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WeeklyGeeks #14: Book Tour

For this week, Dewey has asked us to create a book tour using photographs (of course). I’ve been browsing through a few and I really like what I’ve seen — Joanne shares a plethora of book-photos, Kim has tons of photos of her family reading, and Suey has TONS OF BOOKS and I am jealous of all her wall space!

Dewey is also giving away tons of books… Just thought I’d mention that.

Anyway, thought I’d be a little creative with my tour… I’ll start out here but continue under a cut. Enjoy!

Here’s where most of the antique/old books go…

And since this is right next to the kitchen, here is where my cookbooks live.

This is the “library” (it’s really a dining room, but what makes you think we can fit a table with all those books there?).

We only have a small selection of books in the bedroom, mostly because that stupid bed takes up most of the room. We can sleep on books, right?

Okay, this is actually an entertainment center (holds the TV, record player, records, stereo, and video game equipment), but Tolkien lives on the top of it.

I love my magical floating books!

Cut for length or spoilers »

The People’s Act of Love by James Meek

Set in 1919 in Siberia, The People’s Act of Love by James Meek takes place at the end of a war. Yazyk is host to a gorup of Czech soldiers who only want to go home and a Christian sect that exercises castration as a way to become closer to God. Balashov, the leader of the Christian sect, has secrets of his own involving a widow, Anna Petrovna, who lives among these groups with her young son. Mutz, one of the Czech soliders who longs for home and yearns to get his wish, is in love with her.

Wandering through the cold and running, he says, from a cannibal called The Mohican, Samarin finds himself in Yazyk. With him he brings death; the local shaman’s body is found shortly after his arrival. He is suspected and locked up to await his trial. It is during his defense that the reader learns of his daring escape from The White Garden, a prison camp, with The Mohican under the understanding that The Mohican merely took Samarin along for sustenance.

On the border of all of this, the leader Matula is in conflict with the Red Army as they make their way to the town.

In reading such a succinct summary of this book, you would need convincing to believe that it’s actually a love story. True, the majority of the book is spent reading about each character’s life — the hopes, dreams, wishes, and ideas that motivate them and keep them alive, but what it comes down to is the love of one for another. It’s not a traditional love story: You cannot script it to a simple, “Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl runs away, boy follows her, etc,” idea, as you may be able to with other love stories.

There is death, violence, castration, pain, intelligence, stupidity, and compassion in this book — in short, The People’s Act of Love illustrates human nature without all the guff, without any forward explanation, and without criticism. The characters are pure in their reasoning, even if irrational at times, because they are not acting; they are simply performing based on their own humanity. Despite the gruesome events in this book, love remains a certainty. Time and again, the question of love and what it provokes people to do is addressed by each character in this book.

For example, Balashov in his intimate love for God and his religion deserts a battle and leaves his family to wander in a desolate land, castrate himself, and form a community of like-minded people. Anna, on the other hand, had at one point a true love, but in the course of the book she flickers from one man to the next using love as a point of getting what she needs.

James Meek said the following about this book during an interview: “If there is one thing which the four central characters in the book … agree on, it is that love exists and matters. What they disagree on is what love may be.”

It is difficult to review this book fully without giving away a lot of the plot. There are several twists and turns, some unexpected and some wholly anticipated, but perhaps not for the guessed reasons. This book is too good for me to sit here and talk about every aspect I enjoyed because I’d rather let you read it and discover those elements for yourself.

The Sunday Salon: Bookstores

Finishing up The People’s Act of Love by James Meek incited a short-lived fascination with Russian literature. I made a small list of Russian literature I’d like to read and them promptly forgot about it until today. In my previous Sunday Salon post, two weeks ago, I mentioned this. Now I’m just updating to let you know that I still haven’t written a review for the book. In fact, I’ve finished a few books since then and had only the motivation to pick apart New Moon by Stephanie Meyer.

It hasn’t been a particularly busy week, per say, though I did have a two-year anniversary on Tuesday, a very full birthday on Thursday, and a day empty of life on Friday (used to recooperate from Thursday and the preceeding week, and by that I mean I read Eclipse and became very discouraged to read Breaking Dawn any time soon). I also finished The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox sometime during this week and it was so excellent that I haven’t even begun to gather my thoughts to it. Surely I can think of a better review than, “This book was SO GOOD, you should BUY IT IMMEDIATELY.”

I set aside some time today to read 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, after which I watched the movie. The book was touching and I may have cried a bit, but the movie wasn’t quite as endearing. Anthony Hopkins does make a fine English bookshop employee, though I must admit that I expected him to admit to eating someone’s liver at some point. I know! I’m one of those awful people who can only think of Hannibal Lecter when they see him, even though he is an excellent actor and has done many greater things.

