• THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
• by Oscar Wilde
• [rated by PBS readers as #55
• 213 pages

What a difference a couple of months make! When I first ordered and got Dorian, I read a couple of pages and thought it was so hip and current and stuff like that. But I had something else to finish first.

Now I have just finished it, after picking it up several months later. But I didn’t have that experience. In fact, I’m not sure what experience I did have.

No one who is either creative and/or surrounded by gay people that they love will ever dislike Oscar Wilde. His wit, his talent and his terrible life story is the stuff of legend. And his work, like that of so many truly gifted people, transcends those barriers.

I know I’m not a stickler for studying period stuff. And I have no foundation of what the writing styles were like at Wilde’s own time…so I’ll just say it – everything about this story is so gay! On just about a million layers! Which is, in a way, the most exhilarating thing about it.

You almost feel like a co-conspirator while reading it – that he manages to infiltrate his own art and culture with so much truth about himself – and right under their sneering noses!

Anyway, I should read some funny Oscar Wilde. But not anytime soon. Nothing wrong! Glad I read it. And I’ll add to this if more of its meaning if it occurs to me later.

PS This is one book I would love to hear your takes on. Very hard to summarize. You kind of want to do it simplistically but that seems to undercut. It is a demonic fable. Or is it? I might have searched for depth when there wasn’t any and missed it when it was there.

BONUS ADDITIONAL BOOK – THE GOOD EARTH

Okay, I know that this isn’t even on the list. But in my current strategy of reading 5 books at a time and listening to two more, I came to The Good Earth.

Recently switching over to Audible, I have gone to the dregs of my audio books, determined to finish listening to all of them. I have only four more titles to go. While it is good to be nearing the end of this motley bunch, it also gives you an idea of the enthusiasm level I had to plow into this little beauty.

Here is the first surprise of listening to this book, since that seems to have become my theme in the recent books for this blog.

Over my lifetime, when anyone has mentioned The Good Earth, the people listening get moony-eyed and sigh into saying, “ah, I love that book.” So I’m not sure what I was prepared for, maybe some simple assed story of peasants making it work in ancient China. Oh well. Yawn. Told you I wasn’t enthusiastic.

I was completely unprepared for the wollop this thing brought. At first, when the thing resembled the Chinese Grapes of Wrath, it was one thing. You got your little family starving slowly to death, while he runs a rickshaw and she begs with the kids. And then times turn around and the lead guy shows himself to be shallow, capable of great cruelty and just plain hard to like.

The scene where he gives his first wife’s pearls to his mistress is wholly the most shocking scene I’ve read in many a book past. Murders have never been as shocking as that.

This story and its inhabitants rumble forward like a bat out of hell. The main guy is an antihero and an entirely unapologetic asshole.

But here’s the tweak. This got the Pulitzer Prize – back in 1932! This story barreled at me with huge relevance. How could Pearl S. Buck have had the temerity and the genius to have said this stuff this way in 1932?

Like the experience of Gone With the Wind, so recently, both writers are unbelievable in their ability to juxtapose specific personal details with the huge scope of all that surrounds those moments.

Buck got it right. I didn’t like the main character and specifically didn’t root for him, but his voice will stay with me for a long time (beautifully rendered by actor Anthony Heald, in this audio format).

To think that something that would sock me this hard in 2021 and to think that it was unleashed 90 years before AND that it got the Pulitzer, which meant people got it 90 years ago!

Well, that makes me feel better about the world. Can’t tell you why and don’t want to. This will stay with me for a long time.

• FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
• by E L James
• [rated by PBS readers as #86]
• 514 pages

120 pages into Fifty Shades of Grey and I am shaking my head once again. Honestly, will this project ever cease to be surprising?

I have to start with this point. I was ABSOLUTELY SURE that this book was the one title that didn’t belong on this esteemed list. I saw it on the list and shrugged, certain that the voting happened close enough to this book’s big reception that it just got fad points. That had to be it.

I had never been drawn to it. My sister had loaned it to me, so I knew that, looking at the list, I had one less book to buy. But I also knew I’d had it for almost a decade without even considering opening it.

To be honest, I still don’t have a definitive answer to the question of its inclusion. I mean, does Fifty Shades of Grey really have anything in common, quality level wise, with Another Country by James Baldwin? Of course not.

But then. It was a quiet night. I picked it up and read 120 pages of it without looking up! I almost felt guilty about how fast and easy a read this was after Book Thief.

But I’m not and don’t want to be a book snob. This story reads well because it is paced really well. My hat is ALWAYS off to pacing. I don’t care how pulpy some might think an author is – if they can keep my interest and keep me turning pages, I feel I am in their debt.

And then it is an entire book about sex! I am simply amazed by this. Why? Because sex is really hard to write! It is even harder to write well!

As an author myself, I’ve been told several times that I write sex well and I appreciate that. But I insert three minute sex scenes into a larger plot; this is a whole book centering around sex. One would think that sooner or later, the descriptions and/or verbiage would lapse into the same stupid words that every one uses. But this author never does that. That alone deserves a high five.

James’ greatest trick is that she really has fashioned a plucky and interesting protagonist. She is experienced and falls hard for this guy, but you go with her on her ride, listening to all the directions her mind goes in.

I mean, think about it. A full length story about S&M with the girl being the submissive and yet she is never passive. At least so far. Think of that! It seems like an almost impossible hat trick to pull off. But James has fashioned a women who you want to follow as much as the sex. In fact more, but it’s a fairly delicious package so far.

So what am I, a quarter into it? Who knows where I’ll end up? Maybe it will start being more stock sex scenes. Maybe it won’t hold up. But so far?

I am, once again, very pleasantly surprised.

2/22/21 – DONE

I wonder if any of you remember a book called The Celestine Prophecy? It came out shortly after I got out of college. It was a story about something spiritual that seemed very on point and fascinating to all of us then. It was a guy on some sort of spiritual quest.

Anyway, everyone was buying and reading it and when they spoke about it, the most common complaint was that it wasn’t written very well.

I bought it. Not written very well was the world’s biggest understatement. It read like a high school paper written by the smelly guy in the back of the class whose emotional range fell between angry and dumb.

Unlike others, I couldn’t even grasp what they were grasping from the book. The terrible writing was way too off-putting for any deeper points to be made.

Somehow, I had it in my mind that 50 Shades of Grey was going to prove to be the Celestine Prophecy of S&M. People said it was badly written and I went there. So much so that, like I mentioned earlier, this was the one book on this list that I was absolutely sure didn’t belong. I immediately decided that, if the list were made in ten years, this was a title that would have fallen by the wayside.

As has happened a bunch with this project, I was wrong. I was happily wrong! I couldn’t imagine that a book about bondage could be written well. EL James proved me out of my depth. Sigh. This is getting annoying!

Here’s what is so right about this book:

1) There isn’t a moment when the writing about sex slips into stupid verbiage. Even writers that I like a lot can slip into that, saying “he thrust his hot throbbing member…” or “he explored the depths of her…” Many times, I have been reading an otherwise good novel and the sex shows up and those phrases come in and it is tough to take. You think to yourself, well he writes well but not about sex.

It really only takes a millisecond and a couple of cliche terms to take you right out of sex scenes and feel stupid for having started to read them in the first place. Yet, here is a book that is over 500 pages long and I never once felt in judgment of these two people or the author or asked myself why I was reading this.

2) Sex heavy stories descend into archetypes mostly. Neither of these two characters is anywhere near stereotypical. In fact, I felt that both of them were characters I had never read before.

