Oh no--Lady Marjorie is on the Titanic!

This is a spoiler only if you, like Dr. D. and me, had never watched “Upstairs, Downstairs” and are just now seeing it as consolation for the absence of “Downton Abbey.” Strangely, although there are predictable parallels, we are finding that the earlier series, broadcast from 1971-75, is edgier and grittier, and shows downstairs life as possibly a little closer to what it might have been.

“Why couldn’t they have just killed James?” he asked. We knew the answer: James’s death wouldn’t have resulted in enough interesting plotlines.

Dr. D.’s and my shocked reaction to Lady Marjorie’s fate made me think of an old New Yorker cartoon in which parents are watching a young girl race from the room sobbing as the mother explains, “Beth just died.”

Fiction, on the page on or the screen, exists to draw us in and then play fast and loose with us, kick our feelings to the curb. And the more drawn in we are, the harder we fall.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Other People's Memories

Who isn't captivated by memoirs? For years my most frequent book recommendations have included two memoirs. One was “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World,” by Lucette Lagnado. The other, from the same general area of the world, was “My Father’s Paradise,” Ariel Sabar’s story of his father’s life that began in a 3,000-year-old Aramean-speaking Jewish community in Iraq. More recently I have been among the many readers fascinated by Edmund de Waal’s story of uncovering a remarkable family history he never knew about in “The Hare with Amber Eyes.”

Why do we want to read other people’s stories? The exotic details certainly have appeal. (How exactly did Lucette Lagnado’s grandmother cook those apricots down to a fragrant essence?) But I don’t think it’s just curiosity.

A line I think about often is this one by Willa Cather: “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Certainly I am discovering something about my own life as I read these stories. In a strange way it feels as if the memoirs lead me to discoveries not just about my life as it is, but about what might have been, trying on other circumstances for the satisfying strangeness of the fit.

Case in point, the memoir I am reading right now, “Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt.” Yes, another exodus from Egypt. How could Jews leaving Egypt be anything else, and it IS close to Passover, after all. Jean Naggar, the author, grew up under unimaginably privileged circumstances. Her family had lived in Egypt since leaving Spain in 1492 and had, during those centuries, amassed wealth and power almost beyond belief and created a family life of enormous luxury. But here’s the strange thing. While I’m reading of her little footsteps echoing down the endless marble staircases and the kitchen used only one week a year, for Passover, and the countless comforts and pleasures of her golden childhood, I am thinking how much my childhood was like that. Yes, my relatives came to the United States from Russia in the early years of the 20th century with hardly a penny or a belonging aside from my great-grandparents’ wedding samovar that is now in my dining room. But I, like Jean, was a coddled child in a family of loving adults in very close to the same years. I remember the glow of taking my place at the family seder, of taking in the family lore and customs. Not the same customs by a long shot, but nevertheless some of this is my story, too.

As fiercely as if it had never happened before and yet, because it has, a connection exists across miles and cultures. And maybe that’s what memoir does most significantly for us, shows our deep human connections, how, aside from the astonishing details, our stories can be the same. We understand them.

What women want

The morning news today brought its usual package of anti-woman (anti-person!) outrages. This one was the closing of women’s health clinics in Texas, but no matter. Take your pick--it could have been any one of a hundred stories of ways in which women are ground down around the world. Including here in the United States quite noticeably where it’s open (election) season on women’s rights.

And just in time, my friend Susan Donnelly has sent me this wonderful poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt. Voigt is among the poets I admire greatly when I come across her work and then somehow I forget to seek out more. Not this time though, thanks to Susan’s reminder. What this woman wants right now is more of Voigt’s wise and finely-crafted poetry.

The Wide and Varied World

Women, women, what do they want?

The first ones in the door of the plant-filled office

were the twins, fresh from the upper grades,

their matched coats dangling open.

and then their more compliant brother, leading

the dear stuffed tottering creature -- amazing

that she could lift her leg high enough

to cross the threshold to the waiting room.

