It feel like ages ago that I read Ken Folett’s Pillars of the Earth and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It was the end of the summer, and all the back-to-school trappings meant no-more-getting-sucked-into-story-land for this mummy. And since it’s been a while, some of the details of these stories have since faded, but I loved them both very much.

Pillars starts off in the year 1135. T’is the Middle Ages. Castles and kings, urchins and thieves, treachery and deceit, raping, pillaging, and fresh horses for the men! God, those were some bad old days. People wore tunics and hairshirts, bathed a few times a year, and toothpaste wouldn’t be invented for centuries. Yikes! Nast.

But this was an super-well-written story starting with one man’s beginning of a new life as he finds employment building a cathedral. That doesn’t sound necessarily appealing, but the twists and turns of this tale are most engaging. I realised while reading this story how little I know about architecture. This isn’t so strange really, since I never studied the subject, but there’s a ton of detail about constructing a cathedral. It was very interesting to me, and somewhat amazing given the crude times. Building was only a (small) part of the story though. The writing is descriptive, and the narration is excellent for the times. Villages burn. People are raped and murdered. Sometimes this story is downright brutal… but the sex scenes rocked well enough. I wish Twilight had more of that kind of writing in it. (Yes, I’m still dreaming of vampires… leave me alone. They’re seeeeesssssy!!) Anyway, I truly recommend this read. Do it.

I was a bit apprehensive about East of Eden. Because I have a thing about John Steinbeck. Or had. Lemme esplain…

I loved, Loved, LOVED of Mice and Men. Of all his works, this one is my absolute favorite. I love it because it’s such an intense and compact story – and oh, what a story. (I also loved the Malkovitch/Sinise film of the same title – wonderful stuff. “Tell about dem rabbits, George…”) I read The Grapes of Wrath in school, I think. I don’t remember enough of the story because I was completely distracted by the long-haired boys in my class what I felt to be overly-described landscapes of the times. It was set during the Great Depression (in case you don’t know) and what I remember was what felt like pages and pages and pages of words like this: “It was hot. Lord, it was hot. And dry. And dusty. It was ever so dusty and dry. I said, “Lord, Ma, but ain’t it hot and dusty.” And Ma said, “I reckon it’ll be hot and dusty for some time, son. Ain’t no rain a-comin’…”

This is not a quote. This is just what I remember of it. Pages and pages of it. I felt like, “Okay, it was HOT and DUSTY! No crops growing! I get it!! Let’s GO! Can we please move on now?!”

I think if I were to reread The Grapes of Wrath I would be much more… empathetic. Age can do that to a person. My entire perspective on the world has changed with the passing years, and with the coming of children. Everything looks different when one has a child – it just happens like that. I would feel much more anguish reading scenes of standing in a bread line, worried about feeding my children, now that I actually have some. Oh, what terrible times.

So that being said, I started East of Eden with my eyes narrowed. I know it’s a classic. Come on and show me why then… and man, did it ever. It’s the story of a family (Steinbeck’s family) starting when our hero, Adam Trask was born in 1862. The story is full of sibling rivalry, crazy wives, brutal fathers, whores with secrets, love, agony, death, and a sage Chinese house-helper/manny named Lee. I felt it spoke much about the meaning of life, if that’s not being to vague. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. Heavily. It spoke volumes about why it is that people are as they are. I like that. People make me very curious. It spoke to all my sensibilities on the matter.

A random point of interest to me: All the people who knew Adam Trask scoffed and laughed at his idea about packing a train full of ice to ship lettuce from California to northern states who couldn’t grow such luxuries at certain times of the year. It was 1915. Everyone thought refrigeration was a stupid idea. Imagine that, really. Fast forward a few decades, and ta-da!, as most people start having iceboxes in their own homes, shipping fresh produce from sunny climbs to northern, chilly ones turned out to be no thang at all. Poor man lost nearly all his money over that idea at the time. Crazy how times have changed.

John Steinbeck’s words are decadent, and to be savoured. The language is wonderful. Sometimes, the English word is just so freaking delightful.

I’ve been all about juicy, delicious magazines for the last few months, but I feel it’s time to get back to proper reading. My bookshelves beckon and mock me at the same time. Le sigh. I’ve had Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy sitting here for a few years now, and one of my foxes wants to lend me The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, which is supposed to be a bit of a brutal on the brain. (She was also one of the first to recommend that fucking Twilight series, so I’m not certain that I trust her entirely.) We’ll see. I could use something wordy to escape to.

If you have suggestions, let ‘em rip!! Failing which, I might have to re-read New Moon, since the movie opens later this week, and being all twelve years old in my pants head, I might enjoy the refresher before the flick. Heh.

NOTE: The reason I do not have a copy of The Grapes of Wrath to refer to is because of a fox called Peaches who years ago jibed and taunted me into feeling like an epic, anal super-loser for keeping track of my books-on-loan in a very attractive little notebook I kept strictly for this purpose… so in an act of trying to appear all cool again, I gave up the notebook, and subsequently lost track of about 25% of the books I used to own. Fuck you very much, Peaches! It’s a good thing I like love you so much, you bitch.