3) The sex was small compared to the feelings within. The psychology and the feelings were the through line. The sex was the punctuation. If you can get that balance right, you’ve got something.

I don’t know how many books I’ve read that were mostly centered around sex. Maybe read a handful. But as I read Fifty Shades, I was aware that, on every page, I’d never read anything that got the balance as right as this. This is solid book writing in my view.

4) Most important saved for last. The book centers around these two characters and I truly liked them. I liked them very much. I haven’t seen the movies, of course (I told you – I had the book that my sister loaned me for almost a decade and I always read the book first. If I didn’t read it, I wasn’t going to see the movie.).

But though Dakota Johnson looks like she might have been a good choice for it, there would be no way in a film that you could get the best part of this opus, which is her charater’s running mental commentary.

There is never a moment where you aren’t involved with her dilemma. You feel her indecision and you feel her love for him. As I mentioned earlier, she is utterly not passive and that is what felt fresh and new to me.

Since I am currently in a phase of reading about five books at the same time, one or two others that I’ve been reading had some sex scenes in them briefly and I was completely aware that they didn’t hold a candle to this one. And NOT because this book had more sex. It was because we were given sex by a writer who knew how to tell it right.

Grey, the leading man, is no brooding Heathcliff. He is an amazing and complex character. On the surface fairly cliche, but as time goes on, you the reader want to know as badly about the layers within him as Ana does. The author has not crafted a great woman and a placeholder for the man. Both are growing and changing throughout. How nice for us that the work was done to make that happen.

I will doubtless think of many more things to say about this book, but it was a happy surprise to me. In fact, I didn’t finish it for a while, leaving it unread for a week here and a week there. In all fairness, that particular reticence was more about the fact that I liked this book and these characters and that felt nice. Never know when, at any moment, I’d be in a new book , slogging through a plot with some weird Russian officers with names I can’t pronounce.

So there you go! That’s just me. You might hate it, but Fifty Shades of Grey was pure fun, while War & Peace haunts me…

At any rate, would I recommend this? That’s a funny one. I don’t know the reader’s relation to sex or books about it. If that doesn’t float your boat, this won’t get you to shore. But it ranks as a huge, fun surprise to me.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if, after I read the whole list, I still feel as I do today – that Fifty Shades of Grey belongs on there. One involving, surprising, fun read.

Send those letters disagreeing with me! I’m ready.

• THE BOOK THIEF
• by Markus Zusak
• [rated by PBS readers as #14]
• 550 Pages

I picked several titles and the Book Thief was one of them. It was also one of the four titles that I already owned, so I went over to pick it up and start reading a bit to see if it felt right.

The lyrical writing pulled me in and wouldn’t let me stop.

Apparently, the Book Thief is next. Seems like 550 pages that I will be glad I read.

But, then again, I’ve been wrong before!

100 PAGES IN –

I’m sure people argue where creativity originates and/or comes from – and they will for as long as someone has a hunch and picks up a paintbrush.

My own feeling, though I’m certain it is less widely held than other theories, is that all creativity is channeled.

Doesn’t mean you have nothing to do with it. Just means it isn’t all coming from you.

For example, do you really buy that the Sistine Chapel was painted by one guy upside down with no help? Nah, I contend. It was him plus a confluence of spiritual help. In my view, that is the only way to see it.

Then there are the creators who do very good work until one day, they happen upon making something great. Truly great. Like all great art, it takes what the artist has and sends it up into a high weather pattern that becomes bigger than seemed possible. No artist who it has happened to, that has created something genius, can explain that. You might outwardly defend that it was all you, but you know better.

You know, before you fall asleep, that this one project of yours? It was different. It was kissed into a cosmic hyperdrive that came through you but blew up into something much bigger and almost left you happily behind.

I haven’t read anything else by Markus Zusak, the author of The Book Thief. I’m sure they are all good. One of the fun things about this booklist, though, is that it contains so many examples of a particular writer’s liftoff into hyperdrive, creating something beyond what they knew how to create.

From the first words of The Book Thief, you can feel this liftoff sensation. This story of a young girl growing up with foster parents in Nazi Germany. The story is told by someone who has met up with the young girl more than once and becomes fascinated with her – Death. You heard me.

It is the most fantastically out there story and voicing that is at the same time, completely realized. I imagine that one version of this is what Sci Fi fans live for – a completely alien but fully realized world to step into as you read. This language and writing lift from terra firma into transcendent storytelling and never do you waver for an instant floating in this unknown but fully realized world.

At 100 pages in, I am not even 1/5 of the way through it and yet, I’m on the unknown ride.

Don’t misunderstand – there is nothing airy fairy about this writing. Each scene is exquisitely detailed and very much in the present. What you don’t know is where it is leading. No idea.

Right now, it feels like an exquisite desert for me and I am taking it in in small tastes, 20 – 40 pages at a time. Yet some of the reviewers said “edge of your seat for the last 200 pages” type things and I don’t have any sense of how we will get there.

This is a lovely follow up to Harry Potter, the World’s quickest book to read. Harry’s magical gentleness was a great precursor to magic and gentle storytelling of a whole different ilk.

Book Thief is a quietly beautiful experience.

1/17/21

Finished it. Wow.

I reread the last line from my last entry and that remained true. Reading it was a quietly beautiful experience. But it was also a really difficult read. It spoke of a girl in Nazi Germany, attempting to hold onto life and its precious moments, even as they slowly slipped away from her.

It is a book filled with death. Perhaps the reason the narrator is Death. Which is an amazing idea to keep alive for over 500 pages.

I assume that I will have more to say on this after I’ve slept on it. But for now, I’m not going to lie to you. I have two truths about this.

1) I’ve just read a masterpiece and

2) I can’t wait to get it out of my head.

1/17/21

After a sleep and a busy day, I am once again reflecting on The Book Thief.

The late Roger Ebert, my idol when it came to discussing movies, said something to the effect of nothing done with excellence is ever depressing. I remember agreeing with him, at least with regards to film. For instance, watching Schindler’s List, a film most would regard as depressing and hard to watch, I was floating from the sheer mastery in visual storytelling.

Ah, but here’s the difference. Two differences, actually. And they are both fairly darned significant.

One – Schindler’s List tells an incredible story, resulting in an incredibly beautiful ending, filled with hope.

Two – Schindler’s List took up three hours of my life.

With The Book Thief, you have mastery in writing and exquisite storytelling. I will always remember these characters. I find no fault with this amazing book.

However, it took a month of my time, rather than three hours. And the story is ultimately and relentlessly depressing.

So, about the master stroke of Death telling the story?

At the beginning, that choice seems incredibly inspired. By the end, you realize that there was no one left to tell the story!

And yes, while it is certainly true that hope often dies and death is inevitable… Jesus! Do I want to spend a month in that reality? Whee-oh!

I’m past 60 years old. Life was always short but feels more like that now. I’m privileged to have visited this author’s immense talent. But I’m sure glad I don’t live there.

Don’t know who I could recommend this to. To study great writing, sure. But I like everyone in my life too much to suggest they spend a month in this reality. So stamp my passport. I’ve been here. And now I’m out of here!

To pick the next book, I didn’t go through my usual picking routine. Well, I started with that. But I picked four titles that were all a bit depressing and involved kids and I just shook my head. I needed something that veered completely away from the last one. At least, one with some laughs and people staying alive!

So I just started picking titles out of the box. The fourth one I got made me laugh. It was the title that I thought least deserved to be on this list. And why? Probably fairly poorly written, salacious more than anything and from what I’ve heard, not that good.

Suddenly I thought, what better time to stick this one in than now? No matter what I think of it, it is the furthest point I could go from the last one.

