An Aside: Stealing Athena in photos

In photos and going chronologically, Karen Essex's Stealing Athena is a novel about the Parthenon and two women who had a major impact on its state of being.

[My photo of the Parthenon in 2004]

Perikles began building on the Athenian Acropolis in 447 BC.

[Roman copy of Pericles bust, from The Elgin Marbles by B.F. Cook]

He put the sculptor Pheidias in charge of artistic decisions and according to the book, Pheidias decided to use Perikles' mistress and Stealing Athena's protagonist Aspasia as his model for his glorious statue of Athena, known as Athena Parthenos. (Pheidias was also accused of hiding portraits of himself and Perikles in the massive statue.) Although the original statue no longer survives, today you can see Alan LeQuire's replica (based on historical writings and artifacts) in Nashville's full-scale Parthenon. (Why Nashville has a full-scale replica of the Parthenon I do not know.)

[The photo of Athena comes from the city of Nashville's website.]

Fast-forward about 2,200 years to first years of the 19th century. There was a man named Lord Elgin. He loved the Parthenon more than he loved his wife, the heiress Mary Nisbet and the other protagonist of Stealing Athena.

The photo of Lord Elgin, attributed to a 1795 drawing by G.P. Harding, also comes from Cook's book. The drawing of Mary Nesbit, Countess of Elgin, is found on the cover of Susan Nagel's awesome biography, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles.]

But by that time, the Acropolis had been used and abused. After the fall of the Greek gods, the Parthenon had been turned into a church; when the Turks arrived, they turned into a mosque. Later, they used it to store gunpowder and half the building exploded during a Venetian siege in 1687. So Elgin made it his life's mission to cart what he could back to England, thus beginning one of the art world's biggest controversies. Since he didn't have much money of his own, he used his wife's fortune. Ironically, saving the Acropolis marbles from further ruin helped destroy his own marriage. In the wake of a scandalous divorce, he was forced to sell his beloved marbles to the British Museum in 1816.

According to the British Museum, about half of the marble sculptures from the Parthenon survive. They have a good chunk of what's left, including about 60 percent of the remaining frieze and "much" of what remains of the East Pediment.

[My 2004 photos of the Duveen Gallery (top) and East Pediment (bottom)]

Now we're going beyond Stealing Athena, but the rest of the remaining frieze is in Athens. When I was there, in 2004, it was housed in the old, small Acropolis museum that was on top of the hill. (As I recall, the overflow was kept in storage.) The British Museum refuses to give them back to Athens and for a long time, one of the arguments was that Greece didn't have a proper facility in which to house them. Although the spectacular new Acropolis Museum opened in 2009 (alas, I haven't yet been), the B.M. still isn't budging - and I imagine they never will.

This subject of location is highly controversial and while I've tried to keep my own opinions out of this post, the one thing that sticks out in my mind from my trips to Athens and London is the difference in the marbles' condition from one location to the next. Say what you will but Elgin's actions led to a better preservation in the long-run - and it's obvious in pictures:

[My 2004 photos of a frieze section in Athens (top) and a metope in London (bottom)]

Anyway...that would be the end (and I am reminded once again of why I hate trying to input photos into Blogger...)

#9: Stealing Athena, Karen Essex

As you can see, I skipped number eight, which was Shakespeare's Henry IV. While not my favorite of his plays, I recognize the genius to say I liked it well enough. But since I discussed it ad nauseum with my students, I'm done with it - and thus moving on to number 9...

...Karen Essex's Stealing Athena. I had high hopes for this book since it features one of history's most interesting ladies - the indomitable Mary Nisbit, Countess of Elgin - but unfortunately I had a hard time getting into it. The novel actually centers on the Parthenon and weaves together two tales - that of Aspasia, Perikles' lover, who was alive when the Parthenon was built and may have posed for the its Athena statue, and that of Lady Elgin, who funded her husband's removal of the sculptures when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The text shifts back and forth between the two tales and what they have in common, besides the building itself, is both women have these spirited, overcome-it-all personalities.

I think the problem was that while the two female protagonists were strong, the secondary characters (i.e. everyone else) were pretty flimsy. In Aspasia's story - which constituted most of the second half of the book - it didn't matter all that much because it was really about her...navigating her tenuous relationship with Perikles, achieving success as a philosopher, and later defending herself in court against the establishment who felt she'd overstepped her bounds. But Mary's tale is different because it has everything to do with her husband - and he was such a thinly painted ass in Stealing Athena that it was hard to see why she put up with him.

