Knopf 100--Day 23

85. We’ve probably written about Toni Morrison more than any other writer. Liz and I adore her. In fact, Beloved is on both of our top ten books of all time list, and it's actually my favorite novel. 

Anyway, Song of Solomon was arguably Morrison’s first great book. The Bluest Eye and Sula are very good books and the perfect start if you plan to jump into Morrison’s literary canon, but it was Song of Solomon, the epic American novel that follows a single family nearly a century, that was a hint at what Morrison would soon produce in her masterpiece, Beloved. (And apologies to Franzen devotees, but Morrison is the living master of the American landscape, the American story, and the publication of Beloved on the heals of Song of Solomon sealed that deal long ago. Before Morrison it was Twain, I suppose.) Morrison isn’t easy, and she asks us big, deep, moving questions and a reader must pay attention. Read Toni Morrison because it will make your life richer.  Don’t read her because you have to, or think you should (or you had a bad high school situation in your AP class...). Read Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, Jazz, or The Bluest Eye, because everything you’ve heard about a book changing your life is true. End of sermon. 

86. I am going to move right on to another writer that both Liz and I love, Alice Munro. Now that I think about it, Liz and I are two peas in two very differently sized pods. Anyway, I thought I would choose a Munro book that we haven't written about at all, The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose. It's set in a small 1930's Canadian town that is filled with everything you'd want--thieves, bootleggers, prostitutes, and less exciting people like factory folk--and shopkeepers like Rose and her step mother, Flo. Although, to be fair when I say boring, Rose does date quite a bit. In fact, a good number of the stories are about Rose's love life; in one she is seduced on a long train ride by a .... that's right, a very old minister. If you had any sense at all, this is everything you would need in order to be convinced to read this book, but I will also tell you the stories are lovely, sad, and are all about the one thing that make all good stories about small towns great...they are about escape. I like to think about this collection as the one that almost got away because I didn't read it until Munro (finally!) won her 2013 Pulitzer. 

87. Listen, I am going to try and do something that simply has not been accomplished on this blog. I am going to try and convince you that the 1981 film Endless Love, which was then given a second adaptation in 2014 called, well, Endless Love ... is actually a really good book by Scott Spencer. Okay. Here is my pitch: If you've seen the 1981 version of Endless Love, unsee it. It wasn't good. Close your eyes, concentrate, and just unsee it. I know you love Brooke Shields, I know it's when you first fell in love with James Spader and Tom Cruise,  and yes I know it's hard to unsee Tom Cruise, I know this oh so well, but unsee him. Okay. Now did you see the 2014 adaptation? You did? Seek help, nothing I can do for you if you're over the age of twenty five and paid money to see that movie. The novel, the really fantastic novel, Endless Love, is about wild, erotic, dangerous, violent, crazy fucking love. Poor Scott Spencer, two shitty adaptations and then you get this theme song? That's just crappy luck.

88. I recently read Anjelica Houston's first memoir, A Story Lately Told. It concentrated on her young life and you know it was okay...a little quiet but it was fine. Now, if you want an old fashion huge loud big memoir about the Houston family, go to papa. Read, An Open Book by John Huston. It is thoroughly engaging and fun from page one. A boxer, writer, actor, philanderer (he was married five times as well), and of course great film director (Maltese Falcon, African Queen, The Misfits, The Man Who Would be King, Prizzi's Honor and of course The Dead).  He doesn't bullshit in this book, he admits his many faults and mistakes (I mentioned the marriages and cheating, yeah?). He was a huge personality, a huge talent and the book reads exactly that way.

100 Knopf, or The Big Anniversary in Book Land

Back when I was a bookseller contemplating making the leap to publisher sales rep, a huge factor in making that decision could be summed up simply as "Alfred A. Knopf." Knopf, simply, is one of the greatest publishing houses in the world and I love just about everything Knopf publishes. 2015 is the Year of Knopf, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the venerable press, so we're offering 100 titles that exemplify what makes Knopf great.

First, let's set the scene:

Feeling inspired to dive into great books yet? Good. Let's get started.

1. Sula by Toni Morrison, originally published in 1974. The story of two friends, this is my favorite of Morrison's books and the one I reread most often. Nel and Sula grow up together, the prim and proper good girl and the child with no inhibitions, sharing comic moments, dark secrets, loyalty, and then betrayal. Morrison's novel captures the intensity of best friends as well as the potential for pain that comes from loving another person. All of the elements that made Morrison a Nobel Prize Winner are on display in this masterpiece--beautiful writing, eccentric characters, passion, pain, and that feeling that you're reading something profound that requires thought and discussion.

2. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, originally published in 1995. I am not bipolar, but I am far too introspective and obsessed with my mind, so of course I've read Jamison's classic memoir of her struggle with bipolar disorder. This book is a landmark example of how to write a personal narrative that transcends one's own particular story, and in reading about her struggle and work with mental illness, I found greater compassion for myself and others. I highly recommend all of Dr. Jamison's works, but definitely start here.

