Sister Carrie

"Theodore Dreiser's first and perhaps greatest novel, Sister Carrie appeared in 1900, was met with outraged disapproval, and immediately withdrawn as too shocking and sordid for polite readers." 

This is from the book jacket.  I pulled this book from my pile-that-mom-brought, thinking, "At last!  At last!  I will enjoy a book for once!  And not only will I enjoy it, it is a great work of literature!  Sordid, shocking, and ultimately the answer to a question on Jeopardy!"   (Getting Jeopardy questions/answers right is, of course, my ultimate goal with all this reading.  Obscure facts come out of NOWHERE and impress Andy when I gleefully shout them aloud.)

Alas.  Sigh.  Foiled again.  Let me tell you how this book would have been good:  See, you have this girl who leaves a small Midwestern town to seek her fortune in Chicago.  On the train some dandy meets her and tries to take up with her.  But she resists a little bit, and moves in with her sister and brother-in-law as planned.  She tries to find work but hates the factory job she finds.  The dandy from the train catches up with her and offers her some money for clothes and a place to live.  She moves in with him and tolerates him even though she wants to get married.  He keeps putting her off.  She meets one of his friends who is married but she doesn't know it.  His friend falls in love with her.  She gets a job as an actress.  Her friend leaves his wife and begs her to come away with him.  She agrees to but finds out he's married.  She has a big fight with both the dandy and the friend.  The friend steals a bunch of cash and tricks her into leaving town with him.  Now stranded in New York, Carrie has no choice but to be friends with the friend, who fake marries her.  She starts to make money as an actress.  He loses his job and keeps sponging off of her.  She becomes the most successful actress in the whole wide world.  She leaves the friend, who eventually dies homeless and useless on the streets.  The dandy finds her in New York but she ignores him.  She lives happily ever after, but realizes no matter how much money she has- a lot- she will never be truly happy.  The end.  

And why, you ask, did I recap the entire book?  Well, because that's IT!  That's all there is!  This is 399 pages of about, what, 15, maybe 20 events, one page each, and the other 379 pages are these ridiculous people THINKING about these ridiculous events.  And what do we get in the end?  Well, nothing really good ever happened, money doesn't bring you happiness.  REALLY?  Wow, pro-FOUND.  I am overjoyed to learn that!  

I mean, it might have been different if we had liked anybody in the book.  But the friend is a philandering snake, the dandy is a lazy weasel, and Carrie herself is shallow and silly.  At one point the book says, "Carrie was not dull by any means."  Well, if she's not "dull," how did two men manage to fool her into thinking she was married, and why was it that she couldn't take some of her hard-earned money back to her family in Chicago that was struggling to put food on the table for their children?  Sweet.  

Oh, and the scandal!  This is a shocking and sordid book, huh?  Well, I guess it must have been for the times... but I still can't see how cohabitation with absolutely no mention of, well, even LOVE, let alone anything sordid or dirty, is really that sordid.  But I guess I'm just silly and naive in my own way... if I had read this book when I was a kid, I would have said to myself, "Well, they were just roommates, right?  I mean, they didn't get married, and it's not like they were having sex.  The book would have said if they were having sex."  I might have wondered why when there was a fight they mentioned someone sleeping on the couch... but since other than the couch incident there was never even a mention of sleeping, let alone sex, I guess the whole scandal part just sort of flew over my head. 

Speaking of scandalous, my favorite part was when two cops were talking and apparently had something filthy to say, because this is how it was printed:

"That --- ------ ------ -------- hit me in the neck," said one of the officers.  "I gave him a good crack for it." * * *  "I know that big guy called us a --- ---- --- -------," said the first.  "I'll get him yet for that."

My innocent ears are burning.  Scandalous!  

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Okay.  So I read it.  Well, actually, I listened to it.  I told you I read everything.  So what if this is a teeny pop culture chick lit novel?  So what if it was filled with girls who worry about fashion, schoolgirl crushes, and their parents embarrassing them?  So what if the most meaningful thing that happens in this entire book is some girl being discovered skinny dipping by a hot guy?  I don't care.  Judge me all you want.  I told you.  I read for entertainment.  This may not have been meaningful or life-changing, but hey, it wasn't boring.  I quite nearly enjoyed it.  All right, I did enjoy it.  So?  I watch Steel Magnolias too!  I also do crossword puzzles, word searches, use crayons in coloring books, use color-coordinated markers and pens in my notebooks, put puzzles together, have a teddy bear in my bedroom, and shelves full of toys.  Oh, and I sing nonsense songs to my dog, skip for no reason at any given time, and, my favorite, whenever I'm pushing a shopping cart in the parking lot, I run as fast as I can and then hop on the back so I can go on some freakish daredevil ride through the parked cars- scaring vehicle owners and awakening jealousy in all the children whose parents are keeping a restrictive hand on their shoulders.  So I like to have fun!  So what?  Back off!  Entertain me!

