Book 233: Far From The Madding Crowd

"She was the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises."

Dates read: May 11-16, 2018

Rating: 8/10

Lists/awards: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2012 edition)

Most people will say that they appreciate a "strong female character", but what exactly do we mean by that? What makes a woman strong? Often it seems like it gets interpreted as literal physical strength, a la Buffy Summers, or else a kind of "tough girls don't cry" emotional repression. As a reaction to the stereotypical depiction of women as delicate flowers prone to wailing or running away when faced with challenges, or as objects to be rescued and therefore earned at the end, there is strength in presenting women as having physical and/or emotional toughness. The idea, though, that the way for women to be strong is to be more like men doesn't feel like it encompasses enough about women's strength.

As a woman, I think what I most gravitate towards when I'm looking for a "strong female character" is agency. The ability to make her own choices, knowing the consequences, and then continue to make them for better or worse in a way that feels like they're actually real choices a person would make. There are a surprising number of these kinds of characters in the classics (though they have a not-unfair reputation for being dominated by men's stories), and some of my favorite have been found in the work of Thomas Hardy. In his Far From The Madding Crowd, our central character is Bathsheba Everdene, who we watch grow from an inexperienced but capable young woman to owning and running her own farm and learning some brutally hard lessons about relationships, through her own effort and largely by her own hand. Bathsheba isn't without flaws, and some of the choices she makes are bad ones, but you never lose the sense that she's in control of her own destiny.

Bathsheba catches the eye of young farmer Gabriel Oak when she's on her way to live with a cousin to help out on the farm, and he soon grows besotted with her beauty. He proposes, but through they've built a friendly acquaintance, she shoots him down because she doesn't love him. She leaves when she inherits a farm of her own, and after financial disaster strikes and Gabriel loses his own toehold in the landed class, he winds up working for her as a shepherd. Unlike many owners (particularly female ones), she insists on being an active part of the operation of her land, and she and Gabriel become trusted allies to each other. When a silly joke with an older, eligible bachelor neighbor, Boldwood, leads to the other man's obsession with her, Bathsheba resists making a marriage with him as well but is under tremendous pressure to accept his suit. And then Sergeant Troy happens...he's young and hot and even though his heart belongs to his childhood sweetheart, he and Bathsheba have a whirlwind fling that ends in holy matrimony. Drama ensues.

If you can read Hardy without feeling a passionate longing to go spend some time out in the middle of nowhere for a while, you're a stronger person than I am. He doesn't gloss over the very real toil of rural life, but he presents it so persuasively as the most harmonious way to live that it makes you think about what it would be like to chuck it all and go buy a little piece of land and work it yourself. I would never do that, I know I'd hate it about 48 hours in, but Hardy was very concerned with growing industrialization and his preference to maintain traditional pastoral lifestyles is obvious. But his real strength lies in his complicated, multifaceted characters. While Gabriel Oak is a little on the idealized side, Bethsheba, Boldwood, and Troy are all painted in shades of grey that give them nuance and interest, and the drama derives from circumstances that mostly feel organic, giving real weight to their choices and interactions.

The more classics I've read in my late 20s and beyond, the more convinced I am that we do young readers a disservice by insisting on reading them in high school. While there's nothing going on here at a conceptual level that a reasonably intelligent teenager couldn't grasp, there's also so much more that you can bring into the novel of your own experience once you have some under your belt that gives it so much more life. If I'd tried to read this at 16, I doubt I would have cared for it, but at 32 (which is how old I was when I read it) it's got full layers of meaning that I really responded to. It's lengthy, but it moves along pretty well, and I would definitely recommend giving it a read!

One year ago, I was reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Two years ago, I was reading: This!

Three years ago, I was reading: The Skies Belong to Us

Four years ago, I was reading: We Need to Talk About Kevin

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Book 233: Far From The Madding Crowd

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Should Have Abandoned

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! I'm doing a twist on this week's topic, which was supposed to be the last ten books we abandoned. While I judge no one else for not wasting their reading time on something they're not enjoying, I am a never-DNF type. Even I, though, will admit that sometimes I probably would have been better off throwing in the towel. Here are ten books that I found so bad I should have just put them down forever.

