Books I read in July and why I read them.
1. Bâtarde- Violette Leduc
I read this essay in Context, a newsletter which I would pick up for free in Diesel Bookstore. I was seduced into the sensual and emotionally overwrought material this novel/memoir promised to cover. Since the book was out of print, I did not expect to easily come across it, so I kept it in the back of my mind as a book to keep an eye out for. On one of my rare Green Apple visits, I wandered around, and there was Bâtarde, tottering on top of a haphazard, yet standing, pile of books. Thus, there, I purchased it. It took me another few years to get around to reading it. The book's heft and personal subject kept me at an arm's length.
It was not as good as I wanted it to be. But I'm beginning to think this is the theme of my life, perhaps it can be my epitaph: "It was never as good as she wanted it to be." Sadly, I won't have a grave, or a gravestone, maybe it can be carved into a plaque above my favourite haunt.
There are beautifully written moments in this work: including a fantastic passage describing an endive salad and her enticing account of her black-marketing during WWII.
Most of the time, however, I felt mucked down by her barrage of emotional tumult.
I was having lunch at a Chinese restaurant one day, reading the book intently, trying to finish it. A man who was dining next to me asked me how the book was. My answer:" It's like being in a relationship you want out of, but you are committed to the end." That is how I felt about reading La Bâtarde, after 187 pages I felt committed, but I was quite relieved when it ended.
2. A Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
This book has somehow stayed with me despite the great book purge of 2005, when I had to move, and I rid myself of at least a few huge boxes of books. I must have picked it up for free from some giveaway pile because it is a cheap, grungy little paperback. I'm not even sure what could have compelled me to pick it up in the first place. I really didn't know anything about this book or the author. I decided to read it after seeing it in a book called 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die, which, by the way, I don't agree with all the choices. Since I had Stranger around, I thought I would at least read it so I could get rid of it.
It is not too bad for a dated science-fiction utopian paperback. The dialogue conveys the characters well, but the free-love, cult storyline chippers into martyr-fantasy cheesiness. There are some novels where the writer's desired take on reality gets worn on the page; this novel is such an example.
3. Three Years- Anton Chekhov
I was delusional enough to think I might start reading Don Quixote this summer. So I ambled to my local library to check it out. While I was in the C's, I saw this slim novelette by Chekhov, since I had read another of his small novels (Story of Nobody) I knew I would enjoy it, plus I could read it easily in case the Cervantes fell through (which it did). But I will read Don Quixote before I die, even if I die while reading it. It is my folly, this desire to read the greatest novels of all time. Plus I feel rather embarrassed that I have not read it yet, I can't even believe I'm admitting it here.
Chekhov writes about disappointment and mundane life, but he does it without sentiment. He says a lot in a little amount of pages, it inspires me.
4. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Again, I was in another public library, this time in Berkeley. I decided that I wanted to read another book by Moravia, on passing through, I came across McCullers' book, and on an impulse I decided to check it out as well. I think I heard of this McCullers' book because it is #17 on the MLA, and as I mentioned before, I'm a sucker for those listed books. For the record, it is not in the 1001 Books, so I think it has lost some of its appeal through time, after all it was published in 1941 when McCullers was only 23.
It does have some juvenile character developments; it feels as though Mc Cullers wanted to bring all the misfits she could imagine together in a sleepy Southern town. The misfits have so much to say that it is bursting right out of them but they are unwilling to listen.
Overall, July was not as productive as I would have liked, hopefully August will be a better read.