Stay tuned!

• HARRY POTTER & THE SORCERER’S STONE
• by J. K. Rowling
• [nominated for the whole series]
• [rated by PBS readers as #3]
• 309 Pages

This is a great, magical moment for me. My friend Kim lent me her copy of this book months ago. She wasn’t using it and didn’t care if I didn’t read it in months or in years.

But just today I was thinking about it! I think that I was thirsting for an adventure and wanting to read this. I have never read a Harry Potter! I did see two of the movies, but they didn’t thrill me. Talking with a friend, we both postulated that it was probably way more fun to see the movie if you had read the book first, with all its details. About a hundred million kids did just that.

Approaching the end of Catcher and Harry coming to mind, I had a mad urge to just grab that book and read it, without any selection process at all. Then I said no. I had to keep with my ritual thus far. Besides, I didn’t want to miss looking through all those titles. They are so peacefully sleeping till I’m ready for them!

Then I picked four titles and one of them was Harry Potter! I was and am interested in Heart of Darkness. I would be reading Memoirs of a Geisha for a second time but that would be okay. And Game of Thrones obviously rates if you are, as I was, looking for an adventure! But I didn’t have those other three at home and the coincidence was just too great.

Yay! Harry, I’m coming at ya! Fun!

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER & ABOUT 60 PAGES IN… Loving me some Harry Potter! Maybe you didn’t hear me.

LOVING ME SOME HARRY POTTER!

Oh man. Loving it! Harry! Where have you been all my life?

11/23/20 – HARRY IS DONE.

You know? Of all the surprises I have gotten from the books I’ve read, the sweetest surprise for me has to be the young adult books. Not for one moment had I ever thought about reading one. I didn’t judge them; I just didn’t even think about them. And now, the three young adult books I’ve encountered here have completely charmed me.

It is really the writing I like. Not one extra word anywhere – no longwinded descriptions or pauses to think. Plot, characters, pacing – they are the bomb!

I have been really amused that, since I’ve made this discovery, I have started to find out that very bright, intellectual women friends of mine have been reading young adult books for decades. Who knew? Well, I know now!

Soaring over them all is Harry Potter. It isn’t lost on me that my last book was Catcher in the Rye, where I strained the entire time to grasp what all the hoopla was about (I mean, I got it. I just didn’t GET IT.). I know what I read there, I just didn’t read it in the right decade or be whisked away by it in high school.

And then, there’s Harry! The single most successful story in the history of books. If ever there was a book that should have a hard time overcoming its enormous success in any reader’s mind, it should be this one.

But baby! I was all in from page one. This will not be the only Harry Potter I read. That’s the first series I’ve read in this list so far where I’m sure I will continue.

The success of Harry Potter can’t spoil it because it is successful before you read it. It is positively brimming over with success!  Beautiful writing – every character is so clear and so different from one another.

As I read Harry, I could feel myself enjoying it and I could feel little kids everywhere enjoying it too! There is a sense in which the story belongs to all of us from the start.

The story doesn’t so much unfold as it forces you to unpeel your layers of defense and cynicism – till you get to the part of you that desperately and happily returns home in this book.

It is childhood and magic and danger and euphoria, all at once.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not obsessed or anything. I won’t be joining a Harry Potter fan club. But I will say this, because it has, in fact, already happened to me.

I can’t help it. And I’m not going to be able to help it.

When someone tells me they like Harry Potter, I am going to like them a little more.

Just the way it’s going to be.

This experience was a lovely surprise. Splendid!

• THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
• by J.D. Salinger
• [rated by PBS readers as #30]
• 277 Pages

8/16/20 – FIRST DAY

This pick was a no brainer. I picked four titles. This was the first of them. I was more interested in it than the others AND it was one of the 20 from this list that I had already bought, so no errands involved! It is way too hot for that.

Plus, I just saw an interesting documentary about Salinger, who was and is a dick. But hey. I won’t hold that against the book. It has been the most important book to

so many people that I’m anxious to partake of it.

LATER THAT NIGHT, 20 PAGES IN This is, I already have a feeling, a book that won’t stand the test of its hype. Or rather – it may well live up to it, but the shadows cast on it from years of adulation make it almost impossible to read cleanly.

I already find myself looking at his writing and thinking – that’s a good description of whatever…not great, but good. And then, as I am reading, I can’t help but wonder – would I be flabbergasted by this if I didn’t know its history?

I do think that the novel, in its entirety, will end up allowing me to see through those lenses that I, as well as the culture, have put on it. And if it is extraordinary, I hope I will see that in it.

Till then, it is a pleasant read for 20 pages. The antihero of the story, Holden Caulfield, is well imagined and I am looking forward to sashaying along with him for a bit…

10/17/20 I know. A whole lot of time has passed. We’ve been sheltered now for the better part of a year. This has exacerbated my need for distraction. Unfortunately, that need has dovetailed into my need to read four books at a time. Ah well. That doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon…

I don’t know why I would be surprised in the least that any book on this list would surprise me. They pretty much all have!

The novelty to Salinger’s writing approach must have seemed amazing if you read this in high school and especially at the time it came out. I am keenly aware, perhaps more for this book than any other one so far on the list, that the time this came out and the reaction that it triggered is too far in the past to awaken. Many writers since then have copied Salinger in one way or another. And many have done a great job!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao felt amazingly original in its writing style. But that’s because it never got folded into the culture. This did.

Okay, so it is amazing that the whole book is continuous in action. You really do feel immersed. It is amazing that you stay interested, even though Holden’s transformation is syrup-slow in coming out (in fact it really happens after the book).

Salinger had the confidence to cut an incredibly thin slice of the pie out and examine it for the length of the book.

I don’t think I would ever disagree that this is a good book. But sadly, the lateness of my reading it is too late for me to elevate it to the greatness that it obviously deserves.

Almost wish I’d had the chance to read this between Jane Austin and Beowulf. I’m sure I would have gone crazy for it…

As I get ready to take a trip and close down my computer for over a week (gulp!), as my last act I want to pass on a very special and unexpected find of a book to you!

• WATCHERS
• by Dean Koontz
• [rated by PBS readers as #79]
• 603 Pages

6/28/20 – FIRST DAY, 65 PAGES IN

Well, well, well… Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water…

I was able to get my hands on two of the titles I picked and it seemed to me that I would read the other one. But I kept holding this one and looking at the thousands of great reviews up front in the paperback. You know, not just enough reviews to wet your appetite. This is the kind of book where they put tens and hundreds of great reviews because it is that well thought of.

It seemed like fun to read an opus of which usually stuffy reviewers said over and over again that they could not put this thing down. Besides, I reasoned, part of this process was to read writers that I had never read before and probably would never have without this. Dean Koontz was certainly a name that I had always heard and seen, but I had no idea what his writing was like. What he a military guy? Or what?

Once I picked Watchers, I asked my girl group that meets virtually on Saturday nights if any of them had read Koontz. There are some heavy readers in that bunch. But no one had. Then my friend Maureen offered that she thought she might have read one once. When I asked her what if anything she remembered about it, she said, “I think it was really creepy.” That made sense to me. Just reading the summary of this book creeped me out.

Then I asked my husband if he had read any Koontz. As a professional musician, he had lived a lot of his life in airports. He allowed that there were a small handful of writers that were in every airport shop, authors that were bought, read and handed off to the drummer… We thought of Tom Clancy, Lee Child, this one, that one and Koontz. He figured that he had probably read one but couldn’t remember.

