so behind! eek!

wait, i start every entry like that...
Books read:
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
Cooking with Fernet Branca, James Hamilton Paterson
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
Papier Mache Monsters, Dan Reeder
Best European Fiction 2010, edited by Aleksander Hemon
Instead of a Letter, Diana Athill
Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill

and a few other things that I know I read since I last wrote, but can't remember now. Sad sad sad.

Bill Bryson: the At Home book was a little unfocussed?? if that is the right word, but still enjoyable. QUITE FANTASTIC, however, was the Shakespeare book: he goes through and actually documents all the primary sources to figure out what is really properly known (so far) about Shakespeare's life, and the excellentest part of all is the very last chapter when he goes on a riproaring un-Bryson like rampage against all the conspiracy theorists who say Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written Shakespeare. Read. Now. Fun. (Fun, but still very scholarly, so you can look clever while reading it).
Cooking with Fernet Branca is a tricky book to describe - seriously, seriously loopy & quite literate, it features my very favourite fiction trick of all: the unreliable narrator (TWO of them, in fact!), as well as deliciously tightly packed precise prose. I was slightly disappointed that the narrators didn't turn out to be quite as unreliable as you might hope (i.e. what from even the first paragraph smells of a mere delusion of competence turns out to be actual competence, sort of), and a few of the weirder elements (the male protagonist, for instance, has a penchant for bizarre recipes involving endangered species) don't quite make sense even within the context of the loopiness of the book, but overall yay very funny and thank you to my sister for passing it on.
I don't even want to think any more about the Tom Rachman book, I am so cross with it. Well, more to the point, I am cross with the reviewers they quoted on the back cover, who made the book sound like a bundle of high-class fun with misleading words/phrases like "hilarious" and "beguiling" and "finding out where the author is going is half the fun." The book consists of a series of interwoven stories told from the perspective of each of the employees at a failing English-language newspaper based in Rome, and **spoiler alert** every single one of the stories leaves you with a hard painful lump in your stomach about what a horrible unfair tragic place the world is. When a basset hound called Schopenhauer, his hapless master's only friend, gets its neck wrung for no good reason, I'm sorry to say, I decided I couldn't be friends with Mr. Rachman even though I am sure he is very nice in person.
Papier Mache Monsters, on the other hand: wow, now, there is a book to restore your faith in joy in the universe. Even if you no interest whatsoever in creating awesome papier mache monsters, you should read this book. It has lovely pictures and he is funny and makes jokes about his cat who was obviously trying very hard to get in the way during the photo shoot for the book and he boosted my level of interest in one day creating my very own papier mache monster from maybe a 2 out of 10 before reading the book up to a 6.5. (I actually got it out of the library thinking it might have some pointers useful for making a papier mache elephant-shaped chest of drawers, which has a longer story behind it that needs to be told here). So there.
Best European Fiction - meh. so far not loving it. (I kind of gave up half way through, to be honest). Very laudable that they are trying to publish stories originally written in languages that are not big players (Galician, Slovenian, Irish, etc.) that you would otherwise never find, but Aleksander Hemon has... very male taste in fiction. Driftless middle aged men who are unhappy; occasionally there's an encounter with either a prostitute or an implausibly nice/pretty/young girl; they go back to being miserable. Half way through the book, I finally caught on, and I thought, hmm, I don't think I need to finish this.
but TAHDAH! here is the WHOLE POINT of this blog entry, which is Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End omg omg omg omg everyone should read this book I loved it loved it loved it. Some background: Diana Athill is a nonagenarian who worked her whole life in publishing as a literary editor; she has written a couple of memoirish books previous to this, but this one specifically is about growing old (i think she was 89 when she wrote it) and it is nothing short of a revelation (I thought). She is so generous, so clear-sighted, so funny, such a smartypants, marbles so much more intact than mine are at 37, and so credibly grateful for all the experiences she has had. I am going to have to go back and read this book again. And possibly again after that, every few years until it becomes obvious that I will never be as graceful in my outlook on life as she is. I couldn't stop talking about this book for days after I finished it, and I think I recommended it to all sorts of probably inappropriate people.
And now for something completely different: bed! yay!

I am thinking of signing up for

... National Novel Writing Month again. arghghghghgghgh. OK, mostly I just wanted to put that in writing and see how it felt. But the thing is, I came up with a totally genius idea for a plot. Are you ready? here it is: STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S. Brilliant, isn't it? I just started rereading Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey, which my mother rejected as "too plot-driven," by which she means "you can tell it was written by a guy," which I don't think is necessarily a reason for rejecting a book out of hand, especially when it's as gorgeously written and kooky as that one is. BUT here's the point: he basically just rewrote bits of someone else's book!! I could do that! My friend Sam has been working on a retelling of Chaucer for as long as I've known him, for instance; Alicia Silverstone became famous for Clueless, Leonard Bernstein and West Side Story... the list goes on. So all I have to do is pick my classic (Le Morte d'Arthur, perhaps - lots of juicy material in that) and then pick my gimmick (rewritten as a 1950's Soviet phone directory! or a rock opera libretto set in Gaugin's Fiji!). It can't fail.

