The charm of those provincial ladies

I make no secret that I am a big fan of Russian lit. I have a hard time not buying books by Russian authors whenever I see them and so I have a big stack of Russian books yet to be read.

I read the Queen of Spades and Other Stories for one of my Russian Lit classes in college and really enjoyed Pushkin. Puskin is best known for Euguine Onegin and for being the father of Russian literature.

This novella is a short collection of tales from the travels of Belkin. These short tales rang in scope from love story, revenge and horror. "The Snowstorm" and "Ladymaid" may be my favorites. It's a hard call though. Pushkin manages to tell stories that seem both familiar and new.

This is a very short little book, part of the art of the novella series published by Melville House Publishing. I highly recommend this book.



"Young men, who consider bravery the height of human accomplishment, and an excuse for every shortcoming, rarely forgive a lack of courage." page 25

"Maria Gabrielovna had been raised on French novels; it should therefore go without saying that she was in love." page 39

Shopping Trip

I had the need to go to the bookstore the other day and thought I'd share what I got.

First up is McSweeny's Issue 13 which is pretty cheap if you buy it from the actually website: Here or if you get a discount because you work at a bookstore. I've been reading a lot of graphic novels and reading a bunch of comics online lately, so I'm excited to read this one.

Second is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I've heard a lot of good things about this one. I read Coraline (my thoughts on that here) but that's it from him. I really enjoyed Coraline so I'm looking forward to reading this one. Actually finishing this one, since I am already on chapter three. Gaiman's website is worth checking out if you haven't yet: neilgaman.com.

And, finally, Tales of Belkin by Alexander Pushkin. I've recently read an article about this series of book, the Art of the Novella Series. I unfortunately can't seem to find the article anymore which is frustrating me, although the publisher's website has several links to related articles. Aside from my infinite love for Russian Lit, I picked this book up because the design is really simple and appealing. Melville House Publishing has a variety of different stories in the Art of the Novella series, which can be found here. These just look so good and are most are from authors that have yet to disappoint me. I'm planing on reading this one on Saturday.

Not photographed was the amazing pumpkin spice latte I got. Book and coffee make me one happy girl.

I prefer empty cages

I often pick up books from Anaïs Nin even though this is the first thing by her I've ever read. Reading A Spy in the House of Love was a little strange. The edition I have is only 117 pages and yet it took me forever to read it. The weird part is that I wasn't bored with this book, I found most of it to be really interesting and relateable; I just set it aside and forgot about it.

The book focuses on Sabina, an actress who is about as restless as they come. She's married and claims to love her husband Alan very much, but she can't seem to help having affairs where ever she goes. She uses her career as an actress to conduct her affairs, by telling her husband she has an performance out of town, when in reality, we hear very little about her actually acting. She seems a much more successful actress in her own life than on the stage.

Sabina has extreme anxiety due to the fact that she's making up stories and pretending to be different people all of the time. She never wants to stay in one place for very long and feels confined by everyday life. The book jumps around a lot from one affair to another, from one Sabina to another.

It's always intriguing to me to read about the minds of cheaters and liars, to see how the morally dubious justify their actions. What's interesting about Sabina is that she seems on one hand to be very concerned about her behavior and on the other hand tells herself there is no other way she could live. She mentions that her father appeared to have many extra-marital relationships but doesn't seem to spend time connecting that to her current behavior.

Anaïs Nin is pretty famous for writing erotica for a dollar a page for a friend of Henry Miller. She's also well known for her Diary, which is roughly nine-thousand volumes. Just kidding, it's only over 150.

Two quotes:

"His airplanes were not different from her relationships, but which she sought other lands, strange faces, forgetfulness, the unfamiliar, the fantasy and the fairytale." - page 71.

"In this world they had criminals too. Gangsters in the world of art, who produced corrosive works born of hatred, who killed and poisoned with their art. You can kill with a painting or a book too." - page 110.

Don't be such a square

This is one I read awhile back but hadn't gotten around to blogging about until now. I picked this up and really enjoyed it. I know that they made a movie of it recently, but I don't really have an interest in seeing it.

The basic plot is that on graduation day, Dennis Hooverman, during his high school graduation, tells the whole school that he's been in love with Beth Cooper. He also makes some accusations about some of the other members of the student body, including outing his best friend Rich. Even though Dennis is your typical "nerd" and Beth, of course, is a cheerleader, and the two of them have never hung out, they spend the rest of the night bopping around suburban Illinois together. Also, they're trying to avoid Beth's drugged-up army ex. Along the way Dennis realized that the Beth Cooper he's built up in his head isn't really real, and gets to know the actual girl in front of him.

Parts of this book were a little much for me, going just over the top. The drugged up ex and his army buddies and the super slutty friend of Beth's, Treecee, got on my nerves sometimes. Dennis and Rich get the crap kicked them so much yet don't go to the hospital. A car drives into and back out of a wall at a party.

