I Have to Read This??!

     We've all experienced it: a friend not just recommending a book but commanding you to read it. The words "You've got to read this book!" are followed by skepticism laced with a heavy dose of obligation. Sure, they're your friend, and the two of you have quite a bit in common. But book taste? That's a touchy subject. You pride yourself on having an eclectic taste in books. When a book is thrust on you this way, you feel pressured not only to like it but to love it. Isn't it convenient when you actually do?
     The best book ever recommended to me was Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. The events in the novel are partially based on the author's experiences but are, for the most part largely fictional. An escaped Australian bank robber travels to Mumbai, India where he lives for a decade.

With Shantaram, I avoided starting the book for several weeks. Once I had begun reading, however, I was hooked. Time constraints forced me to return my borrowed copy, and so I finished reading with a copy from the public library. All in all, it took me about one week to read a 1,000-page tome.
     Have any of you  had similar experiences with book recommendations? What was the best book ever recommended to you?


- Rose

Mosses from an Old Manse

     What is the oldest book on your bookshelves? We were pondering this question today, so like normal bibliophiles (oxymoron!) we searched our shelves for our oldest and most tattered books. Our copies of Lorna Doone, Raintree County, The Building of Jalna, and The Moonstone were in the running for the oldest book we own, but the winner is Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse.
     Frances purchased this in the late 1970s in a used bookshop Downtown called the Haunted Bookshop. It was probably $2 at most, but worth every penny.
     Our copy was published by Donahue, Henneberry & Co. in 1900. The date isn't actually in the book, but the website WorldCat has very similar editions listed that were published in 1900. It has an Art Deco style cover in silver and blue. It includes some of our favorite Hawthorne short stories such as Rappaccini's Daughter, Young Goodman Brown, and The Birth-Mark.

     Anyone else have really old books? We're interested in hearing about them and their stories!

The Sandcastle - Iris Murdoch

     I've read several of Iris Murdoch's novels in the past year and loved them.  This was one of my favorites.  Like her other novels, The Sandcastle is filled with dark humor, captivating characters, and plot twists. It is a story of love, guilt, loyalty, ambition, magic, and art.
     At the heart of the novel is a love affair.  It begins with a verbal conflict between Mor, a teacher at St. Bride's school, and his wife, Nan, over his future and that of their children.  It is immediately clear that Nan usually wins such arguments because Mor gives in to keep peace.  Mor reflects:

     "The early years of their marriage had been happy enough.  At that time he and Nan had talked of nothing but themselves.  When this subject failed, however, they had been unable to find another - and one day Mor made the discovery that he was tied for life to a being that could change, who could withdraw herself from him and become independent.  On that day Mor had renewed his marriage vows."

     When Rain Carter, brought up in France by her artist father, comes to St. Bride's to paint an official portrait of the retired headmaster, Demoyte, Mor finds himself falling in love.  She loves him, too, but his twenty-year marriage and two children are barriers to its consummation.  Neither of them are adept at this sort of situation - she is very young and his weakness lies in his problem with making decisions.  What follows are chance meetings, intercepted letters, and the appearance of a gypsy/vagabond who seems to be a harbinger of doom.

     Rain tells Mor that, as a child, she tried to build sandcastle's on Mediterranean beaches but when she "tried to make a sandcastle the sand would just run away between my fingers.  It was too dry to hold together."  Like the sandcastle, the lives of the characters are swept up in the chaotic tide of events and what once seemed secure slips away from them.
     The novel ends with Mor's daughter, Felicity, thinking, "Everything was alright now.  It was alright.  It was alright."  But perhaps it wasn't.
     If you've read other Murdoch novels and liked them, give The Sandcastle a try.  It has echoes of The Black Prince but I thought it was much better.
 

- Frances

Bookish Quotes

Introducing our new weekly feature: Bookish Quotes! Every week we will post two quotes about books and the art of reading. Enjoy!


"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
     ~ Jorge Luis Borges

"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."
     ~ Virginia Woolf

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four...and Ten!

 We couldn't resist copying this from Stuck In A Book, so here are our "five" books (except that there are really ten - we're both terrible at math).

1. The book I'm currently reading:

 Frances

The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch – I discovered Iris Murdoch in 2010, and this is my latest of her books. If it’s anything like the others I’ve read, it won’t disappoint!

Rose

 

The Hollow by Agatha Christie – I tried to read this once before but was distracted by a large assembly happening around me (I’m never good at reading in large public places). So, I’m going to give this Poirot another go. If I finish, it will be the first Poirot that I’ve ever read.

 

2. The last book I finished:

Frances

Saratoga Trunk by Edith Ferber - This was...disappointing. It won a Pulitzer Prize, so expected it to be better. I read afterwards that she had initially written it as a play, which explains a lot. At the time, it was praised for capturing dialects, but I felt they were contrived.

 Rose

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - See our post about Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I doubt it will be easy to follow up such a great read!

3. The next book I want to read:

 Frances

A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy - I adore Thomas Hardy, and this is a lesser-known novel that I found listed on Classic Bookshelf.

 Rose

 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - I have read this book before several years ago, but who could resist re-reading Shirley Jackson? I may change my mind tomorrow, but today I'm willing to say that We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Shirley Jackson at her best.