G.G.

I finished Michael J. Fox’s second book, Always Looking Up, about a week ago. It was another easy read – Michael J. is just talking here… about his life, his work, politics, faith and family. I like him. I think he has a splendid outlook on life – one that it utterly optimistic, especially in the face of his life with Parkinson’s Disease. He is continually thankful for his blessed life, which is a position one should always try to hold, no matter what. Find your joy at all costs.

I took my time reading it, as it was an easy one to put down and start up again, unlike that tormenting Twilight series that sucked me in from the start. I enjoyed his freshman memoir, Lucky Man, and I also recommend this read. It was well written and thought-provoking. I like Michael J. Fox.

I’m now starting Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, which is, in short, about building a cathedral. Follett has a huge interest in these old buildings, about how they could even be constructed in the first place by men and women during a time before knowledge of mathematical structural engineering, before power tools, and how they could possibly remain standing after all these many centuries, still perfect, and still beautiful. And why were they built in the first place?

After reading the preface, I understand that Follett had a successful career as a thriller writer, but Pillars is a story he wrote an outline for in 1976, and actually finished in 1989. But there’s a great story too. He says, “I would write an adventure story, full of colorful characters who were ambitious, wicked, sexy, heroic, and smart. I wanted ordinary readers to be as enraptured as I was by the romance of the medieval cathedrals.” WooOOoo… sounds meaty and wonderful!

Dirty house be damned! I will spend my afternoon tucking into this new tale.

I’d love to know how anyone else has found this novel…

G.G.

I love Michael J. Fox. First as the Family Ties character Alex P. Keaton (loved that whole family, of course) and loved him even more as he played a myriad of characters in great flicks and some not-so-great flicks. It warms my heart to see a little kid from Canada do good.

I feel proud of him, though I’ve never met the man. I’m sorry for his illness with Parkinson’s Disease. I’m sorry the advancement of scientific research is so often fraught with red tape. I’m so very pleased for his optimism though.

I read (and loved!) Lucky Man, his refreshing memoir published in 2002, and recently purchased Always Looking Up – The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, at least most of the time. It’s been a heavy load with the kids both home with me so much, due to some rather unsavory summer weather… we’ve been indoors much more than I like. I also needed something to read after that crack-like Twilight series – something to get my head out of the world of fiction… and something I could stand to put down from time to time so I could just live my life and feed my kids on time.

This book is not only serving those intended purposes, but I’m also finding it soothing to my stressed and harried life. When I can take a bit of time to read a few pages, I am instantly reminded of how good my life is. Things could always be so much worse. His words are helping me keep my life in check at the moment, which is never a bad thing.

I love Michael J. Fox. He’s a good egg.

NOTE: I believe I will read Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett after this – thanks for the recommendation Jean!

G.G.

The author of this saga, Stephenie Meyer, is so frickin’ smart. At the end of the first novel in this series, she very trickily added the first chapter of the sequel to the back… it’s a brilliant move to snare you hook, line, and sinker into the stories to follow. A few chapters into the sophomore story, I just knew she’d trapped me into reading them all. Balls.

Following the first story are New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. These reads are good ones. The stories drip heavily of themes like love, desire, trust, betrayal… vampires and werewolves and humans (oh my!) entwined with Native legends of monstrous dogs and an elegant Italian bloodsucker mafia… all that good stuff. The action is pretty intense, and the stories are, well… fun! And sexy too.

I will say that by the time I was on the fourth book, our heroine, Isabella Swan, was beginning to tread on my last fucking nerve… all that teen-angst was making me feel like I was regressing into the high school bad place. I hated identifying with her, constantly worried about the what ifs of love… I’m so glad I’m passed that in my real life now. (Mostly.) Sometimes her martyrdom made me want to give her a smackdown.

I finished the series about a week ago, and still I’ve got many of these characters lingering in my brain, hanging around when I sleep. I’m glad it’s finally over. I’ll have to choose something non-fiction to read now, to shake these bloodsuckers from my neural reel. Back to reality.

Each story took me between four and six days to read because they were nearly impossible to put down. I don’t know that there will be any literary prizes won here, but they’re perfect for light summer reading. I will advise you NOT to read any more after the first story, Twilight, unless you’re ready to be sucked into the whole series. The pull is entirely too strong. There’s just no way to win against it. It’s brilliant, I tell you.

Consider yourselves warned. Happy summer!

NOTE: If the author ever writes a fully detailed vampire-sex story, I will be the first in line, camped out overnight at Chapters to buy it. I will stay up all night to read it. Yes. Good lord, vampires are super-hot.

G.G.