So there's not much to say about this book.  Sometimes you read stuff for no good reason other than to find out what it says.  This is one of those books.  It was fun, and now I know all about the magic of the traveling pants.  So, four girls find these great jeans at a thrift shop and they magically fit all four of them.  They decide to each wear them for a week or two and then send them off to the next friend on the list, documenting all the while the magic that the pants brought to them.  Oh, they're supposed to document ON the pants.  So they write the best thing that happened to them while wearing the pants ON the pants.  Find this annoying?  I do.  Oh, and they're never supposed to wash them.  Find this gross?  I do.  The first thing I thought when I read the pants "rules" was, gross... somebody's going to have a little too much fun in these pants... and guess what?  I was right.  Teenage girls, mad hormones, ew.  I would have washed them.  Actually, I would have washed them after the girl sat down in the mud.  Or after the guy's bloody nose splattered on them.  I guess that makes me a bad friend.  Sigh.

So, one girl goes to soccer camp in Mexico, one girl goes to spend the summer with her father, one girl goes to Greece to spend the summer with her grandparents, and one is stuck at home working in a drugstore.  One girl makes a movie, one finds she has a new family, two fall in love, one loses her virginity, one has way too many experiences with naked (not the same one who loses her virginity, by the way), one makes a friend (who dies, thanks for the cheer), one runs away, and all have some marvelous life-changing experience while wearing the pants.  Beautiful!  The whole world put into perspective.  You're 16 and your life is complete because You Are Changed.  Ahhh.  So satisfying.  Truly filled with teen angst and somehow it's all happily ever after by the end.  It's just like watching a John Hughes movie.  In fact, I think I'll go check out Sixteen Candles or something just to bring back those warm fuzzies.  

No, I think I'll go to bed instead... because my falling-asleep music tonight is, in fact, the sequel to this amazing piece of literature!

Oh, yeah, there's a sequel.  Brace yourselves, people, there's FOUR of these books, and they're all queued up!!

Now, why did I write this ridiculous blog about this ridiculous book?  To prove my point.  Sometimes you read stuff for no good reason other than to find out what it says.  You just did.  

Now stop judging me. 

My Sister's Keeper

This was another audio book.  I've been pretty unable to read very well because I've got a ridiculous cold/headache/sore throat/sneezing thing and I can't really comprehend what I'm reading.  It doesn't help matters much that I'm currently trying to read something written in 1300 and something written in 1900, so it's not exactly fun fluffy reading.  But I can listen to books while I'm laying around in misery.  But this might be a short entry.

My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, is a good book.  This is the second book of hers that I've "read"- listened to- and I enjoyed them both.  Pretty sure her kind of writing wouldn't appeal to the men of the masses... well, maybe the gay men... but as far as chick lit, this was pretty good stuff.  It's more intellectual than "Confessions of a Pregnant Princess" (which I've also read) and not as deep as "Catherine of Aragon" or those ridiculous epic novels detailing generations for no good reason.  (No, I have not read "Roots.")  Anyway, this is the story of a couple who had a daughter who was born with a thus far incurable horrible strain of Leukemia.  They genetically engineer their next child to be born so that she is a perfect match to be a donor for their existing daughter.  So the new kid is born and spends her whole life donating blood, marrow, blah, blah, blah, to her older sister, and when she's 13 and everybody wants her to donate a kidney she sues for medical emancipation because she's sick of it all.  Of course, that means that her sister will die, so a fast-paced trial ensues.  And thus the drama unfolds in all its glorious splendor.  

