This was the other Jane Austen (along with Northanger Abbey) that merited a one sentence review: “It’s not a bad book; I just like her other stuff a whole lot better. ” Actually, I’m going to change that, borrowing a line from Becky’s review of Camilla: It’s not Jane Austen’s best work, being both delightfully pleasant (I did smile a few times) and yet sluggishly dull. But it’s not my favorite Austen, and it never will be.

Why do I not like thee? Let me count the ways:

1) Fanny. She’s annoying. She’s a doormat, a pushover. Sure, she’s an upright, moral person, but what good is that if she can’t even do anything without Edmund there. Yeah, there’s the whole status thing and Mrs. Norris is sufficiently vile, but even so, I’d like her to just be slightly more assertive, or at least more something. She reminded me of Anne in Persuasion, but Anne’s so much more sympathetic. Perhaps it’s because she’s older. But Anne knows her own mind, and even though her family (and others) think little of her, she’s not a doormat. Fanny is, and that drove me nuts. That, and she spent the entire book pining for Edmund. (Mr. Crawford wasn’t that bad until the end. Okay, so their sensibilities were not similar, but he really was trying and she just sat there pining for Edmund. What if he had never come round?) She’s not a sympathetic heroine at all. Which brings me to point 2.

2) The love story was terrible. This book was a long diatribe on what Austen believed to make up a good character. She abhorred excess in all its forms — either too rich or too drunk or too poor or too flirty — and Fanny was supposed to be the model of quiet, sensible decorum. (She didn’t like the spoiling of the Bertram sisters, but she also didn’t like the excess of ill manners at her parents house.) The love story was an afterthought, only coming on in the last 50 pages. Even Northanger Abbey had a better love story. When you read Austen, you want to read good character development and societal parody but you also want a good love story. At least I do. And I was highly unsatisfied with this one. (It’s not the “kissing cousins” thing. I can deal with that. It’s the “Edmund’s in love with Miss Crawford for the entire book and it’s just because she wasn’t horrified enough — or at all, really — at the actions of Henry and Maria and so Edmund realized that he could not marry someone who couldn’t be horrified at running away with someone else’s wife and that means Fanny has to be perfect” thing. Bleh.)

3) All the other characters. Enough said. Mrs. Norris was vile, evil, and I wanted to smack her. No wonder Maria went wrong. Sir Thomas and Lady Betram were lazy and Mrs. Norris was just a snob. She’s worse than Lady Catherine deBerg, too, because Mrs. Norris really has no reason to be a snob. She’s someone Lady Catherine would look down on. That makes it worse. Lady Bertram was as much a pushover as Fanny (maybe that’s why they got along?). Sir Thomas was a flip-flopper, sometimes being nice to Fanny, sometimes being a real jerk. Edmund was a twit. Sorry. See above. Tom was a drunk (at least he reformed). The Bertram sisters were shallow flirts and Maria got what she deserved. No pity. Mary Crawford was also a shallow, money grubbing flirt who could have been okay, but Austen decided that no, the only “decent” person in the book is going to be the pushover Fanny. And then there’s Henry. I actually liked him until he ran off with Maria. He wasn’t too bad; a bit of a flirt, but he was actually fun and interesting (and he read and acted well).

Mansfield Park isn’t an Austen book I’m going to come back to any time soon. I’d say that’s too bad, but I’m perfectly happy with the Austen books I do like.

I almost got a Russian minor in college. I know, I know… I’m not exactly a connoisseur of all things Russian around here, but I did have an interest in the country during my college days. (That and I had a morbid fear of Calculus. I know, I know… Russian isn’t easier than calculus. But try telling a stubborn 18-year-old that.) Anyway… I was trudging along taking classes, and mostly enjoying them until it came to the last two classes for a minor. One was conversation, and it was taught by a grumpy Russian woman, who told me that if I took her class she’d fail me. I spoke horribly. The other was the Russian literature class. I realized I just couldn’t stomach Russian literature.

