books

Books, Books, Books

This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to my company’s warehouse employee book sale. This is where they lay out all the returned stock from bookstores and let us purchase it at a steep discount, which means that it doesn’t need to get recycled or trashed. It’s one of the great perks of my job for book lovers like us, and is a really great deal, money-wise. I was able to pick up many books that have been on my “to read” pile for a long time.

On the other hand… we came home with 160 books. 57 of them were mine, 30 of them are presents for family members, and 73 of them are Stephanie’s. So… yeah. We made great strides in reducing clutter this year in our house, then frakked it all up. Heh. Actually, the sheer volume of stuff we cleared out this year is quite a bit more than the books we acquired, so we’re not at all back where we started. But we have a lot of book storage to come up with.

And I have a LOT of books. Doing the math – I acquired more books at this sale than I read this year, easily, and I did the same thing last year. And I also bought quite a few new books this year, although one of my goals was not to do that. I feel guilty that there are so many wonderful books in my library that I simply haven’t read. And many of them have been sitting there for quite some time, while I go around willy-nilly, checking out new titles from the library and buying new books from the bookstore.

So… that leads me to my 2008 new year’s resolution(s), which I’m making a bit early:

In 2008, I will read only books that I already own, and read more of them than I have in the last few years. To accomplish that, my plans are:

  1. I will not buy ANY books in 2008, new or used, unless I have to for work, with one exception – next year’s year-end warehouse book sale, and that only if I accomplish my resolution, and I can only purchase as many books as I’ve read in 2008.
  2. If I need a book for book club, I’ll check it out from the library, or (worst case scenario) Stephanie will buy it.
  3. I will NOT check books out from the library this year, unless it’s for book club. (I know that seems strange, but the goal is not about saving money, it’s about focusing my attention on my own library.)
  4. Do a massive purge of my feed reader and severely reduce the number of blogs I read regularly.
  5. Carry my current read around with me everywhere, so that I focus on it, and not the magazines in the doctor’s waiting room, the internet while I’m waiting for gym class, etc.).

So there it is – my official 2008 New Year’s Resolution. Let’s see if I can stick to it.

2019 update: I did not succeed at this resolution. Not this year, or any other year that I made it.

2022-03-12 Update: And I haven’t since 2019, either.
Continue ReadingBooks, Books, Books

Twilight

After complaining that I’m frustrated by my start and stop reading lately, I sat down with our next book club selection, Twilight, and finished it in less that 24 hours. Abiding by the first rule of book club, I won’t discuss the book, but obviously I blazed through it.
(it’s about vampires, and I liked it. Breakin’ rules.)

Continue ReadingTwilight

Recent Reading

It was about this time last year that I got behind in reviewing what I had read recently and gave up and simply posted a list of recent reads. Must be the time of year. I’ve definitely been having trouble getting through any book; I have tons of things half read, and I’m very frustrated by that. I used to read a lot on the weekends, but the last couple years we’ve been so busy that most of my reading is done at night before I go to bed, and I’m irritated by the stop and go effect.

Chicago from the Air
by Marcella Colombo, Gianfranco Peroncini
Crappy book. Very difficult to read, and not easy to get a good idea of what the whole of Chicago looks like from above. Could have been much better done.

Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft
by Simon Houpt and Julian Radcliffe
Non-Fiction
Cool book on major art thefts throughout history, and how the current inflated price of fine art drives recent thefts.

The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Fiction
“Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax’s novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax’s novels. As he grows up, Daniel’s fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a “porcelain gaze,” Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend’s sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide.”
I took this on the cruise with me and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Poe Shadow
by Matthew Pearl
Fiction
A young lawyer in 1849 Richmond sets out do discover why his hero Edgar Allen Poe died under strange and unfortunate circumstances. His investigation confounds and disappoints his family and friends, and eventually lands him in jail for murder. But his instinctive sense that something about Poe’s death wasn’t quite right leads him on. I enjoyed the book, but there are definitely sections that dragged, and I found myself as exasperated at the hero as his own family at times.

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder–How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
Non-Fiction
As noted in the Amazon description — “that organizational efforts tend to close off systems to random, unplanned influences that might lead to breakthroughs.” They have some very valid points, and very entertaining examples; the book was definitely worth reading.

The Mysterious Benedict Society
by Trenton Lee Stewart and Carson Ellis
Young Adult Fiction
“After Reynie Muldoon responds to an advertisement recruiting “gifted children looking for special opportunities,” he finds himself in a world of mystery and adventure. The 11-year-old orphan is one of four children to complete a series of challenging and creative tasks, and he, Kate, Constance, and Sticky become the Mysterious Benedict Society.”
I really enjoyed this kids book, it was very inventive and reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books from childhood – The Westing Game.

