of all to express my sincere gratitude to be working in a truly wonderful community. Thanks to all of you, especially for humoring me when I’m rambling about the fantastic novel I just read. This truly is a special place to be.