So, while mine wasn’t terribly encouraging research, it sort of served to make me even more curious. I picked up Watchers and started the read.

The man knows how to write. Let’s begin with that. The reason I put that quote from Jaws at the top of this entry is that the movie’s two note menacing score line could be playing behind this whole story. Just the silent pulse of it… Koontz takes you to places in very few pages that make you scared and nervous and completely addicted. And yet, his touch is light.

I admired that, when he introduced his characters, one was a hired assassin. Clearly a wacky guy who would kill anyway just for fun, he loved his job. You read about one of the killings where he hurt this woman. Yet it is curiously told without trying to gross you out with details. Every word counts – no self indulgence. He is spinning his yarn and he is in charge of just how much he gives away and when he will be giving it.

I admire the mastery. I especially admire that I read for the first time in a long time without checking to see what page I was on while doing so. This baby is 600 pages but I think it will be a quick read. And one that, I imagine, I will be passing on to others.

That’s what I think after 65 pages. Now let’s see how wrong I can be!

JUNE 30, 2020 – 150 PAGES IN

Okay, so now we’re cooking with gas! Watchers is like a steam locomotive racing at top speed! I’m not only a quarter of the way through a 600-page book in two days; I’m also thinking about it whenever I’m not reading it. Showed up in my dreams last night! It has been SO LONG since I’ve felt this involved in a book. It truly feels like a privilege.

I don’t want to give it away and I’m conscious that the brief outline I give you might not seem as good as it really is….

Imagine that a monster that will kill anyone in its way has escaped from a detention-like center. Since no one except the scientists ever knew of its existence, no one is made aware of this escape. We watch it kill as it heads toward…two people and a dog. Three beings that you would instantly protect any way you could. Scary? Of course. You love these people and this dog! and the suspense is so thick that it reaches up into your throat.

Okay, I see you, friend. You read the above paragraph and said this isn’t for me! But it is.

Can’t help this reflection. This guy, Dean Koontz, is a huge best selling author. There is a reason why certain writers are bestsellers. Usually, it’s because they are that good. I mean, if someone writes sappy romances, if you’re reading the top selling author in sappy romances, there’s a reason why they are the top selling author in that genre! It always feels good to experience being in the hands of a good writer

The creepiness is his to brandish when he wants to. But, like Crichton, he is a master storyteller. Fantastic plot and the unfolding of it. Fantastic characters that are unique and clear. The build and the suspense… This man knows how to write this and what fun!

I confess I knew nothing about Koontz. I thought he was a military guy but then I realized I had him mixed up with Clive Cussler, another big airport seller. I probably won’t ever read a Cussler, but I might well read more than one of Koontz. I knew nothing about him and feel so grateful to this project for the chance to be in his capable hands!

JULY 29, 2020 – 400 PAGES IN

So far, this book has been revelatory to me. I already mentioned that I was never drawn to a Dean Koontz book in my life and most likely would never have read one.

And more would be the pity. That would have been my distinct loss. I’m keenly aware that all tastes differ and that I shouldn’t come up with sweeping generalizations about a writer as prolific as Koontz after reading just one of his books. Certainly I can’t speak for the direction that his writing goes beyond the scope of this book. What is merely creepy here might go somewhere I don’t want to go, if you catch my drift. Current events in the world already have me close to throwing up, I don’t need more to push me in that direction.

But.

You know the feeling when you bite into something and it suddenly fills your mouth with flavors and layers and depth and sheer class? And you know that, in tasting that thing, you have put yourself in the hands of a master?

Reading this book feels like that to me. Watchers has elements that are in most of what I read, but here, they are done better. Quite a bit better. This isn’t dessert: this is mousse handwhipped by a three star chef.

The bones of this book astound me. Starting with pacing. Even my usual books that I really like that rely on pacing have little dips here and there. You forgive those dips because you like what is there in the main. You can’t imagine how you wouldn’t have a dip here or there. You tell yourself that that’s just real life!

For instance, when a new character is described. Sure, you can do it long or short and of course, you need to do it. And yeah, the action stops for a bit. That’s cool.

But Koontz sails in a different author boat than most. The pace is interesting, involving, doesn’t pull back or need to – every page worth reading. It feels like you are reading this amazing suspense novel and also being taught by a master teacher about how to write a suspense novel at the same time.

Pacing is great, characters all involving and worthy of rooting for. No one perfect. Mystery lurks around the corner. It lurks so successfully that you don’t need any unnecessary drama added. Besides, as a master teacher and writer, he set up all the elements perfectly at the start. Tense from the start and heart-filled from the start.

Since this book revolves in part around the love story of a man, a woman and a very special dog, I know that I’m going to have to see what happens to the dog before I can specifically recommend it to some of my sensitive dog friends. I’ll be pissed if the dog dies too, but whatever happens, I’m in for the ride.

One last element that might go pretty far in explaining why Koontz is such a big seller…. For someone as flighty recently as I have been – it never takes me more than a paragraph to know where I am in this story and where I left off. That, for me right now, is a full fledged miracle. There aren’t a million characters. There are around six – and only three of those matter.

At least till the end of this book and most likely beyond, I am a devoted Koontz reader and fan.

8/16/30 – DONE.

Well. What can I say? Never again will I sit by and let anyone diss Dean Koontz. Ever. Well, okay, that has never happened and probably won’t ever happen. But if it does, I’ll be prepared!

In his afterward to the book, Koontz says that even if he is still writing when he wears pajamas and drools all the time, he will still be receiving comments about this particular book. It is clearly his masterpiece. People who haven’t read any of his other stuff, like me, have read this. And any one who reads any of his stuff has quickly found this one.

I loved Monte Cristo. I’ve been moved by many of these books. And it’s stupid to pick a favorite while I’ve only read 20 of these (and especially when my first and second favorite books of all time are still on this list for me to read again!).

But I loved this! A 600-page book in which you are in solid suspense the whole time. Characters that you care about more than almost any characters you have read about in your adult life.

Superbly written and amazingly sparse, with a through line that stays with you when the book is in your hands and after you close the pages for good, this book will stay in your mind and heart.

I’m so grateful that this project brought this book to me. It was so good that I’m nervous about the next one. Seems like I’m due for a dud!

• TALES OF THE CITY
• by Armistead Maupin
• [rated by PBS readers as #74]
• 371 Pages – that’s nothing!

5/25/20 – 20 PAGES IN

Leaving behind Gone With the Wind was going to be, I was sure of it, like leaving a long term relationship. I really spent a lifetime with those characters. So I knew that I would love a departure from all of that.

I picked four titles. One of them was Tales of the City and my heart leapt. Here is one of the few books on the list that I have always wanted to read and I couldn’t wait!

My husband, dog and I popped into the car immediately for a drive to Santa Rosa, where Barnes & Noble had it and they would bring it to the curb for you (we are all still sheltered in place through the pandemic).

Once home, I opened it and was even more excited. Short snippets of stories and scenes (this is what made it possible to be printed in the paper before becoming a book), this is a book about a young girl coming to San Francisco in the time when freedom, homosexuality, drugs all came out at the same time.

It should be said that I would have loved to be there with her. For me, it was college and gay men in Los Angeles and I had the world’s great time, so I am overly romantic about this period and these people.

But so what? Finally, I have reached a world I know something about – and that’s nice for a change.

It will take me quite a long time to get over Scarlett and Rhett. But Tales of the City will be a great companion during that separation.

I love it already.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: After a book that was just under 1000 pages, I don’t think that anything will ever seem long again!

Now watch me have to eat those words.