3. Hiroshima by John Hersey, originally published in 1946. What did the first nuclear weapon do to the people and city where it was utilized? Note the date--Hersey was interviewing people who survived the atomic blast of Little Boy just after it was dropped and the war ended. I'm fascinated by the impact of nuclear weapons on the world in the last seventy years, and Hersey's book is critical reading for understanding a nuclear world.

4. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, originally published in 2014. Last year's Man Booker Prize winner is a novelistic wonder. Set mostly in a Japanese POW camp during World War II, Flanagan combines the struggle of POW Dorrigo Evans as he struggles to survive and keep his fellow POW's alive in increasingly horrifying conditions while building the Burmese railroad. The narrative jumps to contemporary Australia and to before the war when Dorrigo was in love with a girl before shipping out; it shows the humanity and inhumanity of the POW's as well as their Japanese captors. When I read this novel last year, I remember thinking "THIS is why I love working with books and with Knopf."

4 down, 96 to go. 

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge Day 2

Day 2: A Book That You've Read More Than Three Times

Gianna:

Just as luck would have it, there are exactly three books that I have read three times! Just looking at this short list, it's obvious I have a type, and I am an incredibly well-rounded person. 

The Holy Bible 

Lonesome Dove

Rubyfruit Jungle 

Now, just because I know so many of our readers have also read the Bible and Lonesome Dove (some in the same weekend if you're like me!), I will focus on the last book on my list, Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. 

Gianna, Rita Mae
does not approve of
your theft.

No I didn't read this novel in a tough college level literature class as one may expect. I first read it in a dark corner of a library when I was in high school. I then went back and read it in the same library, in a different dark corner. I then stole it from that very same library so I could read it a third time. I then returned it to the library two days later so it would never be found on my person. 

Now, just because I can, I own a copy but have yet to read it a fourth time. Not as fun I guess.

[Correction: Gianna has not read Lonesome Dove, even though I've been bugging her about it FOR YEARS.  She has not read it three times.  She has not read it ONE time.  Nonetheless, she works for UT Press, which has published several books on Lonesome Dove.  She's a liar.]

[Correction: If Gianna has read the Bible, it's obvious that the holy book had only adverse influences in her life. I'm going out on a limb and saying that Gianna is a liar.  Isn't lying a sin?]

Liz:

I almost never reread now.  Rarely I will read a book a second time, such as when I was a member of a book group. So I'm going back to college for my pick, which is Sula by Toni Morrison.  I read it for a Women's Lit class, read it again for the comprehensive lit exam that English majors had to pass, and I read it for a book group after I graduated from school.  A few years ago, I listened to the audiobook of Sula because Toni Morrison reads it and hearing an author's work in her voice made it fresh once more.

Gianna the Liar will agree with me that Sula is a wonderful book about friendship, love, and anger.  It's a book of powerful women, damaged people trying to survive, quirky characters, and two incredible friends, Nel and Sula.

Home by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison--or TMo as I like to call her--is having a pretty good spring.  She's going to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the US, along with some no names like Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, and John Glenn.  (On a side note, this round of award-winners includes three of my hero types--TMo, Dolores Huerta the civil rights activist, and the winningest coach in basketball history, Pat Summitt.)  Aside from the accolade, though, and more importantly, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning Morrison as a new book going on sale May 8.

Presidential
Medal of Freedom

Home, like the rest of Morrison's fiction, is a short narrative that manages to pack every sentence, every paragraph, every page with unparalleled writing and emotional depth.  However, I'm stating it now--Home is the best Toni Morrison novel in a decade.  This is the Toni Morrison who wrote Beloved and Sula, two of my all time favorite books.  This is TMo proving that she's still the best writer in the United States.

Here is the story of Frank Money, an angry veteran trying to readjust to life in the United States after fighting in the Korean War.  Frank, though, as an African-American, is moving from the equality of a desegregated army into the harsh, segregated world of 50's America.  He's once more a second class citizen and he's suffering from his experiences in Korea.  And Frank needs to get across the country.  He needs to go home to help his sister--the only family he has--escape from a bad relationship.  As Frank travels from Seattle to Georgia, he encounters both kindness and hostility, and he experiences the rages of PTSD.

Toni Morrison

What sets Home apart from other Toni Morrison novels is that it's contemporary.  It's set in the 20th Century and it addresses issues at the forefront of modern American society.  Race relations are explored even as the radical right rails against our black President.  The plight of traumatized soldiers transcends the decades from that war to the ones fought in Afghanistan and Iraq as soldiers come home.  And women; women still fight for equality in relationships and in society.  This is an important book, and it's a beautifully crafted one.  If I had to place a bet on the front runner for next year's Pulitzer Prize (assuming one is awarded...sigh), my money's on TMo.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 15

Day 15: Favorite Books about Friendship

Gianna:



I am the nerd...who is Gianna?

