Books Read for the Summer Reading Program

There is no theme here.

Books read between early June and early August. I'll expand commentary later this week.


1. THE HARD WAY. Jenkins, Mark. Personal essays about travelling, trekking and the outdoors. The author is primarily a mountain climber.

2. THE PLAGUE. Camus, Albert.

3. BACKWOODS ETHICS. Waterman, Guy and Laura. The most boring book ever about Leave No Trace hiking and camping. Still relevant, but it ha ssince been written about in a much more interesting manner. Read THE COMPLETE WALKER by Colin Fletcher (may God rest his wandering soul) instead.

4. THE MAN FROM THE CAVE. Fletcher, Colin. Hard to put down. Read this in three days. Fletcher narrates his decade-long quest to discover the identity and origins of a man who left his camp and some belongings in a desert cave near Las Vegas in the nineteen tens when Fletcher discovered it on a solitary trek through the same area in the mid 'sixties. Definitely recommended.

5. THE LAST SEASON. Blehm, Eric.

6. THE BEAN TREES. Kingsolver, Barbara. Fiction. Her first novel.

7. UNCOMMON ARRANGEMENTS. Roiphe, Katie.

8. INTO THE WILD. Krakauer, Jon. A 2nd read for me.

Ethan Fromme

Read sometime after Age of Innocence, and before June. Maybe in March.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

by Edith Wharton. 1920. Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize.

This is the first book I've read by Edith Wharton and I was so pleasantly surprised. I confess that I saw Scorsese's film first - which is very faithful to the book, I found - and love it so much I watch it almost every time it's on cable.

The book is even better, though, really.
This is the story of Newland Archer, a very young attorney in very old New York. He leads a slow, stale and ultimately unsatisfactory life amidst incredibly sumptuous surroundings. Wharton writes in such fluid, rich detail, the reader sees and feels the glow of fireplaces in large, shadowy rooms lit only by candlelight; the clamminess of pale skin sticking to a satin bodice in the summer.

It is also the story of Newland's attempts to alleviate his boredom and fulfill his desires, and how the rich trappings of his own heritage thwart him at every turn.
The ending in the book is even more devastating than Scorses portrays it in the film.

I would also say this is Wharton's comment on social institutions and traditions that seem to have forgotten their original purpose - and those citizens that blindly follow them.

I rate this novel - excellent. I defintely want to read more Wharton (and since I received three collections of her work for my birthday recently, I shall).
Recommended for those who like period fiction, probably more for older people (I doubt I would have felt the sting of some events in Newland's life if I'd read this before my thirties.)

Note to Jenny

Jenny,

Bless your heart for checking out my blog. I've been busy this winter with a respiratory illness, a torrid love affair, and an ongoing search for the perfect anti-aging cream. For once - and this cannot last long, I know - my own life is as exciting as a Fitzgerald novel.

I have, however, been reading - Hurakami's latest short fiction, Borges essays in SEVEN NIGHTS, and the advice column at salon.com. No re-reading of Fitzgerald, though I'm sure it'd knock some sense and fresh air back into me.

Just for you, though, Jenny, I will take a few peeks at THE GREAT GATSBY today and make some comments. I may even finish the Hurakami anthology. Comparing those two would be interesting. . .

Take care, and thanks again for checking in.

SEVEN NIGHTS

I am re-reading SEVEN NIGHTS by Borges with a friend. I wonder if he's making any progress. I may urge him to write his comments here, as I'm obviously too lazy to do so myself.

I hope to take some time soon to finish the Top Ten. SEVEN NIGHTS is on the list, simply for the one lecture, "Nightmares".

"I, for example, always dream of certain corners in Buenos Aires. . . I know exactly where I am, and I know that I must head toward some far-off place. These places in my dreams have a precise topography, but they are completely different. They may be mountain paths or swamps or jungles, it doesn't matter: I know that I am on a certain corner in Buenos Aires. I try to find my way."
- "Nightmares", SEVEN NIGHTS. Borges, Jorge Luis.

Click title above for more info on Borges and his work.

Books I Hate

Well, actually, I got the idea for this list from Salon.com TableTalk/Books.

(Feel free to leave a comment re: the book(s) you truly hate. )

1. Bridges of Madison County. Waller, Robert James.
Is an explanation really needed?

2. A Moveable Feast. Hemingway, Ernest.
Hemingway, otherwise one of the finest writers in American Literary history, pretends to feel compassion for his fellow expatriates in 1920's Paris. Instead, he unwittingly reveals himself to be a huge misogynist ass preoccupied with his own self-importance. The anecdote about Fitzgerald's body parts is so obviously hateful, it's unbelievable. He is obviously jealous of everyone he writes of, including both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. This is some of the most vitriolic stuff ever written about real people.