June 22, 2020 – that’s if we even count time anymore after sheltering for months! – Almost done…

I could have written about this book countless times while reading it. Except I couldn’t.

In a way, the strongest discovery and win from this project so far has been the number of ways I can be surprised by a book.

Surprised that Little Women was such a slog to read.

Surprised that I could hate Gulliver’s Travels as much as I did.

Surprised that I could like Monte Cristo as much as I did (now I’m gonna have to try that sandwich!).

Surprised that the two books for young adults, a market I had never before tapped, would be the most delicious surprises of the lot.

Surprised that I would finally read Vonnegut and Adams and end up just missing Tom Robbins (I’m currently jone-sing big time to read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues again!).

Surprised that my favorite part of Jurassic Park was when the dinosaur was chomping on somebody’s head.

Surprised that I would read The Sun Also Rises, a book that changed my life in terms of writing and a book I voted for throughout the PBS contest, and find out that my life-changing memories of it were wholly inaccurate!

Surprised that Gone With the Wind, after wincing through the first 100 pages, would end up moving me to my core.

And now we come to Tales of the City. I liked it immediately. That period of time in San Francisco is filled with romance in my mind. I felt it similarly in Los Angeles. It was a place and time where so many souls were peeking out from under enforced covers and finding acceptance. The mist-covered past where eccentric was accepted and revered – where did that go?

It is at this point that I need to refer to my friend Micaelia. We talked about this book and she made two excellent points. First off, she lived in San Francisco at the time and told me how exciting it was to go to the paper and read the next installment. And in reading this, it isn’t hard to go there and imagine that.

So many of these books, more than I would have imagined, originated as newspaper serial installments. I can’t possibly relate to what they meant within their respective environments. Too far back in history, and then there’s me – not a researcher. So too bad.

But when Micaelia described that excitement, it is all there. It’s in the pages. The writing must have been refreshing then; it is more than refreshing now!

Here’s where I hit a snag. Maupin writes this with such brevity that you sense he would consider it a failure if he had an extra word in there. In the mode of simply recording the gossip, it is almost journalistic.

And here’s me – loving brevity! I always love that. And the talent required to say and describe more with less. The problem for me is that, with every chapter 2-3 pages, jumping from story to story (although they are interlaced eventually and beautifully), I care about these people, but I keep having to remind myself of who they are. Who is this girl having an affair? Do I remember how this guy came into the picture? Stuff like that. It can give a girl a complex with regards to focus.

Enter Micaelia again. She started to talk about the Showtime series of this and the subsequent books he wrote about these characters. I remembered seeing a preview for that with Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis and…

I am suddenly surprised in a new way.

After an almost universal disdain for seeing books I like turned into movies (I know they can be good. I just prefer my own visuals of the thing.), I suddenly know that I will love seeing this series. Because a true heavyweight actor like Linney will fill out the character. She will stop and give her the humanity that the character deserves, humanity that is flying by at a dizzying pace in the book.

Having said that, I’m not done yet and I look forward to how this ends. This might be one in a series that I would like to read more of.

See that? Surprised you, didn’t I?

June 25, 202  – DONE with Tales of the City.

I’m finding it difficult to add to what I wrote above. I do intend to revisit these characters, mostly because I’d like to read them before seeing the series. I will have to get reacquainted with them by the time I get to that second book. But then again, I was getting confused by them by the end of this one.

A refreshing read, to be sure. Unique, fun and filled with the magic and plethora of choices that are loaded onto the newly liberated among us!

I don’t have the slimmest idea of what book / experience comes next! Should be fun.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I had no idea I was headed into an explosion of a book next!

NAUSEATING DISCLAIMER:

Once again, I have read far ahead of my posts to you. I’ve written them; I just haven’t posted them! And so, with this increasingly nauseating disclaimer, I will earnestly pledge to catch up. And I’ll even believe it when I say it! So there!

Now, as for tomorrow…..

Seriously now. Even though the following book was read last year, it was a big, homping part of last year. In fact, I tend to think of it as the thing that really stalled my reading/blog progress completely. The pacing of my decade of reading had to pick up after this bohemoth, rather than coasting along as I was before it.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s one of the biggest book adventures I have taken, in ways I will attempt to explain here.

In point of fact, I think the huge final scene in the film was one final attempt to convey the incredibly broad stroke that Mitchell attempts and pulls off with this opus. But I’ll stop now! And start again!

• GONE WITH THE WIND
• by Margaret Mitchell
• [rated by PBS readers as #6! Whew!]
• 959 Pages – Lord, help me!

2/27/20

Well, here is an interesting turn of events! I previously mentioned that this book just popped into my mind when it was time to pick the next one. It popped so much that I didn’t pick it in my usual procedure, but I “picked” it, you know? Seemed like it needed to be read.

To go back, I remember more than a few of my girl friends citing this as their favorite movie ever! Not me. I have never been that interested in Gone With the Wind. I never even considered reading the book. Saw the movie once as a younger person, but the theatre was overly full and I was forced to sit in the front row for all those hours. So I guess you could say that I associated it from then on as a pain in the neck.

Then the next time I met up with it…well, I need to set the scene.

Upon graduating college, my father had given both my older sister and now me the gift of a trip anywhere in the world. The only catch was that it would be with Dad, so that left out all the party places! I chose a photo safari in Africa.

I guess I was thinking Kenya and when I was mailed the itinerary and it said South Africa? Shock didn’t cover it. I hadn’t bargained on this and I felt very uncomfortable from the start. Why couldn’t he have picked another country, for pity sakes?

But when Dad booked a trip, you went. So there he, his then wife and I were. As a treat, he had booked us on the Blue Train from Johannesburg to Capetown, knowing how much I loved trains.

We arrived in the Johannesburg train station and it was a bustlng beehive of activity. Someone whom I didn’t even see, probably a porter of some kind, gestured that the three of us should go into a little quiet room and sit there to wait for our train.

As we sat in there, I wondered why there were only the three of us in this pristine room, while people were packed in and bumping into each other outside. Then I saw it. I looked over at one of the benches. It had a stamp that read Net Blankes, which meant no blacks.

I thought I was going to throw up. I stood up and bolted out of the room and went down to sit by the trains. My dad followed me. I was crying. I honestly never felt that I would ever participate in something so racist. I’m sure that, in unfeeling ways, I have been part of the problem many times, but this was a completely blatant incident.

My dad was great and just sat there with me till our train came. As I recall, Dad’s trifling wife stayed in that room and read her Jacqueline Susann, enjoying the air conditioning. Later, we were in a hopelessly elegant hotel in Capetown for the night. I turned on the TV. There was the very beginning of Gone With The Wind.

As it starts, in very flowery writing (the kind they always used in films of that period), it explained that in 1862, America freed its slaves with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

I couldn’t help reading that and comparing. Apartheid would be exploding there within the year. And all I could think was “1862 we signed it – and we are still not even close to really freeing the classes, races and sexes. How long will it take them?

Looking back, they moved far more quickly than we did. How could they not, when our country is not a country interested in self-reflection. So change is a rocky terrain for us. One that, as a nation, we are loathe to traverse.

Moving from that experience of Gone With The Wind until now, I pick up the book and read the introduction.

Far from the last hideous and endless introduction to Alice, this one is only a few pages and it is by Pat Conroy. He is the perfect author to do it too – well respected, great writer and very Southern.

In the intro he explains what Scarlett O’Hara meant to his mother. How Scarlett was a real person to her and her mother would read the book to him as well as asking herself what Scarlett would do. He waxes rhapsodic about the meaning of the book to Southerners. He says

that, despite the slavery inclusion into this idealized world, this book is too big and too important to be shut down from just that angle alone.