While I dither about that, I also have to spend a minute gushing about Hilary Mantel, who is my new author BFF. I just finished reading Wolf Hall, and wowee zowee! girlfriend can tell a good story. I actually got a little obsessive and weird about this book, to the point of nearly not quite actually neglecting my child's basic needs in favour of reading it, especially towards the end when I was racking up 10 cents a day in library late fees, but I didn't care because it was worth 10 cents a day just to be reading it because it was so good. And totally heartbreaking that the book stops at what feels like a good ending point to Cromwell, but the reader knows that all kinds of shit is just about to hit the fan... now, there is a plot device. See, I am overusing italics because I am so excited about how much fun this book was to read. Please excuse me, I need to go get on the library website and request everything else Hilary Mantel has ever written.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

I am sorry to say that I didn't find Gilead to be mindblowingly good; perhaps it had just been too built up by too many people, or perhaps I am just too queasy about Christianity, or ?? I don't know, but I didn't love it. Briefly, the novel purports to be a letter that a dying minister writes to his seven-year-old son reflecting on his life, his thoughts about fatherhood, and his coming to terms with his godson (who is a bit of a rotten apple, but the beloved son of his best friend, so not someone that you can just blow off). It's slow slow slow and meandery and (as you would expect) there's a lot of talking about God, which usually makes me a bit uncomfortable, because you can never be quite sure what other people mean by that.

However, I did have to write down two quotes that stuck with me:

"I began my remarks [he is working on a sermon] by pointing out... that Abraham is in effect called upon to sacrifice both his sons, and that the Lord in both stories sends angels to intervene at the critical moment to save the child. Abraham's extreme old age is an important element... not only because the children of old age are unspeakably precious, but also, I think, because any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents' love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in the wilderness."

and also:

"...your mother could not love you more or take greater pride in you. She has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as God does, to the marrow of your bones... You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally..."

Mostly I just love the phrase 'to love someone to the marrow of their bones.' I think it gives a good sense of the visceralness of love for a child. I kind of freaked babydaddy out the other day when I read these quotes out to him, and added that if I could, I might actually tunnel inside my baby, roll around inside her hugging and kissing her sweet little internal organs, curling up with her intestines and going to sleep right next to her warm little beating heart. Gross but true.

And on the subject of religion: I wonder how it would change the world if you had to have read, start to finish, the holy book of any religion that you claimed to be a member of. Believing in a higher power is all very well, but I think to actually have to confront the violence/inconsistency/weirdness/downright creepiness of some bits of the Bible (for instance) (which is the only holy-book-of-a-major-religion I have ever read, and I only made it through about half each of the Old and New Testaments if that) might make a lot of people think twice about whether they could endorse it wholeheartedly.

Next up: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, and a whole stack of lovely lovely art books on the early Flemish Renaissance...

I don't want to love Dave Eggers. But I do.

... because I just finished Best American Non-Required Reading 2008, what he edited, with an introduction by Matt Groening, which right there is enough to make you suspect that ALL THE COOL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD KNOW EACH OTHER! wtf!!, and so so so good. a couple of stories that were a little bit more detached-ironic-cool than they really needed to be, but also some really heartfelt articulate attempts at trying to mend some of our fences with the Islamic world, for which, hey, kudos to you, dudes.

The three pieces which I think will stay with me the longest were (1) some excerpts from a blog written by an American soldier in occupied Iraq about what it was doing to his soul to be shooting people every day 2) a wry essay by the Canadian David Rakoff about his decision to become a U.S. citizen which reminded me oh-so-painfully of my own naturalization process ten-ish years or so ago and 3) a commencement address given by David Foster Wallace, in which he encourages the listeners in his ultra-accessible-yet-super-smartypants prose to attempt to live in what I (not he) would describe for brevity's sake as a state of grace, allowing yourself to imagine kindness and love and goodness in all sorts of places in order to not let the grind of daily tedious adult life get you down. all of which, of course, made infinitely more poignant by the fact that he was ultimately unable to keep himself from falling into total despair (he talks about contemplation of suicide in the address, but in such a way that you feel reassured, aha, he has managed to figure out the secret that really makes life Worth Living, and it just tears you to pieces to think that such a fantastically nice brainy inspirational guy as that (and he must have been nice, he must have) should have been unable to get himself out of the depression hole. as in, what hope is there for the rest of us if he can't do it?

