Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

I must preface this by saying that my husband read it when he was 18 and back then he said it was whiny and annoying, so I went into this experience with the prejudices of an 18 year old boy. The husband was THE WRONGEST and now has to listen to my DEMANDS that he RE-READ IT IMMEDIATELY and correct those MOST ERRONEOUS thoughts.

Photobucket

Philip is our hero extraordinaire here- an orphan with a club foot who is raised by his silly and joyless uncle the Vicar and his wife, same. We accompany Philip as he goes off to boarding school, decides to chuck becoming a Vicar because he doesn't have the constitution for believing in God, and trundles off to Paris to be an ARTISTE. In Paris, he does many ARTISTE-Y things like having ARTISTE-Y conversations with other (mostly) middle class, young ARTISTES pretending to have anything other than middle class thoughts. So there's a good bit of WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE and NO NO YOUR TASTE IN ART IS AWFUL THEREFORE YOU HAVE NO SOUL and I AM A TRUE ARTIST/PAINTER BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE STUFF WITH RELIGIOUS STUFF.

Photobucket

Eventually Philip gets a bit hmm, these folks are silly, and goes back to England to become a doctor. Along the way he has various and sundry adventures, including but not limited to: becoming obsessed with a hooker, experiencing poverty, befriending a Dickensian family that has Love But Not Much Else, and having lots and lots of epiphanies.

This is the best epiphany: "He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

The books is largely autobiographical, so Philip's sort of Nietzsche-ish/nihilistic point of view shouldn't be surprising if you've read any of Maugham's other work. It's a world view that I find mostly silly and selfish if we're being perfectly honest, but I agree with the conclusion of aforementioned epiphany except that I don't find being happy to be a defeat. Philip wants to be some sort of epic hero, though, so having a life of fulfilling contentment is something he disdains, then later accepts as his only real option. Actually, Maugham's ruminations on/ loving criticism of the middle class was my favorite bit of this book. He is WAY more respectful of his subjects than, say, Franzen (who is, as we all know, an ass). 

I didn't think the prose itself was really anything to shake a stick at, though I never really do with Maugham. But Philip's intellectual journey is totally gripping (thatswhatshesaid) and I'm sure that I would find some of his soul-angst much more affecting if I had a heart. But, alas. I am cold.

Your tears don't affect me, boy.

Four stars out of your mom.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!



So I gathered together all the entries for the Penguin Classics hardcover holiday giveaway and combined them with the Twitter entries. I assigned each entry a number and used Random.org to draw the winner. Aforementioned winner is: @DuchessCadbury, who I've notified on Twitter. If you didn't get my tweet, lady, please email me your mailing address and the hardcover you've selected.

Thank you for participating, everyone! And if you didn't win, you should still go buy these books because they are fancier than the fanciest fancy pants.

NELSON OUT.

Tournament! Of! Booooookkkkksss!

The Tournament of Books approacheth! Let us have a moment of silence in appreciation.


That was fun.

So the Tournament of Books, for those who don't know, is the bookish version of March Madness hosted by The Morning News. Every year, the staff over in those there parts consult with publishers, booksellers, their moms, and cowboys in bars (according to their website, that last part is totally true) to pick out some of the best fiction of the previous year (so 2012 for this one). The final books are then put into brackets where they have to FIGHT TO THE DEATH, and by death I mean an appointed judge picks which one is better and will therefore advance to the next bracket. The judges are authors/editors/publishing people/bloggers/journalists, etc. There's also a zombie round, where readers can resurrect an eliminated book and have it put back into the competition. The winner wins The Rooster! (I don't think that really means anything.)

They've released the list of finalists super-early this year so that people can read as many as they want before the For Real For Real bracketing starts in March- and I am going to read them all (except one)!


The List of Finalists! (bolded are the ones I've already read, don't know if I'm re-reading them yet)

HHhH by Laurent Binet
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (TOTALLY skipping this one)
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
Ivyland by Miles Klee
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Dear Life by Alice Munro
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Building Stories by Chris Ware
[winner of the pre-tournament playoff round]

Pre-Tournament Playoff Round
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
Fobbit by David Abrams
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

So, these are the books you should expect to hear a lot of chatter about here for the next little while- and keep an eye on Book Riot, as well- this event is a favorite of most of the contributors over there and there will be MUCHOS TONS of coverage (including some from me).

I'm starting with Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk because...that's the only one the library had available for immediate download to my Nook. I'll also be reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall in preparation for reading Bring Up The Bodies, which is the sequel. 

Rooster on, readers. Rooster on. (And let me know if you're going to read the field, too!) I hope your favorites make it far.