The Perfect Son: I did not know it was possible to have so many cliches in one book.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Turns out I just really don't like reading about people having feelings about nature/the outdoors.

Whores of the Devil: This survey of accused witches and heretics throughout history seemed like the kind of thing that I would enjoy but the author wrote in such a lurid fashion based on sketchy details and it was incredibly off-putting.

Catch-22: I often don't care for satires, and this was no exception. It has one joke (war is ridiculous!) and doesn't go anywhere for hundreds and hundreds of pages.

Soon the Light Will be Perfect: This book is pretty short but tries to balance way too many plots and feels like a draft that needed real work.

Empire Falls: I had high hopes for this Pultizer-winning family drama but it was just awful. Misogyny and lots of feelings about "real America" and a sensationalized school shooting subplot...just a mess.

The Man in the High Castle: I wanted a story and got mostly a thought experiment. It wasn't completely without interest, but I did not care about any of the characters or what happened to them.

Good Riddance: This was supposed to be a light-hearted comedy but was just offensivelydumb.

Ready Player One: This book had such hype, and was so mediocre and boring.

Shantaram: I hated this book almost immediately, and unfortunately it's pretty lengthy. I eventually got into a kind of hate-reading groove that let me finish it, but I wish I had just stopped reading it.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Should Have Abandoned

Book 232: Children of Blood and Bone

"The children of Orïsha dance like there's no tomorrow, each step praising the gods. Their mouths glorify the rapture of liberation, their hearts sing the Yoruba songs of freedom. My ears dance at the words of my language, words I once thought I'd never hear outside my head. The seem to light up the air with their delight—it's like the whole world can breathe again."

Dates read: May 7-11, 2018

Rating: 6/10

When I was a little kid, I longed constantly for a sign that I was special. Not "in all the advanced classes" special, I already knew I was smart, but actual special. Someone was going to appear in my little small town, find me, and announce to the world that there had been a terrible mix-up, and I was urgently needed elsewhere so I could fulfill my glorious destiny. Or maybe I had to prove it, had to find the magic that was surely lurking within me and I spent more time than I should admit trying to do like Matilda Wormwood and move things with my mind. It never worked. No one ever came for me, and I grew up and took myself where I wanted to go, which is as it should be anyways.

I suspect, though, that I'm not the only one who nurtured these fantasies of being suddenly wrested from my ordinary experience to have magical adventures. Hence the popularity of "chosen one" narratives, particularly in the young adult genre. Tomi Adeyemi builds on the legacy of the Percy Jacksons and Pevensie siblings that came before, but for her debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, she grounds it thoroughly outside of the "white people in Western countries" place it has lived for so long. She creates as her world Orisha, loosely based on Nigeria and the magic in her tales comes from the mythology of the region. There used to be magicians in this world, the maji, divided into ten clans with a special connection to gods and goddesses and their representative elements. But then a cruel, autocratic king cracked down and slaughtered the maji. The adults, anyways. The children were left behind.

The loss of her mother in the raid that ended magic haunts teenage Zelie even years later. She takes after her mother in that she's a Diviner, born with the distinctive white hair that marks her as a potential maji and therefore subjected to discrimination. Her brother Tzain, though, is "normal" like their father, who's never recovered from the loss of his wife. Their lives are forever changed when one day Zelie heads to the capital city to go to the market, and runs into Amari, the country's princess, fleeing her father and the palace with a powerfully important scroll. That scroll, along with other artifacts, has the power to bring magic back to Orisha. Zelie, Amari, and Tzain find themselves on the run from the King and his son, Amari's brother Inan, who discovers much to his dismay that he's not as dissimilar from the Diviners he hates as he'd like. An unexpected connection between Zelie and Inan could be what saves them all...or what dooms them.

