Nonsuch Book

wrong, wrong, wrong but holding onto some favorites

Nine match-ups so far in the annual Tournament of Books. I have picked three correctly. So my original brackets were such a mess of scratch outs and mystified expletives that I printed out a new sheet, armed myself with a red Sharpie, and wrote the winner in the center of the new sheet first. And then thought through the other matches with an eye on a final contest between my two favorites - The Sellout and Our Souls at Night.

Wishful thinking, I know. With much bound to change as I get more wrong. And the Zombies are really up in the air. If the Zombies went for each other today, it would be Fates and Furies vs. The Story of My Teeth. I like that match. But it is bound to change as more good books fall. But I am still sticking with my pick for the final contest, no matter who rises from the dead.

Looking at my picks for this coming week, I can see the real possibility of getting only one of the quarterfinal match-ups correct - The Sellout wins over A Spool of Blue Thread. If that contest goes any other way, I am obviously done.

How are your picks doing? Even if you are not playing along, click over to the commentary for each match for some fun bookish talk. Work gets in the way of me participating in the daytime conversation, but I have enjoyed reading the back and forth each night. And getting in some quick comments on Twitter. It is all about the conversation.

the rooster is laughing at me

0 for 4 last week, friends. That's right. Four match-ups in the opening week of the annual Tournament of Books, and I picked the wrong book for each of them. Which makes me a winner of sorts. Only seriously miffed at one loss though - Oreo going down to The Sympathizer. I enjoyed both books, but the boldness and the timelessness of Oreo made more of an impression on me than its elegantly crafted competitor did.

So I have spent some time this weekend imagining what a rooster sounds like when it laughs (I am certain it can), dusted myself off, and I am now back and ready to post my next set of doomed picks. Ready? Here we go...

• March 14 - Our Souls at Night v. The Whites - I do not even need to think about this one. The Haruf was so powerful and moving and deceptively simple. It stayed with me for days to the point that I could not pick up another book. The Whites, though more than competent and very readable, could not come close to Our Souls at Night for me.
• March 15 - A Little Life v. The New World - This is a more complicated pick, but I have decided to go in favor of the fun quotient on this one. The New World was a giggle fest in parts for me (come to think of it, there have been lots of laughs this tournament year), and was playfully conscious of the games it engaged. It made me more than willing to play along. In contrast, A Little Life is no fun, and took about three times the number of words to convey the wretched lows in one fictional character's life than I feel were required. It made for compulsive reading, but the writing annoyed me. And if Fates and Furies, a book I enjoyed more than A Little Life, is going to get slammed for purple prose than this one cannot come out of this round standing. Or even breathing.
• March 16 - The Book of Aron v. The Tsar of Love and Techno - The Marra book blended humor and poignancy and social relevance into a very attractive reading package. It did not bowl me over but did leave much more of an impression than The Book of Aron which I came close to giving up on. I felt oddly distanced from the content, and even rationally accepting that a bit of emotional distance is necessary for the characters in the book, that this perspective was being very skillfully written by the author, I just never fully engaged.
• March 17 - A Spool of Blue Thread v. The Story of My Teeth - I talked about my Tyler opinions last week, and have tweeted lots of love for The Story of My Teeth. This is also an easy pick for me. The Luiselli was so inventive and playful! Several folks on Twitter mentioned that reading the afterward first or having some context about the construction of the book would have made it more enjoyable, and they may be right. I saw Luiselli at the National Book Festival last September, and enjoyed the background information on its own. It certainly deepened my enjoyment of the book. Additionally, the experimental writing in the ToB shortlist this year has been a blast, and I believe that this is the strongest example of it.
• March 18 - The Sellout v. The Invaders - Bright and shiny examples of satire set in two very different hoods. I enjoyed them both but The Sellout is my favorite book of the tournament this year, and only one can go on. 

And there we have the last of my opening round picks. Next week I hope to dive into a little more textual detail as we move into the next round. How have your picks fared so far? Having fun?

"this silly, moronic, informative, all-consuming, fascinating, weirdly fun thing"

It's time. Tomorrow morning, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner will kick off the Tournament of Books over at The Morning News. Waking up the rooster. The start of the silliness. Bring on the blood sport. However you choose to approach the fun.