Historically, Mary and Lord Elgin marry in 1799 - they may or may not have been in love, but she was endowed with an enormous fortune and said to be quite charming, while he had a title and was thought to have a great career ahead of him. They immediately head off to his new post in Istanbul/Constantinople and while there, they convince their hosts - who had ruled Greece since the 1400s - to let them take the Parthenon marbles back to England. [The Turks don't care for the wonders of Ancient Greece and had let the Acropolis buildings fall into ruin.] This becomes Elgin's great passion but he doesn't have the money, so Mary's fortune ends up funding the lengthy and complicated endeavor. But then the tides shift, Elgin becomes a political prisoner in France and Mary spends a lot of years on her own, and it eventually leads them to a very scandalous divorce.

It's a fascinating story - much more complicated than my abridged version - but I didn't feel like Stealing Athena did it justice. The history was all there, but it was hard to get sucked into it because Essex relied on action more than emotion. As a result, I had a hard time figuring out for most of the novel whether or not Elgin was supposed to be the good guy or bad guy - was he a noble collector or a thief of both Mary's fortune and the Parthenon? Was he a loving father and husband or a mean and spiteful man without a nose? (Seriously, he loses his nose.) I found it hard to empathize with Mary's plight because I couldn't get a grip on how I was supposed to feel about Elgin, since his characterization shifted back and forth. So overall, I found Susan Nagel's Mistress of the Elgin Marbles (which Essex mentioned in the acknowledgements) to be much more captivating.

So as you can probably tell, I am a wee bit obsessed with the Elgin Marbles and so the next post is a photo gallery...

Something Borrowed movie adaptation

Something Borrowed, an adaptation of Emily Giffin's fabulous and bestselling novel, comes out this Friday - but I can't decide if I'm enthused. I like this book so much that I've read it twice. But I can't figure out my feelings toward this movie (and I was spot on with my Eat, Pray, Love assessment). Watch the trailer and then we'll discuss:



As seen, Something Borrowed is the tale of the love triangle between mousy lawyer Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin), her best friend Darcy (ugh, Kate Hudson), and the man they both want, Dex (Colin Egglesfield). The trailer implies that the movie stays true to the book's events except in one major regard: Ethan. In the book, the action pretty much revolves around Rachel, Darcy, and Dex, which makes sense (the triangle is perfection in art, no?) and keeps things focused. I realize promoting Ethan to a major force here was a chance for the filmmakers to cast another hot young actor, the always hilarious John Krasinki, and appeal to the ladies. But it strikes me as a distraction, this fourth big character - and sort of effs up the sequel, when Darcy has to flee to him at his home in London. (And no, it ain't London, Connecticut.)

Thoughts?

Update on 6/5: So I've seen the movie now. It wasn't the greatest movie ever made but probably didn't deserve the critical thrashing either. But in regards to Ethan, I think they forced it - they moved him eventually but it felt forced.

#6 and #7: Room and Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (meh)

I read Emma Donoghue's Room and Rhoda Janzen's Mennonite in a Little Black Dress back-to-back in February. Both books had gotten good word of mouth but personally, I wasn't really into either of them (which is perhaps why I put off blogging about them). Warning: A few spoilers in the next paragraph.

Room is the story of a little boy named Jack and his mom, who if I recall correctly never gets a name. Jack is this really happy-go-lucky little kid with boundless enthusiasm for the world - except that he doesn't realize the "world" is a little room, because Jack's mom was kidnapped by a guy they call Old Nick, who keeps them prisoner in a garden shed. To five-year-old Jack, his world is amazing, which we hear as he (torturously) baby-talks his narration; his mom just wants to escape. And eventually they do (too easily, I thought) and Jack and his mother go through all kinds of readjustment issues. And I know I was supposed to think it profound, the contrast in perception and happiness and fear, but I just didn't feel it. (Apparently most Amazon readers did - it has 475 five-star reviews.) Which was too bad - I really enjoyed Donoghue's Slammerkin, a novel that could not be more different in subject or tone, which I read in 2008.

I started Mennonite in a Little Black Dress back in November and put it down probably six times to read other things. In theory, the memoir is about the author's discovery that her husband is gay, quickly followed by a terrible car wreck, which causes her to flee for her parents' home to recuperate. Except that she grew up Mennonite, so she has to go from being big-city sinful back to innocence-ish religious ways - which is supposed to provide much comic fodder and the heart of the book. But in truth, I never really caught onto the storyline because it really jumped around (and admittedly, my lack of attention didn't help) - it was hard to keep up with the chronology and minor characters, like the brothers and sisters-in-law, who weren't well fleshed out. Despite the premise, I don't think I learned anything significant about the Mennonites - in fact, I'm not sure what the book was really about. In the end, it seemed to be more about relating individual witty anecdotes (which were individually funny) but as a whole, I don't think the memoir came together. It simply lacked an overarching story.

