The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken

I hadn't heard of this book until I read Maggie Stiefvater's post "Books That Feed Me." You already know how much I admire Maggie's writing, so of course as soon as I read that post I requested from the library both The Giant's House and Bel Canto. I don't think I would've ever picked either of these books on my own, so I'm grateful to Maggie for the recommendation, at least for The Giant's House. (Stay tuned for the verdict on Bel Canto -- that's next on my to-read list.)

The Giant's House is classified as a romance (in fact it says "A Romance" on the cover), which made me a little weary at first, but now that I've read it, I think that little label is misleading. Not that I can really tell you what makes a romance a romance, but this book was not it. Yes, Peggy Cort (the narrator) is in love with a boy 14 years her junior -- James, the giant of the novel's title -- and yes, Peggy's entire account is colored by that love. But I would not call it a love story.

In fact I'm not sure what to call it or how to talk about it. The narrative is linear enough (which is to say it moves more or less chronologically); there is definite escalation, climax, and resolution; the characters are well developed, and so are the relationships between them. But this isn't a book I can describe with the usual "who did what" or "what happened to whom" kind of formula, because the plot development seems secondary, more of a background for the relationship than a driving force for it. And in fact I would argue that even though James is the main character, the story isn't so much about him as it is about Peggy.

In my mind, the average love story has a more clearly defined direction, it moves towards a specific point -- usually upward all the time, towards the moment when the couple begins its "happily ever after." But in The Giant's House, the movement is more like the expansion of concentric circles. It's like when you throw a stone in a lake -- the circles start small, then they swell and expand, and at last they fade and disappear quietly. I guess that in my very clumsy metaphor Peggy's life would be the surface of that lake, and James would be the stone, irreversibly fracturing the stillness of her waters without even realizing it. Does this make any sense at all? Probably not.

One thing I should warn you about is that there is only the barest hint of scandal in the story -- although I suppose that's debatable, so let me amend and say that for me the scandalous aspects of the story were very marginal. All of which is to say, if you're looking for a shocking tale about a love that breaks taboos, this is not it.

I've noticed by now that I seem to talk about this book more in terms of what it isn't rather than what it is. I also realize that I haven't told you anything about what actually happens in the story, and I'm not going to. The power of this book isn't in the events and outcomes. In fact, the plot could have gone in an entirely different direction, and I don't think that would have changed the overall impact of the novel in any way. It's a beautiful, beautiful book, and you should read it not because but regardless of what happens. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, but in a fragile and subtle way, and for me that's what makes it all the more powerful. Maggie quoted two passages in her post, and I'm going to give you four other short ones that I thought were particularly striking. Hopefully they will be enough to redeem what is undoubtedly the world's lest helpful review.

"Before I met James Carlson Sweatt, the library was my best comfort and company. I was a fool for that library. We are fools for who will have us."

"You could believe in God, looking at James. He looked at himself, and decided not to."

"Altogether, [Dr. Calloway's] head looked like [a] miraculous precarious rock formation -- you couldn't imagine how such a thing kept balanced on its spindly neck. You expected one of his cheekbones to break loose and avalanche down to his collar, followed by his nose, then the other cheekbone, and finally by the total dusty collapse of his entire head."

"For years I'd waited for someone to love me: that was the permission I needed to fall in love myself, as though I were a pin sunk deep in a purse, waiting for a magnet to prove me metal."

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

If you don't have at least a marginal interest in poetry, you probably won't enjoy this book as much as I did. Which is a shame, because it's such a charming little book! It's sweet and touching and educational and amusing and a really fun quick read. You don't need to know much about poetry in order to like it, but you have to at least want to read about poetry. Because, even though it speaks to some fundamental truths about the human predicament, it's ultimately a book about poetry.

Paul Chowder -- the narrator -- is a middle-aged poet whose career has been only marginally successful. He's now past his prime. By his own account, he's written a few decent poems, but not a single great one. He's in the middle of compiling a poetry anthology, but he's having a hard time deciding which poems to include. He is also supposed to write an introduction to the anthology, and that's an even bigger problem. He's been procrastinating for months, and he still has no idea what to say in that introduction. His financial situation is shaky, because he is a full-time poet who isn't producing any new work. His girlfriend, Roz, has finally lost patience with Paul's lack of progress and moved out.