And, I'm being sarcastic, but it is actually a good read.  It's told from the point of view of the donor sister, her older brother, her mother, her father, her lawyer, and the guardian ad litem appointed to the case.  Each of them narrate alternating sections.  Of course, all we want is for the sister with Leukemia to speak up and say her piece, and of course, we wait the whole book to hear what she has to say, and of course, she's the last narrator.  That's hardly a shocker.  Pretty much as soon as you realize there's a second narrator you realize that you are going to hear from the dying kid last.  But regardless of the fact that you're pretty sure it will end with her take on it, you actually are not sure what's going to happen until the very end.  So I give it points for holding my attention till the very end- ask Sara, I had to pull out my computer to charge my mp3 player because my battery was going to die in the middle of the climax.  I don't know how this author would translate on paper, but I enjoy listening to her books enough that I am pretty sure I will look for Picoult in all my future CD scouting trips to the library.  

And I can NOT believe how tired typing that made me, so I'm going to go sneeze my way to bed.

That entry wasn't that short.  

The Elson Reader, Book Four

Well, here's a post that's going to tell you a little bit more about me than it is about the book.  Be warned.

The Elson Reader, Book Four, is, in fact, a reader.  That is, it's a reading textbook.  The one that I have, though, is old, falling apart, was published in 1920 and has the spindly cursive handwriting of Vida Lorene Hexamer scribbled throughout it.  I have no idea who this Vida is- no one I know or am related to is named Vida- but it adds to the book's charm.  

Charm?  Well, there's not really that much charm.  Like I said, this is a reading textbook- how charming could it be?   It's divided into all the little stories that a "book four" reader can handle, subjects ranging from Alice in Wonderland to the adventures of Benjamin Franklin... followed immediately by all those thought-provoking questions that all schoolchildren hate to answer for homework: Why do you think Alice acted the way she did?  Why does the Cheshire Cat always grin?  Where do you think the Hatter got the tea?  Be sure to answer in complete sentences.  

Oh!  Complete sentences!  How I hated those!  Because for some reason, teachers failed to understand what a complete sentence was.  The question, "Do you think Alice was wise to blah, blah, blah..." was supposed to be answered with the complete sentence, "I do think Alice was wise."  Or some other such lengthy thing- it was only a "complete sentence" if you totally repeated the entire question in your answer.  Hey!  Teachers!  Guess what?  If my answer is, "I do.", then THAT is a complete sentence!  Look at it!  Subject!  Verb!  SENTENCE!!  WHERE is my diploma, and WHY did I have to wait until I was 18 for it?  Fools, fools, let me out of this narrow-minded institution!

But I believe I digress.  At any rate, there's not much to tell about this book, but I read it- all 350 pages of it- yes, there's a glossary- because I simply love reading these little books.  I'm weird.  I have a huge stack of old reading textbooks back at my parents' house (yes, in the bathroom cupboard)- some of them I used in school, some I didn't, and they're from all generations of readers.  I love those little stories.  Sometimes they're excerpts from books and I liked the story so much I went out and read the book.  I ignore the poems.  I always ignore the poems.  I'll read the glossary before I read the poems.  Know why?  I hate poetry.  I love lyrics, but hate poetry.  You know why?

Twenty seconds pass

time of poetry

is now

...!COMPLETE

And look, I just wrote a poem.  Seriously.  Twenty seconds and I'm ready for publication.  What is the point?  There's no art in that!  Dude, just say it, you're lonely, she doesn't love you, the pond is beautiful, your lover is dying, who cares, just spit it out!  Honestly, Will!  "Of all the @*#^% families, you have to be a MONTAGUE?!"  Wouldn't that have been just as effective as Juliet's original painful soliloquy?  In fact, weren't you the one who said, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?"  So, really, poems by any other meter would speak the same.  SO USE SENTENCES!!

Whoops, again, I digress.  Suffice it to say, I love reading these little short stories and I think old readers are totally fun.  And besides, who needs a novel in the bathroom?  Those little stories are just the right length.

Oh, and don't act like you don't read in the bathroom.  If you aren't going to admit it, you're far, far too sophisticated to be reading this blog.  :)

The Town House

It looks like I'm falling behind on my book a week goal... I'm not, really, I just haven't had a lot of time to post about what I'm reading.  Plus, I took a magazine break.  Plus, I'm reading about 5 books at once so I'm not cranking them out like I usually do.  I figure as long as I have more than 52 entries at the end of the year I've pulled it off.  :)  Oh, and this is not a resolution, it's a goal, just for the record, since I just went on a mini-rant about how I don't make resolutions.  

