I’ve been reading some, though not as much as I’d like. Here’s a rundown:

Penguin Classic: I only got halfway through Le Grand Meaulnes before I had to return it. It was an ILL and it came all the way from Ripon College in Wisconsin, no possibility of renewing it. Okay, this is an admittedly obscure title, but jeez, it’s a Penguin Classic, it’s not exactly out of print. And there was no copy closer to Ann Arbor MI than Ripon? Well, anyway. I sort of enjoyed the half that I read, but I was definitely handicapped by my lack of familiarity with the customs & mores of late 19th century rural France. There were a lot of descriptions of clothes that I’m sure were significant, but the significance escaped me entirely. For example, all the guys were wearing smocks. Smocks. Now I know they weren’t wearing oversized men’s shirts, backwards, with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. I know they weren’t fingerpainting. But there’s got to be some reason why these smocks (?) were mentioned so frequently. Honestly, I never thought I’d say this about any novel, but this one could have used some footnotes, or at least an introduction. Still, I’d like to go back and finish it some day. Despite the smocks, it was a vivid portrait of adolescent boys, coming of age, friendship, first love, etc. And, to answer your burning question, Meaulnes rhymes with moan, and it’s the main character’s name.

Book Group: We’re reading Beloved. I’m halfway through. How did I manage to miss reading this before? It’s really good. Really good! Query: why is “magical realism” so unpalatable in Latin American fiction and yet so perfect and true when Toni Morrison is the author?

Slaves of Golconda: I totally missed out last month. The book was The Island of Dr. Moreau. However, I felt like I joined them in spirit, anyway. During the last week of August, when I should have been reading and writing about Island, I was instead watching the first season of Lost on DVD. Yeah, that was the week before school started, when I should have been getting organized and Steve should have been working on lesson plans. And instead we were staying up until one in the morning every night for a week, watching three or four episodes per evening. I understand season two is out on video now, too. We are going to try to hold off for a while.

From the Nonfiction Department: I read The China Study. Actually, I should probably save this one for a separate post. It’s a detailed and very compelling treatise on the health benefits of a vegan “whole foods, plant-based diet.” We are working on it. I have discovered that Silk brand soy yogurt is sooooo good! Better than regular yogurt. Other than that, as I say, we’re working on it.

From the Library: Remember the contraption that allows me to browse in the adult fiction section? Well, a book called The Darwin Conspiracy caught my eye at once. This novel purports to answer the real-life question of why, after his legendary voyage in the Beagle, Darwin never travelled again, became anxious and sickly with myriad vague, psychosomatic ailments, and waited more than twenty years to publish his theory. Can you imagine a better premise for a novel than that? I’d never heard of this book, or the author, John Darnton, but there were glowing blurbs on the back from Ann Arbor’s own Nicholas Delbanco and also Elie Wiesel. So it must be good. Right? Wrong. I don’t know who paid Nick and Elie to write these glowing encomiums but they couldn’t possibly have read it. Here’s a sample. Get your barf bag ready.

And then [young Charles Darwin] had returned home to find the offer waiting for him, a bolt from the blue that could change his life forever, provide it with meaning. And to be denied it! To have his hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How could he endure it?

This book is supposed to remind us of Possession. It goes back and forth between the present (researchers fall in love while uncovering the mystery), and the past (Darwin’s life). Here’s a bit from the present. You might need another barf bag.

That was back before Victor left [the Galapagos island where they're doing field research -- copped straight from The Beak of the Finch, I might add]. At first it was a relief to be alone — solitude was what he had been looking for, part of his penitence — but as weeks stretched into months, the loneliness he had sought became almost too much to bear. Then when the rainy season didn’t come and the lava island turned into a black frying pan stuck way out in the ocean, at times he actually wondered if he could keep going. But of course he did. He had known he would — in that way at least, in brute staying power, he was strong. It was his psyche that was brittle.

No! He actually wondered if he could keep going? Thank goodness he had that brute staying power, because you know, that lava island was just like a black frying pan. And not just any old black frying pan, but one that stuck way out in the ocean.

Boy, what a mean-spirited review. I am sorry. But honestly? I was sooooo excited about this plot idea. The disappointment is bitter. In fact . . . to have my hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How will I endure it? ;)