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J.K. Rowling: Dumbledore was gay.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Harry Potter fans, the rumours are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay.
JK Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series, outed the beloved character today while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall in New York. After reading briefly from the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she took questions from audience members.
She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love”.
“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down”.
Dumbledore’s love, she observed, was his “great tragedy”.
“Oh, my God,” Rowling concluded with a laugh, “the fan fiction.”
Potter readers on fan sites and elsewhere on the internet have speculated on the sexuality of Dumbledore, noting that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past. And explicit scenes with Dumbledore already have appeared in fan fiction.
Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.
Rowling, finishing a brief “Open Book Tour” of the United States, her first tour there since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and urged her fans to “question authority”.
Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Continue ReadingJ.K. Rowling: Dumbledore was gay.

kerouac

Louis Menand in the New Yorker, on kerouac…

Kerouac credited the inspiration for the scroll to Cassady–specifically, to a long letter, supposedly around thirteen thousand words, that Cassady wrote over several days (he was on speed) in December, 1950. This is known as the “Joan letter,” because its ostensible subject is a girlfriend of Cassady’s named Joan Anderson. But the letter, or the portion of it that survives (the original is lost, a holy Beat relic), is actually a hyper, funny, uninhibited account of Cassady’s sexual misadventures with a different girlfriend. It has no stylistic pretensions; it’s just a this-happened-and-then-that-happened piece of personal correspondence. Kerouac was knocked out by it. “I thought it ranked among the best things ever written in America,” he wrote to Cassady. It had the vernacular directness and narrative propulsion he was looking for, and it gave him the impulse he needed to tape his scroll together and get a complete draft on paper. He saw that this-happened-and-then-that-happened had literary possibilities, and the scroll was a way of forcing himself to stick to this vision. (A little later, Frank O’Hara made poems using the same theory. “I do this, I do that” is how he described them.) The scroll was therefore a restriction: it was a way of defining form, not a way of avoiding form. In religious terms (and Kerouac was always, deep down, a Catholic and a sufferer), it was a collar, a self-mortification. He did, after he finished the scroll, go back and make changes. But first he had to submit to his discipline.

Nostalgia is part of the appeal of “On the Road” today, but it was also part of its appeal in 1957. For it is not a book about the nineteen-fifties. It’s a book about the nineteen-forties. In 1947, when Kerouac began his travels, there were three million miles of intercity roads in the United States and thirty-eight million registered vehicles. When “On the Road” came out, there was roughly the same amount of highway, but there were thirty million more cars and trucks. And the construction of the federal highway system, which had been planned since 1944, was under way. The interstates changed the phenomenology of driving. Kerouac’s original plan, in 1947, was to hitchhike across the country on Route 6, which begins at the tip of Cape Cod. Today, although there is a sign in Provincetown that reads “Bishop, CA., 3205 miles,” few people would dream of taking that road even as far as Rhode Island. They would get on the inter-state. And they wouldn’t think of getting there fast, either. For although there are about a million more miles of road in the United States today than there were in 1947 (there are also two more states), two hundred million more vehicles are registered to drive on them. There is little romance left in long car rides.

Continue Readingkerouac

Everything is Miscellaneous

Everything Is Miscellaneous
Everything Is Miscellaneous
I mentioned the book Everything is Miscellaneous a few posts back on my list of recent reads, but I wanted to pull it out and write more about it, because it was very thought provoking, and a book I intend to buy (I borrowed it from the library) because I want to read it again.

In the book, author David Weinberger is discussing how we think about and organize knowledge, and about how the internet is changing the way we do that. He starts by discussing the hierarchical nature of traditional organizing schemes (what he calls first and second order schemes) like the Dewey Decimal System, and Linnaeus’ taxonomic scheme of organizing the natural world, and then examines some of the flaws with those systems. Among them: Dewey isn’t flexible enough to account for new knowledge or allow changes in categorization (libraries would have to move and relabel all of their books) and doesn’t allow books to be located in more than one spot in the system (the history of military cooking is an example of a problematic book). Linnaeus’s taxonomy forces us to make rigid decisions about what fits where, when there are grey areas in between. Both systems are authoritarian in nature; neither allow for additions or contributions by lay people who might possess knowledge the system authors do not. My paraphrasing of his ideas is pretty simplistic here, and I’m leaving lots out, unfortunately.