3. What to Expect When You're Expecting. Murkoff, Heidi.
Of the three or four self-help pregnancy books given to me as gifts, this one was the worst. The author should be ashamed of herself. What pregnant woman on earth can follow the so-called "Best-Odds Diet" of plain whole-grain bagels smothered in plain yogurt? Christ. Morning sickness, anyone? Worse yet, she actually admonishes those who would dare cheat and sneak a potato chip or two.
The rules and regulations here are too numerous and overwhelming. If you are pregnant, do yourself a favor and get "The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy" instead, written by a former Playboy playmate, chock full of advice like remembering to paint your toenails before your due date. I am completely serious here - this is the stuff pregnant women really need to hear, not a bunch of preachy, self-righteous dogma sure to make one a nervous, paranoid, guilt-ridden wreck way before you've even made it to post-partum blues-land.

4. On The Road. Kerouac, Jack
First of the confessional drug-laced wanderlust stories, obviously meant to shock and very boring. Read THE ODYSSEY instead. Read THE GRAPES OF WRATH instead. Hell, read GO ASK ALICE instead. Not a sympathetic character in sight, mainly because Kerouac writes of himself and fellow "beat" Neal Cassidy.


5. Naked Lunch. Burroughs, William S.
OK, I just don't care for the Beats. For one thing, I'm not blessed with an addictive personality. If you are, and you enjoy incoherent rambling with no theme or reason, you'll get this. I didn't. Please read Faulkner's LIGHT IN AUGUST instead. Hell, read Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE instead.

6.  BREAKING DAWN.   Meyers, Stephanie.  
Yeah, pale whiny pink is an appropriate font for this post.   
The fourth in the Twilight series of books.  The first three are not bad.  They're not very good, but they're not really bad, either.  (Meyers does have an incredible talent for character development, I will credit her for that.)  She also weaves a lot of (sometimes ridiculous) details together, and manages to keep track of all of them and fit them nicely into the plot.  And the latter is why BREAKING DAWN is so very, very bad.  It is beyond bad, it is a travesty, and a betrayal of the author's readers and fans.  It is a betrayal to the characters themselves, and to the genre of tragedy, in general -which Meyers obviously does not understand in the slightest.  
In BREAKING DAWN, Meyers takes all of her little details and rules given in the first three books and throws them out the window.  Then, she throws in details and plot twists more ridiculous than ever.  But the biggest flaw in this book is Meyers' complete failure to understand why happy endings are often not the stuff of great literature - because it would be BORING.   

I discovered Edward Abbey (now deceased, and supposedly buried in a remote area of the Cabeza Prieta Nat'l Wildlife Refuge, in far southwestern AZ) through an article in BACKPACKER magazine. Mr. Abbey was a "desert rat" and hailed as the Thoreau of the American Southwest, where he lived, although he apparently made a practice of throwing his empty beer cans out the car window during regular drives along AZ's Interstate 10. He argued that the landscape was already decimated by the building of the road itself. . .

DESERT SOLITAIRE was the first book I read by Abbey, and it was his first book published, in 1968. ("Everything's free today!". . . ) * Abbey had accepted a job as a temporary ranger at Arches Nat'l Monument some years earlier and this little book describes his life and work there. It was the transition point for Arches, just before it's inclusion into the National Park system, just before new, maintained roads and trails would be built. In DESERT SOLITAIRE, we get an intimate glimpse at a rough and raw place that we now know as sacred to us, and, therefore, controlled and sterile.

BEYOND THE WALL is a collection of his essays published in various journals throughout his career. One of the most striking pieces depicts his hiking/rafting adventures in Glen Canyon before it was dammed. Abbey says he wrote the piece to commemorate those remote, sacred places forever hidden to us now because they're under water. But it also his plea for leaving natural places alone, and not make them into "National Parking Lots".
Most of the essays are about the Southwest, except one, about a foray with several other strangers into a remote area of Alaska, reachable only by plane or helicopter. Apparently, Abbey always wanted to see a grizzly bear in the wild, but never did. He refers to it as "the alleged grizzly." This was the essay that was reprinted in BACKPACKER, and I think this piece, more than the others, reveals how Abbey is his own man, with his own unique and personal opinions, that were often at odds with other "environmentalists".
Of the two, I enjoyed DESERT SOLITAIRE more, but I really cannot say why. DESERT SOLITAIRE almost reads like an epic poem, although his journey is over time, in the same place. He shows the place - Arches National Monument - from many different angles - personal, historical, geological, botanical . .
Abbey's writing style, in general, is quiet, but tense, and rambling. I think both books would appeal to pink 'n green types, as well as libertarians tainted in either color.

This describes Abbey's work more eloquently than I have done here.




*quote from a Godard film, (I think, TOUT VA BIEN is the title, but I'm not sure.) Anyway, in the film, it's post -May 1968 and a group of students storm a supermarket and declare "Everything's free today!"