The Good Wife

Patty Dickerson is The Good Wife in this novel by Stewart O'Nan. She leaves early from a night of drinking with her husband Tommy and his best friend Gary. The next day she receives a call from her husband informing her that the two men have been arrested. Patty's life will never be the same. Pregnant and confused she begins negotiating the justice system, knowing that things will work out because her husband could not have committed such a heinous crime (the murder of an elderly woman during the commission of a robbery). Patty's optimism is dashed when Tommy gets charged with murder and is sentenced to 25 years to life.
The novel is simply narrated in Patty's voice and it tells the mundane story of the rest of her life, her search for decent work, the difficulties she faces as a single mum, the struggle to manage her always precarious finances. Through it all she tries to stay hopeful and remains faithful to Tommy though all his friends desert him. Her regular visits with him are what keep her going. When life gets hard she reminds herself how much harder it is for Tommy. Unlike Patty who is blinded by love I am not 100 percent convinced that Tommy didn't do it. O'Nan deliberately keeps the facts ambiguous and we know only what Patty sees.
In the end Tommy is released after serving 28 years. The story leaves him struggling to make the adjustment to life outside the penal system and to make sense of a world that is so different from the one he remembers. I found this passage particularly poignant:

He wakes up every day at six o'clock sharp, no matter how late he stays up, takes an eight minute shower and has their bed made before Patty can dry her hair. The top of his dresser is empty except for his watch and wallet, returned to the same spots every night, lined up square with the edge. His drawers are just as neat, the piles precise, his rolled socks all in a row.

28 years of incarceration are evident in his regimentation. (I admit I found myself thinking, but only for a fleeting instant, that a stint in the slammer might be just what is required to cure my husband of his slovenly habits.)
O'Nan writes in an authentic voice that continued to resonate with me after I put the book back on the shelf. He tackles complex social issues in simple prose. I look forward to reading his other books.

The oddest of the odd book titles

The Must Reads
From Waterproofing Your Child to Hot Topics In Urology, the Diagram Prize celebrates the oddest of odd book titles.

Ageing chimp's own story on list for Guardian first book award

The autobiography of an acting chimpanzee is going head to head with a cold war love story and a novel about the assassination of a Pakistani dictator in this year's Guardian first book award.

Me Cheeta: the Autobiography, is billed as the true story of Cheeta the Chimp, star of Hollywood blockbusters, told 'in his own words'. The book documents the life and times of a chimpanzee who has outlived all his co-stars from the 1939 film Tarzan to reach the ripe old age of 75. He withdrew from the limelight in 1964 after biting his Doctor Dolittle co-star Rex Harrison, and has retired to an old chimps' home in Palm Springs, California.

Portraits of Women Reading

Lezende vrouwen Via Nag on the Lake

Favorite signatures

Favorite signatures: from Ginsberg to Sedaris

Is book signing a curse? Prompted by a U.S. Craigslist ad for sweatshop-style autograph forgers, the U.K. has been abuzz with the legendarily traumatic author signings: James Ellroy taking down a stack of 65,000 first editions, Stephen King signing until his fingers cracked, the autograph line demanding their autographs in blood. David Sedaris admits that after seven hours he loses his decorum, writing a cheerful 'Abortions, $13!' in one woman's book.

Via

A Simple Book Repair Manual

The web version of the Simple Book Repair Manual was created by members of Preservation Services, Dartmouth College Library.
The only book I have that is need of repair is "MMMMM", Ruth Reichl's first cookbook. It is pretty worn out and may, in fact, be beyond repair. I have found copies online but they are damned expensive. Perhaps I'll learn something here that will help.
Via

On thisday in Literary History

On this day in 1949, Martin Amis was born. In any history of the last half-century of English Literature, a chapter will have to be given to the Amis family's seventy books -- and still counting, in Martin's case. Two chapters might be better: one of father Kingsley's many 'failures of tolerance,' to use Martin's phrase, was his contempt for his son's postmodern novels, or the few he'd tried reading.

Literary Quiz

This Quiz is quite tough but there's a prize in it for you. I performed best on the Fruit section, perhaps because I live in Ontario's fruitland.

In Which We Redeem the Surrogate Goodbyes

Lots of stuff for Samuel Beckettphiles in this post at This Recording.

World's largest monastery library restored to its baroque splendour

The world's largest monastery library, in the quaint Austrian town of Admont, has re-opened after four years of restoration work that has returned all its rococo splendour to this baroque jewel.

The ornate library is the size of a cathedral: 13 metres high, 14 metres wide and 70 metres long.

In the ceiling, seven majestic domes boast wonderful frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte that seem more three-dimensional than flat.

Below, niches filled with ancient books cover the immaculate white walls around a chequer-patterned marble floor, decorated with Josef Stammel's sculptures of "The four last things" -- death, last judgment, heaven and hell.

Via

Feed My Dear Dogs

This is Emma Richler's second novel. It took me so long to read it that you must have thought I'd become aphasic. As I read it I found myself getting distracted. The story is of the Weiss family, told by Jemima Weiss and played out against a Jewish/Christian background. Jem is nine years old when the story begins and fourteen at the end. She is one of five precocious and eccentric siblings. Dad is a plain spoken sports writer. Mum is a stylish saint. A lot of the dialogue comes from old movies and even older novels. The narrative is, I think, slowed down by almost obsessive description. It's a beautiful and clever novel but gets bogged down in its own descriptive oblique language. We get to know the individuals in this family. Their characters are finely and skillfully drawn. But there is too much happening peripherally, moon walks, telescope invention, arctic expeditions, Sherlock Holmes investigations, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and on and on. Everything gets tied up, albeit not neatly, in the end. It took me six weeks to finish because I felt I had to take it in tiny bites or risk overload. It was worth it in the end.