4. The last book I bought:

Frances

The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch - I bought this at a library sale. It was my first Iris Murdoch and my favorite, so far.

Rose

  

 Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain - I found this at the Book Nook and bought it for myself for my birthday. It sounded like an interesting take on the cultural/political revolution set in 1930's India.

5. The last book I was given:

 Frances

Losing Battles by Eudora Welty - I read this several years ago with a book club, but never had my own copy of the book. Rose gave it to me for Christmas.

Rose

Hundraåringen by Jonas Jonasson - I won this book in a giveaway on the Swedish blog Transparent Swedish. It was actually sent to me by the author himself, signed. Unfortunately, my Swedish isn't up to par, and it may take me a while before I can read further than the first chapter. It does, however, look great on my bookshelf! Tack så mycket, Herr Jonasson!

Books on T.V.

Because my love of books doesn't stop at merely reading and blogging about them, I have become addicted to several television series focused entirely on books and the people who read them.

The Book Group

I discovered this gem, which aired on the BBC, through Hulu.com. Each episode sees the book group reading a new title and dealing with everything else in their lives, as well. I found the show to be hilarious in every way and finished watching both series in just a few days. If you enjoy The Book Group also look for the writer/director Annie Griffin's Coming Soon, which I found equally enjoyable.
http://www.hulu.com/the-book-group

Invitation to World Literature

This show aired on PBS in the U.S. earlier this year. Each half-hour episode discusses one classic work in World Lit with university professors, actors/directors who may have been involved in stage productions of the work, and simple readers who enjoy it. Some of the works covered include The Odyssey, The Tale of Genji, Candide, Things Fall Apart, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and The Thousand and One Nights. The website for the show has each episode available to watch online as well as fun extras. I'm not sure whether or not there will be more episodes, but I hope PBS realizes what a great show this is.

http://www.learner.org/courses/worldlit/

The Librarians

 

Full disclosure - I have not seen this show. I have been trying in vain to find it online for a few years now. I first stumbled upon this Australian mockumentary about librarians when I was obsessed with The Office. This could very well be only a moderately amusing show (like Parks & Recreation) or even thoroughly bad. If anyone has seen it or knows where I can watch online, do tell.

Black Books

Black Books is absolutely one of my all-time favorite shows. How could it possibly be bad when it was created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan? The show follows the antics of a delightfully cynical Irishman and his friends working in a book shop. Selling books, however, is obviously not the ultimate goal. I shall leave you with a clip where Bernard and Manny write the best children's book on Earth.

 

If you know of any other shows similar to these or even films, please share as I'm always on the look out for something new to watch in between reading.

- Rose

Evelina - Fanny Burney

     Published anonymously in 1774, Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is an epistolary novel, related in a series of letters.  It immediately became the 'hot read' of the time and the true author revealed.  The letters give seventeen year-old Evelina's perspective on the social lives of women in a male-oriented culture.  It is a witty, comic novel that satirizes English aristocracy and their social pretenses.
     Evelina is the unacknowledged, legitimate daughter of an English aristocrat who is raised by a vicar in rural seclusion until she is seventeen.  The Evelina's captivating innocence and lack of knowledge of society's rules lead to misunderstandings and embarrassing social errors when she is thrust into London society.  At her first ball she commits a terrible faux pas.

     "A confused idea now for the first time entered my head of something I had heard of the rules of an assembly; but I was never at one before - I have only danced at school - and so giddy and heedless I was, that I had not once considered the impropriety of refusing one partner, and afterwards accepting another."

Her honor is questioned by the first and defended by the second, beginning the pursuit of Evelina by several eligible society bachelors.
      The story is complicated by disguised identities, misplaced fortunes, and questionable intentions.  The heroine's entry into society, womanhood, and love along with the novel's notions of sensibility and romanticism were influential in the later writings of Jane Austen.  If you are a Jane Austen fan, you will love this book!

Portrait of Fanny Burney

Best Lines: (from my favorite scene where two young gentlemen devise an unorthodox way of settling a bet)
"I asked him how the bet was to be settled?  He told me that, to his great satisfaction, the parties had been prevailed upon to lower the sum from one thousand to one hundred pounds, and that they had agreed it should be determined by a race between two old women, one of whom was to be chosen by each side, and both were to be proved more than eighty years of age, though, in other respects strong and healthy as possible."


- Frances

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

     We write this sitting at our green desk. It is much more comfortable than a kitchen sink, as Cassandra Mortmain can attest. She begins chronicling her life at the Castle in the kitchen sink because, as she explains, "sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring." Dodie Smith's novel, told through the journals of the intelligent, witty, and perceptive Cassandra, is a classic and must-read mentioned on nearly all book blogs. We searched for a copy for months and finally found one in a used bookstore. Although I Capture the Castle is a perfectly good book to read by yourself, we recommend reading it aloud as we did.

     In a crumbling castle in 1930s England, the Mortmain family struggles to survive the father's writer's block, poverty, and the lack of eligible bachelors in the country. 17-year old Cassandra's voice is genuine and captivating, often standing out as the only sensible one in the family. Through her diaries, Cassandra manages to capture the essence and eccentricities of life in the Castle.

Best Line: "I wish Stephen hadn't made me think of food, because I have been hungry ever since; which is ridiculous as I had a good egg tea not six hours ago."