Changes, They Are A-Comin'

Guuuyysss I've been doing this blog for years! YEARS PLURAL! I love this effing place. It's allowed me to find my people, to snark in ways I've never snarked before, and it's led me to a career in talking about books and bookish things over at Book Riot that helps make it possible for me to work at home whilst not wearing any pants.


In the time since I started blogging about books, I've obtained and left a job as a bookseller (well, sort of, January 1 is my last day), had twins, and seen my book taste evolve dramatically. I no longer feel like the only authors worth reading died before 1960. Of my favorite books read in 2012, several of them were written by people who are still around.

What I'm saying is that I'm in a different readerly place and this blog is going to evolve to reflect that because IT'S MY BLOG, DAMMIT. You'll notice changes to the banner and the subtitle, but the name will stay the same because I still read All The Classics and I'm Too Lazy To Change It.



What you can expect from me from now on: the same stuff, but with a lot more contemporary literature. I analyzed my reading from this year, and about a 25% of it consisted of classics. That means that most of what I read, I don't talk to you guys about because of the constraints of the blog's title, and that is ZE DUMBEST.

I think a change in the direction of the blog will be fucking awesome and will lead to more talky-talk without sacrificing the tone or spirit of what I'm doing here, which is humanizing reading and books (especially the hard stuff) so that more people will do it (the reading) and talk about it.

So, what sort books are we going to be talking about now? Well, based on my reading from last year, it'll be a mixture of literary fiction, awesome genre fiction (Gone Girl, what), lots and lots of backlist, memoirs, history, science writing (I'm reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson right now)...

...and classics.


Photobucket

I hope you'll stick around because if you don't I'LL FIND YOU. Just kidding about that last part.

Holiday Giveaway, Suckas!

It's time for that thing I do every year in December- give away a thing! This giveaway is international because I can't stop feeling guilty about the Anna Karenina one wherein the promo company limited it to the U.S. only. Makes me SOIRRITATEDANYWAYMOVINGON.


Get To The Point: What Am I Winning, Ladypants?

Bueno! One winner will get a Penguin classic hardcover of your choice (priced at $25 or less, but as far as I can tell they're all $25 or less, so) designed by Coraline Bickford-Smith. WOULD YOU LIKE EXAMPLES GREAT HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITES:



You can see all your options on the designers website under "Hardback Classics."

Oh, Those ARE Fancy. So What Do I DOOOO?
Like always, just leave a comment below with your name and e-mail address. You can also tweet about the giveaway for an extra entry- just be sure you tag me (@deadwhiteguys) so I can count it. If I tweet about it, you can retweet me and that also counts as an entry.

I have the attention span of a gerbil, so this giveaway will close on Christmas Eve, December 24th, at midnight. I will randomly select the winner from all the entries on December 26th, and will announce the winner that day or the day after, depending on the severity of my Christmas hangover. If the winner comes from Twitter, I'll notify you there as well. 

Fin.
Sally forth and book shop.


Because in High School, We Were All Bitches

So I went to a "gifted" high school, which is basically code for Everyone In These Four Walls Is A Major Smart-Ass Know-It-All. My two best friends and I were the resident culture snobs- we went to all the shows of all the bands before those bands were cool, we took all the art and theater classes, we read All The Books.

We also had a list of books you had to read (or be in the process of reading) to be our friend (even though we ourselves hadn't read all of them).

Photobucket
We weren't really that smart.

It was a combination of snobbishness and good, old-fashioned social awkwardness- we really didn't have anything to say to you outside the language of our pop culture ingestion, and we didn't have the skills or emotional maturity to care about whatever it was you were interested in. Also, what you were interested in was inferior. Also, we know more about books than you do, and books are how you are smart, therefore we are smarter than you.


Photobucket

I remembered the list because every year, my best friends from high school try to get together for each other's birthdays, and last week we got together for mine. The list was recalled and then ONE OF MY FRIENDS FOUND IT. I present it to you- this is my friend Tiffany's copy, so the things that are crossed off aren't necessarily ones that I had read by that point:









Note the "read these or die, SMILEY FACE" on the second to last page. There are a few different handwritings because all three of us made contributions (which is also probably why there are repeats).

I look back and think WOW I WAS AWFUL, but really, not much has changed. I still spend most of my time with people who read because I don't have much in common with people who don't, and I suck at small talk and have no people skills so I'm bad at pretending that I'm interested in stuff like your favorite football team or how much you like hiking or whatever.

But at least now I don't have a list of required reading. I AM GROWING, PEOPLE.