but i digress. like i said, i don't _want_ to like dave eggers, because there is sort of a too-cool-f0r-school ironic hipster thing about his prose, but i really, really do like the fact that he devoted so much of this book to bridging the gap between the u.s. reader and the average muslim joe-on-the-street (one of the chapters, for instance, is the new iraqi constitution, and there's another essay which is a piece of american propaganda which was published in an iraqi newspaper purporting to be written by an iraqi. etc.). I tend to switch off a little bit with serious news sources re: Iraq at this point, and will be the first to admit I still am fuzzy on the differences between Sunnis and Shiites (for instance), and I wouldn't be able to find Fallujah on the map without a little bit of hunting, but little glimpses of regular life in Iraq are nothing short of totally engaging, and it's clear that his purpose, while obliquely arrived at, is dead serious. Respeck, as Ali G would say. i'm definitely going to check the other books in the series out: respeck for the SF public library as well, comrades. I heart the SFPL.

flemish art! conspiracy theories! an unbeatable combination...

Jonathan Lopez, The Man Who Made Vermeers

Terence Morgan, The Master of Bruges

in the middle of Stealing the Mystic Lamb, by Noah Charney

unrelated but recently finished and AWESOME:

Drown, by Junot Diaz (book of lacerating short stories that make you want to curl up and die because we are an evil selfish species who do each other no good and whenever there is the teeniest little flicker of hope that maybe the world is not a terrible terrible place and kindness does exist then SQUASH flicker is gone. but wow boy can write.)

The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett (a very good antidote to the Junot Diaz book, since it is about people managing to forge connections in unlikely places and manages to be both sweet and intelligent without compromising either the sweetness or the intelligence.)

But! we are here to discuss fifteenth century Flanders and all the spicy juicy shit that was going down in the art world. This episode of Nick Hornby Will You Be Our Friend is dedicated to Alexia R., whose book recommendations turned out to be spot on...

The fluffiest of the three books is the Terence Morgan; it purports to be narrated by the Flemish painter Hans Memling, and it weaves a deliciously plausible solution to the English princes-in-the-tower mystery into the known facts (according to my brief review of the Wikipedia article about him...) of Memling's life and all the bigwigs of fifteenth century Burgundy, Flanders, and England. Love. It. I could identify only two problems with this book: 1) the back copy is SO STUPID (it makes it sound like an extraordinarily sloppy historical romance bodice ripper eeeeuuuw) and 2) at least the paperback edition doesn't include a lovely glossy insert of all of Memling's paintings that are clues along the way, a la Da Vinci Code, as to what is going on, but otherwise it is great and fun and clever and totally addictive. When I went to the internet thinking, hunh, I'm SURE someone somewhere has remedied the lack of a companion picture guide, turns out il n'existe pas wtf (at least that I could find), so here, for all your conspiracy theory scratching pleasure, is my little Reader's Companion Guide to The Master Of Bruges. (I'm not going to write about the Jonathan Sanchez book because although juicy it was a re-read, or the Noah Charney book, because I am still eating it whole and it is DELICIOUS).

1. Semi-fact! Yes, Memling probably did apprentice with the master painter Rogier van der Weyden. Can't find anything about whether vdW really was as cantankerous an old bastard as the novel makes out.

2. here's the portrait that vdW (Memling, in the book) painted of Charles, duke of Charolais:

3. Unclear whether Memling actually did military service. I found one website which (sort of sweetly) states, "Contrary to popular belief, Memling did _not_ fight at the Battle of Nancy under Charles the Bold," as if Memling's presence at Nancy is the hot topic on Twitter & Facebook right now.

4. here's a teeny tiny pic of the lefthand side of the triptych which was commissioned by the Spanish ambassador, Francisco de Rojas (pictured). Couldn't find an image of the complete thingy, sadly:

5. Central panel of the "revolutionary" triptych commissioned by Portinari for Sint Jacobskerk:

6. Altarpiece painted for the hospital of St. John:

7. Fact! John Donne was an English diplomat in the court at Bruges for Edward VI, and he commissioned the Donne Triptych, now on display in the National Gallery in London:

7. This is the altarpiece painted for Jan Crabbe, with the image of the Virgin Mary modelled on Marie of Burgundy:

8. The printer William Caxton printed the first book ever printed in English in Bruges. I couldn't find anything on Google re: whether he and Memling ever met, but fifteenth century Bruges can't have been _that_ big a place.