Weinberger then examines what he calls the “third order” organizational scheme that the internet has given rise to – hyperlinking and tagging are examples. Hyperlinking, of course, allows anyone creating a page to associate any idea to any other by linking pages together. Tagging allows people to create their own robust systems of metadata about a piece of knowledge by “tagging” it with words they associate with it – excellent examples are sites I use every day to do that very thing – Flickr, where I describe my photos using tags, Del.icio.us, where I bookmark links and tag them with descriptions. Systems like these are democratic in nature (anyone can provide tags that mean something to them), flexible enough to accomodate grey areas and restructuring, and allow a one-to-many association of ideas.

It’s a thought-provoking book for me because I’ve pondered some of the same flaws in hierarchical systems while organizing my graphics, photos, personal design work, blog entries, fonts, library catalog and my library itself, and I want to buy a copy and re-read it thinking about my own systems specifically. I’m hopeful that I can solve many of my long-standing doubts about my approaches to those systems – the biggest being that list of topics over there in the right column of this site.

Incidentally, the problem with first and second order organization schemes is exactly what I’ve been frustrated with and trying describe the flaws of in my rants about how Movable Type treats templates for category pages.

David Weinberger was also one of the authors of another book I found very thought-provoking years ago: The Cluetrain Manifesto (a book I wish we’d paid more attention to at work, frankly) and his website/blog is also a great regular read.

Weinberger spoke recently to the employees of Nature.com about his book and about the web; here are the notes from a fellow who attended that lecture.

Weinberger has been thrust into the debate with Andrew Keen, a former technophile who recently wrote a book about his change of beliefs, for a variety of complex reasons. Weinberger comments on Keens book and numerous public appearances at Huffington Post, and that was a really interesting read as well.

Continue ReadingEverything is Miscellaneous

What To Read, What To Read

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So, I’m trying to pick out what books to take on our cruise next week. Because of course that’s the most important thing to pack; clothes can just be plucked from the basket and chucked into the suitcase willy nilly the day before we leave, but reading requires some actual planning.
(Now if this sounds like I have my priorities in the wrong place, let me point out to you that my lovely girlfriend is in the dining room perusing her library and doing the exact same thing right now, and neither of us has so much as cracked a suitcase.)
I have alot to choose from, and that’s taking some narrowing down. We’re only gone five days, so in all likelihood I will only need two books, but of course I’m taking three, because I need to have options. And I don’t want to lug around hardbacks, so that rules out lots of my books. I’ve read most all of the mass market paperbacks I own, so I’m looking through my trade paperbacks. I don’t want anything dark or grim or textbook-like, but I would be bored as hell by throw-away romance or dumb genre crap.
Here, so far, are the options I’ve narrowed down:
The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I bought this way back on another vacation – last year when we were in Chicago for the gay games. It has some great reviews and was a bestseller, which recommends it. It’s described as “scary” and a “thriller” which gives me pause, but it’s about authors and books, so it’s right up my alley. This one is definitely going.
The Power of Place
Winifred Gallagher
A non-fiction book “How our surroundings shape our thoughts, emotions and actions.” It’s an interesting subject, doesn’t sound brain-busting, and was reviewed well by several reliable reviewers, and described as “engrossing” and “richly textured and intriguing” so I think this going, too.
Hot-Wiring your Creative Process
by Curt Cloninger
I’ve been meaning to read a work-related book for sometime, and this one looks fun, stimulating and not brain-busting. I feel guilty that I’m only half-way through Transcending CSS Design, so I’m seriously thinking about taking this along, although the balance of two non-fiction books to only one fiction makes me think twice. I have a much easier time focusing and getting lost in fiction these days what with my recent ADD-like problem. (I blame the internets. And coffee.)
Birds of a Feather
Jacqueline Winspear
A mystery novel that’s received several awards and good reviews, so it’s exacly what I want. I picked it up at our workplace booksale (Penguin is one of our publishing companies). Unfortunately, it’s a sequel (the first was equally well reviewed). I really like the idea of a nice, non-pulpish mystery, and the cover and description are great, but I don’t know if this is one of those “They Must Be Read In Order” deals.
The Night Listener
by Armistead Maupin
Another bestseller, and I love Maupin. Even reading the cover, I’m not sure I understand the plot, but a reviewer mentioned “hitchcock” so it’s on the list. I’ll read more about it on Amazon before I decide.
The Geographer’s Library
by Jon Fasman
Another fiction, but it’s also about musty old books, which is lovely, but might be overkill. Probably not going.
So…. what do you think?