Winners: Anna Karenina Giveaway


Yesterday marked the close of the Focus Features Anna Karenina giveaway! Thanks for participating, everyone who...participated (and for the international readers out there, I'll be running another giveaway for the holidays that is open to everyone).

SO! Without further ado, the winners of a movie tie-in edition of Anna Karenina, as well as the movie's soundtrack, a votive candle, and a bookmark are: Lauren Ozanich  and Amanda (akpatchin), selected by random.org. I've sent you two e-mails to get your mailing addresses, which I will then forward on to the movie promotion company and they'll be mailing you your prizes.

Congrats to the winners!


Anna Karenina Giveaway

So the kind reps of Focus Features contacted me about sponsoring this here giveaway in support of the upcoming release of the new Anna Karenina movie (by sponsoring I mean they're providing the prizes, not that they've paid me or anything). I said HECK TO THE YES because AK is easily one of my top five favorite novels and I want to get copies into people's hands, whether they have Keira Knightley's face on the cover or no.



Movie Info

Trailer n' shiz.

Release Date:                          November 16, 2012
Nationwide Release:               November 30, 2012
Studio:                                     Focus Features
Starring:                                  Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Kelly Macdonald, Ruth Wilson, Olivia Williams, and Emily Watson
Directed By:                           Joe Wright (“Pride & Prejudice”, “Atonement”)
Written By:                            Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in Love”)

"Anna Karenina is acclaimed director Joe Wright’s bold, theatrical new vision of the epic story of love, stirringly adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s great novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love). The film marks the third collaboration of the director with Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley and Academy Award-nominated producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, following their award-winning box office successes Pride & Prejudice and Atonement."


Giveaway Info

The giveaway is limited to U.S. participants only (sorry, I know, but I didn't make the rules for this one- I will be running another classics giveaway in December like I always do and that will be international).

So! Two winners will get a movie tie-in edition of Anna Karenina (Lousie and Alymer Maude translation), along with the movie's soundtrack and a Votivo candle and bookmark. 

To Enter- Just leave your name and e-mail address in the comments below between now and November 26. I will draw two random winners on November 27th. I'll e-mail the winners and get your shipping address, which I'll then send to the movie promoters so they can ship your prizes out to you. 

I'd also appreciate it if you tweeted/Facebooked/whatevered the shiznit out of this because ALL THE PEOPLE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK. And you know what makes people read books a whole lot? WHEN THE BOOKS ARE FREE, AMIRITE (and also when they've seen a pretty movie with pretty people in it, maybe)? There are little buttons below this post for sharing on various social media type things. Anywoot, Godspeed, gentle readers. Or, you know, aggressive readers. Whatever gets your goat.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

My Meets-In-Real-Life-And-Drinks-Wine-And-Is-Supes-Fun book club selected The Moonstone for our December meeting, which I was ecstatic about because I am an honorary member of the Cult of Wilkie, having read and loved The Woman in White. This dude writes THE SHIT out of some campy Victorian mysteries.


So! The Moonstone is a Very Large Yellow Diamond stolen from the head of the statute of a Hindu moon god in India by a Very Nasty Englishman. The diamond makes its way back to England, where it ends up in the house of a posh, respectable family who do posh, respectable things. NATCH, the rock is cursed (ish) and all sorts of icky badness RAINS DOWN on the heads of our saucy heroine and her noble love interest. There is also a butler who opens to random pages of Robinson Crusoe when he needs wisdom (kinda like my grandma used to do with the Bible), and a clinically depressed reformed thief/wannabe temptress with a wonky shoulder, AND AND AND a band of ROVING ORIENTALS (Wilkie's word, that one) out to return the diamond to its rightful place at all costs. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT, PEOPLE?

Predictably, there is a good bit of ZEE ROMANCE a la Victoriana- you know what I mean, lots of tension that happens whilst doing something harmless like drinking tea or taking a walk. Lots of DECLARING OF LOVE at inopportune moments, lots of pining, lots of waiting hopelessly for years for your beloved, lots of self-sacrifice, etc., etc.


Impressively, the story is told from several first person points of view, so you get the history of the diamond from eye witnesses. Now, I knew Mr. Wilkie was the master of the sorta-tawdry-and-therefore-awesome mystery, but I did NOT know the man could write such distinct voices so well. We move from an aging butler to a religious fanatic spinster to a respectable lawyer to a charming rogue-hero type, and each character is completely distinguishable from the next. Whattaya know- you come for the murder/mayhem and you stay for the impressive literary skillz.

So, if you're ever in the market for a Charles Dickens-meets-Agatha-Christie-meets-melodramatic-gothic-novelist, Wilkie's your guy.

