Upon becoming a size queen (with update)

Well, I managed to slog through The Naked and the Dead (which took forever), Les Miserables, and Cousin Bette. And then, looking up from my welter of books, I realized it was almost October. Beginning to panic, I whipped through some shorter works, like Freaky Friday and The Art of Fiction. Two books in two days! BAM.

I came to a belated realization: the only way I was going to finish 75 titles this year would be to specialize in short, easy reads. Accordingly, I went through my lists and started sorting them by page length. I picked out stuff like The Little Prince, Howl, Fat Land, and The Awakening, and I'm determined to read only those from here until the end of the year. No more long woolly 19th century novels. Take that, Victor Hugo!

(When you focus on only that criterion, it's actually surprising how many books are less than 300 pages long.)

I'm currently reading Fat Land, which is almost as compelling and juicy as an episode of My 500 Pound Life. But more scholarly, and less smug.

Update: I finished Fat Land, listened to the Librivox version of Northanger Abbey (which was excellent! And free!) I also read Howl and The Awakening, both of which I enjoyed a lot, and not just because of the sense of accomplishment they afforded me.

Here are the rest of my Rory unreads, with all of the above deleted and some corrections:

1. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
2. Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
3. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
5. Bambi by Felix Salten
6. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
9. The Bhagava Gita
10. The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
11. Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
12. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
13. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
14. Brigadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
15. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
16. The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
17. Christine by Stephen King
18. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
19. The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
20. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
21. Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
22. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
23. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
24. Cujo by Stephen King
25. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
26. David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
27. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
28. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
30. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
31. The Divine Comedy by Dante
32. Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
33. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
34. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
35. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
36. Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
37. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
38. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
39. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
40. Ethics by Spinoza
41. Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
42. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
43. Extravagance by Gary Krist
44. Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
45. The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
46. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
47. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
48. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
49. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
50. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
51. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
52. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
53. Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
54. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
55. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
56. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
57. The Graduate by Charles Webb
58. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
59. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
60. Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
61. Henry V by William Shakespeare
62. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
63. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
64. Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
65. The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
66. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Lpr)
67. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
69. How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
70. I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
71. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
72. Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
73. It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
74. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
75. Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
76. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
77. The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
78. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
79. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
80. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
81. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke 
82. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
83. The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
84. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
85. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
86. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
87. Marathon Man by William Goldman
88. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
89. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
90. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
91. The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
92. Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken (Season 1, Episode
93. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
94. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
95. The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
96. Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
97. A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
98. Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
99. A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
100. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
101. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
102. My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken, (Season 1 Episode
103. My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
104. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
105. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
106. Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
107. New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
108. The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
109. Night by Elie Wiesel
110. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
111. Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
112. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
113. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
114. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
115. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
116. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
117. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
118. Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
119. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
120. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
121. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
122. Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
123. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
124. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
125. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
126. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
127. The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
128. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
129. Property by Valerie Martin
130. Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
131. A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
132. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
133. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
134. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
135. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
136. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
137. Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
138. Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
139. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin from Season 1 Episode (I believe this is the movie)
140. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
141. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
142. The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
143. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
144. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
145. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd – started and not finished
146. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
147. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
148. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
149. Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
150. Sexus by Henry Miller
151. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
152. Shane by Jack Shaefer
153. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
154. Small Island by Andrea Levy
155. Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
156. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
157. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
158. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
159. The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
160. Songbook by Nick Hornby
161. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
162. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
163. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
164. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
165. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
166. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
167. Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
168. Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
169. Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
170. Time and Again by Jack Finney
171. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
172. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
173. The Trial by Franz Kafka
174. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
175. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
176. Unless by Carol Shields
177. The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
178. Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
179. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
180. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
181. We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
182. What Color is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
183. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
184. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
185. Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
186. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
187. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Six months of Backlash

It took me six excruciating months, but I finally finished reading Susan Faludi's Backlash.

This is not to say it isn't a good book; it's amazing. The thing is, I started reading it on November 7, 2016. Then ... stuff happened. And every time I tried to pick Backlash up and continue, I'd get maaaaaybe 10 pages in and my head would start to make loud, inaudible car alarm noises, which is my subconscious's way of letting me know that my head is about to explode.