The brackets above (click on the image for a larger view) show you how this will play out over the month of March while most others in this country are consumed by college basketball. I am proud to say that although I expect my choices (I don't say predictions anymore. That's experience talking.) to be way off as usual, I will have read each damn book by the time its bracket comes up. Every freaking book. This will give me license to... what? I cannot even begin to think of all the things this will give me license to do.

There will be four match-ups this first week, and each promises some interesting conversation. Twitter is usually lots of fun for the initial reactions to the judges' picks but more in depth conversation goes on at the event site.

Here are my preferences for week one:

• March 8 (Play-in Match) - Avenue of Mysteries vs. A Spool of Blue Thread - The meeting of the old guard. Chosen for the tournament because giants though they are, they have never been included in the tournament before this year. Although Tyler impressed me with the way she played the second half of this novel, this comes down to which of the authors' well-defined niches you prefer. And I have to go Irving and his loving and studied embrace of his own brand of odd. There is family saga and then there is family saga. And Tyler's family sagas are mundane enough to make me anxious that their tragedies could one day crush me and mine just like her fictional creations.
• March 9 - Fates and Furies vs. Bats of the Republic - Zachary Thomas Dodson gifts us an amazing piece of design work in this one as well as an interesting take on narrative construction, but ultimately, the story is not as compelling as the book as object. Before reading either of these books, I assumed I would pick this one, but Groff gave me not the gimmicky take on perspective in marriage that I was expecting (some critic compared it to Gone Girl for god's sake) but a beautifully written (occasionally over-written) reminder that no tie binds completely.
• March 10 - The Sympathizer vs. Oreo - This one was really hard for me. I appreciated the original view of the Vietnam War, the clever and quiet humor especially, of The Sympathizer, but in the end, I have to pick Oreo for not only standing the test of time (originally published in 1974), but for daring and insightful satire. Hilarious. I'm sad to see though that it would have to make it a long way in the tournament to go up against The Sellout. What a conversation that could be!
• March 11 - The Turner House vs. Ban en Banlieue - I don't really care. Flournoy's writing is admirable but I'm vaguely allergic to these types of family explorations. I'm going with the Kapil because even though it annoyed me in places, she took a great many risks here in terms of defying both genre and the way the body is popularly written. It kept reminding me in tone if not in specifics of French feminist literary theory that folks my age swam in as undergrads.

What are your picks for the first week of the tournament?

the guy who can (almost) ruin a book sale

Thomas of Hogglestock and I got an early start this Saturday morning at a community book sale. He had seen signs around the neighborhood, it benefits a good cause, and we are almost always ready to take a chance on a used book sale.

The professional book sellers were already lined up when I arrived at 7:55. I have no problem with this. They do their thing. I do mine. But I always feel that they are missing out on so much. I am touching books, examining paper quality, thinking about how design is so influenced by the time of publication, remembering things I have read and books family members treasured, looking through personal notes in texts and...... I could go on a while. I bring a lot of emotional baggage to book sales. I get great happiness from the hunt, and seeing other people matched up with books they love. I would not get great happiness from super speed table searches and scanning books into my mobile. But the professionals must make a living, and I have benefited from their work when I have had to search for hard to find books.

Thomas and I always try to be good participants in the fun. No snatching or grabbing, and we neaten the tables and shelves as we look through. Just to keep things nice for the next person. Thomas goes even beyond that and will re-shelve (or table) books to their appropriate category. Today that niceness was rewarded when a volunteer asked Thomas if we would like to look through a closet of boxes that they had not been able to get to yet. Of course! The possibilities! Lead the way!

So here is our own little bookish nirvana until one of the professionals decides to nose in. He had no "nice people" invitation like we did. He just followed us, and proceeded to not only take my space but push right up against Thomas in a rude, no boundaries kind of way. Thomas tried to be nice about it, but the professional's rudeness persisted. Thomas looked a little more, but the fun had been stolen by this guy, and we gave up before looking through all the available boxes. 