As you can see, Paul doesn't have much going for him. With Roz gone, he spends his days sitting on a plastic chair in the driveway, pretending to clean the barn (which is his office of sorts), reading other poetry anthologies, moving boxes of books around the house, helping his neighbor install new hardwood floors, dragging a presentation easel and some sharpies around the lawn, so he can illustrate the meter of a line. At night he sleeps with piles of poetry books on the bed. He's doing everything but working on the anthology introduction. Roz's disappointment wounds him deeply, but it's not enough for him to get his act together. Neither are the stern impatient emails Paul gets from his editor reminding him of his deadline.

But the book isn't just about Paul's failure to write the introduction. It's about his relationship with Roz, about poetry in general -- its evolution and its meaning, about the legacy of different poets, and about some really wonderfully mundane things like hanging a tablecloth on a clothes line and watching the wind blow it around. I think that's Paul's (by which I suppose I mean Baker's) greatest strength -- the way he talks about the seemingly small choices and events in our lives that add up to, well, life. The narrative is easy and sincere, and jumps around the way our own thoughts do. In one sentence Paul tells you "you have to suffer in order to be a human being who can help people understand suffering." And the next sentences is "I have a mouse in the kitchen."

I don't think I'm doing Paul justice. He's really wonderful! I want him to be my friend on Facebook. He's witty and shy and smart and funny and adorably quirky. I would stalk him and check his page obsessively to see if he has updated his status. He will have some mind-blowing status updates, I just know it. Oh, Paul, why aren't you real?

I won't tell you about Paul's theories on meter in the English language or his expose on the iambic pentameter (spoiler alert: Paul and the iambic pentameter are not best friends), but please don't be discouraged by what sounds like a boring academic subject. It's not. On the contrary, it's very interesting. Paul has a great way of explaining things. He teaches you, for example, that the way to pronounce the old-fashioned "o'er" is to "graze your teeth with your lower lip while thinking V. It's like waving the vermouth bottle over the glass of gin." Another time, while he's walking to the rhythm of a verse to illustrate that the iambic pentameter really has three major beats, he exclaims "I feel like I'm making an exercise video."

And even though I hadn't heard of maybe a third of the poets Paul talks about (and I know very little besides the names of the other two-thirds), I didn't feel excluded. It just made me want to find out more about them and go read their work.

I will definitely read this book again. Hell, I might even buy it! I feel I could read it over and over and get something new out of it every time. It makes some truly insightful observations about poetry and about life. Like this one: "Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing." What better way to say this?

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I couldn't bring myself to throw Dan Brown in the same post as Toni Morrison, so Dan gets his own post.

I was actually looking forward to reading The Lost Symbol. I'll readily admit that I've read The Da Vinci Code three or four times and I've read Angels and Demons once or twice (I've told you already that I'm forgetful). I know Dan Brown's books are far from being literary masterpieces, but they are reasonably entertaining, there is good suspense (for the most part), and, perhaps most importantly, I'm a sucker for stories about dark religious secrets, conspiracy theories that center on a biblical prophecy, or some such thing. Umberto Eco, anyone? Or The Last Temptation of Christ? Apologies to both Eco and Kazantzakis for comparing them to Dan Brown, but you get the idea. And, while Eco and Kazantzakis are light years ahead of Dan Brown in terms of literary value and storytelling talent, Dan still has his good moments.

Or, HAD, I should say. The Lost Symbol was bo-o-oring. And about 200 pages longer than it should have been. And predictable. Everybody is conveniently naive and everybody falls in each other's traps. Everything has a hidden layer. Every solution is discovered only in the 59th second of the last possible minute. Robert Langdon is forgetful about certain things (until push comes to shove, in which case, voila, he suddenly remembers!), but otherwise has photographic memory. Also, despite all the legends that he himself has witnessed become reality in the past, somehow for 10-20 chapters he is oh so skeptical about only this one particular legend. Screw the legend, THAT is what's not believable. And the big crisis that he's supposed to be averting, the National Security Nightmare that is about to destroy the nation -- well, prepare to be underwhelmed. Compared to Jesus having a great-great-granddaughter, it's pretty laughable and anticlimactic.

Also, do we really need to hear over and over how fit and attractive Langdon is? For Christ's sake, he's not Indiana Jones, so don't waste our time with the early morning laps in the Harvard pool.

It's not like I had high expectations for this book. Really, I just wanted a little entertainment, but what I got was mostly frustration. I just wanted it to be over -- not because I was dying to find out what happens at the end, but because I was impatient to start reading something better. The intrigue just wasn't very good, and the antagonist wasn't nearly as terrifying as the albino monk from The Da Vinci Code.