Would you like to know what I did on my birthday? Of course you would. Richard and I visited several bookstores in the Northern Virginia area, not all of which were entirely disappointing. I shall eventually write something detailed, with pictures, about all my bookstore adventures in the past few years, but for now I’ll just give a light overview. I couldn’t tell you which came from where, as they’re mixed by size and not by time of purchase, but visiting seven stores only yielded seventeen books. This time last year, a trip of this nature would have brought at least ninety books into the house, so I’m glad being completely poor has allowed me some constraints on my wallet. (Not that I’m glad I couldn’t get more books, but I’m glad that in refusing to use the credit card I’ve realized that I don’t have so much to spend after all.)

Among my favorites included Prospero Books in Manassas, a quaint shop with a large collection of mostly old books, Civil War prints, and some pricey antiques. The employee looked bored, but she was helpful (even though she didn’t know what I meant by “Andrew Lang’s fairy books”).

I consider McKay Used Books, also in Manassas, a “rival” bookstore. Often customers coming into the bookstore where I work will either think we are McKay’s, or they will compare us as if we will change our policies just because this other store exists. The store was extremely disappointing. If I were going for CDs or DVDs I am sure I’d be much happier with my experience, but as it stands, I was put off by the higher prices and unorganized mess. I mean, more than usual (most used bookstores are not organized, and this normally doesn’t bother me, but as I was already biased against them I suppose their mess was more offensive).

Hole in the Wall Books in Falls Church was recommended to me several times by several professors in college, and after visiting it I wonder why. It was a cute store, but its specialty seemed to lie in science-fiction and comic books. Richard enjoyed it much more than I did, but I managed to find at least one satisfying read.

Olsson’s Books in Alexandria wasn’t disappointing, but it did consist mostly of a small selection of new books and tons of remainder/”sale” books. The bright part of that bookstore was the used books, and after browsing those I found about thirty I wanted but only two or three that I actually bought.

I don’t remember the Book Bank very well, except that it was in Old Town Alexandria near Olsson’s. It sort of got lost in the sea of bookstores we visited; however, I do recall thinking it may have been very comfortable to browse for hours on end.

Our second to last bookstore, Already Read Used Books was just as cute as the title, though it was extremely cluttered and, I swear, the cat tried to attack me. I got a discount on the books I purchased simply because I didn’t ask for one, and the woman working was very polite, pleasant, and talkative.

Finally, the Book Rack we found was in a shopping center next to a grocery store, and it seemed very out of place and uncomfortable among so much after-work traffic. It was impossible to find parking, but I now realize that it must have been a commuter lot. This is a great store if one is searching for “bestseller fiction,” but as I’m more of a classic/nonfiction browser, my experience was pretty pathetic. All of my books seemed shoved off to the side and weren’t in any decipherable order.

Newest additions to the household:

• The Knife Man by Wendy Moore
• So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson
• The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
• The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts
• What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee
• Under an English Heaven by Donald E. Westlake
• Walking a Literacy Labyrinth by Nancy M. Malone
• A Passion for Books edited by Harold Rabinowitz
• Stolen Words by Thomas Mallon
• Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future by Jason Epstein
• Books Are Not Life, but Then What Is? by Marvin Mudrick
• Collector’s Progress by Wilmarth Lewis
• The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey
• The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
• Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

All of which will, of course, just be added to a growing stack of books that will probably not be read for another ten years.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

The biggest complaint I’ve seen in reading reviews on this book is that the Cullen family wasn’t prominent in this book; vampires, in fact, were not prominent very much at all. In New Moon, Bella starts happy-go-lucky in her relationship with Edward, but very quickly and quite suddenly he decides that what is best for her is for him to distance himself. The Cullen family leave, Edward having broken Bella’s heart (basically telling her that she’s not good enough for him, thus confirming all her fears), and Bella spends much of the book in constant turmoil while developing a relationship with a former friend, Jacob.

Jacob, apparently, is a werewolf, so after Meyer gets the reader all hopeful that Bella will finally get over Edward and date a guy who will more or less treat her as she deserves, he “comes of age,” as it were. Poor Bella. She wasn’t even given the chance of a normal life, was she? Oh wait, she was. There’s that perfectly decent Mike Newton guy who is still completely enamoured with Bella but whom she doesn’t give a second thought. He, perhaps, is thrown in the storyline to illustrate that there is life outside of paranormal activities, but Bella chooses to be blind to it.

This book reminds the reader several times that it is exactly like the previous book, Twilight, in plot and construct, except backwards. Instead of falling in love with Edward, Bella is forced to fall out of love. Instead of getting used to the idea of a vampire, she now must get used to the idea of a werewolf. This year is exactly like last year, even so much that the events which require her to leave town happen to coincide with spring break - very convenient, again! Thanks, thanks for pointing out multiple times that New Moon is a slightly less exciting version of Twilight. I can only hope that Eclipse doesn’t pick up the same plotline for another creature - Big Foot perhaps? Oh, but that would be another hairy animal, we need something slicker. Mermaids might do the trick.

