Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
by Nina Sankovitch
Harper, 2011
256 pages
source: purchased

Description (from amazon):
Catalyzed by the loss of her sister, a mother of four spends one year savoring a great book every day, from Thomas Pynchon to Nora Ephron and beyond. In the tradition of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project  and Joan Dideon’s A Year of Magical Thinking, Nina Sankovitch’s soul-baring and literary-minded memoir is a chronicle of loss, hope, and redemption. Nina ultimately turns to reading as therapy and through her journey illuminates the power of books to help us reclaim our lives.


My thoughts:

This was a good book. Not drop-what-you're-doing-and-go-get-a-copy good, but a solid read. It was also a bit of a downer. I was expecting something along the lines of The End of You Life Book Club (my review), but this was much sadder - a memoir of loss and grief, rather than reading.

[reading books] ... was not a way to rid myself of sorrow but a way to absorb it. Through memory. While memory cannot take sorrow away or bring back the dead, remembering ensures that we always have the past with us, the bad moments but also the very, very good moments of laughter shared and meals eaten and books discussed... Remembrance is acknowledging that a life was lived. 

Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Every fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth. Stories about lives remembered bring us backward while allowing us to move forward.  (28%)

Sankovitch read a book a day for one year. More than a year had passed since the death of her sister and she desperately needed to come to terms with the loss and get her life back on track. Reading provided the means.

Sankovitch read globally - a wide variety of books, many in translation, many unfamiliar to me. General thoughts about books are interspersed with memories of her sister. But this memoir is not about the books, as I was expecting. It's not a reading journal. In fact, not all of the books she read are even mentioned. (A complete list is provided at the end.) This is a memoir of grief, her sister, and family stories, with the books serving as a vehicle for recall.

I suspect I would have enjoyed her blog during the year she was reading a book a day but, despite some memorable quotes, the overall sadness makes me hesitant to recommend this book to a friend.

My rating:

Bottom line: Proceed with caution - too much sadness and not enough books.

West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan: Pick or Pass?

West of Sunset
by Stewart O'Nan
Viking, 2015
305 pages
source: review copy from publisher via Netgalley

Regular readers of this blog know I am a huge fan of author Stewart O'Nan. I am in awe of his ability to turn ordinary people and the mundane events of daily life into novels filled with characters and situations that genuinely matter to me. O'Nan also has the distinction of being the only author I have ever pre-ordered.

His new novel, West of Sunset, is a bit of a departure. As you've probably heard, the novel is about F. Scott Fitzgerald, specifically the last three years of his life. He is a "has been" in literary circles, his health is failing, and Zelda is institutionalized. He moves to Hollywood to try his hand at screenwriting. There are no ordinary people or mundane events here. Instead, big time celebrities grace these pages - Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Bogie, Joan Crawford, George Oppenheimer, and the list goes on.

The novels starts off slowly. Very slowly. In fact, I considered abandoning it. HOWEVER, it is Stewart O'Nan and I did request a review copy, so I chose to continue and was eventually rewarded.

Should you read West of Sunset?  I do recommend this novel, but with reservations. Hopefully my "Pick or Pass" will help you make your decision.

Pick up West of Sunset  if:

• You are a die-hard fan of Stewart O'Nan and want to read everything he has ever written.
• You can't get enough of F. Scott Fitzgerald, his novels, or his life with Zelda.
• You generally enjoy fictionalized accounts of the lives of famous people.
• You appreciate a beautifully written, well-researched piece of fiction which provides insight into the life of its subject.

Pass on West of Sunset  if:

• You are curious about Stewart O'Nan and would like to try one of his novels. Do yourself a favor and pick up Last Night at the Lobster  instead.
• You don't have much interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hollywood. This will surely bore you to death.
• Your primary interest in the Fitzgerald household is Zelda. She's a minor player here.
• You often wonder why, after so much research on the subject, an author chooses to write a novel instead of a biography.

What do you think? Will you pick or pass?

Tuesday Intro: Heads in Beds

Introduction

I've worked in hotels for more than a decade. I've checked you in, checked you out, oriented you to the property, served your beverages, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room service (before and, sadly, after), cleaned your toilets, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&M's out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. I have been on the front lines, and by that I mean front desk, of upscale hotels for years, and I've seen it all firsthand.

HEADS IN BEDS:A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
by Jacob Tomsky

Over the weekend, I mentioned a developing reading slump. Yesterday I visited the library and came home with a half dozen potential slump-busters, including this one. It seems to be doing the trick. Heads in Beds is not great literature, or even especially well-written for that matter, but I've already turned half of its pages. Maybe I'll even finish today. Light, nonfiction, entertaining... just what the doctor ordered.

One sentence summary (from goodreads):
In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential  and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry.

What do you think of the opening? Would you keep reading?

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

Weekly Update: February 8, 2015

Good morning from southwest Florida. We were out early this morning for our weekly trip to the farmers market - in February. What a treat! This certainly isn't central New York. We bought fresh seafood, meat, and poultry for the week, as well as vegetables, a baguette, and a ball of homemade mozzarella. We'll grill the fish and roast some veggies tonight, but I'll need to come up with a menu plan for the rest of the week.

