Recent reading roundup: The Brits, then and now

Just in time for the Fourth of July — or maybe in anticipation of the London Olympics? — OK, it was completely by accident – I recently finished two books whose authors are Brits and which concern mostly British people in harrowing situations. *

Other than that, they couldn’t be more different.

One is nonfiction, the other is a novel. The nonfiction book was just published, the novel came out eight years ago. One is a disturbing account of a young woman who falls victim to a sociopath. The other is a historical adventure romp that should appeal to people who like Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels – and/or the movie version of Last of the Mohicans. Yes, that happens to describe me.

I read the nonfiction book first, a contemporary true crime account called People Who Eat Darkness (note to publishers: why oh why would you give a book a title that is both generic and difficult to remember???). I’ve recently gotten into the true crime genre but almost exclusively on the historical end. More recent crimes just don’t interest me enough to read an entire book about them – most of the appeal is learning about a whole time period or society rather than just getting tons of detail about an ugly crime. But this book got a good review on Salon so I figured I’d give it a try. Especially since it was helpfully in the library’s collection.

The author, Richard Parry, is a British journalist based in Tokyo. One story he covered during his tenure there was the disappearance of a young British woman, Lucie Blackman and the subsequent trial of the man accused of killing her.

It’s very well done, especially on the inevitable but still heartbreaking cultural divide and incomprehension between Blackman’s desperate family and the Japanese authorities tasked with investigating her disappearance. Blackman was working as a hostess in a Japanese bar, one of scores of Western women who flirt and drink with Japanese men at bars in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. She was far from the first to encounter the man eventually charged with killing her — and that’s the other heartbreaking part of the story, how many opportunities were lost to stop the sociopath before he encountered Lucie.

Between the covers, without pain

It’s surprising who has read the Fifty Shades books, or at least the first one. Me, for instance. And other people I know whom I think of as No Dummies. I remain torn on this issue, kind of liking the out-of-nowhere fan-fiction origins – the literary equivalent of winning the lottery only with a tad more initiative involved. On the other hand, the fan fiction aspect is slightly annoying; more so is the Old Skool romance, virginal-heroine-must-redeem-the-tortured-dominant-hero theme whose problems are explicated to a far smarter degree than i could ever do in this post from the Rumpus. Not to mention the general annoyingness of the heroine, along with the not-very-inspired writing (many have suggested drinking games based on how many times Anastasia chews her lip — an action that just makes world-traveling sophisticated billionaire Christian Grey INSANE WITH LUST).

But my primary issue with the success of these books, really, is that there is so much out there in the broad area of the romance genre that is so much better written. I know this is true of many, many bestsellers. Why does Dan Brown sell so much better than writers who are so much better? And I won’t even go into the James Patterson Fictional Industrial Complex.

So as alternatives for people who are curious about books written primarily for women and that include differing amounts of nookie — and because at the Library we are embarking on a Summer Reading program for adults with the theme Between the Covers (with four weekly prize drawings! Prizes from Key West Island Books, the Tropic and Bad Boy Burrito!) — I am hereby offering my suggested alternatives for books you can read on your ereader … and not be cringing at the writing. Or the stupidity of the heroine, for that matter.

Most of my trashy romance reading is historical. However if Fifty Shades has you curious about contemporary romances, I can recommend Jennifer Crusie (my favorite of hers is called Bet Me, but they’re all pretty good). I like Lisa Kleypas, too; the one that got me hooked is called Smooth Talking Stranger. Kristan Higgins is also very well regarded; I have to admit I haven’t actually read her but I saw her at the ALA conference last year and she was charming.

Summer in the subtropics

My fourth Letter from Key West ran today on WLRN’s Under the Sun program. Special thanks to Trina Sargalski and especially to Alicia Zuckerman for her always deft editing — and for contributing, in the studio while we were about to record, what turned out to be my favorite line in the whole piece (In summer, there’s more light and more time.) Alicia gets special extra triple credit, along with Dan Grech, for creating Under the Sun and helping South Florida realize its radio potential. It’s been a real pleasure to listen and to take part.

Besides Alicia’s line, my favorite part of the piece might be that photo — because it really does say summer to me, which is why I shot it with my iPhone a couple weeks ago and posted it to Facebook — all while walking the dog. The other photo illustrating the piece, of some mangoes on a table at The Studios of Key West, also came from my iPhone. Both of them were total punts because last week, when I should have been collecting photos to illustrate summer in Key West, was a washout from what would become Tropical Storm Debby. But I think it worked out.