It is really the perfect introduction and it doesn’t even feel optional. It feels like you couldn’t have the book without it. One can feel the problem and what a hard sell this book is now.

I am about 100 pages in and still navigating the waters. From the start, it is a wonderful read. Can’t deny that. Ashley’s getting married and all of that – legendary.

AND! ICK! Every page has darkies and pickaninnies and shit that you just don’t want to be facing!

I do think that the ironic saving grace of this huge epic is that Scarlett is not a nice person or particularly sympathetic. This is a help, really. We are watching her, I suspect as the book goes on, getting her eyes opened over and over again. So that part factors in the balance.

I’m glad to be reading it. Doesn’t pass the restaurant test because it weighs too much to bring anywhere – huge! And though it might take me six months till Tara gets torched, I’m in. But the slavery thing is tough going.

Already full of surprises. But what hasn’t been so far? I do love that!

3/18/20

200 pages into a 1000 page book! Oy.

I want to comment on this book, but it’s strangely hard.

We are presently in isolation due to the pandemic, so up front, this seems like it would be a perfect time to read and make real progress.

Yet, even then, Gone With the Wind is a slow read. I’m not a speed reader by any stretch but even I don’t remember the last time I took a half an hour to read 20 pages!

That said, there is a whole lot in those 20 pages. You are not being gypped, you are being dipped. Dipped into this world and these characters. They are larger than life. And once you can trudge through the slavery part (which never becomes easier), it is a real slice of life brought up around you and baby, you are right there, in the middle of it.

You know, remembering the movie and in reading the book, you realize that Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were perfectly cast and they both did magnificent jobs. It is

impossible for me to visualize Scarlett and Rhett played by anyone other than those two actors. I generally try not to have movie actors insert themselves into the characters in my head when I’m reading, but this one is unavoidable.

What I’m taking too long to say is that these two mythical characters are all there from the start in the book. Amazingly there. And the themes of pride lost and wanting to feel attractive and the woman who is so wonderful that it makes the other woman sick! I mean, c’mon! That’s entertainment.

My mind seems always “en route” these days. But when I finish 20 pages of Gone With The Wind, I remember it.

That says something. Sometimes it seems pulpy but let’s face it, huge interactional themes are pulpy!

3/28/20

320 PAGES IN – ROUGHLY A THIRD…

As I sit down to write a description of what it feels like to be reading Gone With the Friggin’ Wind, I am at a loss.

Limitations first. It is a world class slog. No question about it. Almost a thousand pages, slow reading for a fast reader and I’m pretty slow!

Because of the length of this, I cannot lie. I’m branching out and reading someone’s memoir and a mystery alongside it. That is just the right amount for me. The three differently paced stories make “Gone” fit in its proper place.

But here’s the thing. The reason Gone fits with other books is because it is so friggin’ good. I have used friggin’ once in this entry and now it has clearly become a habit.

I think that Gone might be the most evocative book I’ve ever read. Its vibrancy overtakes you. The character of Scarlett O’Hara isn’t on a page. She is standing right next to you. You see her! You feel her!

The first 100 pages make you sick – with the happy darkies and the good old days. But then the war starts.

And with that, the lead characters have all been introduced and all of them leap off the page. I don’t really know how Mitchell does it because I never catch her doing it, but her characters sparkle with clarity.

And now, the war is raging and the South is losing and the grim realities of loss – both political and personal, the needs, the hunger, the death, the uncertainty… They have become the central reality as the sick and dying descend on Atlanta.

Once Mitchell has painted her huge, supremely iconic characters, she backs up further and further and ends up painting an entire city in wartime. And surprise! She is equally deft at the micro and the macro! She is amazingly strong at how evenly and vividly she can zoom in or out and the result is an amazingly evocative read.

Having only seen the movie once and back in the Stone Age at that, I thought the end of the movie was Atlanta

going down. It feels like we are almost there now, but then what is to be done with the other 600 pages? Guess I’ll know soon enough.

One thing is for sure. I am a stone cold fan of Margaret Mitchell. This book kicks some major literary ass!

Last thing I want to add. As I write this, we are entering our second week of shelter in place in Sonoma. I feel very adjusted to it at this point, as I can’t help feeling we are here for a while.

Gone With the Wind comes off to great impact in this time and place. The book has so much to do with being trapped in a role and how overnight, everything in your world can change. Tres appropriate, yeah?

4/1/20 – 375 PAGES IN…

I mentioned already that so much of Margaret Mitchell’s grandeur is almost invisible. But now and again, as Scarlett and troupe are leaving Atlanta through fire, a paragraph will quietly rise up and knock me out.

For example, here, as they try to find an escape route, with fires burning all around them:

“As they neared Marietta Street, the trees thinned out and the tall flames roaring up above the buildings threw the street and houses into a glare of light brighter than day, casting monstrous shadows that twisted as wildly as torn sails flapping in a gale on a sinking ship.”

Or a little further down the road, they pass yet another small retreating regiment:

“The detachment came down Marietta Street, between the burning buildings, walking at route step, tiredly, rifles held any way, heads down, too weary to hurry, too weary to care if timbers were crashing to right and left and smoke billowing about them. They were all ragged, so ragged that between officers and men there were no distinguishing insignia except here and there a torn hat brim pinned up with a wreathed “C.S.A.” Many were barefooted and here and there a dirty bandage wrapped a head or arm. They went past, looking neither to left nor right, so silent that had it not been for the steady tramp of feet they might all have been ghosts.”

You feel me? Mighty damned good writing.

4/15/20 – 530 PAGES IN… OVER HALF!!

Wow. I’m not going to lie. I wonder whether the moment will exist on earth that I can exclaim I’M ALIVE and also exclaim I’M FINISHED WITH GONE WITH THE WIND!

But not yet. Not remotely a bad read, just a long one.

A little nugget of a thought has been inching up into my brain as I keep going with this. I am starting to remember how, as little kids, before the Internet, we always read really long books! I had forgotten that forever but it was true. I remember us reading James Michener, Leon Uris – we sought out these huge opuses to read! While this book would have been perfect for that time, I’m meeting it now. So the length is a bit more problematic.

But unlike others I have read from this list, if I was just reading this for my own enjoyment (hard to believe but…), I wouldn’t be abandoning it. You couldn’t pay me to abandon it. It is a great, great story, told really well. It helps me that I thought I knew what happened in this book and I don’t.

I know she gets with Rhett somewhere in there and she fights for Tara till the end. But that previous sentence does not 400 pages make, so on I go.

Last point, we are still sheltered in place. I thought I’d pour into and finish Gone With the Wind if we were here long enough.

But we have been here long enough. And I have made great progress on a lot of home chores in that time. But Gone With the Wind remains a 10-20 page stint a day for me. I want to read more but Gone With the Wind doesn’t want to be read faster for me. I may have to give up most of one year to finish this thing. I hope not. However long it takes, it’s time well spent.

5/4/20 – somewhere over 700 pages…

Have I mentioned that each page of this, I was figuring recently, is about three pages worth of a regular paperback? Big. Ass. Book.

I have never experienced a closer relationship between a writer and her character than Margaret Mitchell and Scarlett. Her writing of this woman is always surefooted. It is that surefootedness that allows the reader to keep looking at this character from every side. You are disgusted with her at times, particularly when it is all about her. And then you must admire her courage when she goes to the hilt, while others cower and urge her to cower as well.

Gone is really a book about war and its effect on the people. Taking you quickly from idealized lives and the excitement to take part in a war to life becoming the never ending tragedy that war always is.