So that was my February reading, fairly disappointing...which is perhaps why I didn't finish another book until the beginning of April. :(

Three Cups of Tea: True or False?

I've been pretty fascinated by the brouhaha over Three Cups of Tea since the controvery hit about 10 days ago but I've resisted posting because I don't know what to believe. Anyone else with me on this? But I'm starting to doubt Greg Mortenson's intentions, mostly because his new explanations aren't holding up either - and if that turns out to be the case, I'm angling for my $10 back, to spend it on a piece of fiction that actually says fiction. [Full disclosure: I personally know all the Outside people mentioned herein as I used to work at the magazine.]

In a nutshell, author Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes go after Greg Mortenson on two main points: that he fabricated significant events in Three Cups and that he has mismanaged his charity's funds, both refusing to document expenses and using the charity's dime to promote his books and then pocketing the proceeds. The first charge, that he made up events - including the origin story of how he wandered into the Pakistani village of Korphe and discovered his life's mission - appears to be true. In an interview with Outside editor Alex Heard, Mortenson blames his co-author David Oliver Relin, saying that he synthesized events to create a stronger narrative and no one cared when Mortenson complained. To the second charge, Mortenson acknowledges in the same Outside interview that he did use charity funds to charter a jet for the sake of time management, that people are misreading the charity's tax records, and that an independent law firm has established that they've done nothing wrong.

I think I've fairly synthesized both sides of the argument...and it's still hard to know what to believe. In a lot of ways, it's a he-said-she-said involving a very remote part of the world. Add in a heap of commentary from everybody from the New York Times to your ordinary blogger (hello, world!) and the water just keeps getting muddier and muddier. Interestingly though, Mortenson's side has remained mostly quiet in the face of some pretty damning financial evidence. (If you read Alex Heard's interview, you'll see on pages 4 and 5 that Mortenson doesn't deny using the charity's funds or refute Krakauer's main argument; rather, he justifies it in the way that many of his Internet defenders have, that the ends justify the means.)

I think it's fair to say that Greg Mortenson had good intentions to change the world but he lost them in the hustle-and-bustle along the way. The mismanagement of the charity seems pretty well documented. Whether he absentmindedly misplaced those intentions when things got too big or discarded them when he became a millionaire remains to be seen.

Personally, I'm leaning toward the "changed by fame" interpretation - but then, I was never a big fan of Three Cups of Tea. As I said at the time, the text struck me as manipulative, like a very long PR manifesto. But the biggest issue now, it seems, is that Mortenson's new and improved explanations don't seem to hold water which in my opinion is the thing that makes him look the most guilty.

Take the debate of the origin story, how he got to Korphe and how long he stayed there. In the greater scheme of things, it's probably irrelevant if Relin condensed the incident. But the fact remains, as the 60 Minutes mash-up (start at minute 1:30) adequately proved, that Mortenson repeats Relin's version of the story on tour as truth. Now, he blames Relin for the inaccuracy and says he voiced concerns - but if that's true, why keep repeating an inaccurate tale? (Interestingly, in an interview with the University of Oregon's Etude in 2008, Relin gives a remarkably different account of how he and Mortenson came to work together, compared to Mortenson's version in the Outside interview.) But now it seems that the revised version of the Korphe tale - which Mortenson provided to Outside - isn't plausibly true either. A second Outside article posits that geographically, the facts don't line up.

What can I say, I have a hard time having faith in someone whose story keeps being disproved. I don't know what the truth is, but it's not looking good for Mortenson.

#5: Russian Winter, Daphne Kalotay

I read Russian Winter in January, just as Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe for her performance in Black Swan; for awhile there, I felt surrounded by mentally unstable ballerinas with starring roles in Swan Lake. The two stories dovetailed quite nicely and I enjoyed a month filled with visions of tutus and sugar plums dancing in my head.

Like Possession and the Lauren Willeg novels, Russian Winter features lonely modern-day scholars try to figure out mysterious historical happenings who in doing so heal their own psychological wounds. In this one, professor and adoptee Grigori Solodin is trying to figure out who his parents are; before the novel opens, he has contacted the now-elderly prima ballerina Nina Revskaya, and although we don't know exactly why, she suddenly decides to auction off all of her jewelry. This jumpstarts Russian Winter's plot and brings in Drew Brooks, a recently divorced young woman who works at the auction house and is trying to unearth Nina Revskaya's biography, in order to firm up the auction catalogue. The novel moves back and forth between the present day, when Drew and Grigori start working together, to Nina's memories in Moscow before she defected. Interestingly, the present-day action is written in past tense, while Nina's memories happen in present tense, flipping perspective on "reality" and importance.

