one of my first entries in this book journal was about Carolyn Heilbrun's suicide and my sense of loss over it.  via a newly discovered delicious bookblog, Redwing, here is an essay by Katha Pollitt on the same subject.  it's from the NYT magazine, so you need a name and password.  but, surely, you have them?

House of Sand and Fog, II

Okaay, all finished. time now to read something that picks me up a little bit. chances are, i won't see the film made from this book.  it's just too outrageously feelbad, although i was curiously detached from any personal feeling about most of the characters.  i knew from the beginning, partly from reviews of the film, that there would be no Happy Ending, and i was simply following the train wreck from bad to much worse.

the story:  an Iranian immigrant, former officer in the Shah's Royal Air Force, now struggling to keep up the appearances of a rich expat life in the Bay Area, buys a bungalow at a tax auction with the intention of flipping it for a large profit.  the sale was a mistake on the county's part, a bureaucratic error in street addresses, but the sale is legal and final.  the former owner is a young woman who moved to California from Masssachusetts, newly married to a husband she met in rehab (booze and coke). the guy by now has left her, friendless and alone, cleaning houses for a meager living.  she and the cop who supervised her eviction are soon united in a mad effort to get the house back, as well as a sexual relationship leading down an alcoholic rabbithole. the deputy is probably the most interesting character in the book, complicated, conflicted about everything, looking for love in a very wrong place.  i'm sorry to say that we also have to add Col. Behrani's family, a married daughter, teenage son, and wife, to the characters dragged into the nightmare resulting from the ownership battle.

this is a long book and at the end the stage is as littered with bodies as a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. i think this may in fact be a contemporary version of a classical tragedy, and i may have to go away now and think about that.  take a look at Col. Massoud Behrani as a tragic hero, a man so dedicated to his vision of pride and honor that he is blind to everything else, and so loses all that truly most matters to him.  and, if i can think of it in those terms it might be interesting to see just what Ben Kingsley does with this character.  or, maybe not.

House of Sand and Fog

well, bethellsigns, it's so interesting that you mention "House of Sand and Fog," the movie, in your comment on my previous entry.  having finished all my library books, except for Brick Lane, which G is currently reading, i picked up an old reader's copy of House of Sand and Fog which has been lying around for a couple of years.  it is a totally compelling read, a terrible thing to have started while the DC group was visiting and i had to be social and auntly and fun and active.  when all i wanted to do was curl up in a nest of quilts and read this ghastly story of spiraling awfulness. our company has just departed, and we really had a ton of fun, but now i can devote myself to seeing who falls apart first and worst in this book.  i reserve judgment yet on seeing it as a movie.  love that Ben Kinglsey, however.

sad note over the weekend, another of my favorite actors, Alan Bates, died of cancer at the far too young age of 69.  a fine and literate actor, often appearing in fine literate films.  i will miss him quite a lot.

This is what a real reindeer looks like!

If you read my other journal, the windmills of my mind, you know that i've done a few entries on the subject of the Solstice.  here is the first one, there are two more here and here. the others should all be on the front page of most recent entries.  if you have the stamina.  but, i really didn't do the job i wanted to, owing to the technical problems the journals have been having, and to the fact that this is a busy season, with lots of other things to do besides sitting at  the computer.

so, for anyone who might be interested in reading more, i give these references to real books, not internet links.  John Matthews, The Winter Solstice: the Sacred Traditions of Christmas.  Quest Books, 1998.  this one's full of wonderful illustrations, recipes, suggestions for celebration.  here's a fun one: Royale, Duncan, The History of Santa: from 2000 BC to the 20th Century. M.E. Duncan, 1987.  and, for those not afraid of the magical life, here's one to take you through the entire cycle of celebration:  Campanelli, Pauline & Dan, Wheel of the Year:  Living the Magical Life. Llewellyn, 1989. 

and if you do your reading you'll know why a reindeer illustrates this entry!

from books to blockbusters

here's an amusing little list, from "the Hollywood Madam,"  of movies recently opened or opening soon, the "holiday season" Biggies.  these are twelve films based on books, to whatever degree.  the categories the Hollywood Madam chooses to use for how closely the adaptation follows the book are:  "adapted from"  "based on"  "inspired by" or "loosely inspired by."  it's a fun read, and might help in our holiday cinema-going choices.

I asked for it, didn't I?

yes, i ask what you're reading and what do i get?  Libraries in the Ancient World!  Salman Rushdie!  okay, that's enough showing off now, isn't anybody reading The Murder Room?  or, i don't know, the latest John Grisham?  just kidding, of course.  i am impressed at the answers to the who's reading and what? question i posed in the previous post.  more, more! let's hear what's going on out there.  don't be afraid to be elitist!  don't be afraid to be hoi polloi, either. nobody reads Libraries of the Ancient World all the time.

now, i know it's been a long time since A.S. Byatt's Possession was the novel on everyone's night table, but i have just become aware that at some point in the recent past a film was made of the book.  i can't find it in my local Blockbuster, but i'm going to forage further afield and find it somewhere.  has anyone seen it?  i just found a lengthy review of the film on chicklit.com, which is not exactly complimentary.  here's the closing lines:  "Overall, Possession surprised me by seeming barely connected to Byatt's novel; it felt like a Cliffs Notes version with all the British terms Americanized.  Those who like the book can see the film without it ruining their reading experience, and if nothing else they'll appreciate the lovely English scenery.  Those who are unfamiliar with the book, however, won't come away with an accurate sense of it; reading the novel would be far more enjoyable and less confusing."  but is that not almost always the case?