So I spent months of dithering, feeling guilty, avoiding GoodReads, and reading almost anything but Backlash: George Simenon's Maigret novels, Mrs. Polifax novels, Arnuldur Indridason's Rejkyvek murder mysteries, re-reading George R. R. Martin's The Game of Thrones (currently on book three, A Clash of Kings, and wow, it moves way more slowly than I remembered. I blame finally getting HBO. Books longa, TV brevis.)

I finally managed to finish Backlash by making it my task while my daughter went to her Broadway dance class at the local community center. Instead of running errands, working out, or sitting on the big comfortable sofa in the lobby Facebooking for 90 minutes, I read Backlash. And after a few weeks of doing this, I finished it!

Honestly, it's like eating less and moving more and discovering that it actually does make me lose weight.

Anyway, if, like me, you haven't gotten around to watching Game of Thrones reading Backlash, read it. It is so good. I underlined like a boss. I could type entire paragraphs into my many politically-charged Facebook groups and shut the trolls up BAM. I could use passages to troll www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/.

I'm currently sitting in the Admiral's Club awaiting a flight to New York, and I brought two much shorter, and it is to be hoped, quicker reads with me: The Princess Bride (from last year's Read Harder Challenge: Read a romance novel) and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which I believe is also from the Read Harder Challenge--Read a book set in Asia.) Wish me smooth skies and quick reads.

May update—the Plath part

I finished The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. And it took for-fucking-EVER. On GoodReads I had a starting date of January 26th. I hope that marks the day I brought the book home and maybe read the back cover or some such, because four months? For one book? Really? Even if it's 720 pages long, that is a long-ass time to spend reading a single book.

I'd be ashamed, except that the book has very small print. And is non-fiction. And has lots of end notes. And is studded with appendices and I swear, I was dutifully reading my way through all of them ... until I got to Sylvia's working notes about St. Teresa of Avila. I decided that I'm not a Plath scholar and don't need to read every. single. word. I read The Bell Jar and her (then) two published collections of poetry in the 1970s, when I was a young woman with literary aspirations, because that's what you did. But I haven't read them since, because books about mental illness and confessional poetry are not really my thing.

I also finished Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath, by Anne Stevenson, which I picked up in April in a used book store in Washington, D.C. I needed some secondary source material to fill in the gaps in the journals, because the gaps are sizable. What Sylvia included: minute descriptions of why a boy she's dating is suitable or not suitable for a husband; self-castigation about procrastinating; discussions of writer's block. What she left out: her breakdown, suicide attempt, marriage to Ted Hughes, and Ted Hughes' affair. 

Unfortunately, Bitter Fame is a not-uncontroversial biography that apparently pissed off Plath's fans big time. This is actually OK with me. I'm not Team Sylvia, so I didn't mind that Sylvia came across as kind of difficult because I have been given to understand that that's one of the hallmarks of being mentally ill, which—newsflash—she was. However, in addition to being the opposite of a hagiography, I found the writing pretty ham-handed, and the discussions of Plath's writing were cursory at best.

I'm not Team Ted, though. No, not at all. In fact, I saw this poem when I did an image search for Sylvia Plath that cracked me up:

So hey—I finally finished one of the Big Leftover Rory books from 2015! Also a biography that I can count towards my Read Harder Challenge. Hooray!

In other news, I also read Little Dorrit, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Angela's Ashes, Let the Dead Lie, and The Winthrop Woman, for a total of seven books this month.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a nerd

And sometimes I strap on my pocket protector and do things thoroughly.

So about this Rory Gilmore book challenge. When you go over and over something and keep seeing errors, they start to bug you. And there are some dumb errors in the Rory Gilmore list that have gotten on my last nerve. In the list as I found it, Bambi is listed as Walt Disney's Bambi and appears in the W part of the list. Way to alphabetize, dimwits.