At first, I couldn't get into it. Grigori's only clue to his birth parents is a purse that contains some photos, letters, and an amber pendant. He's sure that the letters were written by Nina's husband, Viktor Elsin, and Nina has launched the auction after hearing from him - so it seemed pretty obvious, despite the book's mystery, that they are his biological parents. But then I realized that was way too easy and figured out who his parents really were - and suprisingly that got me into Russian Winter, because I knew it was going to take some serious drama to make that happen and I was looking forward to the where and the when. And then the end came and I found out I was totally wrong - the real answer was totally out of left field (but a believable left field) and I was really impressed by the actual ending, the believable surprise. It seems like a difficult feat to pull off but Kalotay managed it well.

Russian Winter also reminded me, interestingly, of Atonement and The Joy Luck Club, with the introduction of the subtle idea that the telling of stories can heal wounds, and the release of depressing/scary/embarrassing family stories (ie the truth) can free you from emotional burden. As a writer, I really connect with that message - it seems like one of literature's main purposes and the result is beautiful and powerful when done well.

At the end of the novel, Nina says, "'Who else, after I die, will even remember these people? They were real people.' It sounded silly to say it that way, not what she meant at all. What she meant was that it seemed a crime that their thoughts, their lives -- the very fact of their lives, the truth of their lives -- were lost along with them. No one to preserve the truth of who they were. Who they had been." (p. 427)

An Aside: Great Gatsby video game

Yes, there's a Great Gatsby video game that you can play on the Internet! In this supposedly original Nintendo game (Mediabistro doubts the "I found it at a yard sale" origin story), you take on the persona of Nick Carraway navigating his way through the world. The game starts out at one of Gatsby's parties, where Nick's goal is to dodge waiters (or take them out with his flying hat weapon) in an attempt to locate Gatsby.

A random Level Two, the Valley of Ashes, takes place on top of a train. I'm not quite sure what the ultimate point of The Great Gatsby game is - I couldn't get past the laser-shooting T.J. Eckleburg eyes to find out - but the game is quietly addicting, despite the annoying soundtrack.

Clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way. The game has garnered 126, 000 Facebook likes and 5,000+ tweets!

#4: The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

For the record, I finished Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club for the second time at the end of January. I assigned it to my students because it oddly treads some similar ground as The Odyssey and King Arthur, but from a female/minority perspective. I really do love this novel but after three weeks of discussing it, a quiz examining it, and an exam reviewing it, I just can't be bothered to blog about it. I hope you understand.

#3: The Red Queen, Philippa Gregory

The Red Queen is book two of the Cousins' War series; I read the first book, the aptly titled The White Queen, at the end of December 2009. The first two books portray more or less the same time period, but from opposite sides, during England's War of the Roses in the 1400s. The narrators of both books are the scheming wives of powerful men: The White Queen featured Elizabeth Woodville who married the Yorkist King Edward IV whereas The Red Queen centers on Margaret Beaufort, heir to the House of Lancaster. They're both desperately trying to put their own heirs on the throne (although god knows why, they're technically all part of one family...hooray for incest!).

About halfway through both Queen books, the stories merge together; I assumed book three would focus on the ultimate outcome (the two rivals becoming grandmothers to the same future king) but Philippa Gregory's website says that the next book, The Rivers Woman out fall 2011, will focus on Elizabeth's mother, Jacquetta, a rumored witch. But I digress...

I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first, possibly because Margaret Beaufort might be one of the most annoying characters working in fiction today. As a child, she believes that she has divine visions of Joan of Arc and believes she is just as chosen, making for a lot of sanctimonious selfishness. It is slightly amusing when she utters clueless things like, "I care nothing for his good looks as I am devoid of vanity and lust, but the rightness of being his wife and becoming Queen of England haunts me like a lost love" (p. 212). But then, passage after passage, I was reminded of how much I hate people like this...because mon dieu, if you gotta let everyone know just how devout you are, you're in it for the wrong reasons.

Besides drinking the Jesus juice, Margaret harbors some serious jealous toward Elizabeth Woodville for marrying Edward IV, a mate that would have made Margaret queen. And Margaret deserved to be queen, dontcha know? "The plans were formed by a woman who thought herself the mother of a king, who could not be satisfied to be an ordinary woman," Margaret says on page 301, speaking of Elizabeth though she easily could be describing herself. "The fault of the enterprise lay in the vanity of a woman who would be queen, and who would overturn the peace of the country for her own selfish desire." She says this, of course, after she's failed to overthrow King Richard III when trying to put her own kid on the throne.