Oh to think of all those books!

piles of swag carried home from the library, hoped-for holiday surprises.....books galore, and time to enjoy them.  i finished Jhumpa Lahiri's story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, last week, and am now in the final pages of The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen.  the Lahiri stories were very good indeed, though i thought the last one in the collection the best, and wondered why it was not the title story.  The Last and Final Continent, a good title for a collection, don't you think?  this Elizabeth Bowen is gripping in its own way, but it's somewhat like reading a book in a foreign language.  i feel that i am constantly translating.  i'm not sure how to define what i mean by that, but perhaps you know?  any Bowen readers out there? 

any readers out there?  is perhaps the better question.  because of the problem some of us have been having using the various buttons on the journal, notably the "save" button for entries, i haven't been posting with the regularity i'd prefer.  but this journal is a little lonely.  i want to hear what other people are reading, and how they feel about it.  want some suggestions, some feedback.  hmmmm, how to thump up some business?

oh BLOODY journal buttons!

so, i've been messing and messing and messing with things.  is it fixed?  can i save an entry?  this is a test, this is only a test. 

well, it would appear to be semi-fixed.  for the moment.  but i can only edit through a linked entry, not thru the main page.  i don't trust this enough to really do an entry.  i'll pop a vein if it won't save.  this has been going on for two days now, ever since i've come back from DC.    I have been gagged!  and mighty frustrating it is. 

silent snow, secret snow

i always think of that story by saki (h.h. munro)  when it starts to snow.  i loved his stories when i was a kid.  maybe i still would.  anyway, it's snowing here right now.  i should be home curled in a down comforter with a good book.  i am instead in the college library giving chapter retests to students in danger of failing beginning grammar class.  student, actually, singular.  the others didn't show up.  well, okay, it is snowing.  we're facing one more week before our much-needed winter break.  a week of final exams and grades, of exhausted sick students, lagging will-power.  final exams are an invention of the devil.  we are required to give them. if we don't know what our students have learned, actually learned and now know, by this point, there's something wrong with us as teachers. 

i've been reading book reviews and blogs, getting lots of ideas for things to read during the long-awaited break.  the C.S. Monitor turns out to have a wealth of information in its book section online. good lists of the past year's worthwhile books. i have Shirley Hazzard's NBC awardwinner, The Great Fire, David Guterson's Our Lady of the Forest, and Toni Morrison's new novel, Love, at the head of the list.  great book energy coming from spending time in a library.  i love libraries.  clean, quiet, well-lighted places full of books, magazines, newspapers, rolls of microfilm.  libraries and museums, places where i feel safely in the bosom of civilization and order.  yes, i know it's an illusion.  but i like it anyway.

 

pet envy

yes, i envy my pets.  because they spend all day lolling around the house.  if only they could read.  i've always thought it would be so good if dogs and cats could read.  their lives would be vastly improved.  so, molly curls up in the middle of the down comforter, without a book to keep her company, honey spends the day barking at anyone/anything (mail carriers, squirrels, bluejays, meter readers) that moves in the neighborhood.  in the meantime my TBR pile grows ever higher. 

yesterday morning i finished up the last pages of Lunch at the Picadilly, by Clyde Edgerton.  he has many previous novels, delightful small works of loving attention to southern characters and life.  he is particularly good with old women and young men/boys.  and that's what Lunch is all about.  an aging aunt in a nursing home, and her young(ish) caretaking nephew.  it's a small book, full of quirky personalities, humorous dialogue, a "preacher" whose sermons deserve some time and thought.  this book made me laugh out loud several times.  because i spent quite a few years caretaking an elderly aunt who was the world to me, it also made me extremely sad.  i'm a total fan of Edgerton's, so i'm hardly an objective reader.  he lives just down the coast from me, in Wilmington, NC, where he teaches creative writing.  if i were younger, i'd go enroll.

who gets to say? or, you're not the boss of me, elitist judges!

over at her excellent journal Amused has an entry on the subject of reading, followed by a string of comments from her devoted fandom.  altogether a fascinating entry.  did the Muse base this entry on the events at last week's National Book Awards ceremony? (certainly the cartoon accompanying the entry was a takeoff on the NBA controversy-in-a-teapot.) where Stephen King was given an honorary award, and Shirley Hazzard won the award for fiction?  there were comments on what is/is not fit reading material for a Serious Reader in this day and age.  polar oppostites King and Hazzard both had something to say.  here are a couple of stories highlighting the authors' remarks, one from the CS Monitor, the other from Yahoo News, oddly enough.  delicious to see that AOL bookers are following in such illustrious footsteps!