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.

I really wanted to like this one. I liked Jane Eyre quite a bit and I had high hopes for Charlotte Brontë’s last novel.

I liked it at first — though I’m a bit disappointed with the blurb on the back (there’s a post — what makes a good jacket/back blurb); I didn’t get the sense that Lucy had a “unhappy past” that she was “in flight” from. I enjoyed the detail fo Lucy’s childhood, the relationship between Graham and Polly, and even Lucy’s job with Miss Marchmont. But once she gets to Villette, things slow way down.

I managed to stay interested through volume 2. I thought the whole Dr. John drama was fun. Especially the bit when Lucy realizes who he his (or rather, the bit when she lets us, as readers, know who he is). But as the book wore on, I began to care less and less about Lucy and her life. It took a l-o-n-g time to get to the main point of the book — at least according to the back blurb again: her relationship with fellow teacher M. Paul and Madame Beck’s attempts to keep them apart. Honestly, by the time I got around to their relationship I was fed up. Fed up with the oh-so-helpful endnotes (great for translating the French, but kind of annoying otherwise), fed up with M. Paul and his annoying attempts to control Lucy, fed up with the excesses of Victorian literature.

So, I read the last chapter, discovered that M. Paul left Lucy and possibly died in a shipwreck, and called it quits.

Maybe I’m just not meant to read so much Brontë. A little goes a long way in this case.

After all the hemming and hawing and picking not very good books for the Armchair Traveler Challenge, I think I finally found a winner in Pomegranate Soup, by Marsha Mehran. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

It’s hard to describe what this book is about. It’s a food book, complete with the recipes for the delectable dishes that Marjan — the oldest sister – cooks up for the town of Ballinacroagh, County Mayo, Irleand, where the Aminpour sisters have ended up. It’s one part travel book — lush descriptions of both Irleand and Iran, as we slowly get the sisters’ back story. It’s magical realism; Marjan’s cooking changes lives, Layla’s (the youngest sister) sent of cinnamon and rosewater inspires lust in younger men and remembrances in older ones. The only sister who didn’t have a healthy dose of the magical was Bahar (the middle sister); perhaps it’s because of her past — it was too brutal and too sad (and the reason that the sisters are in Ireland) for it to be magical.

It wasn’t a depressing book, even though it touched on heavy themes: domestic abuse, the Iranian Revolution, greed, gossip, racisim… It was all there, but done in such an engaging way that the book never seemed depressing or difficult. I loved the characters in this book — from the sisters, to Estelle Delmonico (the landlady of the cafe’s space), to Malachy (Layla’s love interest) to many of the other townspeople. Like the store owner who believes in fairies and leprechauns. Or the hair stylist who used to be an actress. Or the grumpy woman stuck in her house so she spend the day spying on everyone. Or even the town “bad guy”, the bully Thomas McGuire. Sure, he was a jerk, but he was a very well-written one.

Now if I can just find two other books that I enjoyed just as much as this one.