A and Z March Through the Middle: Middlemarch Part II

Heather and I have finished Part II of George Eliot's Middlemarch!  For those of you who may not know, the lovely and fabulous and eloquent Zibilee and I are reading George Eliot's Middlemarch together over the next several weeks in a fairly meandering and highly unscheduled manner.  Basically, our plan is to read one book (there are eight books that comprise the novel) and then discuss it and analyze it into submission so that our weary modern minds can understand it :-)

No, for real, this is how the novel is meant to be read!  It came out in eight separate parts originally, and who are we to disagree with George Eliot, the woman so tough she wrote as a man?  Plus, this way, we can get into great detail on each section of the book, instead of trying to converse on the whole 1,000+ pages of it all at once.

Based on the nature of our discussion, spoilers abound ahead!  But so does pure literary conversational awesomeness, so weigh your choices and choose accordingly.  The first half of our Part II discussion is over at Raging Bibliomania and goes into series detail on the men that populate Middlemarch, particularly the evil Mr. Bulstrode, so hop over there first and then come back here to catch up with the second half, where we discuss almost everybody else.

Let us commence.

Joints Musings: The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

I've mentioned many times before that my great love for my Kindle stems almost entirely from the massive, obscure, esoteric and fabulous free library that is at my disposal through Project Gutenberg.  I often look through the Gutenberg website specifically for memoirs written by women, and I came across The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands in exactly this manner.

Mary Seacole was a mixed race woman born in Jamaica in the 19th century.  She was married and widowed young, and never remarried, instead running several hotels throughout the Caribbean and becoming a very capable nurse.  When the Crimean War started, she decided to take her healing skills to the front and took on a substantial loan to travel from Jamaica to England and then to the Crimea to open a hotel and tend the soldiers there.  She was a very strong, determined and fascinating woman and I was so excited to read about her.

Ana from things mean a lot read the book, too, and below is the first half of our conversation about the book (and a much more general conversation that stemmed from the book but doesn't relate directly to it).  For the second half of the conversation, visit Ana's blog- it has a lot of the good bits on a woman's place in Victorian England and the fine line between what we say drives us to do things and the motivation that actually does drive us.  I hope you enjoy it!

[TSS] In which I don't talk much about books

Hello Friends!

So generally, on my blog, I do not talk about my Real Life because so much of my life is not book-related and, well, the title of this blog is BookLust.  But today I shall give you a glimpse behind the magic (iron?) curtain because there are many non-literary things I'd like to share.

First:  I saw the movie The Ides of March this week.  Wow.  It's quite an eye-opening experience, and when I say "eye-opening," I mean, "eye-gouging."  (Well, except that Ryan Gosling and George Clooney are both quite easy on the eyes.)  When watching political movies, I often get very cynical about the entire election process and spend about 45 minutes mulling conspiracy theories and the high probability that they are correct because, for real, people can get manipulative and devious.  I thought this movie was very well done, except that I am not a fan of the main female character at all.  So stereotypical!  I can't really say anything else in here because I'm sure some of you guys are spoiler fanatics and would be very unhappy if I were to say much else.  I will almost certainly spend one Sunday Salon in the future talking about spoilers and how, IMHO, people have become out of control about them on the web, but today is not that day.  But if you do not mind spoilers, or if you have seen this movie and would like to discuss the objectification of women with me, PLEASE DO.  I have opinions.

Second:  Book blogosphere, I am disappointed with you.  You've given me so many books to put on my wish list.  You introduced me to the glory that is Dr. Who.  Actually, on Thursday night, I had a longer-than-necessary and fairly useless conversation with the head of campus recruiting, who just happens to wear bow ties.  But, I found out very quickly, but not quickly enough to evade the morass of unfruitful conversation, he does not wear a bow tie because of Matt Smith.  Have you ever tried describing Dr. Who to a non-science fiction/fantasy person?!  You end up sounding a little unbalanced, which is unfair because if you watch the show it all makes complete sense.  "Oh, well there's this guy.  Actually, he's not a guy, he's a time lord.  And he doesn't have a name.  Well, he has a name but he doesn't tell anyone what it is.  He calls himself the Doctor.  No, he's not really a doctor.  Anyway, the point is that he wears a bow tie.  Just like you!  Do you ever wear a fez?  You should consider it."

Anyway, I bring this up because I only found out about the glory of Dr. Who through blogosphere and so made the logical conclusion that I would learn about everything glorious through blogosphere.