I buy a lot of books. Or, I should say I buy books often – but I seldom have the chance to read them. Since doing time in baby-prison, I haven’t been reading novels nearly as much as I like to. Constant interruptions from The Little People makes this an impossibility. But I am determined to read something other than the daily news (which is, of course, necessary, but not often uplifting) and short articles from the magazines I subscribe to. They’re just not nearly as satisfying… and I love getting sucked into a book of some kind. I think I relish the escape a great read can provide, and I almost never get to go on vacation.

I love words.

The trouble is sometimes deciding which book to read.. what will this one be like? Is it worth my precious, invested time? Will I turn the last page, and want to turn the opened book upside and start shaking it, as if to see if there’s something more to it that I might have missed? I hate that feeling. I feel as if my time was wasted. And then I say, “Aw… balls.”

Sometimes I’ll finish a book, perhaps with a surprise ending, that makes me hurl the book across the room and start weeping… husband comes running, asking me what’s happened, and I’ll say, “Goddamned book… I HATED it! I loved it. It was wonderfully, horribly good. Ack. I’m not reading another book for a while. Fuck.” My poor husband hugs me and pats me on the head like I’m a mental patient. He’s a good man.

Bastard out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison made me feel that way. Others will leave me feeling rather stunned and pensive for days afterward, like Blindness, by Jose Saramago. Wonderfully, heartbreaking reads, both. Any book I try to read shortly after a book like that always seems lacking by comparison… so I’ll go back to magazines for a while.

Here’s a short, random list of what’s on my shelf these days… not sure where to begin. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

And make it quick – I’ll need something to devour once I’m done with that damned Twilight series I totally got tricked into reading by one of my bitches closest friends.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox

Death With Interruptions by José Saramago

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Letters of Allan Ginsberg edited by Bill Morgan

Okay, I must say this was a really compelling read… it’s a total page turner. It was the kind of book I was slightly embarrassed to read in public, much like anything by Maeve Binchy – not scandalous or anything, but not terribly literary, if you know what I mean. A perfect summer time-suck.

The version I had was a fat hardcover, with a large typeface and beefy margins, uncomplicated wording. It took me about four days to read it – if I’d had childcare, I would have sucked it down in two.

To me, the main theme of this novel is desire, which I suppose is always a bit juicy. I’ve never been one to enjoy the Harlequin-style romance novels (except for in my formative reading years, when after a leisurely day of swimming, my sister and I would peruse the shelves of the rec room at the club our family belonged to… we’d just flip and scan the pages, looking for the semi-sordid dirty parts. I like to think everyone did – but I digress) but Twilight doesn’t seem to fit that genre.

“I was glad to leave behind the shrink-and-duck feeling that came with having this book under my arm”

Our hero is a bright 17-year-old girl, who is mature for her age, so we’re saved from a lot of typical teenage dialog overly-peppered with likes, as ifs and duhs. Her love interest is a one hundred-year-old vampire timelessly trapped inside a very gorgeous boy her “age”. It is readable because his use language is also mature, more suited to a turn-of-the-century gentleman, than of an average man-child in the oh-ohs. He is careful to control his thirst-lust for her at every turn, but also loves her with every fibre of his non-being. There are pages and pages devoted to her swooning over him. He explains everything that goes on in his pretty little head which is all women everywhere, of any age are looking for… it’s a fairy-tale. It’s delicious. I won’t say any more about the story (I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read it) but I think girl-people of a wide age-range would enjoy this story.

I will say that I was relieved when it was ending, only because I was glad to leave behind the shrink-and-duck feeling of having this book under my arm, and I was tired of staying up later than usual at night to read it.

AND THEN! At the very end of the book, I read the preface and first chapter of the sequel in the series called New Moon. It’s a fucking series of four books. Balls! Just as I was wondering exactly how I could possibly survive without reading the next story, the very next morning, my friend/neighbour who lent me the book in the first place sent her son over to our house to give me the next three books in the series. And then she promptly left town for most of the summer, laughing all the way… ‘coz that bitch pal-o-mine knew I’d kill her for getting me hooked, like she did by someone else. It’s like crack, I guess you could say. I’ve already taken my first hit off the sequel. Lord. I have no shame at all.

There’s a reason it’s been on the New York Times bestseller’s list… it’s not a bad read at all, really. I liked it enough. Enjoy yourself.

G.G.

One of my neighbours shoved this book at me, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, imploring me to read it – she’s not the first grown-up woman to mention this title, so I’m giving it a try. I make no judgement about what others like to read. Not really. I mean, read whatever you enjoy – but just read.

I understand this to be some kind of vampire love story. With the exception of the movie Interview With a Vampire, which I’ve always loved and have watched about a hundred times, vampires in general don’t do anything for me. I’m not usually into scary movies or stories. I’m on page forty-five, and I’m bored already. I understand that vampire stories are all hot these days, but perhaps if I was a twelve-year-old girl I’d like it better.

I don’t often get the guilts about things, but leaving a started book unfinished always makes me feel a bit like a failure somehow. I’m determined to finish. I’d be curious to know what anyone else thought of this novel…

G.G.