Four stars out of your mom, mostly because of the butler and the funny things he says about marriage.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I embarked on a re-read of Slaughterhouse Five with Greg of New Dork Review of Books for Book Riot's Vonnegut Day (here's the post we wrote together about the experience, if you're interested) and man. That is one bleak read, which explains why I loved it so hard in high school (I also lurved it this time because it's darkly hilarious which is my favorite kind of hilarious and his prose is deceptively simple. Like Hemingway, if Hemingway was a total smart-ass and also made pencil drawings of boobs).


The resemblance, she is uncanny.

For those of you who didn't go through the requisite Vonnegut-lurve as an adolescent like the rest of us did, let me catch you up to speed here: in Slaughterhouse Five, the main character Billy Pilgrim is an accidentally-time-traveling (maybe) veteran of World War II who was present at the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, and who was also kidnapped by aliens (maybe). The aliens who (maybe) take Billy teach him that all of time has already happened at the same time that it is happening and at the same time that it is always happening, so each moment is both inevitable and inalterable. Vonnegut drives this point home by stating "So it goes" (you know, that most popular of hipster tattoos) anytime a character dies. In the fist meta-chapter, Vonnegut gives us a semi-or-maybe-totally-autobiographical account of how hard it was for him to finally write a book about Dresden, saying that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book. An uphill battle with little to no discernable results.


Photobucket

So when I read this as a teenager, I took it very literally. Billy Pilgrim was a time traveling victim of alien abduction who was put in a zoo on another planet, and wars would happen because wars would happen because wars would happen because people are awful and do awful things and everyone sucks, let's drink some vodka and listen to Dashboard Confessional (before they [him] were cool). So that's one way to look at it.

Ten years later, I don't agree with my original interpretation (not just of the book, but of anything in life because everyone is wrong about everything at 16). There are a bunch of holes in the abducted-by-aliens sub-plot, and many of the things that Billy experiences while time traveling/space traveling show up in Kilgore Trout's sci-fi books, a detail I didn't notice or care about the first time around. I now think that Billy became "unstuck" in time as a way of escaping the moments he spent in Germany and the memories thereof (so they are essentially hallucinations), and that the alien view of time (the aliens also being hallucinations) is an excuse Billy (and the rest of humanity) tells itself in order to feel ok about something like genocide. 

Having read a lot of Vonnegut's other work, along with many of his interviews and letters, I still think he found war to be an inevitability because life is a bitch and people can be awful. But I don't think he was taking "so it goes" so far into fatalism as to be interpreted as a call to do nothing about it- it's an acknowledgment and maybe even a warning that your efforts may come to nothing. So yeah, the book is bleak and cynical and maybe opposing something like war is similar to opposing a glacier, but that's no reason why we shouldn't do it anyway. The opposing, I mean, not the warring.

Gotta love a man who makes his own GIFs.

Four stars out of your mom, both for nostalgia and for all the rest of it.





Grapes of Wrath: FIN.

Let's just say I spent a great deal of this last section of Grapes of Wrath dragging my proverbial feet because I knew the awful, awful ending was coming.



Anyway. In this here section we had The Return Of Casey, the ex-preacher-turned-socialist (Hint: these things? They're not mutually exclusive, Steinbeck), as well as the return of Tom Joad Who Likes To Hit People With Blunt Objects. There was also starvation, strike-busting, evil capitalists (SHOCK), a flood, an engagement (WTAF?) and of course that bizarre ending. And you know what my final conclusion is? This entire book should have been a novella, starting at the moment the family arrives at the peach farm.

Steinbeck was a genius at the tiny book, and there is more action in this last section than in the entire rest of the book combined. And having read most of the rest of Steinbeck's canon, it's easy to say that he could have fit in enough heart-breaking back story about the Joads and Casey in a few sentences, without all the Turtle/Agricultural Progress is Evil/Here is How All Poor People Act In Every Situation At All Times chapters. You know, the ones that contribute nothing except for acting like a leftist version of John Galt's speech. I'm not the sort of reader who bemoans a chunky book just because it's chunky- I think every word of Anna Karenina is necessary- but I could've easily done without the first 3/4 of Grapes of Wrath.

Another benefit of making the book a novella would be that Steinbeck would have less space to write cartoon characters. You know- Big, Bad Policeman (all of them), and Big, Bad Employer/Exploiter of the Poor (all of them), and Poor Traveling Folk From All Over The Middle Of The Country Who For Some Reason All Speak In The Same Oklahoma Dialect (another blogger pointed this out a few weeks ago and now I can't stop thinking about it) And Are All Very Nice To The Other Poor People.