Then the woman, the patient, carrying the baby

in an infant seat, his every inch of flesh

swaddled against the vicious weather.

Once inside, how skillfully the mother

unwound the many layers --

and now so quickly

must restore them: news from the lab

has passed through the nurse's sliding window.

The youngest, strapped again into his shell,

fusses for the breast, the twins tease their sister,

the eight-year-old looks almost wise as his mother

struggles into her coat with one hand and with the other

pinches his sweaty neck, her hissed threats

swarming his face like flies.

Now she's gone.

The women who remain don't need to speak.

Outside, snow falls in the streets

and quiet hills, and seems, in the window,

framed by the room's continuous greenery,

to obliterate the wide and varied world.

We half-smile, half-nod to one another.

One returns to her magazine.

One shifts gently to the right arm

her sleeping newborn, unfurls the bud of its hand.

One of us takes her turn in the inner office

where she submits to the steel table

and removes from her body its stubborn wish.

We want what you want, only

we have to want it more.

-- Ellen Bryant Voigt

in The Lotus Flowers

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ellen-bryant-voigt

Words of advice

When I was a child I became intrigued by a book on the family bookshelf, a big thick one, dark blue, by Emily Post. Its words of advice have never failed to steer me in the right direction on the critical everyday questions of leaving a calling card or addressing an ambassador. They have also, gentle reader, given me insight into the later novels of Henry James.

I found--and continue to find--the book a wonderful glimpse into another age. And what I took in, too, was the underlying message, not of snobbishness, which it often stands accused of, but of consideration for one’s fellow human beings and of a democratic idea that establishing rules everyone can know can allow anyone to feel at ease no matter the social situation

Of course fast forward to the 21st century and the rules have become a little muddled. It’s still easy to know which fork to use, but other issues are less clear. Which is exactly why we’re drawn--and by we I mean me--to advice columns. How to navigate the intricacies of ex and step and blended familial ties, the appropriate reaction to the cell phone on the dinner table, the friending and unfriending of friends and unfriends. We need advice.

Some of my favorite comes every Sunday in Philip Galanes’ Social Q’s column in the New York Times Styles section. His answers feel like the perfect mix of snark and compassion. He seems to recognize that since we’re all in this together why make anyone’s life harder than it needs to be.

Galanes has a new book coming out soon, a compilation of the columns. It’s called " Social Q’s: How to Survive the Quirks, Quagmires, and Quandaries of Today." Ah, quite. I’m looking forward to reading it. Maybe you’d like it, too.

Punctuation rules!

The news was shocking. To me, at least. Well, apparently to quite a few other people, too. A snarky piece in the HuffPo said that, ho hum, the serial comma is out and who cares.

The news was that Oxford University had updated its style guide and was discontinuing use of the serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma. This is the comma that comes--or not--before a conjunction in a series of three or more: e.g. red, white, and blue instead of red, white and blue. Or eats, shoots, and leaves.

News of the demise comes just as I am hearing the term Oxford comma for the first time. It’s a very good upgrade, I think, since serial has those unfortunate connections with words like “killer.” Though there’s always “serial drama,” which I like.

Whatever it’s called I think it’s a good idea. It just makes grammatical sense. There’s a symmetry in the way it looks on the page. And there’s a nice sense of pacing. It sounds, in your head, the way you’d say it. It doesn’t rush you to the final element. Will we need to say it faster without the comma?

The article is followed by a string of comments, some of them irate and one of them mine (“it’s a good day when people care so much about punctuation”). And many people were all a-Twitter about it.

You can also see a video of a song called “Oxford Comma” by the rock group Vampire Weekend. I’m learning a lot. And I also see that the Oxford comma is sometimes called the Harvard comma. How could I not have known that, right here in 02138 in the shadow of the Great University itself?

Anyhow, I have to apologize for upsetting you. Turns out to be a cruel hoax. Relax. Stand down. Oxford University issued a statement that, contrary to reports, no change in its policy on use of the serial comma is planned. Except maybe to start calling it the Harvard comma?