This is not my usual type of book: I don't read YA particularly often, and it focuses heavily on plot over characterization and prose. Nevertheless, that plot moved forward so relentlessly that it was impossible to resist getting swept up in it, even when it veered toward the ridiculous. From nearly the second we meet them, our characters are under threat, and no sooner does one danger pass than another arises. Even as the story zooms, Adeyemi does some quality world-building, introducing the reader to a deeply earth-rooted system of magic in a way that gave enough detail to be intriguing without gratuitous information-dumping. It's refreshing to read a story that doesn't rely on the same familiar Christian and/or Eurocentric myths for inspiration.

That being said, while the details of the story are fresh, many of the beats are eye-rollingly familiar: enemies to friends, hate to love, capture and rescue. There are serious, serious deficiencies in character development...no one feels like more than a set of keywords and relationships that the readers are clearly supposed to get deeply invested in are so thinly sketched that the "payoff" barely registers. Prose quality that might elevate the more rote elements is absent...the writing isn't at all bad, but neither is it ever more than serviceable. The book doesn't feel like it's meant to be taken in and of itself, but rather as a springboard: for a movie, for sequels. While it's compelling and compulsively readable while it's in your hands, it loses a lot when it's over and you have time to think about it. I maintain only a vague sort of "if it's on the Kindle for less than $5" interest in continuing the series. If you're into this genre and these kinds of stories, you'll probably very much enjoy this book. If you're looking for something to keep you entertained on the airplane, this is a solid choice. If this isn't the kind of story you're predisposed to like, though, this is skippable.

One year ago, I was reading: Battleborn

Two years ago, I was reading: This!

Three years ago, I was reading: Friday Night Lights

Four years ago I was reading: Vinegar Girl

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Book 232: Children of Blood and Bone

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Characters I’d Invite To A Party

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about the bookish parties we'd throw, and I decided to focus my list on the characters that would be fun at a party. Here are ten characters I think would make excellent party guests!

Lizzy Bennet (Pride and Prejudice): If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit next to me!

Jordan Baker (The Great Gatsby): Anyone who shows up to Gatsby's parties is welcome at mine.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary): Every party needs a bit of a hot mess.

Margaery Tyrell (A Storm of Swords): She's both politically astute and genuinely good-hearted and talented at putting the people around her at ease, all of which make for a good party guest.

Sookie Stackhouse (Dead Until Dark): Sookie is savvy and kind and loyal and while parties probably aren't her favorite because of the whole mind-reading deal, she would be fun to hang out with!

Georgia Nicolson (Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging): She's a delightfully daft teenager and would absolutely do something unintentionally hilarious.

Lady Brett Ashley (The Sun Also Rises): She's kind of a tragic partier, but she parties nonetheless.

Vianne Rocher (Chocolat): Vianne would bring the good chocolate to share.

Ifemelu (Americanah): Ifemelu would be absolutely fascinating to get into a corner and have a serious conversation with.

Kolya Vlosov (City of Thieves): This party is otherwise all women, so let's throw a charming flirty young guy into the mix.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Book Characters I’d Invite To A Party

Book 231: On Trails

"When I was younger I used to see the earth as a fundamentally stable and serene place, possessed of a delicate, nearly divine balance, which humans had somehow managed to upset. But as I studied trails more closely, this fantasy gradually evaporated. I now see the earth as a collaborative artwork of trillions of sculptors, large and small. Sheep, humans, elephants, ants: each of us alters the world in our passage."

Dates read: May 3-7, 2018

Rating: 3/10

There's an outdoorsy, hiking culture in the West that's unlike anything I ever knew growing up in southeast Michigan. People camped (which I quickly discovered was Not For Me) occasionally, but generally spending time outside consisted of making friends with someone who had a lake house and then going out on the boat. The only time I'd ever hiked was on trips to the Upper Peninsula to visit family, and that was under duress. But on the other side of the country, spending time in the wilderness is treated with a kind of reverence. I have to confess I remain unconverted...I'm not deeply opposed to getting out there for a few hours, but left to my own devices I'd rather stay home and read.

Even out here, though, there are casual weekend-type hikers and then there are the truly insane, the kind who do things like hike the entire Pacific Coast Trail, or its east coast counterpart, the Appalachian Trail. Robert Moor is one of the latter kind of people, and his experience "through-hiking" (start point to end point, not just doing the odd segment here or there) the Appalachian Trail inspired him to write On Trails. In it, he examines not only the trail he hiked (his experiences with it form a significant part of the book), but trails and paths the world over. Human trails, yes, but also ant trails, sheep trails, elephant trails, the entire idea behind trails and paths and what they signify.

