2011 LT Reading Challenge

We are now in the 6th month of 2011, which feels wholly unnatural to me.  Time has alternately been dreadfully slow or moving by super fast.  Either way, I can't keep up.  Since the year is nearly half over I thought I would do a quick check-in to let people (someone? anyone?) know how I was doing on my 11 in 11 challenge over at Library Thing.  The idea is to read 11 books in 11 categories for 2011. Now I didn't exactly do that b/c it would be way too many my list is staggered so that category 1 has only 1 book, cat. 8 has 8 books.... you get the picture.  I tried to structure it so that the categories I knew I would be reading more of any (like sci-fi/fantasy) had a higher # of books, whereas my category "Ukrainian" has only one. 

Well, as far as book challenges go, it has always been clear that I never finish them.  I try really hard, but I just end up reading other things, or not finishing books, or getting distracted.  I don't know, there is some perversion in my head that stops me from reading books I say that I will read.  In other words, I have been saying for years I would finish The Brother's Karamazov, but I never touch it.  This does not mean, however, that I'm not reading books, just not the ones I'm "supposed" to read.  Whatever.  Ultimately, compared to my previous attempts at this themed challenge (I tried it for 2008 and 2009), I'm doing ok I think.  Overall though I've read less than half of the books on my list; roughly 30%. 

I've started reading about 10 on the list, not exaggerating.  The problem is that I tend to try to read too many things at once, and then I see a new book someone posted about on some blog and then I want to read that one too, so I get it from the library, but then it sits on my shelf and sometimes I renew them, but usually they just get late fees.  Yeah, you see.  Anyway, the silver lining is that I'm not traveling this summer so theoretically I will have time to read.  However, I'm also supposed to be rewriting grant applications this summer.  (But at least to help motivate me w/that I joined a writing group). 

In case you are curious, the list is below of what I intend to read vs. what I have actually read.  Feel free to point and laugh at me if you want. 

1.      1. Ukrainian

1.

2.      2. Theory/Philosophy

      1.

2. Heidegger (bro.) 

3.   Tomes

      1. War and Peace (own)

      2. Don Quixote (own)

      3. Drood (own)

4.   Books from the Family (own all)

      1. Decolonising the Mind

      2. Wizard of the Crow

      3. Parlor Politics

      4. Planning the Past or the Invasion Within

Bonus: Ashes of Waco

5.   Left Behind

      1. The Brothers Karamazov (own)

      2. Dead Souls (own)

      3. The Windup Girl (own)

      4. Landscape Painted with Tea  (UW)

      5. Lanark (MPL)             

Bonus: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (MPL)

6.   Listed

      1. Iron Council (started) (own)

      2. Ash (UW?)

      3. Life of Pi (own)

      4. Gulag Archipelago (own)

      5. Beloved (own)

      6. Old Man’s War (MPL) (Tor’s list)

7.   South

      1. Sound of Building Coffins (MPL)

      2. All the King’s Men (MPL)

      3.  The Missing, Tim Gautreaux (MPL)

      4. A Confederacy of Dunces (MPL)

      5. Antarctica, Robinson

      6. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (MPL)

      7. The Reavers are the Angels by Alden Bell

      Bonus:  The Strange Career of Jim Crow C Vann Woodward,  Kaleidoscope Odessa

8.   Its New to Me

      1. North and South (MPL)

      2. Light, Harrison

      3. Storm Front, Butcher

      4. Perfume, Suskind

      5. Equations of Life, Morden (MPL)

      6. The Dervish House

      7.

      8.

9.   Science Fiction/Fantasy

      1.Vivia by Tanith Lee

      2. Tomb of the Undergates Sam Sykes

      3. The Half-Made World Felix Gilman

      4. Titus Groan (own)

      5. Habitation of the Blessed Valente

      6. The Cardinal’s Blades

      7. Nights of Villjamur

      8.

      9.

10.  You Tell Me  (MPL)

      1. The Yawning Heights

      2. Pastel City, Harrison

      3.

      4. The Book Thief

      5. World War Z

      6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera

      7. 2666, Bolano 

      8. Detective Story by Imre Kertesz

      9. Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood

      10.