So after all this, you expect (nay, pray!) she'll get the comeuppance she so rightly deserves. The book ends before the saga concludes but historically, you know it's not going to happen. Her kid is Henry Tudor, i.e. Henry VII. She gets exactly what she wants and becomes a very powerful figure at court, far more powerful than her rival's daughter, Elizabeth of York, who ends up bearing her a grandchild. Margaret deserves a swift kick in the ass but alas, it never arrives. And that ends up being a real shame after putting up with this woman for 400 pages.

An Aside: Casting The Hunger Games

From what I've seen on the interwebs, there's a lot of speculation surrounding The Hunger Games casting but no actual news to report. (In December, the L.A. Times quoted producer Nina Jacobsen as saying they have no front-runners since they're still looking over the millions of young actors no doubt salivating for the star-making roles. That last part, of course, is mine; she just said they were still looking for someone who could capture Katniss' complexity.)

So, I offer a suggestion. Not for Katniss, but for the role of Panem president Coriolanus Snow. As I was reading Mockingjay, a book which prominently features President Snow and his white hair, a vision hit me. He should be played by this man:

Yes, Karl Lagerfeld. That is all.

#2: Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

Thank god, Mockingjay took the plot in a new direction. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed The Hunger Games - just not twice. But this last installment had serious "what's going to happen" momentum and I consumed Mockingjay in about 24 hours.

In the third and final book, the rebellion has taken center stage. Mockingjay starts with Katniss walking around the ashes of her home, District 12, which was blown to bits by the government forces after she was pulled out of the Quarter Quell arena in a massive plot by the rebels of District 13 - where she now lives with her mother, sister, and remaining survivors. Katniss is very conflicted about taking over the role of the Mockingjay, the symbolic heart of the revolution, because it will result in death and she hasn't resolved her guilt about causing death to her fellow tributes to secure her own life. The book isn't terribly complicated or filled with any surprises but it's remarkable for this - the emotional wounding of Katnisss Everdeen.

The main characters in the other two wildly popular teen series, Harry Potter and Twilight, on the other hand exhibit an utter lack of growth, which is what I came to hate about the books. I mean, the characters go through all kinds of crazy shit but at the end, they emerge unscathed and ridiculously cheerful like they've spent their respective series sunbathing on Bora Bora. How does that work? (Conversely, the emotional fallout is what I respect in works like The Lord of the Rings, Atonement, and even The Odyssey. Being good, or trying to be good, is a lot harder than being bad. If heroism was easy, everyone would be heroic. The point of these books is, the hero suffers and keeps going, despite personal consequence...making him/her a hero. Sheesh.)

Without giving away the plot, I'll just say that unlike Bella Swan, Katniss Everdeen doesn't get everything she wants wrapped up in a neat little bow at the end. She succeeds and completes her heroic journey - which I think was obvious from the outset and not actually giving anything away - but not without loss and change. And that journey - both emotional and physical - was what made for an incredible series.

An Aside: Mystery and Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak

As I mentioned in my last post, there are 22 art prints strewn throughout Steve Martin's most recent novel, An Object of Beauty. I loved these unexpected delights and yet....I found them a little confusing. I could never figure out if the print was the actual piece mentioned in the text or just a work by that particular artist meant to enhance the reading experience. (Or perhaps I am just way over-thinking this?)

The one that really stumped me though was the appearance of Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak, as the Parrish print in the text is the novel's smoking gun. This is what the gorgeous print looks like:

But then the text describes the scene differently: Lacey points to the painting and tells the narrator Daniel that her grandmother was a woman named Kitty Owen, who "was eighteen when she took off all her clothes for him and posed." Which then means that the "grandmother" has to be the figure standing up, since the figure lying down is clothed. She goes on to say that the now 92-year-old no longer has the red hair and the narrator Daniel writes, "I looked at the slender, pale girl on the cover of the book, who looked like a faun standing over an idyllic pool trimmed in iridescent tiles." From all that, I deduced that the unnamed painting in the book was just made-up since the standing figure isn't pale with red hair or standing over a pool or even "arching up, and facing the twilight" as the chapter ends with. And fine, this is a work of fiction; I accept this. But, but...then I found out Kitty Owen was a real woman who posed for Maxfield Parrish. So shouldn't it be a description of the painting featured in the book? I am confused.

And apparently, I am the only person confused. I tried googling this, but the only thing that popped up was middling reviews for this book (though interestingly, an Object of Beauty has 44 five-star reviews on Amazon, compared to a combined 30 one- and two-star reviews.) So, yup, perhaps I am way over-thinking this...though if anyone has a thought, I'm all ears.