Next up is a walk on the beach, lunch, and an arts festival. I could get used to this...

Now for the books.

After finishing The Warden by Anthony Trollope last Sunday, I decided to read some nonfiction and picked up Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. That was just an okay book for me and now I'm having trouble settling into anything.

Some Luck by Jane Smiley is on my kindle and will disappear in two days. No such thing as an overdue ebook ;-)  It's the first book of a planned trilogy (more a negative than a positive for me) and after about ten pages, I'm not ready to commit to the story. I am willing to give it a little more time, but a trip to the library is on tap for tomorrow... something else may catch my eye. If not, there's always airplane mode.

On audio, I started An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. I really liked the beginning but have not had much listening time, so will reserve judgement for now.

My reading seems to be floundering this weekend.

On the blog//
Other than my Tuesday Intro post of An Unnecessary Woman,  the blog has been quiet. It's time to buckle down and write some reviews.

In the kitchen//
My father-in-law was under the weather this week, so I tried a new recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup from Cooking Classy. He didn't eat much of it, but the rest of us liked it a lot.

Anticipating//
My sister and brother-in-law arrive on Saturday. Next week is her winter break and they're more than ready to escape the snow and cold. As much as I love spending the winter in paradise, I miss having my family around. I know we'll all have a great time together.

I'm also looking forward to another installment of Downton Abbey tonight. There can't be many episodes left...the season is ending far too quickly.

What are you reading today?

This post will link to It's Monday, What are you Reading? hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Tuesday Intro: An Unnecessary Woman

You could say I was thinking of other things when I shampooed my hair blue, and two glasses of red wine didn't help my concentration. 

Let me explain. 

First, you should know this about me: I have but one mirror in my home, a smudged one at that. I'm a conscientious cleaner, you might even say compulsive - the sink is immaculately white, its bronze faucet sparkles - but I rarely remember to wipe the mirror clean. I don't think we need to consult Freud or one of his many minions to know that there's an issue here.

An Unnecessary Woman
by Rabih Alameddine

I started listening to this book as I was falling asleep last night and found myself immediate drawn to the voice of the main character, Aaliya Saleh, as portrayed by narrator Suzanne Toren. I'm only 20 or 30 minutes in, but think I'm going to enjoy this one.

Here is the goodreads summary:

Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone. 

In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. 

A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East.

What do you think of the opening? Would you continue reading?

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

Weekly Update: Super Bowl Sunday Edition

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, an unofficial national holiday. Do you have plans to watch the big game? Or just the commercials? Is food the main draw? Personally, I can't wait for the Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip...a once-a-year treat for me. Can the Super Bowl possibly be as exciting as the Seattle/Green Bay play-off game a couple weeks ago? Are you as sick of deflate-gate as I am? And the really  big question... what about the Downton Abbey conflict??? I will certainly abandon the game come Downton time.

Current reading//

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Is this even the same book I read 15 years ago? I'm enjoying it so much more this time around and am already looking forward to Barchester Towers. I'll finish today... not sure what I'll pick up next.

Audrey's tempting tidbits from this Trollope biography by Victoria Glendinning prompted me to pick up a copy for myself last week. It will be a long-term companion read to my Barsetshire project.

On the blog//
Tuesday Intro: Reading Barsetshire
Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Not Exactly Euphoric - my review of Euphoria by Lily King

Later today//
- a walk on the beach
- a trip to the farmers market
- The Super Bowl, but only until Downton time

Happy February, friends!

This post will link to It's Monday, What are you Reading? hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Not Exactly Euphoric

As they were leaving the Mumbanyo, someone threw something at them. It bobbed a few yards from the stern of the canoe. A pale brown thing.
'Another dead baby,' Fen said.
He had broken her glasses by then, so she didn't know if he was joking.

The opening lines of Euphoria by Lily King, among the oddest I've encountered, left me feeling slightly off-balance. Unfortunately, I was never able regain my equilibrium or fully connect with the novel.

Inspired by events in the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria tells the story of "three young, gifted anthropologists in the 1930s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives."

I listened to the book in December after it was offered as an audible daily deal. In addition to the price, there were three additional draws:
-  it had appeared on several year-end "Best of" lists
-  I have a vague interest in both anthropology and Margaret Mead
-  narrators Simon Vance and Xe Sands are among my favorites

While I found lots of interesting anthropological tidbits, the novel itself just didn't have much of an impact on me.

The high point was definitely the narration. Euphoria perfectly lends itself to a dual narrator production and the combination of Simon Vance with Xe Sands was inspired. Vance, narrating the larger portion as Englishman Andrew Bankson, easily slips in and out of an Aussie accent. Sands narration adds depth and understanding to the character of Nell Stone.

Not a favorite by any means, but I'm glad I listened.

My rating:

Euphoria
by Lily King
narrated by Simon Vance, Xe Sands
Blackstone Audio, 2014
6 hours and 53 minutes