And then there are situations where a short story is mentioned. Is it OK to read just "The Lottery," or do I need to read the entire collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories? And what if a book is mentioned because Rory's mocking it? As I've said, I'm a nerd who does things thoroughly, so I'd still read the book in question. But it would be nice to know that Rory Gilmore hated The Da Vinci Code, so I wouldn't feel pressured to like it. I don't want to waste time searching for literary qualities that don't exist. (I hated The Da Vinci Code. I expect you've already figured that out.)

Anyway, I decided to do a Gilmore Girls rewatch, noting what books were mentioned. Because it struck me that perhaps whoever put together the list needed an editor.

It turns out that while many authors are alluded to, and many works of literature are mentioned, but Rory does not spend seven seasons sitting around reading. In fact, I was wondering how she got the reputation for being such a bookworm.

Well, here I am at Season 1, Episode 9, "Rory's Dance," and I'm finally seeing Rory read. First, The Group, while Tristan is annoying her.

And then The Portable Dorothy Parker, which she carries in her evening bag the night of the school dance.

May Day, May Day

It's time for my May update! Yay! Only six books this month. Boo.

Titles from the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list

R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton
The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse

Thank God Rory occasionally reads something a little frivolous and doesn't only read Russian novels, gender studies classics, and memoirs by Civil War generals.

Also reads

Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, reviewd here
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan (Read Harder Challenge, Task 12) reviewed here
Bad Country, C. B. McKenzie

Also reading

I'm about to finish Angela's Ashes, which I'm enjoying much more than I thought I would. I think I read an excerpt of it somewhere, and that, combined with the cover art, made me think the book was going to be depressing AF. But it's not.

I'm still working on The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Rory) and even bought Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath because sometimes a solid secondary source fills in background information and adds a note of rationality and objectivity to the adolescent self-center.

I guess I could use that Sylvia Plath biography for my Read Harder Challenge "Read a Biography" task. Although I was planning to read a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt or Colette. But whatEVER, Sylvia, sheesh.

I'm also reading Ironweed (Rory) as well as rereading The Winthrop Woman because I've been asked to facilitate a book club meeting about it. (I suggested the book to the bookclub based on its having been the hot sexy book when I was in seventh grade. Since that was over 40 years ago, can I count this towards my 2016 titles? Does it count as reading when I'm rereading? I honestly remember very little about it. Except for the hot sexy bits, of course.)

Review: Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Mary Sue

In another attempt to avoid reading more serious books :cough: theendlessjournalsofSylviaPlath :cough: I decided to listen to the audiobook edition of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's expansion of the Sherlock Holmes universe, Mycroft Holmes.

I should begin by saying that although I have read all of the Conan Doyle stories and novels, watched all of the BBC television adaptations starring Jeremy Brett, and am currently keeping company with both Sherlock and Elementary, I am by no means a Holmes fanatic. I just like mysteries and Victorian literature, so it's kind of a natural direction for me to head in.

Because of this liking-but-not-LOVING point of view, I have no problem with updates to the canon. I thought it was brilliant in Sherlock when Benedict Cumberbatch texted, rather than spoke to people, or covered himself with nicotine patches instead of smoking a pipe. In Elementary, Jonny Lee Miller can be a recovering addict, and Lucy Liu can be a female Watson; it's all good.

Therefore I was delighted to try Mycroft Holmes. I mean, really. Talk about a built-in opportunity to broaden the readership's knowledge of a character. I felt the same way you'd feel if J. K. Rowling decided to write The Adventures of Dumbledore.

Parts of the book were quite good. I liked the interplay between Mycroft and Sherlock; I liked the hints of a juicy backstory for their mother. I liked that Mycroft's fiancée was pursuing higher education and social reform. I liked the sense of the massive bureaucracy needed to run the British Empire and the way Mycroft happily envisioned himself as a cog in that enormous machine. I liked the insights I got into the history and culture of Trinidad as well as the post-Civil War period in American and international history.

