So. I've been writing this book journal for a year, today, and have compiled some 99 entries up until this one--making this my 100th post. Not quite a book a post, at least in the beginning, and I regret not having exact statistics for you about how many books there have been. I'll add a comment about that later.

I'm taking this moment to post for the first time not about books, but about my philosophy of blogging. I want to try to make sense, for you and for me, of what it is this project is all about.

This blog is not for reviews, though many of the posts contain editorial review type comments. It's for first thoughts. It's for my immediate impressions, my reactions, what I'm thinking about immediately after finishing (a book or a section). As such, the writing is far from polished, and is far from trying to argue a specific idea or point.

I'm casting a net with these pages. I'm publicly saying, I'm here and I've read this piece. I'm willing to think about the piece, and I'm willing to talk about it--by offering some initial thoughts, and by inviting comments that might lead to more interesting discussions. A quick glance through the history of the comments will convince you that discussions are virutally non-existant, but the second reason to have the comments--an opportunity for people to reccomend other pieces to me has indeed borne some fruit.

The blog gives me an excuse to write about books, and forces me to be slightly more intentional about what I do read. It's a place to stop the reading, and to begin to reflect about the reading.

I've enjoyed my first year here; maybe by next year, I'll have finished reading the book I had just started a year ago (I'm not as far into it as I might like).

One year ago:

So far today:

from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
- I'm in the middle of chapter two.
- It's amazing how interesting STC's footnotes are.
I find that I get lost in their arguments.
By the time I'm done reading one, I've forgotten what he
was discussing before I jumped to the footnote.

Mark Morton, The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, 2003.

Morton is a prof at the University of Winnipeg, and is the language columnist for CBC's Definitely Not the Opera. Herb recommended this book to me back at the end of May, and I stuck in a hold request then. Apparently, it's a popular book.

It's an odd book, really. I love etymology--from the Greek ετυμον (one who discourses) + λογος (words) = thinking about words--so I placed the hold back then, disagreeing with Herb's assessment of a sexual theme. The book is wonderful at exposing the play of words, the way they emerge, adapt, are played with, and are loved. It's fun because Morton obviously loves paying attention to where words come from, and because this is an area of the language where there are a lot of words, even if many of them are of quite recent coinage.

Where the book is lacking is that it's hard to sit down and to read it; it's a book with which the reader is best off dipping into, and enjoying piecemeal. Morton does advocate reading it a chapter at a time, and one might even prefer to read smaller chunks. I found myself smiling and being amused both at the stories behind some words and by Morton's own linguistic exuberance and love of language; for these reasons alone, it's a worthwhile read. I'm not sure, though, that it's one for which I'd pay: for me, it's excellent use of the HPL hold system.

Susanna Clarke, Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell.

M-- recommended this one to me; I can only imagine it was because he'd read only the beginning, and didn't know that the book--which shows such promise in the first hundred pages--rapidly becomes painfully boring thereafter.
Clarke captures the feel of a nineteenth century novel fairly quickly, but her story lacks the liveliness of Dickens, the sensibility of Eliot, or the amusement of manners of Austen. It feels like a work in the style of the masters, and lacks the punch, the zip, the verve. It's just not fun enough.
The story begins with England lacking any magical practitioners. Mr. Norrell fills the void, and takes as a student the only other person capable of performing magic--Strange--and the two perform work that allows England to defeat Napoleon. Norrell's goal throughout is to restore a particular form of magic to prominence and renown, abandoning the wild magic of Fairy and of the mysterious and mythic Raven King of North England. Sadly, the story continues with this, and with just a vague bit of a nemesis.
The problem is that there is no real conflict nor passion. There are opportunities for both, but the staid pace continues seemingly interminably without developing. The nemesis never becomes truly real nor scary to the audience: a sad state of affairs indeed for a work of fantasy.
While an intriguing idea, the book remains imitative in its form, never truly taking advantage of its flexibility. The story is dreary; the novel is unworthy of the praise it has received.

Michael Dobbs, Whispers of Betrayal, 2000.

I've been trying to find the time to blog about this one for two weeks now, but have been a bit distracted.
At any rate, this one is much like the other Dobbs' novels I've read recently, but better plotted & paced than the others. Unlike the careful political intrigue of the first novel, or the silliness of the second, this one is a thriller that is carefully thought out and well executed, with moments of great humour and high pathos.

It was a fun one.