Bella has a falling out with Edward and Jacob refuses to be her friend, so she spends her summer at the beach trying to forget them both. She meets a merman, but this one is very different, I promise. Instead of trying to hide his identity by ignoring her and distancing himself, he’s very open about it. I mean, he’s got a flipper for Christ’s sake. Not much you can do to hide that. So the majority of the book is about them flirting and swimming and otherwise being okay except for Bella’s inner struggles to forget Edward and Jacob, who are both voices or visions she hears and sees regularly. Then! Conflict! One hundred pages before the book ends, Merman wants to turn Bella into a Mermaid so they can live happily ever after, but Edward doesn’t like that very much. So Jacob, in pursuit of Edward, finds Bella having relations with the Merman, tears him apart, and Edward gives him an awkward thank-you once again even though Jacob clearly didn’t do it for the vampire. All of this is extremely rushed and Bella falls for Edward again. The end.

Why am I not rich?

In any case, just as I noted in my review for Twilight, the development was lacking, characters were extremely unbelievable and unreliable even in their own universe, and yet I couldn’t put the book down and will probably read the next. I still expect Eclipse will disappoint, but I knew that New Moon would and still read it anyway.

Usually when one has a series of books, one continually develops the characters throughout them. Bella, however, is just as annoying and weakly constructed as she was in Twilight. Nothing new was learned about her or Edward, though quite a bit was piled on Jacob and Charlie. The reader learns of Jacob’s conflicts, his love for Bella, his loyalty to her as a friend, and his struggles with his father. Charlie, too, is builded on as Bella’s father; in the first book, he could have been invisible. In this one, he truly wants to protect her and make certain she is happy. There is an entirely new dimension to him that isn’t even mentioned in Twilight. If only the other characters also had multiple dimensions!

I’d like to see a Bella who can exist happily and peacefully without a man in her life. I don’t read very much romance, but I can admire the books with strong women who don’t necessarily need the men they meet; I simply cannot get behind those characters who flit from one man to the next looking for that support system which they can’t find within themselves. Bella is absolutely devastated without Edward, completely lost, until Jacob the strong, protective werewolf comes in, and rescues her from a possible life of standing on her own two feet. It’s discouraging that if I ever have a daughter, she will want to read these books, and this will be her impression of what girls her age should want.

That said, most people were disappointed by the general lack of vampires, whereas I was pretty content with the werewolves. I like creatures of all shapes and sizes, and while the process of werewolf transformation was a little shady (it’s as if Meyer had never read anything about a werewolf before and decided to make up her own breed, but still wanted you to be as frightened of them as the others), that’s not my reason for disappointment. This book is no better developed than the first. With most authors, you expect second books to be an improvement. Perhaps this particular piece in the series would be lacking, but the structure, the characters, the themes, the writing might have at least improved. I’m disappointed that a year has passed and Bella has gone through her first real heartbreak, but she hasn’t learned anything or grown at all. I’m disappointed that she is turning into her mother, reliant on a man (as she views it), but doesn’t see that in herself. I’m disappointed that she isn’t more forgiving to her father’s overprotectiveness, especially after she hears a conversation between him and Alice about how worried he was.

In short, New Moon is no more recommended than Twilight was. My boss asked me a few days ago whether I had read these books, and what I thought of them. They are here, as everywhere, a popular request, but we can’t keep them on the shelves. I told her exactly what I thought - “They are very badly written, but I can see why they are popular.”

I’ll still be reading Eclipse. I hear Breaking Dawn was spectacular; maybe something will surprise me.

Upcoming Things

1. August 21: My birthday. Richard is escorting me around the Northern Virginia area and, wait, you’ll never guess this one! We’re visiting bookstores! We did this once last year also and only managed about six, but since we’re more poor now than we were then we might even get to seven!
2. September 6: My brother’s wedding. I have really exciting things planned for this, but I can’t tell you what they are because they’ll end up being his wedding present (and I’m not sure if he reads this). I’m so excited and happy for him!
3. September 27: The National Book Festival. This is merely one of the advantages of living near DC. I missed it last year (work) and the year before (work), but there’s no way I will this year. None of my favorite authors will be there, but I will have the opportunity to meet a lot of people I admire so I’m really looking forward to it.
4. I’ve finished half of my eight paintings. I’m really excited to finish the other four and send them out!
5. Soon (you know, when times are actually posted for those months), I’ll be buying plane tickets to visit Portland, Oregon for a mini vacation early next year. I’ve never been that far to the other end of the country, and I’ll be scoping out the area for comfort… just in case I fall in love and want to live there.
6. December-ish: Next year’s photo project. I know! I must be crazy. I have a really great idea, though, so around December when it’s cold and I’m bored, I’ll start planning and constructing for that. Be prepared to be astonished by another brilliant idea.

So if I’m a bit silent for a while, it’s just because I have all sorts of things on my plate right now and I’m a little distracted… And excited!

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