#1: An Object of Beauty, Steve Martin

I feel conflicted about An Object of Beauty. I absolutely adore Steve Martin (and should I ever win an Oscar, I fantasize that he will be the one to hand it over) and found this novel to be a quick read on a flight home from Europe. But I didn't actually like it - I kept waiting for the action to start but it never really did...and then it ended with a dull deus en machina event. As usual, I will do a little spoiling, but only a very little bit.

An Object of Beauty tells the sordid tale of a young woman named Lacey Yeager who is determined to take Manhattan by storm, by any means possible. So it's all sex and schemes and it seems to work even though she's kinda despicable. The telling of all this comes by an old friend, narrator Daniel Franks, who documents her high-powered career in the art world in order to try to figure out her allure and her tricks. As he says in the first line, "I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yeager, yet I worry that unless I write her story down, I will be unable to ever write about anything else." Writing this now, I sort of see a parallel with Nick Carraway and The Great Gastsby - it's another book where a passive narrator is trying to figure out why selfish people are doing bad things and why, for a time, he participates. And yet, An Object of Beauty is no Great Gatsby.

I think the main reason (and the biggest problem with the book) was that the pivotal moment - when Lacey acquires a large sum of money through devious means - comes very quietly. So quietly, in fact, that only in retrospect did I see that it was the do-or-die moment for Lacey, the moment that the entire novel hinged on. It was also the turning point for the narrator. I guess the incident was to remain as a question stuck in my mind, but it was so undramatic that I forgot about it. Which is the problem with having an emotionally distant narrator - he didn't seem to care that much about it, so why would I?

The most interesting thing about An Object of Beauty was the 22 color art prints scattered throughout the book. I was shocked when the first one appeared on page 14 (though perhaps I should have just read the book jacket more carefully). Oh, and I learned that Steve Martin and I have wildly different versions of what constitutes "sex." His descriptions and the use of the word sex didn't seem to match up in the conventional definition - and I think that might actually, randomly be my biggest takeaway. So take from that what you will.

2011's Books: Better, Much Better

Let's forget the failures of the past, shall we? Yes. We. Are. Forgetting. Now.

Here's what I'm hoping to read this year, while also recognizing that this list invariably changes as new books come out and I get distracted by shiny things:

Ancient Classics (and helpers): Metamorphosis, The Aeneid, The Iliad, The War That Killed Achilles, It's All Greek to Me

Classics: Persuasion, Villette

Biography/Autobiography: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Cleopatra, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, The Talented Miss Highsmith, Kitchen Confidential

Non-Fiction Travel Tales: Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story, All Over the Map

Other Non-Fiction: Unbroken, Outliers

Fiction: An Object of Beauty, Mockingjay, Russian Winter, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Room, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Brightest Star in the Sky

Historical People, Fictionalized: The Red Queen, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, The Birth of Venus, Leonardo's Swans, Stealing Athena

For School: The Joy Luck Club, Shakespeare's Henry IV, Persepolis

All I can say is, wow, my taste in books has really changed in the last 10 years.

2010's Final Tally: Pathetic

And so that's where 2010 ended...at #24 with King Arthur. It is, in a word, pathetic. Especially since I am writing this post on January 16. But onto better and brighter things...really...because 2011 will be better and brighter. I hope.

#24: King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Roger Lancelyn Green

After The Odyssey, my students tackled about half of this King Arthur book. I think they liked it better, simply because they could understand it. It had been awhile since I had read any King Arthur, so I ended up reading the whole thing - it seemed like it would be hard to choose stories if I didn't know what the stories were, you know?

I don't much feel like delving into King Arthur - it is what it is, chivalry, damsels, evil knights, etc - but I will say that I didn't particularly enjoy this edition. Although the introduction makes it clear that these are in fact separate stories and that Green relied on different sources, the book as set up seems to be one continuous narrative. And as a result, the main characters switch personalities at the drop of a hat. In Book One, Arthur is the young king who leads England to its destined glory; he's nearly absent from Books Two and Three and then suddenly in Book Four, he's been transformed into an impotent monarch blindsided by his wife's infidelity. Lancelot flip-flops between faithful and faithless, sickened and set upon his path, depending on the story. And then Mordred - in one chapter, he's ashamed of his deviousness, but then later, he's described as being evil as his nature.

In addition, I didn't understand some of the story choices. Morgana le Fay, Arthur's usual nemesis, barely appears in this version. And then, even stranger, Green identifies Mordred as her son, instead of the commonly accepted son of Arthur and his half sister Morgawse (which then adds an interesting motivation, that of a bastard son fighting his father for his birthright). It was just weird.