One thing I really enjoyed was that I grew up where this book is set. Some of my cousins went to Harper Community College (Beth's probable choice) and I know my way around the streets they were careening down. I had a very, very clear picture of where this book took place.

Another thing I enjoyed was that Doyle starts off each chapter with some quote from popular culture revolving around teen drama. I didn't recognize all of them, but it made me smile to see Lloyd Dobler and Lorraine Baines quoted.

Some of the background characters were interesting. The drug dealer who deals exclusively in prescription drugs (Claritin-D, Adderall) was pretty much on the money for someone you'd actually meet in a suburban high school. Cammy, on of Beth's homegirls, was snarky and bitchy, so you know I loved her. My favorite though was the d.j. at the big party they all go to, Zooey Bananafish. Actually there was not too much to her character, but that name is such a shout-out to Salinger that I can't help but like her.

I enjoyed this book. The writing is easy and youthful, like a high-schooler is telling you the story. The ending isn't what you'd expect from a typical high school graduation piece, and it seems like Doyle plans on continuing the story.

Quotes:

"There's another Beth Cooper out there," she told him. "One just for you. The world is full of Beth Coopers." page 21

"She wore her party face, not unlike her real face, but with the hue and contrast dialed up...She still smelled like Beth Cooper, only more so." page 55

If love is worth the misery

A friend of mine lent me this book and I read it in little more than a day. Dead Until Dark is another vampire/human love story with a murder mystery. Sookie Stackhouse is our main human who can read people's minds, except for the handsome vampire Bill.

Reading this story I was amazed at the similarities to Twilight. I'm actually surprised Harris hasn't sued Meyer over the whole thing. I mean, we have characters who reads minds, Sookie and Edward, except they can't read the minds of the one they fall in love with, Bill and Bella. The vampires in Dead Until Dark "glamour" people into doing what they want while in Twilight they "dazzle" people. There is even another guy in love with the main gal who changes into some kind of dog, Sam and Jacob. Also, someone is trying to kill the girl. I'm pretty sure people have sued for less.

There are some more similarities, but the one big difference is that in this book there's a lot of sex.

Twilight aside, I really enjoyed this book. I've been working my way through 2666 and this was a nice lighter read. I thought that the mystery murderer element was well done; I wasn't able to tell who was going to be the bad guy ahead of time. I thought the lovey-dovey stuff was a little rushed, but apparently vampires don't have time to mess around when declaring their love.

I'm probably going to pick up the next one and may have to check out that HBO show, True Blood, which is based on this series.

IV

The first Klosterman book I read was Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, purely because Seth Cohen was reading it on the O.C.

IV starts off with mostly interview pieces of rock starts and other famous people. Some of it is a little dated, but all of it is interesting. The middle section is more social commentary and the end is a fiction piece. I enjoyed the middle section the most. The last part was really interesting though; he has since written a fiction book called Downtown Owl: A Novel. It'd be worth checking out at least.

I like Klosterman because I can related to the things he's writ ting about. Music, drinking, relationships, the perils of buying an outfit from the Gap, and more music. He writes one piece about going into a store and buying a complete outfit that a mannequin is wearing and how that changes the perception people have of him.

He talks about the difference between a nemesis and and archenemy and why it's important to have both. He writes about eating nothing but McDonalds' chicken mcnuggets for something like a week.


A quote from the first section:

"The dumbest guy in Radiohead is still smarter (by himself) than all three members of the Beastie Boys and two-fifths of the Strokes.”

And my favorite quote from the book:


"In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings and everybody cried for two weeks. And then Enron went bankrupt, and then the U.S. became a rogue state, and then The Simple Life premiered, and then gasoline became unaffordable, and then our Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico, and then we reelected the same unqualified president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and the release of a horrible movie titled Crash.

Things, as they say, have been better."

I love this kind of thing

For this meme, you list a favorite book that starts with each letter of the alphabet. If you don't have a book for a letter (such as Z or X) than you can substitute a favorite book that simply has that letter in the title (ex. The Lost City of Z or Hot Six by Janet Evanovich). However, you can only do this a maximum of 3 times. (Z, X, and Q. But not Z, X, Q, and V.) Books can be of any genre from fiction to non-fiction to poetry to textbooks.



A: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


B: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky


C: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut


D: Dune by Frank Herbert


E: Extremely Loud and Increidibly Close by Jonathan Saffran Foer


F: Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott


G: The Giver by Lewis Lowry


H: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby


I: Island of theBlue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell


J: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo


K: Katherine by Anya Seton


L: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


M: Moon is Down by Stienbeck


N: Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger


O: Oh! Pioneers! by Willa Cather


P: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


Q: Queen of Spades and other Stories by Alexander Pushkin


R: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare


S: Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello


T: Tulips and Chimneys by e e cummings


U: Utopia by Thomas More


V: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides


W: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


X: The Sylnx by Tatyna Tolstaya


Y: Yertle the Turtle and other stories by Dr. Suess


Z: Zipporah: Wife of Moses a novel by Marek Halter