Small Connections

One of my little favorite New York Times features is Metropolitan Diary, a column of little stories of the city that appears on Monday. Over the years I’ve been in it a couple of times and am even in the book of collected columns.

In today’s Metropolitan Diary a contributor named Mimi Alperin, wrote that, in the '70s, her son would travel to and from school on the Fifth Avenue bus. During his daily trips he made friends with two of the route’s bus drivers. Alperin related how her son insisted on inviting one of the drivers to his bar mitzvah. And she told how, just recently, the other driver saw her husband and asked about the son, who is now an adult with his own children.

The story involved two things I like to think about. One is what’s now called “free range children.” Back when I and my children grew up they were just called “children.” But now that the world feels dangerous to us, we are reluctant to let children do the things we took for granted, like taking a bus or walking around the neighborhood alone.

It’s astounding how we no longer notice the absence of children. Not little children who appropriately cling to a parent’s hand when they’re walking down the street. But children who are old enough to begin, one small supervised step at a time, learning how to navigate in the world on their own. There’s a street near my house where, from time to time I have glimpsed a boy, maybe about 10 or 12, walking. Just walking. By himself! A free-range child! I am always happy to see him and I applaud the courage of the parent who has gone against fears of danger and criticism to allow him this freedom.

I also live near a college attended by some of the world’s smartest kids who seem not to know how to cross a street safely. I always think they could have benefitted from a little dose of free-range activity when they were younger.

The second thing I loved about Alperin’s story was the way it acknowledged the relationships we have with all the people in our lives with whom we share an almost unseen connection. We don’t know their names and we hardly do more than nod or smile to each other. The person bringing our mail. The supermarket cashier we like to go to even if her line is a little longer. The gas station attendant who knows right away that we want regular and we’ll be paying cash. It’s these almost unseen interactions that make a neighborhood, that help make us who we are. If we move or if they retire we won’t say goodbye. We might not even notice the absence for a while. But these faces we recognize make our daily lives recognizable to ourselves.

Our ancestors were wandering Arameans

For those of you who haven’t spent time around a Passover seder table, the reference to wandering Arameans comes from a classic line in the seder narrative. For me, Passover 2011--or, more properly 5771--carries faint echoes of a book I just finished about a father who was, at least in terms of language, a wandering Aramean.

The book is “My Father’s Paradise” by Ariel Sabar. Sabar is an American-born, California-raised journalist. His father, Yona Sabar, was born into a 2700-year-old Kurdish Jewish community in Iraq and ultimately became a world-renowned scholar of Aramaic, the nearly -extinct language he grew up speaking.

The book is a fascinating account of Yona Sabar’s journey and of Ariel Sabar’s often fraught relationship with a father different from all the other Southern California fathers. Its references to Baghdad and Mosul and other places so prominently in the news in our new century, remind us of another aspect of the area’s long history. It tells us of a time when such harmony and respect existed among Muslim, Christian, and Jew that Muslims would share the “holiday bread”--matzah, of their Jewish neighbors. And, for me, it opened a door on a community I knew nothing about.

But at this season of sitting around a table and handing down ancient tales, the book was a reminder of how much can be lost between generations and how much the transmission of our history--human, familial, cultural--relies on retelling the stories. Retelling and listening.

Sticking it to books

Where was that book? I was sure I had it on the shelf, but now, when I want to read it again, I can’t find it. (The book was “Had Slaves,” a beautiful, powerful collection of poems by Catherine Sasanov written after her discovery that her family, three generations ago, had owned other human beings.)

Well, I’ll order up a used copy from Amazon...hmmm...”very good condition.” Ok. Click

So imagine my horror when I opened the package and found this lovely book with a sticker marring its very good condition. The sticker said, “Sell me back” and had the name of the book reseller I had bought it from. Ok, I’ll just peel the label off...but no. This was stuck on with world-class adhesive. Supersonic jumbo jets could be held together with this adhesive. When I finally managed to remove a little edge, the spot remained sticky. So just forget about putting it on the shelf, unless I wanted Sasanov to be permanently attached to Schor.