Moor is committed to offering a broad perspective on trails and trail-making, and while his efforts to get across the long, long history of this behavior among living organisms (he recounts a trip to Canada where he goes to talk to scientists conducting research into the very first fossil evidence of trails among very small organisms) is laudable, this book as a whole is just terribly organized. If Moore doesn't have ADD, he does a very good impression of someone who has it. He's jumping all over the place constantly, from his through-hike to micro-organisms to ants to sheep now back to ants and then elephants you guys! Now some Native American trails and then back to another subject and everything is touched on briefly instead of explored in depth, and all of this together just drove me batty trying to get into it.

And the parts based around the Appalachian Trail and Moor's hike of it? Could not have been less interested. Navel-gazing outdoors-y memoirs do less than nothing for me. Congratulations, you undertook a challenging experience that you knew full well would be challenging going in and learned and grew and that's great for you, I wish you the best in your future endeavors, but I really don't care. I already didn't especially enjoy the book, but then we came to the Epilogue and holy smokes you guys, this sent me into an almost burning rage. Moor chronicles time spent hiking with a guy called "Nimblewill Norman", apparently something of a legend among serious hikers, who basically just abandoned everyone in his life and decided to be constantly hiking and has been doing so for years. While Moor doesn't present him in an entirely positive light, he gives him and what he represents (the kind of people who get all Holden Caulfield about how society is "fake" and they just need to be free from outside expectations at the monetary and emotional expense of everyone who's invested their time and energy into them) a kind of respect that it absolutely does not deserve. I hated Norman so much. And Moor also takes the opportunity in this section to repeat many of the often shallow and trite observations he made about paths and trails over the course of the book and getting all of that together completely destroyed any regard I might have had for it.

Now for a caveat: this was a book club selection, and I was essentially alone in that I did not like it. Most of the other members of the group at least liked it, and a couple of them outright loved it. It seemed like most of the rest of the group had a connection to hiking experiences and perhaps this is the source of some of the disconnect between book and reader on my part. As always, my impressions are my own and what I bring to and take away from the book might be extremely different than anyone else. That being said, I hated this and would heartily recommend avoiding it at all costs.

One year ago, I was reading: First

Two years ago, I was reading: The Book of Unknown Americans

Three years ago, I was reading: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Four years ago, I was reading: Chasing the Sun

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Book 231: On Trails

A Month In The Life: April 2020

You almost have to wonder if Corona the beer is going to re-brand after all this...I think we're all very tired of hearing about corona anything! I never thought I would miss waking up early and going into the office, honestly, but here I am hoping that I get to spend some quality hours outside the apartment sometime soon (when it's safe, of course).

In Books...

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: The more broadly I read, the more I learn that there are certain sorts of books that are just not for me. The subgenre I've dubbed "nature thoughts" is one of them. Unfortunately for me, this Pulitzer Prize-winner is exactly that. Dillard's devotion to examining plant and animal life alongside the creek in the Virginia backcountry is clearly deep, and her writing is sweeping and ambitious, but I found it both terminally dull and eye-rollingly overwrought.
• Shatter Me: This, on the other hand, very much worked for me, despite the fact that I've largely moved past YA dystopias of the "chosen one" variety. Part of that is the way that Mafi crafts a unique voice for her heroine, which helps it rise above the many tropes she indulges in. And to be honest, part of it is probably related to the fact that this kind of angsty drama is just easy and fun to read, especially in a time of crisis. 
• Amateur: This short book is about the author's experience of becoming the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden (as part of a charity match). It's a blend of memoir and examination of masculinity, particularly the ways in which violence is tied in to conceptions of maleness. It's honestly uneven: some moments all but took my breath away with their clarity and insight, but at other times you can feel McBee stretching to pad out the page count with superfluous information or digressions that never really go anywhere. 
• The Perfect Son: This is the kind of low-stakes family drama which I usually enjoy: when a hyper-involved stay-at-home mother has a massive heart attack, her workaholic investment banker husband and their son, who has Tourette's, find themselves really needing to connect for the first time. It is FULL of cliches and lazy sentimentality and the resolution is way too pat and predictable and I did not like it at all.
• A Beginning at the End: First of all, this was 1000% the wrong time to be reading a book about the world in the wake of a major pandemic, but that's not the book's fault. This had promise: the characters were compelling and relatable, and I was impressed by how well it was structured and paced. But there were some clumsy moments, some promising plot elements never really developed, and the end in particular resolved a little too neatly.
• Cutting for Stone: I'm a sucker for a family epic set against significant historical events, so this over-600-pager set in and around a hospital in Addis Ababa during the reign of Haile Selassie was very appealing to me. The storytelling is strong, and I enjoyed it overall, but the main character was underdeveloped and while the prose quality was competent enough it never took off like I wanted it to.

