Hell

I don’t like books that mess too much with reality yet I’ve just read two in a row. Hell is a grim domestic fairy tale that leaves the reader feeling disoriented (kind of like falling down the rabbit hole again). Here’s the description from the book jacket:
Hell—part mystery, part domestic meditation, part horror story-is a brilliantly eerie novel in which three odd households coexist in a single restless vision: a dollhouse; a dysfunctional family in 1950s Philadelphia; and the cottage home of Edwina Moss, a nineteenth-century expert on domestic management. While the inhabitants of the dollhouse are powerless to shape their destiny, the four members of the Philadelphia family dedicate themselves to mutual vigilance, as if it might be possible to forestall disaster. Meanwhile, Edwina Moss concedes domestic control to the imagination and, finally, to the novel's governing spirit-the great culinary artist and chef to Napoleon, Antonin Carême.
It’s a slim novel and all these stories careen wildly into one another, placing serious demands on the reader; I was frequently confused and couldn’t figure out whose story I was currently reading as one morphed into another. Davis’ writing is dense and detailed and elegant. Even when I was not quite sure what exactly was happening in the novel I was caught up in the mood that the author created. Life is indeed hell for all the disparate characters. “Something is wrong” in all these houses, they are all absolutely miserable. Shelter and sustenance are the two driving themes of this novel. In Hell home does not offer protection: a tree falls into the house during hurricane Hazel bringing the storm inside. Characters feast and starve themselves. It’s all very hallucinogenic and finishing the book left me feeling relieved and a little exhausted, sort of like coming down off acid.

Lolita at 50

Lolita at 50 - Is Nabokov's masterpiece still shocking? By Stephen Metcalf: "Every now and again it's probably healthy to crack open the glass, remove a certain world masterpiece from the display case, and in re-reading it recall that,unlike Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover, two other novels once deemed obscene by the tribunes of moral upkeep,Lolita is a disgusting book. Furthermore, the day will never come when it is not a disgusting book. By comparison, in fact, it can make Lawrence and Joyce look like a pair of old village bluenoses. For all its arduous recourse to the c-word, Lady Chatterley's Lover places its faith in the sexually fulfilled marriage, a ho-hum piety in the age of divorce. For all its scatological frankness, Ulysses tells the touching story of a surrogate father finding his surrogate son. Lolita, meanwhile, tells the story of a stepfather serially defiling his adolescent stepdaughter.* Public taste was meant to catch up to Lady Chatterley screwing her gamekeeper, to Leopold Bloom sitting on his jakes. Public taste was never meant to catch up to Humbert Humbert. "

Book Depot Boxing Day Sale

This annual sale is the highlight of my year. It's so important I've posted it on both my blogs! As you can see we came away with some real winners.

The Effect of Living Backwards

Heidi Julavits' second novel veers from the authentic to the virtual, treading the fine line between the two and maintaining its balance. It draws on Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland and is a bit of a wild ride. As the Queen in Alice Through The Looking Glass says,"the effect of living backwards...always makes one a little giddy at first." It explores the complicated relationship between Alice and Edith, the sister who Alice alternately adores and despises, from Alice's point of view. Edith says,"It's the cutthroats who survive, Alice, not the most virtuous." Alice is a "good girl" who longs to be a survivor; Edith, the wild thing, allies herself with the enemy.
This is a post-9/11 (referred to as "The Big Terrible") novel framed around a hijacking, authentic or virtual is hard to determine. Moral dilemmas are presented with ironic humour. Julavits makes the tedium of living for weeks with a group of strangers in a hijacked airplane palpable. Alice has an odd but sweet romance with the hostage negotiator who knows more than he should about her background; I liked the passages about the relationship between Alice and Pitcairn best. And it has an epilogue (I love epilogues in books or movies) that is almost sentimental and optimistic. Good read.

Most Blogged-About Books of 2005

A Selection of the Most Blogged-About Books of 2005 - New York Times

World's Most Expensive Cookbook

I was already pissed off because I couldn't add "The French Laundry Cookbook" to my awesome cookbook collection (really, it is awesome) because it was too bloody expensive, now this:
"World's Most Expensive Cookbook

It's by Ferran Adria of El Bulli Restaurant in Roses, Spain, two hours north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava.
Many believe El Bulli to be the single best restaurant in the world.
The book (above), entitled 'El Bulli 1998�2002,' contains details of the development, philosophy and techniques behind the recipes along with many color photographs.
But wait , there's more.
Along with the main volume in the boxed set you get a detailed User's Guide and an interactive CD containing each recipe.
The cookbook, published last month, measures 13' x 10' x 2.5', weighs 9.7 pounds and contains 496 pages.
The book retails for $350 but amazon sells it for $220.50.
Just make sure you bring your computer to the kitchen to get the full flavor."

Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker

"They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat, up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high-school drop-out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life. Ennis, reared by his older brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road, leaving them twenty-four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper, and bad tires; when the transmission went, there was no money to fix it. He had wanted to be a sophomore, felt the word carried a kind of distinction, but the truck broke down short of it, pitching him directly into ranch work."

Guardian Unlimited Books | Top 10s | Top 10 bookshops

I've been to 3 of the top 10 - 2 in Paris and 1 in Toronto.
"2. Shakespeare and Co, 37 rue de la Bucherie, Paris, France
George Whitman has been running what he calls 'a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore' for 50 years. His store has long been a literary hub, attracting the likes of Henry Miller, Richard Wright, and William Burroughs. More importantly, George has been inviting people to live in his shop from its very first days. There are now 13 beds among the books, and he says that more than 40,000 people have slept there at one time or another. All he asks is that you make your bed in the morning, help out in the shop, and read a book a day. After living here for five months, I was inspired to write my own book about the place.
Shakespeareco.org"

100 Notable Books of the Year - New York Times

"100 Notable Books of the Year

The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 5, 2004. "