9. Various paintings supposedly featuring Princess Marie as the Virgin Mary:

10. The "Last Judgement" triptych stolen by pirates of the Hanseatic League:

11. the portraits of Lorenzo Nero Palmieri & the Portinaris:

12. I couldn't find any portraits of Edward IV, Richard III, or Elizabeth Woodville by Memling (or any mention of Memling's ever having actually gone to England) but fun! I found a post (on the website of the "Richard III Society," of all places), re: the lack of historical evidence for these portraits, to which Terence Morgan had himself replied, explaining, "I took my information from “Memling’s Portraits” by Till-Holger Borchert (Ludion Press, 2005), where he suggests (pp.55-6) that both Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were painted by Memling (I added Richard in myself!)." So there.

13. the central panel of the Lubeck altarpiece:

14. and just for fun, last but not least, a link to the Wikipedia rundown on Perkin Warbeck, which I needed to, ahem, refresh my memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkin_Warbeck

OK, now back to Noah Charney and dastardly evil Nazi art thieves...

Lanchester, Carlisle, Bakewell

John Lanchester, Fragrant Harbour

Greg Carlisle, Elegant Complexity

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Sorry sorry sorry have been backlogged for a bit now. Have got terrible case of baby brain: my brain has both shrunk and what little remains of it is now mainly occupied with floppy slushy thoughts about how delicious my baby is, which makes it hard to marshal coherent opinions about books. (I am also suffering from a revival of my addiction to The Office, which is eating into my reading time. but! excuses, excuses).

I did read John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor, which truth be told was a more than a little bit of a disappointment - I have fetishized his book Debt To Pleasure for so long that I think my expectations are just too high to be able to relax and enjoy anything else he writes (although because of DtP I will forever and ever be bound to read everything he writes just in case he writes another book as good). Fragrant Harbor was a bit pointless - one of those books in which random things keep happening to characters you don't really care about, and before you know about it, the book is over, and you're like, hunh, now which of those characters was I _supposed_ to care about?? Poor, dear John Lanchester.

Also I read half of Greg Carlisle's Elegant Complexity, thanks to my sister's introducing me to the SF public library's Link+ system whereby libraries ALL OVER THE COUNTRY will send you their books for free which just blows my mind. Every time I despair about the inadequacy of public institutions (lack of universal health care, long queues at the post office, the fact that the bus from Santa Rosa takes nearly three hours to get to San Francisco) I will think about the Link+ system and it will make me so so heppy. Elegant Complexity is supposed to be sort of a Cliff Notes for Infinite Jest WHICH I WILL FINISH ONE DAY YES I WILL and I read it up to the point that i had gotten into in Infinite Jest, and thought, you know, I'd enjoy it much more if I just read the damn book already rather than the stylishly unlovely and lumpy boring Cliff Notes version. so there.

But this blog entry will end on a happy note: I finished reading just now Sarah Bakewell's biography, How To Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer which was lots and lots of fun, even though it did take me a while to get through it, since I tend to read in bed at night and have been particularly prone to falling asleep with my face mashed into the page recently (see above comments re: baby). The chapter organizations (i.e. the twenty attempts at an answer to the question of How To Live) are a bit precious: "Be born," "Pay attention," "Live temperately," "Reflect on everything," etc) but she makes a very compelling case for Montaigne as a proto-humanist, and I think I am going to try and read Montaigne's Essays (as soon as I am done with Infinite Jest haha). He sounds a bit like Samuel Pepys - a voracious chronicler of every random thing that happens to him, a blogger ahead of his time.

Martha Cooley

Martha Cooley, The Archivist

OK, so I can't tell whether I am getting smarter or the opposite, but when I read this a very very very long time ago, I was like, WOW THIS BOOK IS REALLY DEEP (and yet somehow I completely failed to pick up on the parallel between the life of the main character, a librarian in charge of a stash of T.S. Eliot's letters to a long-lost love, and the life of T.S. Eliot himself (both kept their crazy wives locked up in psychiatric facilities for long periods of time until the respective wives committed suicide)). And when I re-read it this week, I thought, WOW THIS BOOK IS CLONKING ME OVER THE HEAD WITH ITS OVERLY OBVIOUS PARALLEL BETWEEN T.S. ELIOT AND THE MAIN DUDE. Also I found her prose precious and stilted and overloaded with novelly details (people adjusting their scarves in between chunks of academic discourses, just to remind you that they are People rather than just Literary Points of View. And speaking of tedious academic discourse, I swear there are some passages that are indistinguishable from a junior high school paper on T.S. Eliot: a few too many biographical details copied directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica (I'm only saying that because I used to do it, so I recognize the style...). So, meh. Not my fave.

Currently working on John Mortimer's Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (whee! lowbrow(ish)!), and Matt Ridley, The Red Queen (having some trouble following a couple of his arguments, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I am zombie-like from sleep deprivation these days. Perhaps I should be sleeping instead of reading. Hm.