So let's talk about the ending. I think it's largely regarded as ridiculous for a reason, but I don't think the reason is the shock of what Rose of Sharon is actually doing. I think the reason is that the Rose of Sharon we've been with for so long would never do something like that. Steinbeck gives us 400 pages of a selfish, whiny, self-centered brat, and then expects us to believe that she would do something so selfless and abnormal because- what? Her baby died? If she were true to type, that would make her MORE self-pitying and self-righteous- every other tragedy up to this point has done so. I think Ma would've looked deep into her eyes, and Rose of Sharon would've burst into tears and complained about how she was hungry, too, after all she's the one who just did all that labor and has nothing to show for it.


So, the book is preachy to a major fault (even though I agree with a lot of what Steinbeck is saying). The characters, with the exception of a few of the family members (MA, HOW I LOVE YOU) are wooden and two-dimensional. I know this book is beloved by many people because it makes you FEEL THE FEELINGS and HUMAN DIGNITY and hey, I get it. I don't think this is the most successful of Steinbeck's works, but it's a SUPER-SUCCESSFUL work of socialist propaganda (I don't mean that snottily, I think that is literally what it is) and definitely worth the read. I would force it on all the Republicans on the whole wide world if given the chance. 


Read it because you're human, leave your Reviewer/Objective Reader Hat at the door. Three stars out of your mom.

Grapes of Wrath through Chapter 25

Well, folks, we've finally reached California and guess what. Go ahead, guess. No really, guess. Ok, I'll tell you: IT SUCKS JUST LIKE EVERY SINGLE PERSON HAS BEEN TELLING US IT WOULD FOR 300 PAGES ZOOOOMMMMGGGG *explodes.*


Except, except, except it sort of doesn't suck for our friends the Joads because they just so happen to find a nice government facility that so happens to have one space for a family. And while horrible things have been happening left, right and center, we know things aren't as bad as they're going to get for the Joads- which MEANS that we're 300 pages into a 500 page sermon and it's only. Going to get. Worse. I AM SO EXCITED.


And you know what else is just AWESOME? How all the bad people are two dimensions: bad and worse. There's Very Bad Rich People and Very Bad Cops and also Very Bad Religious Crazies. The Joads? All the dimensions! THEY ARE THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM! Which means (and we all know this already) that Steinbeck is perfectly capable of writing complete characters and is choosing not to. Which THEREFORE means he's being purposefully manipulative.

I hate that shit.


Anyway, pet peeves aside, can we talk about how Ma Joad's habit of brandishing blunt weapons whenever she gets annoyed is sort of the greatest? And while that sort of behavior would usually have me whinging about how immature the person is, a poverty-stricken, uneducated woman in the Depression? You beat those idiots, lady. You beat them hard.

OHOHOH so I went and did a bit of research about the Dust Bowl sitch and it turns out that it was the biggest emigration in American history AND back when I was all WHY DIDN'T THEY GO OTHER PLACES THAT WEREN'T CALIFORNIA? They did. About 2.5 million people left the affected states, and about 200,000 of those went to California. Everyone else was taking my advice. Way to retroactively take my advice, past people. Well played.

So, to summarize: yay human dignity, go proto-feminist Ma Joad, Steinbeck, you're pissing me off.

Wallpaper Pictures 05

How to get the most out of using just a single picture (photo or art) on a page? The page can be a page in a magazine, a book, a folder /announcement or a web page.

Using just one photo or picture may be seen as a challenge. But the difference and impression between using no pictures and a single picture is much bigger than the difference between one picture and several pictures on a page, whatever printed material or an online webpage.

A sublime layout with pictures has nothing to do with the number of pictures but how they are used.







Wallpaper Pictures 03

Pictures are truly vehicles to reminiscence. We always want to remember and look back on those moments we feel are very special to us, and the best way to capture these moments is through pictures. When a special moment or occasion arises, the first thing that people want to do is take pictures of it. We may have so many pictures taken over the past years that they may only be tucked away inside photo albums. If you wish to have one or two pictures stand out among the rest and be displayed on your tables or mantles, then the best way to do it is to place them in picture frames. However, if you feel that you want many pictures to come to life on display, the collage picture frame is the answer.

Collage picture frames allow you to incorporate a series or a number of pictures into one frame. Of course, this usually requires a bigger frame than the standard picture frame which caters to individual photos. How is it different from atypical picture frame? Aside from perhaps the size, a collage picture frame is designed to hold an assembly of pictures in one frame alone. Collage picture frames invoke a sense of unity and togetherness with the pictures placed in it, even though it is merely one frame holding a number of pictures. In this kind of picture frame, a number of pictures with a similar theme are mounted together to create a story or a flow of visuals for those who care to see it.