Well, either I was horribly wrong (and I’ll admit that I could have been — Anna Karenina wasn’t nearly as horrible as I thought it would be… except for the last 100 pages. They were worthless) or Russian literature has changed a whole lot in the last 20 years.

Because I loved this book.

I’m not a big mystery reader, but I do love it when I find a good one. One that keeps me guessing, that makes me bite my nails, that keeps me up until late hours trying to finish it. Throw in a bit of humor, keep it relatively clean, add a winning/cute/sympathetic, detective, add a real intense ending, and you’ve got me hooked.

There you have it: Boris Akunin’s The Winter Queen in a nutshell. Really. Why bother with a plot summary, when all you really need to know is that Erast Fandorian, while no Sherlock Holmes, is an up-and-coming detective who just happens to get involved in something way over his head. And that he manages to solve the mystery anyway. And don’t forget the ending that had me going, “AAAAHHH! Where’s the next book!”

There’s really nothing more to say.

This is one of those really good book-group books; there’s so much fodder for discussion. Talk about Sara and her relationship to her parents, especially her mother. Compare Sara’s and Maryam’s childhoods… was Maryam a good mother? Talk about Maryam’s relationship with her father. How did it affect her future and why do/don’t you think it affected her?

And the one that’s been haunting me for a couple of days: Was Maryam’s decision right?

I won’t bore you with the personal details on my end (I’d rather not, anyway), but I will say that this book threw my past up in my face (in a way; I didn’t live in Iran, obviously, and my father was — and is — actually a very kind, loving man. ) and made me assess my present. Can a person be happy in the life and love she chose even when she has had to give up something very dear to her?

I’d like to think, yes, she can.

But, one of the premises of the book — sorry for the spoilers, I don’t know how to review this without divulging it, because it’s just too personal — is that Maryam, at least, can’t. She lives with the ghosts, is haunted by her past, and ends up wrecking her life in order to face that past. I felt so bad for her husband, Edward. The only thing he ever did to deserve being left is love her. And that’s just not fair. That’s not fair of me, though, because this book isn’t about fairness.

I did like that it addressed issues of homeland and exile — is part of the reason why Maryam can’t overcome her past because she was forced to leave her country for another? (Ah, another book group question.) I liked and admired Sara; she was stuck in the middle of all this, and helplessly confused about her mother’s actions, especially since they so closely deal with Sara, herself. I liked Sara’s marriage to Julian — it was grounded, honest, and open, everything a good marriage should be. (And, I should add, very unlike her parents’. )

I’m not sorry I read this, but I do have to say it’s not one I, personally, will be reading again. The language is beautiful, the story haunting and moving. It’s just too close for comfort.

I read this one ages ago, and the one-line summation that currently exists on my blog is this: “I didn’t particularly like this story. Perhaps I ought to re-read it sometime.”

I don’t remember my motivations behind that statement; I went through an Austen phase about five years back, where I read all of her works in quick succession over the winter. Perhaps I was just worn out: too much Austen too fast. Perhaps I was put off by the Gothic novel parody; I hadn’t (and still haven’t) read one of them, so I couldn’t appreciate the joke inherent in Northanger Abbey‘s plot.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been staunchly in the camp that mocks this book, calling it boring and insipid, and not nearly as brilliant as her other works.

I’m here to eat some crow and admit that I was wrong: I like Northanger Abbey.

Why, you may ask? What changed my mind? I think a lot of my change of heart came about because I started this challenge with this one. I was dubious — starting with my least favorite Austen didn’t seem like a good way to begin things — but, being a dutiful reader (and one who is willing to stick with her plan), I decided just to go for it. I came to this book fresh — I haven’t read an Austen book in a long time — and decided to give up my prejudices. The other thing that helped, however, was a very informative and interesting introduction by Claudia L. Johnson. In it, she explains the origins of Northanger Abbey (including Austen’s irritation at the manuscript being bought in 1803, but never published) as well as the jokes inherent in the novel. Because I read the introduction, I was able to more fully enjoy the novel.