Boys vs. Girls

Eli Gottlieb's top 10 scenes from the battle of the sexes

1. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway
2. Herzog by Saul Bellow
3. Sylvia by Leonard Michaels
4. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
6. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
7. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
8. The Collector by John Fowles
9. Miss Julie by August Strindberg
10. Tickets, Please by DH Lawrence

I've read #s 2,4,5,6,8,and 9. I plan to read On Chesil Beach before too long.

Shakespeare's Editor

Via Nag on the Lake:

An Updike Geography

An Updike Geography: from Shillington to Beverly Farms
Photos of significant Updike sites. Sorta cool.
Via

Less Is more

Less is more is the concept for Bildschöne Bücher a small bookshop in Berlin that has grown out of the highly successful website 25books.com. Proprietor Bodo von Hodenberg, a former sales director of Taschen, takes a curatorial approach to bookselling, highlighting exceptional books in photography, art and design. Watch the interview

Cutting Book Series

Noriko Ambe: Cutting Book Series with ED Ruscha
Via

Benny Cooperman mystery series covers

I read a number of this series by author Howard Engel. Engel was born in St. Catharines and the mysteries were set in my hood, the Niagara Region.

“Penguin has re-launched the first 11 Cooperman books (written by Howard Engel) in paperback with a lively new design and a number emblazoned on the spine of each volume, so that obsessive Cooperman fans can shelve them in order of their creation, from No. 1, The Suicide Murders (1980), to No. 11, Memory Book (2005). This is an exceptional publishing event, something the French might do while promoting someone for a shot at the Nobel. Nobody has done it before, on this scale, for a Canadian.”

- Robert Fulford, National Post

Seen at The CANADIAN DESIGN RESOURCE

Bulwer-Lytton contest 2008

I've posted about this contest before. For those of you who weren't paying attention:

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.

2008 Winner:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'

Garrison Spik
Washington, D.C.

The Best Author Blogs

It is no secret that authors write some of the very best blogs. Our editors have compiled a list of author blogs that they believe are truly outstanding. Although the styles and subject matter of the author blogs vary widely, they all share two important qualities: they are all frequently updated and interesting to read.

No Booker nominees in this group.
Via J-Walk (who appears on the list)

Rowan Oak

In 1930, William Faulkner purchased what was then known as "The Bailey Place," a large primitive Greek Revival house that pre-dated the Civil War standing on four acres of cedars and hardwoods. Take a virtual tour of the home that housed this great American writer.
Rowan Oak - Virtual Tour

On This Day in Literary History

On this day in 1937, expatriate Edith Wharton died in France, in the quiet, Old World style she liked to live and describe; also on this day in 1937, and in New World contrast, ex-expatriate Ernest Hemingway bared his hairy chest to Max Eastman's unhairy one, demanded 'What do you mean accusing me of impotence?' and then wrestled Eastman to the floor.Via

Quiz: The Olympics in literature

Quiz: The Olympics Forget Beijing, the ultimate test of your readerly prowess is here.

George Orwell Diaries

The Orwell Prize is publishing the George Orwell Diaries in the form of a WordPress blog with the entries entered exactly as he wrote them 70 years after they were first written, starting today with his August 9th, 1938 entry and continuing on through October 1942.

I guarantee you'll want more

First chapters by three novelists whose short stories have previously appeared in earlier issues of Pulp Net: Drew Gummerson, Nicholas Hogg and Belinda Webb at Fiction - Pulp.Net.

Clive Sinclair's top 10 westerns

1. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister

2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

3. The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider

4. True Grit by Charles Portis

5. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen

6. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

7. Close Range & Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 1 & 2 by Annie Proulx

8. Stories from Mesa Country by Jane Candia Coleman

9. Snow Mountain Passage by James D Houston

10. Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry

I've read #s 2, 4 and 7. I have #10 on my bookshelf but I don't imagine it will be better than Lonesome Dove. And I don't care what he says, Gatsby does not belong on this list. I might substitute The Mineral Palace by Heidi Julavits.

To read his rationale for including each of these novels click here
To read Clive Sinclair's account of what goes into a good western, click here.

Solzhenitsyn and Knockemstiff

"Serge Schmemann wrote an excellent remembrance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the National section visited the tiny town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, the setting for Donald Ray Pollock’s first collection of stories."

Read more at Paper Cuts

Booktown.Net

A Book Town is a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated. Most Book Towns have developed in villages of historic interest or of scenic beauty.
The Book Town concept was initiated by Richard Booth in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, U.K.

Booktown.Net
More book towns here
Via

Why Raymond Carver's legacy keeps on growing

It was 20 years ago today that Raymond Carver died from cancer aged just 50. Although his final years were marked by warm attention from the literary establishment, few would have predicted how central and secure Carver's place in the story of 20th-century American literature would become.

Modernist typographic design in german-language books

Book (design) stories from new typographyto swiss style.
Modernist book design in Germany and Switzerland 1925–1965 (and beyond).

What Book Got You Hooked?

Before they were famous, they were reading under the covers with flashlights. Find out what books got them hooked and why.
Via

Test your knowledge of Literary London

Quiz: Literary London
I scored only 13 out of 20 and I guessed at a few. I guess that puts me in my place.

Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel prize winner who revealed the horror of Stalin's brutal labour camps to the world, has died at the age of 89.