11. Ongoing Faulkner Challenge (Own)

      1. Pylon

      2. Absalom Absalom

      3. The Unvanquished

      4. If I forget Thee Jerusalem

      5. The Hamlet

      6. Go Down Moses

      7. Intruder in the Dust

      8. Requiem for a Nun

      9. A Fable

      10. The Town

      11. The Mansion

Bonus: Collected Short Stories

Review: Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!

            This is the tragic story of Thomas Sutpen’s attempt to establish a dynasty in the 1830s.  He arrives in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, MS as a strange outsider with wild slaves, a mysterious source of seemingly limitless income, and a rigid plan—establish an estate, find a wife, produce a male heir.  While Sutpen does accomplish his life’s goals, his unwavering adherence to an ideal brings out the ruin of him and his family.  The story of Sutpen and his various il/legitimate children is told primarily through the point of view of Quentin Compson (the same as in The Sound & the Fury).  The book, however, is much more than a straightforward narrated life history.  Absalom, Absalom! is layered through multiple points of view.  It is a richly detailed story, but is also complex.

            If you are not a fan of Faulkner’s writing style, I would not recommend this book.  Other works by him, though still distinctly “Faulkner” in style, are much more accessible.  Here Quentin and his roommate Shreve spend a cold winter night at university telling the Sutpen tale to one another.  It is obvious that Shreve has heard much of the history before as he interrupts, embellishes, and at times takes over the narrative.  The story is not only about Sutpen, but also about Quentin’s experiences in Jefferson, about the ways in which he learned bits and pieces of these events over time from a variety of characters such as Aunt Rosa (Sutpen’s wife’s sister) and his father – who himself is retelling it from Quentin’s grandfather.  He experienced other events directly.

            The hearsay third-hand jumbled nature of the transmission is important because the reader experience the plot not as a straightforward narrative, but as a palimpsest of events across nearly a century.  The reader learns details in waves; at the beginning of the book, you get the basic idea and then Faulkner builds upon that foundation by adding details or retelling a section through a different character’s point of view. Unfortunately, many characters are unreliable, so as they passed on their story to Quentin or his grandfather, they edited and/or omitted crucial information.  “’Your father,’ Shreve said. ‘He seems to have got an awful lot of information awful quick, after having waited forty-five years.’… ‘Grandfather didn’t tell him all of it either, like Sutpen never told Grandfather quite all of it.’”  (220).

            Another example that is illustrative of the mangled transmission of key information, involves a tragic incident between Aunt Rosa and Sutpen; specifically, he has told her something, which she never is never able to forgive him for saying.  The reader is left in suspense about what exactly he said for over half the book, and the answer comes embedded within a page long sentence casually thrown into a paragraph on an unrelated topic.  There you finally learn, with little warning, of how Sutpen insulted Rosa.  Faulkner does not make reading easy.

            I could go on for pages about the way the book is written, about foreshadowing (“The day after we—after that night when we—“), and flashbacks, and mind-numbingly long rambling sentences.  I will not.  However, I do think ultimately, Absalom, Absalom! is worth reading.  First, you discover much more about Quentin’s personality and inner turmoil that I think helps clarify his actions in The Sound & The Fury.  He is a fascinating character.  Second, it is a powerful book about important issues—idealism, blind ambition, doomed Romanticism, and the end of an era.  It is also about deep-seated racism, so unwavering that incest is preferred over relationships between people of different color.  Finally, it is also about rigid class differences in the South.  It is a hard read, but worth the effort.

______________________________________________

In case you were keeping up, I have read 9 books by Faulkner at this point:
A Soldier's Pay
Mosquitoes
Sartoris
The Sound & the Fury

As I Lay Dying
Sanctuary 
Light in August
Pylon

Absalom, Absalom!

The reason why there are not reviews for that second collection - As I Lay Dying to Pylon - is because a) I read As I Lay Dying a long time ago and did not re-read it and b) because Pylon is the worst book Faulkner ever wrote, unreadable in fact.  As for the other two, I just didn't get around to reviewing them & now it has been too long.  I will say that so far Light in August is my favorite and I recommend it to any/everyone. 

