Hello from Nashville!
31 Dec 2012
Eric and I are in Nashville visiting family and having a blast. Even though it’s only three hours from Memphis, Nashville is a place I have only been to a handful of times on short trips. We are having so much fun exploring and getting to know the city. It’s a wonderful note to end the year on, and I have lots of fun looking back/looking forward posts planned for the coming week. Here’s to all the joy that 2012 brought us; here’s to all the joy that 2013 has in store!
, so I was really excited when Jeffrey Eugenides published a new novel. 
, if such is possible, moved me even more. The story is woven so artfully, from a number of different points of view, and with great compassion and a slight but bracing distance from the characters. This novel is, in a word, wrenching, and it stayed with me for days after I finished it. Eugenides takes his readers deep into worlds they could never have inhabited without his careful guiding, and it’s a pleasure to get lost in them. Eric and I both read this book, and then we spent days discussing it. It’s a good one.
to me years ago, and I finally got around to reading it. It’s as much an exploration of the act of writing as it is a family chronicle and a Bildungsroman, and I loved every page. The precocious narrator draws readers right in, and suddenly they are living in the ruins of a castle, on the verge of destitute, and seeing it all through the eyes of a child. The adventures are many, the heartaches are searing, but the laughter is what prevails. Ot at least it did for me.
. Frazier exhibits that inexplicable love of Russia that took over me like a fever in my high school years and hasn’t let up yet. The book is written with great humor and curiosity and is not lacking in the foibles and adventures that will meet any person who decides to see all of Siberia. I read this book over the summer while we were on the farm, and I could. not. put it down. If you have an interest in travel or in Russia, this warm and tragicomic book is a must. And it’s nice and big, like Siberia, so it should keep you occupied for at least a week or so.
is one of them. I’m not even done with it yet, and it definitely already has its place here. The prose absolutely sings on every page. I got up three times while reading the first chapter to tell Eric how good it was. What is so ensnaring about it, I think, is the narrator’s deep knowledge and understanding of his characters, while he maintains an alluring distance from them. Mystery and explication, hand in hand. I will be bummed when I finish this one. And then I will immediately read everything else Jonathan Dee has written.
was definitely one of the most interesting books I read this year. David Lodge is one of my favorite writers, and I adore his academic satires. So I was leery at first of following him into literary-historical-fiction territory. But this novel about H.G. Wells is so completely fascinating. The ups and downs and twists and turns of Wells’ philosophy are just as intriguing as his ever-dramatic love affairs and his always prickly friendship with Henry James. I did not know much about him at all before I read this book, but now I would love to know more, and that’s always the sign of a good read.
. I downloaded it to my Kindle before we went to Istanbul, and I have been slowly devouring it ever since. I know that the reviews were mixed on this one, but sometimes I think critics just feel the need to be contrary. And I can’t take very seriously complaints about prose and style when a work is being read in translation (grrrr, the literary scholar emerges!). It was just the slightest bit slow in the beginning, but it very quickly sucked me in. It’s mysterious and otherworldly, like Murakami usually is, and his characters demand interest and sympathy. I can’t wait to see what happens.
for my birthday, and I read it in one weekend. It’s not often that you come across such deep honesty in a writer, and I always appreciate that. It’s a love story too, with the happiest of endings, and there’s no better combination than love and good food.
was written by the Caltech professor who…killed Pluto. It’s a wonderful read–hilarious, informative, and touching all at once–and not a bit dry. It was especially fun for me to read, since Caltech and its many telescopes are our home too. This book is completely delightful. I hope Mike Brown writes more. You know, if he has any spare time while looking for new planets.
, in addition to being a magnificent study of the function of memory and narrative, is a true page-turner. Eric discovered it first, and then he wanted me to read it so we could discuss it. It’s a beautiful portrait of childhood and adolescence, and the unexpected mysteries and terrors of adulthood. The answer to the riddle at the center of this novella is one I never saw coming, and it took Eric and I a whole weekend to tease it out. The prose is lovely, the characters are all too real, and the questions it leaves you with are haunting.
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