And the winner is …

Summer is here, the poll is closed and my summer doorstop tome is decided: I’ll be reading Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. Becky Sharp triumphed over Don Quixote by a whisker but that’s what you’d expect from her, isn’t it?

Thanks everyone for voting — and special thanks for choosing a book that I imagine is available for cheap or free in ebook edition, thus making its tome-ishness easier to handle. I’ll be reporting back once I’ve read it — and I’ll resist watching the Mira Nair film adaptation, starring Reese Witherspoon, till I’m done.

Happy summer reading, everyone! And speaking of summer reading, we have programs at the Key West Library this year, for children and, for the second year running, for adults. So stop by, pick up a reading log and get your read on.

You decide, I read

Every once in awhile I say to myself, hey you lazy self, you should read more classics. * Then a new work of historical fiction or a new season of Justified catches my attention and I conveniently forget.

So now I’m going to take a serious step, the book-reading equivalent of one of those public weight-loss efforts. (No way am I doing that.) I’m going to publicly declare my intention to read a long-neglected classic work of literature. And report back on my progress.

To make this even more fun, I decided my summer classic read should be significant. No slim little Dostoyevsky for me. My classic is going to be a Capital C Classic, at least 500 pages, capable of stopping a door in its original hardcover form.

And you’re going to choose it for me. I came up with four titles, all books that I should have read by now. But haven’t. Here’s my understanding of what each book is about.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: Man chases after whale. 1851, American

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Man tilts at windmills. 1605, Spanish

Pamela by Samuel Richardson: Young woman resists employer’s son’s advances. 1740, English

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: Woman claws her way up social ranks. 1847, English

Please vote!

 

* Just for the record I came up with this idea — even drafted this blog post — BEFORE the much-circulated Slow Books Manifesto that appeared on the Atlantic website. Modeled on Michael Pollan’s rules for eating, it proclaims that we should “Read books. As often as we can. Mostly classics.” At least it was much-discussed in library circles. I get what she’s saying and I am feeling the need, obviously, for a little more classic fiber in my reading diet. But on the whole I agree with the reply of Seattle Public Library’s David Wright, which I’m reposting beyond the jump here. It’s a long reply but it’s worth reading. Wright, by the way, is one of the authors of SPL’s Shelf Talk blog, which is always a worthwhile read.

Fewer than 50 links about That Book

Fifty Shades books on sale at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

I read Fifty Shades of Grey. Hey, it was for my job! So I could discuss the most popular book in the nation with patrons! Nothing to do with dirty bits and kinky sexual practices. Honest!

And I’m afraid I’m late enough to this show that I don’t have much say about the book that hasn’t been said. No, it’s not very well written. But neither, in my opinion, are many other bestselling works of fiction (I’m still waiting for the International Court of Literary Justice to convene and give me back the four hours I spent reading Angels & Demons). Mostly, it struck me as oddly retro, a throwback to the romances referred to these days as Old School — of the Kathleen Woodiwiss/Rosemary Rogers 1970s-80s school. No rape scenes, thank God, but a lot of the touchstones were there. The heroine is virginal and insecure. The hero is dominant (literally, in this case), but tortured by his past, yet still able to recognize virginal heroine’s stunning beauty when no one else had noticed. And also induce her to multiple orgasms the first time out. And like a lot of the older romances, it’s epic in length — three books at more than 500 pages each. And I feel confident that the vast majority of its readers understand this is a fantasy. Lots of us think of ourselves as insecure but goodhearted people — and wouldn’t it be nice if the one person who recognized our qualities was an incredibly goodlooking billionaire who flies his own helicopter and practices global philanthropy and is extremely good at sex, even if he has some serious issues — that only you can help him get past? Like I said, fantasy. Just like vampires, dragons, elves and whatever that guy does in all those Clive Cussler novels that fly off the library shelves. (5/23 update: See last link below for an opposing view on this issue.)

So instead of opining further about the book or trying to diagnose the social factors behind its unlikely and astonishing success, I’ll simply share a few links worth reading if you’re curious.