Гуляю

In Ukrainian, гуляти means to walk or wander around.  It can also have the same slightly negative sense as in "to wander the streets" as in you are out and about in town and up to no good.   Here I mean it in the general sense of walking.

Its Spring!!!

It was 80 and sunny today!! Its about damn time.
Here are some other pictures, but from Chicago last week:

Baha'i Temple

Baha'i Temple (its huge!)

Detail of some of the inscriptions found all over the Temple.

A very cold beach

Lake Michigan

An Actual Post

I have been spending way too much time on Twitter. This has had an unfortunate effect upon me posting here, but I've never compared myself to those "serious" bloggers.  I don't even regularly review books, just randomly & sort of haphazardly (except during Halloween when I try a little harder). Anyway, this semester has been seriously boring and I have too much time on my hands - which does not mean I have anything interesting to update about.  W/o school or employment I have all this free time & zero excitement.  I did decide to read every ethnography on Ukraine ever published. Actually, this is not impressive b/c a) there are about 10 and b) I should have done it a long long time ago.  Maybe I'll try to review some of them.

The point of this post is to talk about my much belated trip to Chicago this weekend.  I have actually never been despite living pretty close.  I also did not end up doing any of the standard tourist things b/c my friend who I went to see lives there.

Karyn's Raw Cafe

A friend of mine has recently become really interested in the raw food movement.  I don't cook at all mostly due to laziness so the sheer amount of preparation (and creativity) needed to follow this sort of diet just boggles my mind.  This Karyn person though is apparently pretty famous w/in the community of raw food aficionados so we went to her cafe in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.  

The restaurant is part dining area part raw food store.  One half is a small fairly swanky looking eating area, while the other is full of cook books, self-help "change your life" type manifestos, a small conference room in the back for weekly classes on how to become a raw food enthusiast, and lots of dehydrated foods.  

All of the menu selections sound like "regular" food you've had before - ravioli, pizza, ice cream, nachos, etc - but are really very different from the food that inspired these creations. Now obviously they are different b/c they are made from raw or dehydratedfood, but they are also entirely vegan and mostly gluten-free, so you can imagine that limits the type of ingredients that goes into the dishes.  Everything was delicious and I have zero complaints about the restaurant side of things.  However, the store was just a bit too "new age" for me - not the food, but the literature being promoted.  Such as the book that practically declared you could cure everything with a salt/water concoction known as sole.  Clearly, some people are really in to this particular scene, its just not for me.

Ukrainian Village

My friend grew up here so we walked around this historic neighborhood for a while.  Many Ukrainians have moved from the area, but you can still hear Russian, Ukrainian, or Polish spoken on the streets pretty regularly.  We visited a couple of delis, which made me really nostalgic for L'viv.  Also, b/c everyone I ever met there seems to be going back this summer - except me - seeing all the imported foods made me a little sad.  I know it might be silly, but I really do love being in L'viv and while I'm not specifically attached to Ukrainian food it was just working yesterday to remind me of all the other things I am attached to.  

 

We also visited several churches.  Significantly you can find on the same long street, separated by several blocks two Ukrainian Catholic Churches (new calendar and old calendar), a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a Russian Orthodox Church, and a Polish (Latin) Catholic Church.  That street is a fairly good indicator of the complicated religious history in Ukraine, where all those same churches (and many others) compete for parishioners, funding, and real estate. 

Baha'i Temple

If you are ever anywhere near Wilmette (close to Evanston) you should go see this architectural masterpiece.  It is one of the most amazing structures I have ever seen.  Unfortunately, they were remodeling the gardens, but the pictures of the fountains and hedges shown in the brochure are magnificent.  I have for a while been passively interested in Baha'i after hearing about it in a World Religion class, but I don't actually know that much about their beliefs or practices.  What I learned from the flyer is that this temple in Wilmette is the national center for the Baha'i in the U.S.  It was started in 1912, and finished about 40 yrs later.  There are only seven temples in the world.  It is 9 sided, domed, and carved all over with symbols of various faiths; Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and others.  I'm not even going to try to describe the fabulous lace-like stone-work that is featured inside or out, I seriously could not do justice to the building. 

I hope that was long enough and interesting enough to make up for my lack of posting.  I will honestly try to do better.