And through it all, the war is defined through the eyes of this amazingly complex, selfish ex-debutante. She is the storyteller and the story observer. The war happens to her. And yet, though she is quite the pawn in the larger sweep of things, she is also the reason to write this, due to Mitchell’s extraordinary sense of her.

Also, I find another interesting crossroads in reading this during the months of shelter in place. There is no outward reason for comparison, but the story rings true in an extra way in that all of the characters are simply trying to cope with these extraordinary and surprising events that are constantly shaping them. This time feels like that to me and so the analogy of postwar uncertainty really rings true.

It should be said that I’m in the 700’s pages, out of almost 1000 and she isn’t together with Rhett Butler yet. He is involved in her life throughout the book, but I’m now seeing that they really eliminated the middle 500 pages to focus on her and Rhett in the film.

No matter. I’m looking forward to them being together. Mitchell really knows this relationship too, so I’m hoping that the old guy Scarlett’s married to now will hurry up and kick the bucket so that we can move forward with the best plot line in here.

Toodles and wish me luck!

5/24/20

I finished it. Wow. Finished it and kissed the book, impulsively. This was a huge adventure to have read.

With 30 pages to go, I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Not because I didn’t want to. It was just such an epic.

The final “don’t give a damn” that is so easily memorable comes at the end of pages and pages of these two people who loved each other and had no way to say it or come close to each other in any way. By the time he leaves, you just feel achy. What a shame.

I know that Gone has been long and parts of it wince-worthy – the black dialogue alone, if it went too much longer might have led me to burn the book.

But I will never forget it. Mitchell wrote the first solid antihero female character in modern literature that I can remember and no one has ever done it any better.

In the end, Gone isn’t about love, it is about each character’s ability to love. Scarlett can’t. It isn’t in her. Rhett can but never understood how to ask for what he needed. And all of this is not knowable to her until it is way too late.

And how human is that? I feel gratitude for the chance to have seen this war from another point of view.

I know that I will always end up on the reverent side of things when this book is discussed. But I’m anxious to move on now. I’ve lived with this huge story for a long, long time.

Bye Scarlett. Loved ya. But tomorrow’s another day.

• ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
• by Lewis Carroll
• [rated by PBS readers as #28]
• 110 pages + 1,000 pages of intro
• wrapped inside a 600 page two book set – sheesh!

Okay. Okay. Have I ever got a lot to tell you! There is even a confession wrapped inside all of this that I’m rather ashamed of. Whee!

So my local book store, Readers, had Alice and had Lord of the Rings. Now, I saw the movie of Lord of the Rings which, as far as I could glean, was a continuous battle with Orlando Bloom and his shocking white hair and a whole lot of arrows.

Yet! A whole gablillion people love it, so I’m open to the tiniest, remote possibility that I didn’t really get the lion’s share of what was going on there. And if it worked as a movie, it was due to the phenomenal success of the book, so I’m hip. Ready to plunge in.

Here is where I seemed to go WAY wrong. Alice? What a delightful repast after my never ending adventure with The Shack. So I decided to start with it. Needed to have the other book anyway, so no biggie.

There is an introduction at the front of the book. And not just any introduction. Entire groves of trees are gone to print up this introduction, in which he tells of Carroll’s basically uncontested romantic love and sexual fixation with a tiny girl named Alice.

He used to take Alice and her two sisters out and after a picnic would end up entertaining them with wacky stories. Well, really. Of course he did. What else do you do to hold the attention of a ten year old – or however old she was.

One day, his story was especially entertaining and Alice urged him to write this one down. He pursued it, though with the same attitude he would have had if she had asked him to lick her boots. He wouldn’t have relished it but he would have done it nonetheless.

Eventually, by the time it comes out, Alice has gone through puberty so he isn’t into her anymore. I know. Lovely back story, ain’t it? My.

Any way I have this problem. I finish books and movies. Now that sounds resourceful, but I mean I almost always finish them all – even if they suck!  See, when I added that last part, you can see that it goes from resourceful to using poor judgment! I keep telling myself that a terrible movie is all going to come together in the last five minutes. The fact that that outcome seldom happens does not seem to factor into my involuntary reaction to keep going.

Well, I quit today. After 28 pages of introduction and just about the same amount to go, I took my road less traveled. Besides, with an introduction just about as long as the book itself!, I still don’t really think that it will cast any deep insight into the Mad Hatter. So here goes. I’m entering a pedophile’s fantasy land. Whee!

Strangely looking forward to it. And if I don’t love it, I already know with 100% conviction that I will love it more than I loved the intro!

2/16/20

HALFWAY THROUGH –

Remember not to be too impressed. The book is slightly longer than 100 pages.

My overriding amazement reading this is that I suddenly think I’ve never read it through before! That only seems amazing because the characters are so indelibly part of my childhood. And what’s more, I was in some kind of Alice play in college, but it truly sucked and I think the director wrote the thing, which would go a long way towards not recommending it.

So yeah, I’m hip to Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, but not the tale from start to finish. Which bodes really well for how vivid the characters are.

The story fares worse, as least for this little buckaroo. I remembered that Alice got bigger and smaller, but she gets bigger and smaller so often in the first half of this that my vertigo starts to kick in. Oy.

Also, because I did read that half an introduction, you can’t help but read this through the eyes of this old guy who is desperate to entertain this little girl and the whole thing gets tainted to a creepy degree.

Of course I’ll finish it. But I’m not thrilled. My juices are pointing towards the next great tale. Could there be a Monte Cristo in my future? Hopefully. And not of the sandwich kind.

2/22/20

Cool date, anyway! 2/22/20!

Ding dong, the Mad Hatter is dead!

I know there are people who think this is a classic. There are, in fact, tons of people who think this is a classic! They picked it at #28 on the list!

I, sadly, am not one of those people.

Do I even get it? Kinda sorta. I get that, much like Dr. Seuss, an author I like much better (I think I do anyway – it’s been a while…). Basically, when insanity meets imagination meets a dexterity in conveying it, therein we have a classic.

I’m trying to think of a childhood book I like. Oh, I know! I love Harold and His Purple Crayon! Love it! Love Harold!

This does not equal any compulsion I might have to nominate it, however, for one of the world’s great reads. I’m just happy to have a copy of it that I hug every now and again.

And Alice – news flash everyone – is not written all that well! Seriously! Like I said earlier, the symbols and characters are emblazoned in my mind, but having just read the book, they are no more emblazoned than right before that.

It makes me think that along the line, I have seen them animated in a way (film? tv?) that really brings them to life. Cuz let me tell you, this text doesn’t.

I am amused at how many of these books in this project have been so opposite my guesses about them. Ones I think will be easy or fun, the opposite. Ones I’ve dreaded have been great.

I think I might be mystery lazy. I’ve been happily in a rut. And it’s a rut that I’ll be in again. But this is shaking me up in all sorts of positive ways.

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Oh! I want to make a note about a past book.

I just saw Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. I vote on these independent spirit awards every year and in so doing, I watch all manner of small films. So I came to this quite late. I felt so darned qualified to comment on it since I had just slogged through the book this past year.

She did a magnificent job! I couldn’t believe the life she breathed into that tale that simply wasn’t there before. I was a fan of hers from Ladybird, but this effort was truly extraordinary.

Having said that, she did take a few liberties that made me chuckle. The biggest liberty, probably, was that the sort of balding, tubby tutor that Meg falls for in the book was played in the movie by that ridiculously hunky guy from Granchester! Are you shitting me?