In horror I sent an e-mail to Donovan, the head of the company that sold the book and got a note back saying that most of their business was in books for college students who “typically do not have any intention of keeping a book.”

I’ll leave aside the thought that “Had Slaves” would be a book one would want to get rid of. This wasn’t “Introduction to Organic Chemistry” after all. I’m going for the bigger picture here, the total disconnect between the people who sell back their books as soon as they no longer “need” them and those of us who add and add and add books to our shelves. Since I’ve had my Kindle I’ve given more thought to this--which books do I simply want to read and which do I want to own?

Ownership of type on a screen does feel fundamentally different from ownership of a bound set of pages. And I’m guessing that the prevalence of e-books changes our relationship to the physical object called “book.”

Donovan, whose company stuck the sticker on “Had Slaves,” thanked me for my note and said they were checking to see if their supplier could find stickers that could peel off easily. That made me feel better. Until I realized that he had said stickers that “peal off.” Was that like crossing his fingers behind his back, or in this case, his screen? If so, I hope he doesn’t have any of my books.

Snow day

We’re snowed in, we lucky ones. The unlucky ones are out bravely slogging their way through it to get to someplace they need to be. The mail delivery got here, though it made me feel guilty--he trudged here just to bring a couple of catalogs and a magazine I don’t care about.

On Facebook it looks as if people are home everywhere--everybody changing their profile photos, adding 8, 10, 26 new friends. A sure sign everyone’s snowed in. Also, a sign that our concept of “friend” has been co-opted, but that’s another story or at least another blog post. I was recently at a party where one of my favorite people--yes, a friend!--noted that he had more friends in the room than he had on Facebook.

The snow is piling up outside and I’m reading and writing and making two kinds of soup, though I have doubts about one of them. We’ll see. Another friend sent me his annual list of the books he read this past year. I am awed. Haven’t even finished reading the list yet.

Last night I finished Pat Barker’s “Ghost Road,” the final book in her trilogy about World War I. Beautifully written and fascinating, just as many of you said. I continue to read “The Known World” by Edward P Jones, but find I need to take it in just a little at a time--it’s harsh.

Meanwhile, time to poke a little at the fire and feel grateful for warmth and firewood and for many other things, including friends on the phone and online.

What I read on my vacation: a bunch more and two really special ones

My vacation this year was very book-intensive, especially since I was trying out my new Kindle on some, still reading the old-fashioned way on others. Here’s a run-down, quick and less so, along with a two very enthusiastic recommendations:

“God on the Rocks,” by Jane Gardam: Gardam is the author of many novels published in England, but only a few, most notably the wonderful “Old Filth” and its companion, “The Man in the Wooden Hat,” have been released in the U.S. So when I saw this one, written in 1978 but available here only in 2010, I grabbed it. In hard copy--an addition to my actual bookshelf. It’s the story of a child, 8-year-old Margaret, observing the people around her, including her overwhelmed mother, Ellie; her religious fanatic of a father; the maid who takes Margaret for outings and has a little recreation herself; and several people from Ellie’s past. It was very good. Gardam’s books ARE very good. But I have to say I wasn’t as wild about it as I was about the first two of hers I read. Still, any Jane Gardam is better than no Jane Gardam. She’s going to be reading at Brookline Booksmith on Feb. 16. I’m definitely planning to be there.

“Mary Ann in August,” by Armistead Maupin: Some people read mysteries; some read sci-fi; my go-to fun books are Maupin’s “Tales of the City” series. I was delighted to read this latest addition, though I’m not sure it would enchant the uninitiated. But for me, another of its pleasures was realizing that there was one in the series that I had missed, “Michael Tolliver Lives.” So--here’s where the Kindle is especially fun--I downloaded it and in just a few seconds I was ready to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of my old friends from Barbary Lane.