Most of the professionals are really nice people, bookish just like the rest of us. Inevitably though, there is always one or two of this rude variety at every sale. It is just not necessary. Come on rude bookseller from Pennsylvania (yeh, we saw you in the parking lot), just be a decent human being and a credit to your profession.

And what did I come home with today? Aside from fodder for a little rant?  Three Nancy Mitford titles and an Anthony Powell edition I've been hunting for - all from Thomas. And then I bought a lovely Modern Library edition of short stories by Henry James, Empty Mansions for a guilty pleasure book that Thomas recommended, two Graham Green Penguins, a du Maurier book I have not read, a 1950s edition of The Once and Future King (too many markings inside so it may become a framed cover), a Rachman title I enjoyed and lent out but never made its way home to me, and some Julia Child letters. My daughter is a David Mitchell fan so I picked up the UK edition of Slade House for her to go with her US edition, and my son wants to read Moonwalking with Einstein which was also once in the house but disappeared with a friend.

There was also a bake sale right along side the books. Tasty. A morning well-spent with the lovely Thomas. Aside from the rude guy.

join us in reading the magic mountain by thomas mann?

Bellezza, Richard and I are reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann together this March, and starting a conversation about the book the last week of the month. Anyone else care to join in? Tiny little thing. Just a little over 700 pages. Come on. You can do it. I have been assured by a reader that knows (okay, my father) that this book simply flies by replete with comic moments not indicated by this publisher synopsis:

"In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps--a community devoted exclusively to sickness--as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death."

And then this about the newest translation:

"One of the most influential and celebrated German works of the 20th century has been newly rendered in English by Woods, twice winner of the PEN Translation Prize. First published in 1929, Mann's novel tells the story of Hans Castorp, a modern everyman who spends seven years in an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, finally leaving to become a soldier in World War I. Isolated from the concerns of the everyday world, he is exposed to the wide range of ideas that shaped a world on the verge of explosion. Considering what was to follow, the most poignant moment comes when Naphta, a Jewish-born Jesuit, defends the use of terror and the taking of life for the sake of an all-encompassing idea. Woods's work reads more naturally than the original translation, which, while faithful to the German, was stiff and forbidding." (Library Journal)

I read Death in Venice back in the fall, and was completely taken by the depth of emotion conveyed in occasionally stark language or crafty use of allusion. I have high hopes for this read also, especially in the company of Richard and Bellezza. It would be lovely if you could join us...

miscellaneous maisie

February was a great reading month for me, but a re-read of What Maisie Knew by Henry James with smart friends was definitely the highlight of the month. I forgot how much I love James. Long, wandering, suggestive, indulgent sentences and all. If time and head space permitted, I could have stayed with the book for much longer. Now I find myself looking through all the shelves, gathering all James and James-related into one space, and entertaining a reading plan for the rest of the year. But before that, I want to share just a few more things that were of interest to me while reading Maisie.

• The 2013 movie adaptation of the book was entertaining in its own right, but could not create that same wonder and tension about what Maisie may know about her unkind circumstances that James created in the novel. Francine Prose wrote an insightful article about the adaptation, ending her piece with a point with which I strongly agreed - "On the one hand, it’s gratifying to realize that someone else has noticed how many New York parents treat their children like infants or like adult confidants, and remain inseparable from their cell phones even as they are, in theory, spending “quality time” with the kids. On the other hand, it’s striking that a novel written more than a hundred years ago seems so much more modern—in every way more daring—than a film that has only lately appeared in our neighborhood theaters." James was daring and so keenly in touch with dark possibilities.
• Henry James is really funny. No, really. Sometimes in a bitchy, cruel sort of way, but funny nonetheless. Mrs. Wix may take a bit of a beating in this book, but it is difficult to not at least smirk at the creepy dead daughter business or her unchecked lust for Sir Claude.
• "No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connexion of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us for ever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody’s right and ease and the other somebody’s pain and wrong." I recommend taking a moment to read James' preface to the 1908 edition after you finish the book. His writing is not so compact in that introduction to the new edition but the expansiveness of his thoughts on the text after having gained some distance from it are delicious, and challenged my thinking about the book in a couple of ways.

Do you have a favorite Henry James novel? Or movie adaptation?