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How to Read Literature Like a Professor: In honor of Professor Foster’s impending new book, How to Read Novels Like a Professor, I’m doing a casual rereading of the original. What a lovely book. The Introduction captures, for me, the feeling of sitting in an actual college literature class.
The Book of Lost Things: I requested this book from my library on the recommendation of several bloggers. The beginning of it just breaks your heart. I’m now only about 100 pages in and the plot is quickly moving towards fantasy – what with the weird wolf/humans created by Little Red Riding Hood’s more illicit activities appearing on the scene. I’ll be posting a review of this pretty soon, I’m sure.
Bible: Still plugging away at Numbers. And, for those of you wondering, the numbering of the people ends around chapter ten. Now we are into a lot of whining and striking by lightening.
The New Yorker: I currently have the May 26, 2008 issue stashed in my purse. Not too much has grabbed my attention as yet. I’m halfway through a short story by John Updike called “The Full Glass.” The story didn’t quite capture my full attention. We’ll see if the ending can rescue it. I also skimmed through an article by Jeffrey Toobin on a McCain Court. I was a bit offended by its extreme liberal tone, so Mr. Toobin lost a little of his credibility (earned by most of The Nine) with me.
BOOK CLUB REPORT
Both of my book clubs met last week. First up was a small book club that consists of myself and two other women. We read The Alchemist. I think everyone liked it. Discussion centered more around the individual ramifications of the message, rather than the writing itself. I like the concept of a Personal Legend. The problem is that everyone’s Personal Legend is, well, personal.
Next up was my regular book club. I hosted. About five people attended. We read The Shell Seekers. Unfortunately, I read the book back in January and had loaned out my copy, so I couldn’t review. I wasn’t much help in the limited discussion that ensued. Though I wasn’t much help on specifics, this much I know: READ THE SHELL SEEKERS! Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale is up for June.
I haven’t been keeping my on my New Yorker review.s For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this particular issue stashed in my purse for reading emergencies. I’m retiring it today and putting another issue in my purse, so I thought I would do a quick rundown of my favorite articles.
Annals of Law – Camp Justice: The next stage at Guantanamo
Written by the author of The Nine, this article looks at the potential ways the new President might deal with Guantanamo. Thought provoking, if a little too detailed.
Profiles – Somebody Has To Be in Control: George Clooney and the art of fame
This article was interesting but seemed to only graze the surface of who George Clooney is. At first, I was disappointed by that but then I realized that that is the point. George just won’t let anyone in.
Fiction – “The Lie” by T. Coraghessan Boyle
This story drew me in in a way that many New Yorker fiction stories fail to do. I read the whole story, start to finish, with no skimming. I didn’t like the story. Wait. I didn’t like the protagonist. I related. To a point. Young man, disillusioned with wife, baby, job, life tells lies. Just read it.
The New Yorker – Feb. 25, 2008
This issue of the New Yorker didn’t speak to me as much as some of the others have. There were, though, as always, some interesting items.
The Political Scene: On the Bus – this article chronicles some of the adventures on the McCain campaign trail.
A Reporter at Large: Big Foot – this article looks into the costs, environmental and otherwise, of “going green.”
Books: Our Free-Spending Ways – this article examines the rationality, or not, of “free shipping.”
The New Yorker – Mar. 3, 2008
Here are the highlights of this edition:
· Annals of Science: Numbers Guy – this article interestingly explores how our brain processes different mathematical concepts.
· Pop Music: The Amy Winehouse Phenomenon – Sasha Frere-Jones pokes some holes into current music trends.
· On Television: Breaking Bad – this review of the new fx show was rather harsh.
· The Current Cinema – the movie reviews this week: “Vantage Point,” “The Counterfeiters,” and “Definitely, Maybe” were very insightful. I want to see all three movies now.
This issue of The New Yorker had much more in it for me than I expected. I read several of the articles all the way through.
The Talk of the Town feature discussed Obama and the Clintons. The article had a very candid examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, but, as most of the media is doing these days, tended to veer in Obama’s favor.
The Shouts & Murmurs feature also revolved around the presidential campaign with a quiz about the candidates. It was very enlightening. My favorite question was the following:
Who said what?
11. John Edwards
12. Hillary Clinton
13. Barack Obama
14. John McCain
15. Mike Huckabee
16. Bill Richardson
17. Mitt Romney
18. Rudy Giuliani
(a) “Americans are looking for a change.”
(b) “Our time for change has come.”
(c) “I believe deeply in change.”
(d) “Look, what we need is change, there’s no question.”
(e) “I know that I have been an agent of change.”
(f) “I want to make change but I’ve already made change. I will continue to make change. . . . I embody change.”
(g) “Not only can I talk change with you, I’ve lived it.”
(h) “We don’t mention September 11th nearly as much as people think.”
*The answers are (11) c, (12) f, (13) b, (14) e, (15) a, (16) d, (17) g, (18) h.
It made me laugh about the rhetoric that people choose to swallow.
Then there was an article about a murder in Poland that was solved by, among other things, the detectives reading the murderer’s novel. Good times.
Alice Munro’s short story “Free Radicals” left me a bit puzzled. The ending was kind of open to interpretation, so if any one out there in blogland has read it, let’s discuss.
Finally, John Updike’s Book section reviewed a new collection of the novels of Flann O’Brien. Let’s just say that the review was not favorable. Updike doesn’t like O’Brien, and he found a rather blatant error in the introduction to the collection. It would make me sad to have John Updike call me out like that in The New Yorker. It’ll probably get blamed on the fact-checker who works for free parking.
February 4, 2008
I recently subscribed to The New Yorker. I’ve always been in love with the idea of the magazine, but, most of the time, the content is a bit supercilious for my taste. But when I got a great offer on a two-year subscription in the mail, I couldn’t resist.Anyway, the first issue came yesterday. I skimmed through it and read half of a couple of articles and was done. Sigh. I want to like it, I really do.
December 24, 2007
On a related note, NPR did a story on a December 2007New Yorker story last week. The story is called “Twilight of the Books” by Caleb Crain. The article asserts that reading is on a serious decline, with only 46.7% of Americans asserting that they had read a work of creative fiction within the last year. Since reading is an occupation and topic dear to my heart, I was fascinated by both the statistics and the hypothesis in the article. Crain asserts that, since books and the printed word are no longer the primary means of human communication in the digital age, the world is going to have to reanalyze how it converses with itself. Check it out!