I think one of the reasons Dan Brown took so long to write this book is because he was overwriting it. Is he not aware that his readers are not after masterfully crafted prose (mind you, not that that's what he's delivering, but it sure seems like he tried to) but only after a good mystery? And apparently he took to heart the criticism about the too-short chapters of his previous books, because in this one the chapters are longer (although there were still 132 of them). I guess his editor didn't have the heart to tell him that sometimes less is more.

Dan, I know I'm being hard on you, but you can take comfort in the fact that I'll probably reread The Da Vinci Code again at some point.

Zombies and Others

I can't really make up for two months of silence, so I won't be doing a separate post for each of the books I've read since my review of Shiver. But I also don't want to leave you wondering about my verdict on those books, so I thought I'd lump them all into one post, just a few words about each.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison -- I enjoyed this book very much, though not nearly as much as Beloved. The writing was still incredibly gorgeous, but the story didn't move me as much. Though let me tell you, Morrison has a tremendous gift for writing about people's darkest, strangest tendencies and desires in a way that makes them sound so natural, even beautiful. I have great admiration for any writer who has such great understanding not just of the good in us, but the vile and the repulsive as well.

Next came Louisa May Alcott's Little Men. Sadly, this one had nothing on Little Women and Good Wives. The plights of ten-year-old boys just didn't do it for me, but I can recognize the fact that I'm not really in the intended audience for that book. I don't think it was as much a question of reading about boys as it was reading about kids that age in general. Still, the book had its good moments.

After that I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was fun, but frankly I didn't find that the zombies improved the book in any way. I had fun reading it, but only because it had been 6-7 years since the last time I'd read the original, which was enough time for me to forget some of the details. And while I did enjoy the racy innuendos about Mr. Darcy's balls, I also felt that some lovely nuances of the relationships had been lost with the zombie intrusion. Not to mention some zombie scenes that were unnecessarily disgusting and really difficult to get over. In short: don't mess with a good thing. Leave it to Jane.

Next I read Toni Morrison's Sula. This one I liked even less than Song of Solomon, but I'm still glad I read it. Again, excellent writing about the fundamental loneliness of the human condition, and here, too, Morrison raises some big questions: what is right, what is wrong, what is justifiable, what is forgivable. The way she does it, however, is what sets her apart from other writers. She doesn't beat you over the head with moral dilemmas. Instead she lets those questions play in the background. She doesn't address them directly, but she allows you to think about them on your own.

One thing I found curious is that I liked the parts of the book that were about other characters more than the parts about Sula. I'm not sure why this strikes me as unusual -- perhaps I have an inherent expectation to be able to identify and/or sympathize with the main character more than with any of the other characters? Do you have that expectation as well?

And I'll leave you with one of my favorite moments in Sula, which happens very early on, when Shadrack wakes up in the hospital and is confused about why people are calling him "Private":

"'Private' he thought was something secret, and he wondered why they looked at him and called him a secret."

Ahem, Happy New Year?

OK, obviously my new year's resolution to blog more often isn't going very well. It's been two months since my last post, which makes me wonder, if I hadn't made this one of my goals for 2010, would I have actually posted more? But Murphy's Law is a poor excuse for my procrastination and lack of time management. It's me, it's not the resolution.

In my defense, I have made some small progresses on some of my other resolutions! Do you want to hear about them? It doesn't matter, I'll tell you anyway.

I am currently enrolled in a computer course. It's a very basic course that explains what's inside a computer, how it works, how the internet works, etc. I'm not taking it for credit, so I have no incentive to do all the homework assignments, but I have already learned a lot! Like, I can now write "bow" in binary code! It's supercool (even if practically useless).

I did some research and chose a few literary journals to submit poems to. So far I've actually submitted poems to only one journal, but I have decided on a few more places that I'll try. Soon, soon!

Also, I'm just finishing the last chapter of Harry Potter et La Coupe de Feu -- I've been listening to the French audiobook on my iPod, so that counts towards my French goal, no? And in the baking category, while I'm not baking nearly as often as I want to, a few weeks ago I made this amazing pear coffee cake, and it was so amazingly delicious (yes, Justin's accompaniment of pears poached in wine spiced with cinnamon and sweetened with fig jam helped a lot) that I am going to go ahead and give myself double credit for it. There. Positive reinforcement.

There is one other goal that I forgot to put on my list in December -- having my cosigner released from my student loan. This one is clearly not entirely under my control, but I mailed my release application yesterday. Keep your fingers crossed! When my dear darling cosigner is finally released of his obligations, it will be a glorious relief for both of us!

And what have you done with your first two months of 2010? Come now, come tell me all your little and big successes! Allow me to be proud of you!