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.