BUT I do not remember anyone in blogosphere telling me about The Wire.  HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?  The show is completely addicting.  You have no idea the trauma I have gone through over the past week trying to choose between watching Dr. Who and watching The Wire (I admit:  The Wire wins pretty much every time, but it's always quite close.)  In fact, I actually went through and did a search for "the wire" on my Google Reader and none of you has ever mentioned it, as far as the accuracy of Google search can tell me.  You are missing out.  The show is fantastic.  At least ten of my friends (I do not exaggerate) have told me that it is "the best show on television.  Ever."  I have only seen seven episodes of the first season, but I believe it.  It's set in Baltimore and is about a gang in the projects and the cops that are trying to crack down on the drug trade and murders and it is is so intense and so good that I urge all of you to go out and watch it right now.  There are five seasons, as far as I'm aware, so don't watch all of it right now, but make a commitment.  I mean, it's winter (for most of us), so there's no better time to be a couch potato.  Below is the DVD cover - does it not just ooze gritty intensity?!

Third:  Contrary to what the above might lead you to believe, I do other things with my time besides look at screens.  One of the most important things I did this week was help put on this conference.  It was so much work, but so successful at changing people's perceptions of Detroit that I feel quite accomplished about my part in it.  But whew, my inbox needs a break from frantic emails!  Isn't the below logo so cool?  It's the actual Detroit skyline.  Anyway, so here is my plug:  There are amazing people working in and amazing things happening in Detroit.  Go to there.

Fourth:  I am going to Ireland at the end of February!  I will be spending some time on a school project, but will have at least four days to frolic.  I am hoping to meet some friends, and will be over there with friends, too.  I'm spending most of my time in Limerick.  Any suggestions on what I should do or see or eat?  Please let me know!

Fifth:  BEA, anyone?  I want to go this year!  But...I am utterly befuddled by the registration process.  Too many options!  I gave up.

A and Z March through the Middle: Part I

Hello friends!  As you may or may not know, the lovely and fabulous and eloquent Zibilee and I are reading George Eliot's Middlemarch together over the next several weeks in a fairly meandering, unscheduled (well, we started scheduled and quickly lost sight of that) manner.  One of the first things I noticed about the book was the beautiful covers it has sported through the years, and so I'll be sure to share those with you over the course of our discussion.  Basically, our plan is to read one book (there are eight books that comprise the novel) and then discuss it and analyze it into submission so that our weary modern minds can understand it :-)

No, for real, this is how the novel is meant to be read!  It came out in eight separate parts originally, and who are we to disagree with George Eliot, the woman so tough she wrote as a man?  Plus, this way, we can get into great detail on each section of the book, instead of trying to converse on the whole 1,000+ pages of it all at once.

Based on the nature of our discussion, spoilers abound ahead!  But so does pure literary conversational awesomeness, so weigh your choices and choose accordingly.  The first half of our Part I discussion is here on BookLust, but for the real meat of our discussion, be sure to check out Heather's post on Raging Bibliomania.

Let us commence.

Musings: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

I do not read a lot of contemporary young adult literature.  This is mostly because whenever I read it, I am utterly confuzzled by how completely different my high school experience was than everyone else's appears to have been, at least as interpreted by YA authors.  I did not drink.  I did not lie to my parents.  I did not have a fake ID.  I did not drive around Chicago going to bars in sketchy areas so that I could see an obscure band.  I did not take medication.  I did not text on my cell phone because I did not have a cell phone.  I never swore.  I loved many of my teachers.  I enjoyed most of my classes.  I did all of my homework.  I never ditched anything.

This was one of my first reactions to Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which takes place throughout my beloved Chicagoland (but was written by two authors who are not Chicagoans, unfortunately for them).  I remembered that I do not read contemporary young adult novels because they make me feel very old and stodgy.  Dusty.  This book was no exception.  This is not the high school that I experienced.

The Wisdom of John Steinbeck

First, I must admit that I have read only two John Steinbeck novels - The Pearl and The Grapes of Wrath, and I disliked both of them.  But I remember them well enough to know that Steinbeck is a really evocative writer who understood the times about which he was writing.  I just didn't really enjoy the books at all.  I plan to give East of Eden a try one day, and I feel like that day may be coming sooner or later because I read this blog post, with a letter that Steinbeck wrote to his son on different types of love.  And it is just so generous and good and kind that now I want to read more Steinbeck and fall in love with him because I know that he would understand exactly the sort of love that a reader can feel for a book, and that is just lovely.