 The greatest book I have ever read about friendship is The Breakfast Club. It is the intricate and moving story of five students in detention who couldn’t be more different. Ninety minutes later, I mean 400 pages later, they realize they are all the same at heart. They are each the brain, the athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, and the National Book Award in 1985, and the author John Hughes went on to become the Nobel Laureate a few years later and then the King of England. The End.

Okay …

The best book about friendship is Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail damn Caldwell. End of story. I wish you people would stop making me write about her book! Annoying.  [I'd normally link to other blog posts in which Gianna mentioned this book, but seriously, it's about every other post.  Take some initiative.  Read through them yourself.]

Here are some other favorites that have great friendships at their core. Not all of the friendships last if memory serves….

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – this is the story of four friends and it is quite simply one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. Set in India during severe government crackdowns, the book tells the story of four very different people brought together by the changes in India. Great book. [One is a brain, and one is a jock, and one is a basket case....]

I feel I should mention The Color Purple by Alice Walker, but that was more like a “friends with benefits” situation (that’s what the kids call it).

Another favorite is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (pronounced just as it is written). This is a really lovely story of best friends who are sent to a re-education camp during the Cultural Revolution in China. They fall in love with the daughter of a local tailor. The two friends decide that they will help educate the seamstress with forbidden foreign books that they have hidden. This has a bit of a twist at the end. This is also one of my favorite book jackets.

You know, I always thought that the best friends to have are the types that help bury the body (Colleen, Stephanie and Liz all have shovels at the ready). But I now realize that a good friend is also the type who puts you out of your misery when needed. Liz often asks me to help her in these situations, but so far I have not been that good of a friend to her. Of Mice and Men –George and Lenny. Now those two were great pals. [I like to watch the rabbits.]

Liz:

Rarely would my mind turn to children's books first, but in the case of this category, my two favorite books about friendship both fall into that category for younger readers.  They also happen to be the two books I most often re-read as a wee Liz.

Anne of Green Gables is all about trying to find connections and family through friendship.  It's about finding community when you're an outsider, and being accepted and loved even though you have fiery red hair and lack social graces and like to read.  It's about forgiveness and supporting each other and learning to belong.  I suspect that the children who read and loved L.M. Montgomery's series as children know how to be stalwart friends as adults.  I certainly count Anne fans among my closest friends now.

The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson struck a chord with me growing up.  In the summers, my sister and I formed an alliance with the boy on the other side of the neighborhood, and the three of us created adventures in the woods that stretched for miles behind our neighborhood.  We had our own worlds, clubs, perils, and discoveries, and though school was a different world entirely separate from our summer escapades, we remained close.  It's not a childhood you've have in an urban area, and though I have many, many, many criticisms about the town in which I was raised, that pastoral freedom is never on the list.  The Bridge to Terabithia reminded me of those adventures and that friendship from my small town.  The book has a tragic ending; my friendship faded with time and divergent paths in high school and college. 

On the adult book front, I think that Toni Morrison's Sula is one of the greatest books ever written about the complexities of friendship between women. It one of the reasons this is the book I've re-read most often.

I also loved To the End of the Land by David Grossman, and since it's new in paperback, I encourage everyone to add it to their reading group lists.  To the End of the Land is a pilgrimage book; a mother and her childhood best friend--a former soldier suffering from PTSD--set off on a trek across Israel because the mother is terrified that her son serving in the Israeli army will be killed in the latest uprising.  This is a mature book about friendship, loss, love, and the uncertainty of living in a perilous world.  It's also beautifully written.  I struggled with To the End of the Land as I read it, but more than a year later I still regularly think about this story. 

These are the types of friends who, according to Gianna, would help you bury the body.  Or, you know, send you a dirty joke when you're having a bad day, no questions asked.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 20

Day 20: The Book You've Read the Most Number of Times

Gianna:

Beloved.  First I read it because I wanted to. Then I read it because I had to.  I read it again because I really needed to. And finally…. I read it because I had just seen the film. Flannery O’Connor is my favorite writer and should Flannery ever die, Toni Morrison will move up one notch and take over that position (don’t do it, just please stop yourself from emailing). We will talk more about Toni on Day 27, or if you ever want to call me we can talk about her (or we can talk about The Closer ending, which has me very upset. Why Kyra, why?!).

Liz:

I am not a re-reader.  I often treat my books like a scrapbook history of my life--the book I was reading at a certain time and place and how its reading experience connected to that point.  Most of the books I have reread were because of school requirements.  I read The Great Gatsby a few times, as well as Moby-Dick and the loathsome Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  Not counting the few children's books I reread for lack of fresh reading material (small town, no bookstore, too young to drive), I think the book I've read the greatest number of times is also by Toni Morrison.  Unlike Gianna's choice, though, I've read Sula more often.  I read it a couple of times for classes, but that was after I'd read it for pleasure in a period after I'd discovered Beloved and needed to read everything that Morrison had written.  I read it a couple of years after college to see if it held up for me (it did).  And I listened to the audio version on one of my road trips last year, if that counts.  It's definitely a desert island book for me even though it's short.  Sula not Morrison's best work according to the critics, but it's my favorite.