Jon Stewart and the Writers of the Daily Show, America (the Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

Hysterically funny. If you like the Daily Show, you will be a fan of this book that does everything from make penis jokes at the expense of Maya Angelou to the highbrow James Joyce teasing, while always keeping its eye on mocking the electoral process. It does that beautifully and viciously, in its textbook format. From the President (King of the Democracy) through to Congress (the Quagmire) to an examination of how other countries manage their leaders, it'll keep you in stitches.

Much of this book will date rapidly, but it's going to maintain a ring of truth--and it's a great companion to the 2004 Presidential Election amusement. So come on out, and laugh at the silliness of our neighbours to the south who can't properly spell the word neighbour.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris.

Michael Dobbs, The Buddha of Bower Street, 1998.

Goodfellowe, part 2, not as desperate, and oddly connected with Tibet. This story is darker than Goodfellowe's first outing--the torturous villanies that Dobbs ascribes to the Chinese characters are particular difficult to read. The book tells of the search for the next Dalai Lama in England, and the desperate efforts made by Goodfellowe and the Tibetans to succeed before the Chinese forces can kidnap the child. Some more fun pulp.

Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities, 1997.

I hadn't read anything by Wolf, and this one had been recommended to me. Essentially, Wolf argues that women in our culture have an unfortunate time with their sexuality: they're not taught it well; they're exposed to an enormous number of inappropriate/wrong-headed examples, stereotypes, and media portrayals; they're asked to live within false dichotomies; as adults, they all too often remain uncomfortable with their sexualities because of these experiences.

Wolf goes through a number of reasons and offers a number of examples of why these things are true, performing what amounts to a series of close-readings of culture, history, texts, and experiences (her own and a selected peer-group). These close-readings are well and carefully done, and her arguments are persuasive. My hesitancy with treating this book in more of a sociological perspective, as opposed to a cultural studies perspective is caused by the very limited sample space that Wolf employs for the experiential histories that she incorporates into her work. Her conclusions, though, make a great deal of sense. While I'm not convinced that the suggestions that she offers for taking away the stigmatization that affects women in regards to their sexualities will in any way afford a comprehensive solution to the problems Wolf enumerates, her suggestions certainly offer a sensible beginning and important considerations (particularly for those people raising and teaching young women).

Miriam Toews, Summer of My Amazing Luck, 1996.

Fun, and funny, but I never really got into it. I'm still not quite sure why.

Miriam Toews, A Boy of Good Breeding, 1998.

When I read a book I like, by an author I've not read before, I tend to go a little bit overboard in terms of then reading a good chunk of stuff that he or she has written. Toews is currently getting my attention--I have two more to read after this one, and am looking forward to both.

That said, A Boy of Good Breeding is not in the same vein as A Complicated Kindness. This is deliberately funny, almost silly: this is small-town in the Mariposa sense, and not in the Horizon-sense. It's a book that seems nebulous, not as focused, as her most recent novel. It's the story of Hosea Funk, mayor of Algren, wanting to meet his father the Prime Minister by ensuring that Algren has exactly 1500 residents and is hence the smallest town in Canada; it's the story of Knute and her daughter Summer Feelin' trying to figure out how to live. Hosea's clueless-ness in life, governance, and love (his poor girlfriend, Lorna!) and Knute's haplessness & luckiness in life, work, and love are endearing. It's a cast of characters and an odd plot that makes you enjoy every moment you spend in Algren--and lament the fact that you'll read the book quickly enough that you wish you could have spent more time there. Like Mariposa, without being sent away back to the big city.

Richard B. Wright, Adultery.

I gave someone a copy of Clara Callan for Christmas a space back, but I must confess that it's not one I've read. Nor, in fact, had I read any of Wright's other books until I picked this one up.

Adultery is the story of Daniel Fielding, a middle-aged editor at a publishing firm. In fact, the adultery has already been committed, and is not to be repeated, when the novel opens: after beginning an affair with another editor from his firm at a book fair, the two travelled to Dover together. While stopped at a car-park, they have sex, and she goes to relieve herself while he sleeps--and she is killed.

The novel deals with the aftermath: Fielding explaining Denise's disappearance, identifying the body, telling Denise's mother, avoiding the press, clumsily apologising to his wife and to his daughter, attending the funeral. The story is how Fielding tries to make sense of these events, of what caused the affair and of his regret. It's well told, spare and elegant, but it never gripped me. I could have put it down without too much guilt or regret. I doubt I'll read it again, and unlike some pundits, I'm unsurprised that it didn't earn a Giller nomination.