In case you don't want to click over, I'll just tell you the key line from the excerpted letter:

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

TSS: The changing nature of this blog

This week has been a big one for me in bloggish reflection.  I think many of us in blogosphere have been mulling over where we fit in, how much of an impact we have and in what direction our community is going.  I have been blogging since May 2005, so am coming up on seven years very soon, though the first few years of the blog were pretty on and off in terms of me posting, and I didn't have many readers at all.

I also posted reviews that were almost exclusively in the historical fiction or fantasy genres.  Often, books that somehow fit both genres and were historical fantasy.  That was basically all I read, and I think that if one were to classify my blog up until probably 2009 or 2010, it would be classified as a fantasy or histfict blog.  And while I loved those genres (and still do, very much), I had a feeling that I was missing out on a big chunk of awesome reading.

So that's why I was so thrilled to receive an email from Kari this week that started with the words, "Hey Aarti, I know you're into non-fiction reading."  Seriously, she does not realize how excited this email made me.  Or actually, she probably does, because my response to that email had a copious number of exclamation points.  But hey, I was excited.  I am not sure when the transition happened, but clearly at least one of you out there thinks of me as a non-fiction reader, and that makes me really happy!  I am not sure why- maybe because none of us really likes to be pigeon-holed or to seem narrow in scope.  But also because I really have made an effort to read more widely and sometimes obscurely than I did in the past, and I'm glad to know that people have noticed.

I don't really know many people at all who have been blogging as long as I have (Kailana?  Daphne?) though I know many, many people who have blogged much more successfully than I have in a much shorter time frame.  But I started the blog to keep track of my reading and this week, I've really been reflecting on my reading.  And honestly, when you have kept track of your reading for almost seven years, you start to see trends and shifts.  I can trace my new-found love of non-fiction to the Women Unbound challenge that I co-hosted with Eva and Care.  I think that challenge really impacted the way I read, and I'm so grateful that we brought that together.  I think my interest in more obscure fiction stems from the now-dormant Spotlight Series that I co-hosted with Amy and Chris.  It was so great to find amazing books that just didn't get the attention they deserved.  And now that I have a Kindle, I can go back and find so many overlooked and forgotten books and journals and accounts that I never would have had access to otherwise.

I still love historical fiction and fantasy (though I admit the epic fantasy has not been thrilling me lately the way that it used to).  But I've also found that as I've grown older, my reading tastes have shifted.  I don't say that they have evolved, really, because I don't know that they are "better" now than they used to be.  But they're certainly different, and I look forward to seeing what direction the next several years of reading will take me, too.

In looking back over old posts, I've also been reminded of all the people that have been involved in my blogging life.  Many no longer blog, but several still do.  And it was so fun to go back and see the first time that so many of you commented on my blog, and how long you've been coming here.  I have done a lot of detective work both on my blog and other people's, trying to see how I first "met" some of you and all our interactions began, and it's been so fun!  I'm sad to report, though, that most of my first comments on your blogs were not particularly insightful or interesting, so I'm really impressed and delighted that you all made such an effort to come back my way and post here, too :-)

I realized, in revisiting old posts, just how rarely I make an effort to visit new-to-me blogs these days.  I don't know the last time I added a new blog to my reader, and I don't really know the last time someone new commented on my blog, either.  I honestly don't have the bandwidth any more to go discovering new people, but it makes me a little wistful, too, that I am moving to the periphery of a community that I've been involved with for so long.  I guess that's the nature of change, really.  I am not likely to give up blogging any time soon, but I am also never going to be at the center of it.

I'm okay with that.  As a very wise friend told me recently, books "are an escape from the world; a lens with which to focus on culture and people around us; and a way of forging strong friendships on the premise of loving the same set of printed words. If your blog still helps you do those things, then you should not stop."  And I won't stop because I've had such a wonderfully literary week.

I've really enjoyed my bookish interactions lately- the fabulous email from Kari that signaled to me that my blog is no longer very genre-specific, reminiscing about the first interaction I ever had with Zibilee, trying to figure out a buddy read with Kailana from our shared LibraryThing catalogs, getting back in touch with Amanda through her blog, chatting with previously quoted wise friend about books challenging the tired tropes of epic fantasy, and discussing the nature of feminism and racism with Ana.  And really, none of those conversations would have come about without the help of this blog, and my ability to interact with so many of you on a deeply personal and profound level.  And I look forward to so many more conversations that will help me discover new works and new perspectives and new readers. 

So thank you, BookLust.  I think I'll keep you around for a while longer.