Continue ReadingWhat To Read, What To Read

Book Review Catch-Up

I’m way behind on writing little synopses of the books I’ve finished this year, so I’m consolidating this latest list. Looking back, this happened about this time of year last year, too. Must be a trend. Anyways, here’s what I read since whenever.

Sword of the Guardian: A Legend of Ithyria (Legends of Ithyria)
by Merry Shannon
Cheesy lesbian fantasy fiction novel. Very much so on the cheesy. Not even worth describing the silly plot; except that I picked up because it had a female cross-dressing character in it. I did read the whole thing, however, because the lesbian sex scenes weren’t terrible. (I have my priorities.)

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
by Lauren Willig
I’ve picked up all three in this series on the remaindered shelves very cheap – and it shows. The premise is quite fun, but the plots are a bit too silly. Set in Regency England and Napoleonic France, they revolve around a “Scarlet Pimpernel” character who is undermining Napoleon’s attempted invasion of England, and having romantic adventures as well. This setting is juxtaposed with a modern-day chick-lit romantic heroine who is reading the manuscripts of the historical story. I may get around to reading the sequels someday, but given the goofiness level, they’re not high on my list.

Rebecca
by Daphne Du Maurier
This was one of our book club selections, and I picked it up to read it, but just didn’t get far. For one thing, I think I read it when I was a kid. And for another it was just a bit too much like Jane Eyre for me – and having read the Thirteenth Tale (which was good) and Heir to the Glimmering World (which wasn’t) lately, I couldn’t get into the “Manor House in the country, young girl adrift upon the world at the whims of unusual families” aspects of it. From the discussion, I should probably have given it a few more pages to let it hook me, but I think my timing was just off. I may go back to it at some future time.

On Beauty
Zadie Smith
One of our bookclub selections; I really dug it. I didn’t realize when reading that it was an homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End. (Perhaps I should read that? Or at least a review of On Beauty? Hmm.) From Amazon.com: “Howard Belsey is a middle-class white liberal Englishman teaching abroad at Wellington, a thinly disguised version of one of the Ivies. He is a Rembrandt scholar who can’t finish his book and a recent adulterer whose marriage is now on the slippery slope to disaster.”

EZ66 Guide for Travelers
Jerry McClanahan
This is a great resourse to take take with you on your Route 66 trip – specifically for helping you find Route 66 attractions, and the off the beaten path remaining sections of the road, many of which are no longer marked. It has detailed turn-by-turn directions and maps of the route by seasoned traveler McClanahan, who has explored the entire Route many times. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes hard to tell how important or visit-worthy an attraction is from this book, so if you have a short period to take it all in and need to be selective, I’d recommend the following book, too:

Route 66 Adventure Handbook
by Drew Knowles
This is the second book I’d highly recommend taking with you on a Route 66 trip. This one is a bit more readable if you’re just trying to get information about Route 66 attractions and if you’re trying to assess how large, interesting or “not-to-be-missed” a particular attraction is along the way. We flipped back and forth between this book and the EZ guide and were fairly successful at fitting the highlights into our 2 1/2 week trip. To see everything, you’d really need a month.

Hogs on 66 : best feed and hangouts for road trips on Route 66
by Wallis, Michael.
Geared towards Harley riders, but a really handy reference for anyone looking for the best diners and stops along the route. I read this ahead of time and had some idea of some of the excellent places to eat along the way.

Route 66 lost & found : ruins and relics revisited and
Route 66 lost & found : ruins and relics revisited, volume 2
by Olsen, Russell A.
Beautiful photography, but a bit of melancholy to it. The author takes photos of “Then and Now” pictures of stops along Route 66 – recreating the scenes of old postcards and photographs with what the same building looks like today. In most cases, time hasn’t been kind. A great book to read either before or after your trip in preparation.

Route 66: Images of America’s Main Street
William Kaszynski
Like the books above, a great before or after traveling book to read to get a history of America’s Main Street.

Roadside Giants
Brian and Sarah Butko
When I first saw this book, I was worried that it was a book form of my “Big Things” photo galleries, but it’s a very different book than what I would write, and definitely worth owning if you love roadside attractions. They aren’t interested in photographing or logging every “big thing” across the country, just providing a cross-section of the most known, famous or unique ones.