Any woman on the planet would be willing to go broke with him! And if there was an argument about money, just forget about it and take him upstairs to bed. I’m sure that his skills in that department could soothe any ruffled feather you might have!

So onward from here. I love to go to restaurants for lunch and read. It is my oldest ritual and I never get to do it enough. These titles are funny to take with you.

When I was reading James Baldwin, I practically draped the book across my food, I was so proud to read it! Alice? Not so much. And I’ve already made plans to be reading something else at the same time as I read 50 Shades of Gray. I don’t mind people thinking I’m wacky sexually. I’m not, but I don’t mind that rep near as much as I mind anyone saying I was reading that piece of drivel.

Watch it be my next one. Here goes!

Oh, also I have been thinking about reading Gone With the Wind all day. Particularly strange, because I have never before had even a thought about reading it! So I may have to throw it in with whatever I pick next…

After picking, I am left with looking over Gone With the Wind, as well as the two remaining titles I have – Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Pride & Prejudice (which I’ve read a bunch and not looking forward to. I’ll look them over and see which one pulls me in!

LATER, SAME NIGHT –

Well, first off, Pride & Prejudice hid from me. I really couldn’t find it. Though I hadn’t wanted to read it, the OCD part of me will keep rooting around in subsequent days to find it, as I know I have it and it will drive me a little crazy! But for now, it obviously did not want its seat at the table.

I looked at Curious Incident and it looks absolutely great. Can’t wait to read it….

But I’m going to have to wait – because Gone With the Wind, after never before finding a spot on my mental call sheet, came into my head this morning and wouldn’t go away.

And you know? I’m strangely not even that freaked by the 959 pages. I’m ahead of schedule with this blog, so I can take a couple of months to read it if need be. Probably one of the top maybe five longest books on the list, but I’ve learned that that doesn’t mean a thing either.

And I have been jones-ing for a juicy novel. Maybe my mental soup cauldron thought of the list and this came up.

Ah well, one way or another, we are off to the races!

Okay. I picked three titles. One of them, The Shack, I have had a copy of for years and was just never drawn to. But the other day, it popped back into my mind – out of nowhere – and I found myself, though not even clear as to  what it was about, wondering whether I might pull that one soon.

When I then picked three titles and it was one of them, I knew I needed to go for it. So here we go!

Also, it turns out to be a story about God that people quoted as being life changing on the cover. After the grittiness of the last few books, I think a little God couldn’t hurt! So here we go…

• THE SHACK
• by William Paul Young
• [rated by PBS readers as #57]
• 248 pages

One day and 70 pages in… Here’s the deal. It’s raining outside and I’m still recouping from a weekend of big shows with my choir, which leaves me a bit unable to concentrate on the TV, something which rarely happens.

So? The Shack is a tale of a father whose child is abducted and murdered, the trail of her demise leading to a shack where it ended. A year later, he gets a note to meet at the Shack. From God. No less.

Sounds like fun! I mean, of course, it isn’t fun but some pretty good plot reasons to read on! Apparently, the book has changed a lot of people’s lives, so I look forward to that.

Funny thing, though. When the last book you read was James Baldwin’s, it takes about 50 pages to give the next guy a break for writing only ordinary sentences! Like thinking, you’re really going to say he walked into the kitchen by writing he walked into the kitchen? Any fool can do that! Baldwin would have written it like a street beat haiku.

But everyone isn’t Baldwin and so I am landing slowly back down on more commonplace writing turf. Having said that, the beginning of the book is compelling.

still at 70 pages –

Just wanted to drop in and apologize. The Shack, described by many as a book unable to be put down, was put down by me. It’s fine and I’ll explain more later. But I took the Christmas holiday and read a bunch of other stuff. But I’ll get there, God! Meet you at the Shack!

This will make more sense later.

a little further in –

As I alluded to earlier, I did read other books over Christmas but that isn’t wholly the reason for my shut down on this book.

The Shack has a great premise. This isn’t giving anything away, as it is on the jacket of the book! A man takes his kids on a camping trip. He jumps into the water to help one kid as his canoe tips over and when he gets back to shore, his youngest daughter has been taken. They find, after an extensive search, her bloody dress at this run down shack, so obviously she is gone. Plus there is evidence that it was part of a serial abductor, so they have to accept that she is gone.

A year later, the father receives a note from God, asking him to meet at that shack that weekend. So he goes.

Cool premise, right? I thought so. I couldn’t wait to hear how the author decided to portray God. That part was a page turner.

And then. I got to God. Now, I should again emphasize that I’m not at all turned off to this premise. Problem being that I’ve read many things that either are fictional or non fictional – depending on your beliefs – words from God. Halfway into it, these are the least interesting or thought provoking of what I’ve previously read. Plus, this is a very Christian – in the sense of traditional Christian – point of view, so they explain things like the Garden of Eden (and not well), something most even religious sorts would pass on as a metaphor…

So I find myself in this weird dilemma. Not being that interested in this author’s words – at least so far – coupled with reading different books – all of which I was more interested in than continuing this – and you’ve got a total blog work shutdown!

But I tried to read more today and there are two things moving me at least a little bit forward. Okay, three. One – that I only have about 100 pages to go. Two – my internal and eternal optimist hopes that something will happen that will knock my socks off.

You know me. Just a simple girl with a dream.

And the third? A chance to read something else when I’m done! C’mon Cyn – finish up this bad boy!

One more thing –

I am rather continually amused by what books are an easier read and which ones are harder. Never what you would expect! This one should be easy! Ah well. Isn’t that just like life?

And while I’m waxing philosophical, perhaps I should go back and slog through ten more pages.

still almost done –

Okay, this is getting positively weird. My new theory (cuz I might be going crazy, but I have to at least theorize about it on the way down!) is this.

We are familiar with writer’s block. I think that I have reader’s block. Toward the end of last year, I felt like I could actually read War & Peace. I was on the reading train big time.

Then the new year came and with it, another tradition that I have been doing for about 20 years. I am a member of Film Independent and we vote for film’s Independent Spirit awards. The period of time you have to see all the nominated films is fairly short, so January has a different film or films to see almost every day. I’ve been energized and inspired by these incredibly brave, cativating and creative films.

So I think that when I finally got back to this book, I wasn’t really interested. But I like the premise! There is nothing odious about a guy talking to God. I took the book with me to lunch today, sat there for an hour and only got through 10 pages!

And what is even more perplexing is that I predict I will have a pleasant aftertaste from this book when I’m done with it. This hasn’t been Gulliver’s Travels. Now if I could just get through it to that pleasant aftertaste, I’d be pretty darned happy!

Less than a hundred pages left. C’mon Cindy, put your nose down and grind it out!

Well, I will. Really I will. Well, not tonight. Just not tonight.

I’m….done.

Well, saints be praised! I finished the tiny Christian opus!

Honestly, this has been an eye opener for me in its difficulty. Not a tough subject and a relatively short book, but it officially took me more time than any three of the others! If that bodes well for War & Peace, I’ll be confused but maybe it does!

And it ended well. It concluded as a rather sweet little fable. I may have resistance that played into this. If so, I hope that the book will do some magic on me in the days ahead. And if it does, I will be sure and let you know.

I ended reading it a bit charmed but I see the toll it has taken as I pick new titles. I couldn’t wait for any of them!

I actually picked four titles. The last one I threw back in, Pilgrim’s Progress. Wasn’t speaking to me. But I have out Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings and The Intuitionist. They all vary radically, including their rankings – Intuitionist is #99, where Lord of the Rings is #5 – but I think I might let my local bookstore choose for me by having one of them in. I’ll let you know!

Whee! On to a new book!