And I did enjoy it. I don’t think that it’ll be my favorite Austen novel, but it is a charming little book, a quintessential Austen novel. There’s Catherine, the silly girl, completely oblivious to society around her. Isabella, her “beloved” friend, is the social climber, exchanging both Catherine’s friendship and Catherine’s brother’s honest affections for something more lavish. Eleanor is the perfect, true, honest friend. Henry is charming in his role as the perfect Austen hero: knowledgeable, but not overbearing, falling in love with Catherine for her imperfections rather than in spite of them. The “bad” elements are there, too: there’s John the boor, who went so far as to “kidnap” Catherine for an afternoon, and then became infuriated that she doesn’t return his affections. And General Tilney in the role of the overbearing, disapproving parent who attempts to keep the lovers from happiness. Still, it wouldn’t be an Austen novel without the happy ending, though in this case, it’s incredibly, almost unbelievably, contrived. Maybe it’s more accurate to call this Austen-lite. She became a better writer, delving more deeply into characters and motivations and relationships as she went on, which is why her later books are the ones that are truly the classics. Still, this one is worth digging out and reading every once in a while, if only for the last line:

To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend the parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

Hear that?

It’s the sound of me surfacing, exhaling, sighing with relief now that I’m finished with George Orwell’s classic distopian novel (the word on the back of our copy is “negative utopia”, but then it was also published — and bought by Hubby — in 1984). It went down like bad medicine; combined with my usual January blues, I was thrust into a funk that was only abated by liberal dosages of 30 Rock.

Now that it’s done, I can look at it at least partially objectively. It is a classic, but a very dated one. It’s very blatantly, obviously a product of World War II.

Let me sum up for those who haven’t read it (so you don’t have to): Winston Smith, 39 years old, is a Party member in Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth (the “propaganda” ministry — the ministry names were funny, in a morbid way: Truth is propaganda; Peace is war; Love is the police; Plenty is economic affairs), as a recorder of some sort. He spends his days altering history, making minor corrections in the records of the past whenever someone disappears, or the economic realities come out differently than predicted, or they change with whom they are at war. He is unhappy; partially because he leads an unhappy life, but partially, also, because he questions this history-making. He remembers that things used to be different; he remembers his childhood. And so, he begins rebelling in small ways. He gets a diary, and writes in it. He takes a lover, Julia (Party members aren’t supposed to have sex). And, after what could be weeks or months, they get caught. Winston is tortured, beaten down, electrocuted, re-programmed and sent back into the world.

There’s this one point where O’Brien, the Party member responsible for Winston’s re-programming, goes on about the faults of previous totalitarian regimes: they created martyrs. They killed their enemies, sure after torturing them or humiliating them, but they killed them nonetheless. “Above all,” he tells Winston, “we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out of the stream of history.”

Chilling, isn’t it. It’s a dated book, as a mentioned before, and not just because the technology is dated. It’s more than that: we’ve moved past the ideas in the book as a society. I really don’t think this book works as a “warning” any more.

It’s not that there isn’t totalitarian regimes anymore. There is. (I was shocked at how well Orwell depicted Mao and the Cultural Revolution, before it happened. Eerie.) But we’re in a much more global society, a much more capitalistic one (for good or bad). There’s authoritarian countries — China, still, Cuba and Russia under Putin — but they’re not the super-scary places that Orwell was writing about. Saddam Hussein is gone. The only one left, that would fit this book’s description is North Korea. It’s scary, it’s depressing, it’s evil… and yet it’s not the way the world is going. There’s too much information flowing — take the internet — too much capital, there will never be a world like the one Orwell imagined.

But as a political novel, a look at what could-have-been, it it could have been compelling (though depressing) book. Yet, I wasn’t compelled. I was repulsed. Physically sickened. Depressed. It took some talking to Hubby, but I finally hit upon it: Orwell has no hope. There is no way out in this book. There is no hope for a brighter future. This is the way things will be. Accept it, love it, or become run over by it. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t take it.

And so, I suffered through (I should have given up, but I did so want to be part of the discussion, and I can’t do that if I go in and say “I didn’t finish the book.” There’s also the very large chance that most of the other women who come will have not read the book, so somebody had to.), very very grateful for the world we live in today.