• First up, there’s the bizarre action of the Brevard County Library where they yanked their 19 copies of Fifty Shades off the shelves.
• My favorite response came from Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books who had this to say about the Brevard County decision.  (Warning: that last link contains explicit selection from books that are in the, wait for it, Brevard County Library collection).  I’m sorry to report that we don’t have any of those, um, Longarm books in the Monroe County Public Library collection. Though one of my colleagues had the brilliant idea of requesting them via Interlibrary Loan. From Brevard County.
• Wendell has had a number of interesting posts about the Fifty Shades phenomenon - she’s as good as anyone about discussing the appeal of certain books and how romance, even erotic romance, is different from porn.
•  In case you were wondering, yes we have all three Fifty Shades books in the Monroe County Public Library collection, both as an ebook (it’s the whole trilogy at once; sorry it was just far more affordable that way) and as individual titles on paper. And yeah, there’s a waiting list. For all of them. Fun fact: Overdrive, our ebook service, places the Fifty Shades trilogy in the Literature collection. That’s them, not us.
• Another good piece on the Fifty Shades phenemonen was posted over at Bookriot where they read and discussed the book in two parts — the second part is here. I liked their take on it, which was realistic (some of the lines ARE hilarious) without being cruel to either the book, its writer or its many, many readers.
• And finally here’s a more critical take from The Rumpus pointing out that maybe these books and their popularity is not all harmless fun after all.
• 5/25 update — really finally — one last link.
• 10/1 update — OK I shouldn’t claim really finally because this puppy has legs but this one from Dear Author was too good not to share.

Don’t get attached to …

In high school, one of my husband’s friends ruined Top Gun before Mark got to see it with one phrase: Don’t get attached to Goose. That phrase has become our household shorthand for spoilers, or mock spoilers.

The phrase returned to me recently when I was reading the latest entry in a newish historical crime series. I am a big fan of Tudor-era crime fiction — C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series, Rory Clements’ John Shakespeare series, Patricia Finney’s books, the David Becket/Simon Ames series under her own name as well as the Sir Robert Carey series under the pen name P.F. Chisholm — I devour them. After reading lots of biographies and novelizations of the various royals, it’s fun to see the action from around the edges and to imagine how life might have looked to an ordinary person, navigating the not-so-easy daily realities of life as well as the larger shifts in religious beliefs and power structures. There was certainly enough intrigue and ill will around the court during the reigns of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I to come up with fodder for plausible crimes, aside from the never-ending human motives for murder (love, jealousy, money, etc.).

I was intrigued when S.J. Parris’ series debuted a few years back, with Heresy, a mystery set around real events, with her hero the real-life scholar and fugitive ex-monk Giordano Bruno. Bruno really did spent a couple years in England in the 1580s, the heart of the Elizabethan era. He may well have been an agent for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and in the books, he definitely is. Heresy was quickly followed by Prophecy and just out, a third volume, Sacrilege (which I was lucky enough to get as an advanced copy through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program). I thought this was the best installment yet in this series, and the book itself got better as it went along. All good. But I have one big problem. I don’t want to get attached to Bruno. Between reading the second and third volumes in this series, I read The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, which includes a description of the real life Bruno’s fate and it is ugly. After being imprisoned for seven years by the Roman Inquisition, defiant to the end, he was declared a heretic and executed. By being burned alive. With his tongue “bridled,” which, according to some accounts, means he had a stake driven through his face, to keep him from addressing the crowd.

In any of these series, you get attached to your hero, flawed guy that he is: Matthew Shardlake, David Becket, Simon Ames, Sir Robert Carey, John Shakespeare. They’re the protagonists; we’re meant to identify with them and they’re often trying to navigate conflicting loyalties while protecting more vulnerable souls, making them even more sympathetic. But now I don’t want to identify too strongly with Bruno — because I know he’s heading for a prolonged and painful end. There’s also something of a contract in series crime fiction; as readers we expect our hero is going to resolve the problem and be around to take on the next one. So far, the books have generally conformed to that convention but if you’re dealing with the real-life Bruno’s chronology, it can’t continue for long. I wonder why Parris didn’t simply create a fictional hero based on Bruno — it would have given her scope for a lot more books if he could hang around England longer, for one thing. Perhaps she’ll exercise the fiction writer’s license and simply have Bruno head out into an alternate future, where he chooses not to return to Italy and avoids the Inquisition. For the sake of the fictional character and my attachment, I hope so. Otherwise I fear this series is not going to see too many more installments. Sacrilege is set in 1584 and we know Bruno left England in 1585.

More on the real Giordano Bruno, if you’re curious but don’t want to read a whole book on the guy, is available on the Wikipedia page and in a New Yorker review of a recent biography.

My current reading is about another real-life Tudor-era figure who also met an early and unhappy end: I’m reading Bring Up the Bodies, the second in Hilary Mantel’s planned trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the advisor to Henry VIII. But even though I know where he, too, is headed I don’t mind entering Cromwell’s mind and world. Maybe because it’s literary fiction or perhaps because it is based on real events not embroidering on known facts, like the Bruno series. Or maybe because I knew Cromwell’s fate from the beginning, and thus have been preparing myself all along. The third volume, which will presumably cover the Anne of Cleves disaster and Cromwell’s downfall, should be a doozy.