“All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost” by Lan Samantha Chang: This is a novel about poets and writing poetry, written by the director of the legendary University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The book is set in a similarly rarified and competitive nest of writing students, disciples of an influential and charismatic teacher, Miranda Sturgis, whose professional stature and long shimmering hair are evocative of a closer to home poetry goddess. This novel brought up the classic questions of whether or not writing can be taught, what a poet’s goals should be, and where creative satisfaction can come from. There are seekers here--of fame and fortune, of pure and non-careerist art, of the roots of creativity, of roots. Nothing comes easily, even when it seems to, no one is immune to doubt, and sometimes life interferes with creation. Just like real life.

“Rescue” by Anita Shreve: I was at the beach and I often find Shreve’s books fun to read. This one, not so much.

Now, two gems, “Great House” by Nicole Krauss and “Russian Winter” by Daphne Kalotay. I loved these books, and probably for similar reasons--complexity and nuance of character and plot and ambition of scope. Each book bounces through time and place. Each is an engaging read. And at the center of each are flawed human beings with secrets, half-buried memories, and histories of loss.

“Great House” could almost have been called “great desk” for much of the story, since, at its core, is a hulking desk that moves from person to person. But toward the end, the enlarging and facinating meaning of the term “great house” becomes clear. “Russian Winter” weaves together the worlds of ballet, Soviet Russia, estate jewelry, auction houses, poetry, and the translation from one culture to another of both literature and lives. And there’s also romance. A lovely book. Well, both of them. And good meaty tales for winter. Read both!

When good things happen to good writers

I have just returned from a lovely party celebrating my friend Edith Pearlman and her new book, “Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories.” It is Edith’s fourth book and begins with an enthusiastic intro by Ann Patchett, herself a wonderful writer. You may have read the glowing front page review in the New York Times with your morning coffee. Or the similar one in the Los Angeles Times. I can’t wait to read the book and you’ll want to read it, too.

Edith has published hundreds of works of fiction and nonfiction in literary journals, national magazines, and online publications. Her short stories have been anthologized (“Best American Short Stories”) and have won O. Henry, Pushcart, and other prestigious prizes. So why has the tone of the praise been along the lines of “why haven’t I heard of Edith Pearlman before?” More importantly, why are people hearing about her now?

Edith herself credits a few people--her agent, Jill Kneerim; Patchett, who has admired her work for years; and Benjamin George, the editor of Lookout Books, the brand new literary imprint beginning its life with “Binocular Vision.” What happened was that George, who had published Edith’s stories in the magazine he edits, “Ecotone,” simply liked her work enough to want to help it find a larger audience. Maybe “simply” isn’t quite the operative word here, with all the complications of publishing and promoting a book, getting it into the hands of reviewers, and then the hands of readers. But the short version of what happened is this: Someone. Paid. Attention. Someone noticed that these stories were, indeed, very fine, worthy of much praise and wide readership.

I am extraordinarily happy for Edith (to whom I am eternally indebted for introducing me to Dr. D!). And her experience, I think, has something to teach us all. For writers the message is to stay true to what you do. For readers--and that includes the writers--honor the work that has been offered to you. Read it with open hearts and let it touch you: pay attention.

Edith will be reading from “Binocular Vision” this Tuesday at 7 at Brookline Booksmith. See you there.

What I read on my vacation: two books I didn’t finish, for very different reasons

I used to never give up on a book, but that’s all behind me. Life is too short. And so, though it comes weighted with Important Critical Reviews and the Man Booker Prize, I got only to chapter 4 (that's 7% in Kindle-speak) in Howard Jacobson’s “The Finkler Question.” I was inclined to give it some sympathy because it arrived with the unfortunate label of “comic novel.” And, true, there were a couple of smiles and one laugh. But there was also a sense of --say it--boredom. It’s possible I may reopen it in the future, but for now, no thanks. I’ll be glad to hear from anyone who has read the book and wants to urge me to give it another chance.