But Mycroft Holmes is, at heart, fan fiction. Fan fiction, in case you aren't aware of the phenomenon, is written by fans of popular novels, television shows, and movies. It started with Star Trek and was published in zines. Now it's happening with Star Wars, Harry Potter, My Little Pony, Naruto, Pokemon, Supernatural, and it's all over the internet. You may or may not be aware that the Fifty Shades trilogy, now threatening to continue into what—a sexology?—started as Twilight fan fiction.

So you see, fanfic has a lot to answer for. But it can also be considered a form of adaptation. We have expectations of film adaptations of our favorite novels; we expect them to be faithful to the originals. But at times, a filmmaker takes familiar characters and settings and runs amok. This is pretty much what happened with Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. There's Alice, and a Mad Hatter, and a Red Queen, but the story itself is all but unrecognizable. In this sense, the movie is failed fanfic.

One way of reviewing Mycroft Holmes is to see how well it succeeds with already existing characters and situations. In this, I think Abdul-Jabbar did pretty well. The Mycroft in this book is only 23 years old, and Sherlock is only 17, so they are at an embryonic state, and Abdul-Jabbar handles this well. He doesn't do anything that conflicts with our already-established understanding of the characters.

My only problem, other than the somewhat pedestrian prose and flat dialogue, was in the character of Cyrus Douglas. He is a middle-aged Trinidadian who has moved to London to go into the tobacco business, and has become Mycroft's best friend. At many times during the novel, Cyrus, who seems destined to be the Watson to Mycroft's Holmes, takes over the narrative. Without including any spoilers, I'll just say that Cyrus is Practically Perfect in Every Way. Which makes sense, because Cyrus is a Mary Sue.

In case this isn't clear (I mean, not everyone spends their time reading 15-year-old Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic ... SPUFFY4EVA) a Mary Sue is basically the author of a fanfic, made pluperfect, and inserted into the narrative. She's the beautiful, talented, kind, understanding—basically perfect—girl who shows up at Hogwarts and Harry Potter (or Draco Malfoy) falls in love with her. 

In Mycroft Holmes, Cyrus is athletic, intelligent, enterprising, open-minded, and capable of teaching many things to his young friend Mycroft. He has a rich backstory and has suffered and endured things that Mycroft can not even imagine. This gives the author the opportunity to school his callow white English character on Imperialism, racism, social skills, martial arts, and how to be a good person. 

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the book. It is more of an action story than a mystery, and the pace plods a bit at times, but parts of it are very good. I get a clear sense of place, whether we are in London, Trinidad, or on board a steam ship. And the end, in particular, kicks ass.  I hope that Abdul-Jabbar continues the series. I just hope that next time, he pays a bit more attention to his eponymous hero.

Susan Silverman is Spenser's Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and other ruminations

OK, so for April I decided to give myself a bit of a break. I'd been reading some rather heavy books that were, frankly, unenjoyable in the extreme. And these were sandwiched between books that were amazingly dumb, like The Da Vinci Code. So I thought, "Hey, there are New York Times best selling mystery stories on the Rory list. They must be pretty good. I'll read some of them!"

Accordingly, I read

R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton (Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list)
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton (Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list)

Eh. They were OK. I guess I like my private investigators funnier, more literary, and based in Boston. Basically, I want them to be Spenser. In fact, the last time I was in Boston, I took advantage of my Back Bay location to go running on the Esplanade. I may or may have not looked (in vain) for Spenser and Hawk.

Fixed that for you

However, if I take a minute or two to stop fangirling and force my thoughts along somewhat more intellectual lines, I find myself wanting to do a compare-and-contrast conference paper about female private investigators dreamed up by women, and women characters as dreamed up by men. Because I've always been uneasy about the tiny amount of food Robert Parker allowed Susan Silverman to eat. Susan will sit there and peel apart a club sandwich, nibble on a lettuce leaf, and maybe finish a quarter of a sandwich in half an hour. On the other hand, Grafton's character Kinsey Millhone has the appetite and eating habits of a teenaged boy.

That says something about the two characters and their authors; I just don't know what.