Anyway, the latest was The Town House by Norah Lofts.  This is one of the books that my mom brought out, so I'm checking them out.  I am torn between this one.  On the one hand, it's cool that it was my grandpa's book.  It has his name stamped in it.  (Oh, by the way, if anybody's looking for a present, a book stamp would be much appreciated.)  On the other hand, this was... so depressing.  So very depressing...

The book is divided up into five "tales" told by five different people, separated by "intervals" that have a mysterious omniscient narrator.  I guess it's basically the story of Martin Reed, who narrates the first tale- beginning with his birth.  The different narrators talk mostly about events that directly or indirectly surround Martin's life, and the book ends with his death.  Oh, sorry, did I spoil it for you?  Well, too bad!  Because in all my life, I have never read a book where so many people just DIE.  They just keep kicking off right and left!  Let me prove it to you.

So we start with Martin's birth, then he falls in love, but he and his lady love have to skip out of town because the earl or somebody wants to violate her, and they run off to the next walled town.  (Oh, by the way, this is in about the year 1400.)  Well, Martin is a smith, but the local guilds won't hire him and all this terrible stuff happens to him.  He, his pseudo-wife and children are on the brink of death and starvation, and the world is about to end.  Just when you can't think this guy's misery can get any worse- and by the way, you really do sympathize with him and it really hurts to read this- the tide turns, and the world is wonderful.  He gets money, land, everything that he needs to make him and his pseudo-wife happy for the rest of their lives.  He rushes home to his wife- whom he was about to marry for real so they could finally have peace of mind- only to find she and his two children burned to death in their homeless hovel because some weird bear-trainer tried to rape her.  And thus ends Martin's tale.

We fast-forward to Agnes, a few years later, who has moved in to Martin's new house on his new land with him as the caretaking woman that all men appear to need.  Also living there is the weird bear-trainer- who lied about the fire that he caused and claimed he tried to save Martin's wife, so Martin feels obligated to him and lets him live comfortably to the end of his days.  Agnes hates Martin's replacement wife, and lets her bleed to death after giving birth to Martin's son.  

Forward to Anne, who is the object of Martin's son Richard's affection about 20 years later.  Anne marries Richard even though he's beneath her, but Richard can't "satisfy" her, so she cheats... gets pregnant with twins, but because of her twisted lies, manages to kill her lover and cause the accident that kills her beloved mother.  Her dad goes nuts, which is neat.  Then Richard (whom she really loves) dies just for the heck of it... must be so Martin can enjoy watching everybody around him drop off one by one.  Oh, I forgot to mention that at some random point both Agnes and the weird bear-trainer die, too, uneventfully 'cause dey was old.  

So, we go on to Anne's daughter Maude's tale... Maude is hated by her mother because her mother loves her twin brother better, but the twin brother is a bit of a rogue and never really calms down.  Maude goes off to some family finishing school, where she's miserable, but makes one friend who makes her life there complete, who, by the way, dies.  Maude decides to go into a convent to pray for her friend's soul to get her out of purgatory.  This is one cheery story.

On to Nicholas Freeman's tale- he's Martin's bookkeeper, or right-hand man or whatever- if you're keeping track, by the way, you're right, Martin's getting pretty old- and he decides he's in love with Maude when she comes back to the convent.  He spends a while figuring out how to ask her to marry him, gets his blessing from Martin and all the right stuff.  Well, Maude's twin brother dies - SHOCKER - and Nicholas retrieves her from the convent, ready to take the lady for his own.  Hm.  What's left here?  Could we have a happy ending?  Nope.  Martin, old coot that he is, dies and leaves everything to Nicholas.  This sounds great- the poor guy who lived a hard life knows that his granddaughter and beloved sidekick are going to live happily ever after in the Town House he created!  Finally, a point to the story!

Nope.  Some random guy from finishing school or whatever arrives, sweeps Maude off her feet and they ride away into the sunset.  Nicholas becomes a Cardinal.  Oh, by the way, this all happened in less than a page.  The last less-than-a-page of the entire book.  

Um... not sure what we're supposed to be doing here.  Enjoying the futility?  The irony?  Wondering why The Town House that is never actually called that is way out in the country?  I'm totally lost as to the purpose of this book.  But my guess is that Nicholas, the last narrator, eventually dies.

Run out and read this book, really.  Just don't have any knives or guns laying around close by, you'll likely want to kill yourself.