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
by Thomas M. Myers, Michael P. Ghiglieri
DO NOT read this book while you are at the Grand Canyon. Also, DO NOT read this book when you are leaving the Grand Canyon, but are traveling further west on Route 66 on the Oatman Highway over the Black Mountains through Sitegreaves Pass. Either read the book when you are safely on flat, solid ground, or better yet, before you go to the Canyon in the first place, so you don’t do something stupid and fall off like the many, many people in this book. A key bit of info to take away from the book, from Amazon.com: “The authors show that most of the deaths, whether of tourists, prospectors, or experienced adventurers, occurred when people failed to pay attention to warning signs or did not use common sense; others are attributed to high testosterone levels. The episodes are engrossing, but one becomes sated with the details after a while.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling
If you really need me to review this for you, you must be living under a rock of some sort. I loved it, of course.

Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
David Weinberger
From Amazon.com: “In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales…” A fun read.

On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Our next bookclub read, so of course the first rule of bookclub is invoked.

Route 66 Remembered
by Michael Karl Witzel
This is the book I really wish I’d read before they trip, because I would have gotten the most out of it. A nice history of the Route 66 that charts the rise of the road and it’s institutions – gas, food, lodging. The really great part of the book is the personal accounts at the end; real people’s stories of traveling on The Mother Road in it’s very early days when it was a potentially dangerous endeavor, to the heyday when families piled in the car and headed to California to see the sights.

Continue ReadingBook Review Catch-Up

Rejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

From theonering.net

One morning, when Harry Potter woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single wizard in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wand.

The sky above Privet Drive was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Stately, plump Neville Longbottom came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Wingardium leviosa!

To Severus Snape she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Lily Potter. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind … and yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Lily Potter, of dubious and questionable memory.

There once was a boy named Dudley Dursley, and he almost deserved it.

Dumbledore was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Harry Potter signed it: and Potter’s name was good upon Diagon Alley, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Dumbledore was as dead as a door-nail.

Once upon a time there were four little wizards, and their names were Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone;” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Ms. J. K. Rowling, and she told the truth, mainly. There was things which she stretched, but mainly she told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Petunia, or Professor Dumbledore, or maybe Hermione. Aunt Petunia – my Aunt Petunia, she is – and Hermione, and Professor Dumbledore is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

When Mr. Harry Potter of Privet Drive announced that he would shortly be celebrating his seventeenth birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk in Hogwarts.

In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a nasty, dirty, dark cupboard, filled with threadbare sheets and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, cramped cupboard with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a wizard’s cupboard, and that means comfort.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wizardry, it was the age of Muggles, it was the epoch of Dumbledore, it was the epoch of Voldemort, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Hogwarts, we were all going direct to Azkaban –in short, the period was so far like the present period, that the Daily Prophet insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hermione Grainger was not beautiful but young wizards seldom realized it when caught by her brilliance as Ron Weasley was.

Call me Hagrid.

Last night I dreamt I went to Hogwarts again.

Continue ReadingRejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Heir to the Glimmering World

Heir to the Glimmering World
Heir to the Glimmering World
I also can’t find enough time to write a synopsis of Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick – a book I picked up in Chicago last July and just finished reading, so again I’m going to cheat and give you the synopsis/review From Publishers Weekly instead:

Ozick’s previous novel, The Puttermesser Papers, revolved around one quirky hero; this time around, Ozick incubates several. Characters, not plot, drive this Depression-era tale, and Ozick eviscerates each one through her narrator, Rose Meadows, a resolute 18-year-old orphan. Virtually abandoned, Rose wanders into a job with the Mitwisser family, German refugees in New York City. Filling gaping holes in their household, she becomes a research assistant to the father, a professor stubbornly engaged in German and Hebrew arcana; a nurse to his oft-deranged, sequestered wife; and nanny to their five children. As she penetrates the fog surrounding their history, Rose limns their roiling inner lives with exasperated perception. Mrs. Mitwisser especially chafes against the family’s precarious, degrading status as “parasites,” erratically supported by the unbalanced millionaire son and heir of an author of popular children’s books who is fascinated by Mr. Mitwisser’s research. With her trademark lyrical prose, gentle humor and vivid imagery, Ozick paints a textured portrait of outsiders rendered powerless, retreating into tightly coiled existences of scholarly rapture, guarded brazenness and even calculated lunacy—all as a means of refuting the bleakness of a harsh, chaotic world. Erudite exposition is packed into the book, so that character study and discourse occasionally grind the plot to a halt. Edifying and evocative, if often daunting, this is a concentrated slice of eccentric life.

The assessment of “grinding the plot to a halt” is dead on – I found this book to be a tough slog. I also had trouble sympathizing with any of the characters; each of them was either mean or sad, and I couldn’t get over my frustration with them.

Continue ReadingHeir to the Glimmering World