 
In Life...

• Social distancing continues: Like many of you, I spent the month trying to leave my house as little as possible. I'll be honest: this really sucks. I miss my coworkers, I miss my friends, I miss my book club. I miss places that aren't my apartment. I miss going to the thrift store to browse around. I miss planning vacations. I am so happy that we've been able to flatten the curve as much as we have, but I am ready for what's next...but only once it's right, which I very much hope is sooner rather than later!

One Thing:

The library is always a great community resource, but as their buildings are closed, I recommend taking a look at what's available online! I've been able to access Rosetta Stone through the Clark County library system to try to brush up a little on my long-faded Italian, and have been watching some of The Great Courses to keep myself intellectually engaged. I had no idea before the pandemic that either was available to me as a cardholder!

Gratuitous Pug Picture: 

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A Month In The Life: April 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Had Read As a Teen

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week's subject is technically books that I wish I'd read as a child, but I haven't read an actual children's book in quite some time. I have, however, read quite a lot of books I suspect teenage me would have absolutely adored, so here are some books I wish I'd come across as a teen!

Sloppy Firsts: This is an easy choice...it's very much a young adult book, about a sarcastic teenage girl whose best friend has just moved away. I very much liked this as an adult lady, so I think teenage me would have been even more into it!

Jane Eyre: I think I would have struggled with this a bit because Jane is kind of a drip in the early going, but once I pushed past that and she got to Thornfield, I bet I would have been extremely into brooding Mr. Rochester in a way that adult me would find embarrassing.

Pride and Prejudice: I didn't read my first Austen (Persuasion) until I was in my late 20s! I found P and P kind of teenager-y when I read it, and suspect that high school me would have adored Lizzy Bennet's sharp wit.

High Fidelity: Somehow I neither read the book nor watched the movie until my mid-to-late 20s! I would have loved the stuff with the "top 5" lists and music snobbery (though I had no business being music snobby with anyone, I listened to A LOT of Top 40).

The Namesake: Teenagers do, of course, enjoy reading about the experiences of other teenagers, and I know I for one liked stories about going away to college because I was very much looking forward to leaving my small town...which makes this narrative about growing up something I would have eaten up as a teen!

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: This is a very short read, and has a kind of implicit warning about the cult-of-personality teachers that you often find in high school that my cynical self would have found highly appealing.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Francie Nolan is kind of nerdy and bookish, but she's more well-rounded than that and with all the female-centered coming-of-age type stories I read at that age I can't believe I missed this one. It's fantastic!

Stardust: This is the kind of well-told story that works for any age, so this one is mostly about wishing I'd gotten into Neil Gaiman sooner.

The House of Mirth: I completely fell in love with The Age of Innocence reading it in my 20s. I did not love The House of Mirth as much, but while I was reading it I kept thinking that its message would have really resonated with me in high school and how I wished I had read it then!

Spoiled: This is another book that is actually really meant for young adults, and the only one published after I myself would have been a teen. I saw some tone issues with it when I read it a couple years ago, but it has the kind of humor that I would have absolutely loved earlier in life (to be clear, I also enjoyed the humor now).

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Had Read As a Teen