#23: The Odyssey, Homer

Speaking of classics, I re-tackled this one in October. I hadn't read The Odyssey since ninth grade but since I was teaching it to ninth graders this year (ahhh, the circle of life), I needed to read it again. I remember liking it the first go-round but this time, I really recognized what a masterwork it is.

So, The Odyssey is an epic poem likely written between 800 B.C. and 700 B.C. about a Trojan War hero named Odysseus. He's brave, strong, and crafty, but he's also an Everyman, representing any individual's ability to be a hero should he/she so choose. Odysseus masterminds the Greeks' victory when he comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse, but then the winning side pisses off the gods (lesson #1: Don't fuck with Athena) and the victors find that they're all doomed in their journeys home. Odysseus then makes several more mistakes in judgment, landing himself on Poseidon's bad side when he blinds his son, Polyphemus (lesson #2: Don't mess with a sea god when you have to sail home). As a result, Odysseus and his fleet get tossed around by the waves and as they go from port to port, either Odysseus or the crewmen make more mistakes until everyone is dead but Odysseus. Finally, ten years later and worn and torn, and with extensive help from a now-fond Athena, Odysseus makes it home to Ithaca only to find that he's presumed dead and all the eligible bachelors in the area have lodged themselves in his palace in an attempt to woo his wife and become king. Having learned from all of his rash mistakes, Odysseus bides his time and plots with his son until the book culminates in a Quentin Tarantino-style bloodbath in chapter 22. But then, happy ending, the family is reunited and the hero is restored to his rightful place. Fun!

There are so many thousands of things one could talk about with this book but most interesting, I thought, was the lingering question of whether or not Odysseus was truly a hero. For one, he's awfully whiny, especially when we first see him crying on Calypso's island. He also makes some morally questionable decisions and causes a lot of carnage (which perhaps the ancient Greeks didn't find so questionable) - is Odysseus really a hero if nearly everyone who meets him ends up dead? And perhaps most importantly, is Odysseus really a hero if he never has an original thought and takes all his direction from Athena and Zeus? In the end, he doesn't "win" by his own skill - the most important gods just like him better. I think you can see where I come down on this; my co-worker, on the other hand, argues that Odysseus is a hero simply because he keeps going. He's faced with seemingly insurmountable odds and death at every turn but the man keeps on trucking anyway. And I guess that's what makes him an Everyman and an inspiration.

It's even inspired me to read some of the classic classics this year. The Greek plays (ahem, Sophocles) killed my enthusiasm for these sorts of works in tenth grade, but I realize I may have left the canon a little abruptly. So at some point in 2011, I'm aiming to read The Iliad, Charlotte Higgins' It's All Greek to Me, and with some luck Metamorphosis and The Aeneid.

Oprah Chooses Dickens

Oprah recently selected Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations as her new book club picks. Clearly, I was so excited about this news a month ago that I didn't rush to post anything about it. Meh, Dickens. I've never read anything by him and I know it's a gaping hole in my literary education but...meh, I just can't get up the enthusiasm for it. I've previously attempted both of these books and never made it past page 5.

So why am I posting, you ask? One, because I posted about Freedom as her last pick and I'm trying to be more consistent with ye olde blog. But mostly because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the cover design of the Oprah Dickens edition. I love it so much that I am considering buying it, despite the fact that I already have copies of both books...and no interest in actually reading them. (Apparently most people don't agree with me: USA Today reported that the new edition failed to crack the Top 50 on the bestseller list, theorizing that people already own these books or realize they can get them for a lot less or even for free on e-various readers.)

Apparently there's been quite a hubbub over the suitability of these classics for the average American reader. Hillary Kelly of The New Republic felt that Oprah is leading millions of the unwashed tribe astray by suggesting Dickens as a holiday hot-chocolate companion. Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College presents the counter-argument on his blog that any reading is always worth it; Beatrice.com calls Kelly's view profoundly elitist. I think all arguments have some merit - Dickens is probably not the right choice for this particular audience and I dislike the cattle mentality of Oprah's book club and yet...reading is good. So if you should choose to take up the gauntlet, I must point out that Oprah.com has posted a high school-esque reading guide to get you started.

#21 and #22: The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

I read the The Hunger Games and Catching Fire back-to-back in October, after reading about the upcoming movie adaptation in Entertainment Weekly and generally hearing this series bandied about as "the next Twilight" (despite a distinct lack of vampires and werewolves). You know, I'm a teacher now, so I try to keep up with what the kids are reading - though despite the bestseller status, I have yet to spy one of these books in a kid's hand, alas.