The reason for closing the other book was quite the opposite. I had been looking forward to reading “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones and I still am. It’s just that, a single chapter into it, I knew this was not the time or place. The book is a strongly written and engaging novel about slave ownership by blacks in the antebellum American south. I was immediately drawn into it. But every time I looked up at the beach and the waves, every time I reached for another dab of 85 SPF sunscreen or another pleasant little snack, I knew this book had to wait.

Now back home surrounded by the rigors of a New England winter I will be able to give “The Known World” the kind of reading it deserves.

What I read on my vacation: "Regeneration"

I had heard about Pat Barker’s trilogy of historical novels about World War I. Like Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy which I gobbled up last year, this one sounded like nothing I’d want to read. I was wrong.

“Regeneration” starts with a statement against the war by the poet Siegfried Sassoon: “I am making this statement as as act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

“I am a soldier, convinced that I am writing on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation....

“I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.”

Hmmm.

It continues with Sassoon’s stay in a mental hospital where he is treated by Dr. William Rivers. This is all historical fact, as is Sassoon’s meeting a very young Wilfred Owen, who is an aspiring poet in awe of Sassoon. There is, in fact, one wonderful scene in which the two are basically workshopping a poem Owen has written.

There is also much about the cruelty of war, often exacerbated by the unthinking cruelty of British military officers. And there is quite a bit of very interesting early 20th century psychiatric thinking and practice.

This was a fascinating book that took me by surprise. I am looking forward to reading the next two books in the series.

What I read on my vacation: Henry James...on Kindle

I just got back from two warm and sunny weeks at the beach where I did a lot of reading and I have much to share about what I read. Rather than give a long list, I thought I’d do a short separate blog post for each book. First up, “The Ambassadors” by Henry James.

No, it’s not exactly a beach read. I had actually started it before I left on vacation. It was my first book on my new Kindle; I had wanted to select something special to inaugurate the Kindle and this definitely was. So poor James was in odd circumstances in terms of both where and how I was reading him: not surprisingly, he rose to the occasion.

First about the Kindle. I like it a lot but I’m not going to be giving up print books any time soon. It is a different experience, more like the difference between watching the same movie in a theater or at home. It’s still the same work and you can still enjoy it or not as itself, but you do take it in in subtly different ways. And there are some books I want to own in hard copy, have up on my shelf, feel the pages of. Still, I'm glad I have this new option for reading.

What I like:
I love going on vacation knowing I’ll have enough books and yet I’ll still be able to lift my suitcase. I even downloaded an additional book while I was away.

I like the physical ease of holding it, even if the book was a thick one.

I like the font, which can be modified in several ways to individual preference. I actually stuck with the default font, which I found attractive and appropriate for reading on an electronic device.

I liked the dictionary function, although with James that’s hardly all the help I’d like to have.

What I don’t like:
This is a little strange but I often like to read the last page early on just so I can relax and enjoy the book without--does this make sense to anyone else?--racing through it to see what happens. That’s still possible with the Kindle, but takes a little maneuvering.

Likewise, going back to reread something is a little harder to do. I may get more adept with practice, but right now, I sometimes just give up on it.

I miss what happens when people read in public. There’s something lost, I think, when you can’t say to a stranger on the beach or on the T, “Do you like that book?” or “I loved that one.” Of course, right now when it’s still new, there is the opportunity to talk about the Kindle itself. But isn’t it more fun to talk about books?

Now, “The Ambassadors”:
Such a wonderful book. Such fascinating characters. So much to think about. If only I could have understood it all. I blogged recently about an excellent annotated edition of “Pride and Prejudice” by Pat Spacks; I wish there were one for “The Ambassadors.” I’d love to know more about all the nuances of social expectations and behavior James writes about. But even knowing that I missed much, this is such a substantive book that it is a delight to read.

The gift of reading

When it comes to gift-giving, we’re people of the books, Dr. D. and I. All those neat rectangular packages. So packable. So easy to wrap. So--okay--predictable. But what could be better? I am one of those romantics who sees a book cover as a door ready to be opened to--what? An idea? A world? A new way of seeing? Or just (just???) a good story to entertain.