The Hunger Games is the monomyth-based tale of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in District 12 of Panem, a post-apocalyptic country that stands in the place of a destroyed America. Every year to remind the people of the damage that rebellion can do, the Capitol demands that each district send them a teenage boy and girl to fight in the televised Hunger Games, a to-the-death battle in a horror-house arena. The tributes, as the sacrificial teens are called, are drawn by lottery and when Katniss' younger sister's name is drawn, she volunteers instead...which sends her out into the world on a hero's journey. (Like all monomythic heroes, she lacks at least one of her parents - in her case, a father - and she has a mentor, though he's not so magical. Harry Potter has a wand, Luke Skywalker has a light saber, and Katniss wields a bow.) Since the story is a trilogy - I have the third installment, Mockingjay, waiting for me at the library when I get home - I think you can pretty much guess how things turn out for Katniss in the arena as she learns the necessary lessons and achieves her destiny.

It's an interesting tale, considering it's a series about teenagers killing teenagers. Collins did a good job in navigating the minefield of how the reader can root for Katniss and want her to win, and still accept the horrific things that have to happen. I genuinely liked the first book. The second, not quite as much - despite its initial promise, Catching Fire unexpectedly mimics the premise of the first book. Which worked, I guess, for Harry Potter and Twilight but I've always found that repitition kinda boring. Still, I'm looking forward to Mockingjay, which seems likely to tread its own path.

#20: The Best of Friends, Mariana Pasternak

The Best of Friends is an interesting, troubling, strange book. As author Mariana Pasternak details her fractious friendship with (former) longtime pal Martha Stewart, she claims to be meditating on the bonds between females, hoping she will "inspire other women to take a close look at the intimacy of our friendships," as she writes in the final pages. But c'mon, we're all smarter than that! Really, The Best of Friends is a nasty tell-all marketed toward people like me who want to know more about one of the most famous/fascinating/vilified women in America. And it's written by someone who is nowhere near as famous - an oh-so fabulous Eastern European emigree/victim who will benefit by becoming just a little bit famous for writing said tell-all. These sorts of books are always strange, and hypocritical, and it's an icky strangeness and hypocrisy that the author and the reader participate in together.

Interestingly, I left the book feeling sorry for Martha Stewart, which was very much not Pasternak's point. (I gathered the ultimate point was to take revenge on Stewart for involving her in the ImClone scandal.) I felt sorry for Martha Stewart mostly because my biggest pet peeve is when people blame others for their own choices - which is what Pasternak spends the entire book doing. She is a grown woman who barely acknowledges the fact that she made an ongoing choice to stay in an allegedly damaging friendship. And reading between the lines, you start to see why Pasternak put up with this for 20 years: She liked what she got from the arrangement. Friendship with Martha brought prestige, introductions to famous people, trips, invitations to amazing events and dinners, and opportunities for her daughters. And that's cool, but she never recognizes that she used as much as she feels she got used.

In a nutshell, the two meet as young, recently-ish married women. They hang out with their husbands as a foursome, then as a threesome as Andy Stewart departs the scene. Then Stewart and Pasternak become a twosome since Martha's post-divorce needs put too much of a strain on Mariana's marriage. Over time, as we all know, Martha becomes incredibly rich and famous - and it turns out that a wealthy Martha likes to take fabulously exotic trips. Mariana can't afford it but apparently feels like she must keep up with the Joneses, so she accepts a loan from Martha and is then shocked when she receives a carefully calculated bill post-trip. She doesn't say anything, feels bitter, and yet accepts the same offer again, multiple times, restarting the cycle. And it's not just about exotic vacations: Generally speaking, the women compete with each other over things like money/clothes/men, Martha does something, Mariana doesn't like it but doesn't say anything and loses out, and so the disturbing dance continued.

Reading the book, you see that for Mariana, money is about friendship, and for Martha, money means business. And really, either viewpoint is acceptable - the problem becomes expectation. And that's really what this book made me think about: how you don't ever get to control others' actions, and the only thing you are truly entitled to is your own reaction. Mariana never addresses the problems in the friendship and yet seems incredibly bitter that Martha didn't perform to her specifications (which is ironic, considering one of the chief complaints lobbed at Martha is that she expected others to do exactly this). On page 319, she writes, "That was a lot of effort for Martha to make for someone else, and it impressed me when she gave Charlotte the champagne wedding brunch at Skylands, but having it done for me could only mean that Martha was finally beginning to be the kind of treasured friend I had always wanted her to be."

That's what The Best of Friends is really about: Martha Stewart was not the friend that Mariana Pasternak expected her to be. And instead of confronting her friend at the time or acknowledging her own free will in the situation now, Pasternak wrote a blame book, blaming Martha Stewart for everything. And in this, The Best of Friends is fascinating.