Around this time last year I wrote about the pleasure of giving and receiving books. To recommend a book you have loved seems like a gift that goes so much farther than even the nicest cashmere sweater or snazzy new i-thing. We recently had some recommendations in the family that went like this: Zach read Kate DiCamillo’s “Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.” He said it was the best book he had read all year and that he cried at the end. Wow.

So I bought “Edward Tulane” for Cameron and Ryan, who tore through it in two days because they couldn’t bear to stop reading. And, like Zach, they were teary at the end.
So now, Sam, Mia, guess what’s in those rectangular packages with YOUR names on it.

Crying at the end of a book--what could be better? It means both that the book had the power to touch and that you opened your heart to it and let yourself be touched. A truly perfect gift at any time of the year.

For book recommendations for kids, check out my friend Deborah Sloan’s blog, The Picnic Basket. For a wonderful selection of books around Boston, my favorites are Brookline Booksmith, Porter Square Books, and Harvard Book Store. And, for the gift of poetry, the one and only Grolier Poetry Book Shop.

Back in touch next year--I’m going to read a book!

Finishing the (Best books of 2010) Hat

So The New York Times “10 Best Books” list is out for 2010 and all the usual suspects are rounded up. Jonathan Franzen, of course. Well, this is clearly the Year of Jonathan Franzen and maybe he deserves it simply for the hard work of producing a 675-page novel. I’m going to have to read “Freedom,” I know, but as someone who couldn’t get past about page 382 of “The Corrections,” I’m not looking forward to it.

I was more than sorry to not see one single book of poetry. Not one? Especially hard to fathom as I am being totally knocked out reading the National Book Award winner, “Lighthead,” by Terrance Hayes.

There are a few that I am planning to read, including the new Stacy Schiff biography of Cleopatra.

But the one on the list that I absolutely am loving and want to recommend most highly is “Finishing the Hat” by Stephen Sondheim. True, I am a Sondheim groupie. But even if you’re not, this book has important things to tell you in its humorous, honest, self-effacing way. It is not only about creating theater, but also about taking it in. It is about poetry, about taste, about what makes for good theatrical lyrics and why.

Above all, it is about creating art. Its title comes from a song in one of my favorite Sondheim shows, “Sunday in the Park with George.”
“There’s a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat...
Starting on a hat....
Finishing a hat....
Look, I made a hat...
Where there never was a hat.”

"Long for This World"

I didn’t find the book I was looking for in the library, so I picked up one I vaguely remembered reading a review of. Good review? Bad? Didn’t remember; maybe that’s why they say there’s no such thing as a bad review. Anyway, I took home “Long for This World,” Sonya Chung’s first novel, and I’m glad I did.

It is a story of a Korean family, some members in Korea, some in America. What can I say? It’s about life. Tragedy intersects with daily routine and occasional joys. Beloved people finish their lives, just as they do off the page. And, piece by piece the days and years build, families continue.

A quote: “A slight shift in one direction or another and she will slide off the surface of her life. Eow easily this happens to a person. How little it takes to unhinge what once seemed securely locked.”

This is a slim book but so filled with nuanced details of thoughts and actions and characters that it keeps you in its world past the last page. A wonderful bonus is the overlay of Korean culture. After I read it--partly in tribute and partly under the spell of the women in the kitchen chopping, chopping--I went out for lunch at a Korean restaurant. (Koreana at the corner of Prospect and Broadway in Cambridge. I definitely plan to go back.)

There’s another book out with the same title, a non-fiction book about longevity. But that’s a different book. This one, the novel, doesn’t tell you about living longer. Just about living.

"To the End of the Land"

Someone I know, reading this book, said that he hated putting it down because it was so beautiful and he hated picking it up because it was so painful. That seems as good a description as any of reading “To the End of the Land,” the new novel by Israeli author David Grossman.

Yes, it is a beautiful book. The characters are complex, flawed, understandable, inscrutable. They live with an impossible backstory and an equally impossible present that is part of living in a country where the political is overwhelmingly, pervasively personal.

The story is this: Ora, mother of a son in the army, leaves her home to hike through the country so that if/when the “notifiers” come to her door with bad news, she will not be there to receive it. It is a hike she had planned to take with her son. She takes it, instead, with an old friend, “old friend” in this case being a bloodless euphemism for how these two intertwined lives have unfolded.

“A Woman Escaping News,” the novel’s title in Hebrew, carries a very different message from the English. “To the End of the Land” has echoes of geopolitics and journey. “A Woman Escaping News” deals more in magical thinking, the illusion that anything we do could be a bargaining chip for the lives and safety of those we love. The news the woman, Ora is trying to escape exists not only in the world and possibly on her doorstep, but also in her anguished rehashing of past events, regrets, misunderstandings.

Because so much has been written about this book and its author it is impossible to come to it without the knowledge that Grossman’s son Uri, who was in the Israeli army, was killed while his father was writing the book. But even knowing that, it feels like a shock to come to the afterword in which Grossman tells how he started this book three years before Uri’s death, gave Uri updates on its progress, and completed it after the story had taken this tragically personal turn.

This is a sad book, yes, but it’s also an extraordinary one that I highly recommend.

Jane, Annotated

At first I was less than charmed by the idea. An annotated edition of “Pride and Prejudice”? Could be interesting, yes, but this was one of my favorite books. Did I want to read it with 2000 footnotes? Did I want this additional voice intruding on my private time with Elizabeth Bennett? The answer, as it turns out, is yes. I kept an open mind on this, and now, dear reader, I must tell you how much I am enjoying this. The book, officially, is “Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition,” edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks and published by Harvard University Press.

First of all, the book is physically beautiful. An e-book is all well and good in its place, but this is not the place. This is a large, heavy book with paper that affords noticeable tactile pleasure. There are wonderful illustrations, from the familiar watercolor of Jane painted by her sister Cassandra, to a wonderful drawing “A Gentleman’s Art Gallery” that shows what a room at Pemberley might have looked like, to a group of illustrations done for the book in 1894, including a priceless one in which the unbearable Mr. Collins is recoiling at the thought of--horrors!--reading a novel. One of my favorites is the poster from the movie version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, that looks like the cover of a paperback bodice-ripper.

The footnotes, rather than getting in the way, are like having a knowledgeable companion on the sofa next to you, pointing out all the good bits. I had the pleasure of hearing Patricia Spacks talk about the book, and her warm voice is exactly what I hear as I read about various kinds of coaches the characters rode in, the relative levels of social standing of the characters, or what quadrille is. A chatty aside may dish about how Mr. Collins looks at women and furniture alike as objects awaiting his approval or disapproval.

Maybe a gift for the Austen fan in your life?

Mary Ann is back!

I just got my online copy of this week’s New York Times Book Review and--thank you, life!-- Armistead Maupin has given a gift to everyone who ever loved the residents of 28 Barbary Lane.

For the uninitiated, Maupin wrote a series of novels--”Tales of the City,” “More Tales of the City, “ “Further Tales of the City,”etc. in which a very diverse group of San Francisco residents lived under the unstated motto of “Can’t we all just get along.” I loved those people--Michael Tolliver, Anna Madrigal of the anagram name, and the often naive Mary Ann Singleton who innocently rented a room in the boarding house and, well, you have to find out for yourself. Reading those books felt like having an endearing, but slightly out of control group of houseguests descend for an intense, brief time. A little crazy, but after they left, you worried about them, missed them, wanted them to come back.

PBS made a film of the first book that starred Laura Linney as Mary Ann and Olympia Dukakis as Anna, so you can just imagine the deliciousness. And now--oh joy!--a new book. Mary Ann in Autumn. Oh, autumn. Well, ok, I got older, too. I can handle this. I’m ready for whatever Maupin brings my way. In fact, I can't wait.