Making a List (of Books)...

We're leaving on vacation soon, and I can't decide which books to bring with me. Here's what I've got on my shelf:

1) The Rosie Project
2) Lookaway, Lookaway (this one's definitely coming along)
3) I Heart New York
4) A Tale for the Time Being
5) The Golem and the Jinni
6) I-Mary, a Biography of Mary Austin (This is for work, and I probably won't open it the whole time. At least it will get to do some traveling, though.)

What should I bring...? 

Best Reads of 2013

For me, this was the year of getting back into contemporary fiction, as opposed to sticking to the all-Victorian, all the time reading diet I've been on for the last 20 years. Although the reading that I do for my scholarship is still important and interesting to me, this has also been the year where I rediscovered pleasure reading.

Here are my favorite reads from 2013:

1) Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Written in a delightfully snarky tone--especially in sections from the mother's point of view--this book draws on emails, journal entries, and straight narration to bring you into the over-the-top world of its characters.

2) Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw. Aw's novel, which was longlisted for the Man Booker, tells the interconnected stories of a group of outsiders trying to find their social and professional place in Shanghai. The thematic core of the novel is whether authenticity exists (or matters) in a world of self fashioning. The ending is a little disappointing, but otherwise it's a richly tapestried and satisfying novel.

3) I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella. I read *a lot* of Sophie Kinsella this year, but this one was definitely my favorite. Kinsella has created a well-crafted update of the epistolary novel using text messaging and emails. As Nina Garcia would say, it feels very fresh and current.

On a separate note, my second favorite Kinsella novel is Can You Keep a Secret?

4) Longbourn by Jo Baker. Baker's re-writing of Austen's Pride and Prejudice tells the story from the servants' point of view. The strength of this novel is that she doesn't try too hard to mimic Austen's style. Instead, the novel has its own story to tell and its own voice. As I wrote in my blogpost on this novel, I'll never see Lizzie's walk to Netherfield as quite such an independent and courageous act again.

5) The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp. This is one of those novels where the scenario is completely depressing, but you don't mind because the narrative voice is likeable and utterly compelling. I started this novel out of idle curiosity and was drawn in almost at once.

6) The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. I'm still a little on the fence about this one since it is really difficult to read from an emotional point of view. But, like the Spectacular Now, the narrator is so brilliantly drawn and engaging that I couldn't put it down.

A Longer-Term View of Kindle Publishing

Just the other day, a patron asked me to purchase a copy of Leslie Marmon Silko's Oceanstory for our library. Oceanstory, it turns out, is a Kindle exclusive, which means that it is not available in print, at least not for now. While the library where I work regularly purchases e-books, we're unable to purchase Kindle-only titles because we have no way of hosting and sharing them.

Odyssey editions, which published Oceanstory, specializes in ebooks on the Kindle platform. The books listed on their website are all "classic" 20th-century works, available in print, so the Kindle-only policy isn't an issue in those cases. This blogpost by Chad Post explains Odyssey Editions' business model as exploiting loopholes in publishing contracts that specify the rights to publish an author's work in book form.

Oceanstory, however, seems to be working on a different model, where the book is available Kindle only without a print edition. It may be the case that the print is yet to come, but this case has made me wonder about the benefits of Kindle-only publishing from an author's point of view--not so much in terms of short-term revenue, but in terms of long-term reputation.

Here's what I mean: I understand the attraction of e-only publishing on a platform like the Kindle. Authors have access to publishing in entirely new ways and can by-pass the gatekeeping of publishing houses, many of which are primarily interested in finding the next big blockbuster. For authors who are willing to work their social media networks, they can find an audience on their own. This has obvious attractions.

Likewise, a Kindle-only book can't circulate in libraries, and some might see that as better for revenue. That, at least, is the case against "militant librarians who see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to 'lend' our e-books without restriction" that Richard Russo makes in the widely circulated letter that he wrote encouraging authors to join the Authors Guild. That is, as long as the e-book in question is not part of an e-book package, like the Midwest  Collaborative for Library Services, through which public libraries loan kindles.

I'm not going to comment on whether or not restricting library circulation helps or hurts authors' revenues, but I do think that e-only books that are not available to libraries pose a risk to their authors in a way that doesn't get much press, and that's the threat to their future reputation. Simply, if authors' books aren't available for sale to libraries, that means that libraries cannot collect and archive them. And that's what large research libraries are interested in doing: only 20% of the books that we collect ever circulate, but we are also interested in preserving the cultural record for the future.

That might not seem important in the short term of building a reputation, an audience, and a writing career through robust Kindle sales. But I worry about whether those works will be available for scholars to study, write about, and teach in their classrooms--much less available to anyone who's interested in reading and talking about them in the future for whatever reason. By relying on Kindle, we essentially rely on Amazon to archive these materials. I'm not inclined to trust them.

A Shortlist of Cozies

When I started this blog, I thought that I would be spending as much time writing about cozies as about chick lit and other current fiction, but somehow I've lost track of the cozies. For those of you who aren't mystery fans--or maybe not fans of cozies--the simplest definition of a cozy is a mystery that isn't gory. Think of Miss Marple. Cozies generally take place in a closed-off setting, like a country house or small town, and they're generally solved by an amateur sleuth. The emphasis in these stories is often as much on character development and the unraveling of a puzzle as anything else.

Here are some of my all-time favorites:

• Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver mysteries. Miss Silver is an aged spinster who runs her own detective agency and generally gets her information by infiltrating the family circle where a crime has happened or is about to take place. The suspects always underestimate her because they dismiss her as a flighty old lady, but she has an uncanny ability to understand the psychology of everyone she meets.

• Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes. I *love* this mystery, and I tend to re-read it every few years just for the pleasure of it. Miss Pym is a writer who solves a mystery at an all-girls physical education school in England. The characterization is extremely well done and the solution is an absolute surprise. Sarah Waters wrote a brilliant piece in the Guardian on another Tey novel, The Franchise Affair, that made me start thinking about all the class issues in Miss Pym Disposes, but I would rank this one as one of my favorite mysteries.

• Agatha Christie (of course), especially Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None, and Murder on the Orient Express.

• The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart.  This is a very Edwardian mystery with an old maid as protagonist. 

• P.D. James's Shroud for a Nightingale and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. I'll forgive James for the lifeless Death Comes to Pemberley, but only because her earlier novels are so good.

• The Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Most readers are more familiar with the Amelia Peabody stories, but I return to the Vicky Bliss novels as a kind of comfort read. If you're into audiobooks, Barbara Rosenblat does the best version.

I'm know there are others that I'll think of as soon as I post this, but this is the list that immediately comes to mind. Which ones have I missed?

Jo Baker's Longbourn: Or, Why You'll Never Feel the Same about Lizzie's Walk to Netherfield

Some of the most successful adaptations of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice have completely re-imagined the story and shown how it's relevant to a modern protagonist or set of circumstances. These adaptations--like Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary or Pemberley Digital's amazing web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries--don't try to mimic Austen's style, but use the plot and characters as a starting point to tell their own story. Less success adaptations, on the other hand, try too hard to stay "true" to Austen's voice and narrative and don't add anything new.

That's one of the reasons why I didn't enjoy P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley: James's writing felt uncharacteristically clumsy because she was trying so hard to sound like Austen, and she didn't seem to have anything to add. I finished that novel wondering why on earth James had felt she needed to write a sequel.

There's no question, on the other hand, about Jo Baker's Longbourn: it is an inspired re-imagining of P&P from the servants' point of view, and it tells its own story in its own voice. By telling the story from the servants' perspective, Baker gives a dispassionate view of the narrative: the servants are not swept up in the agonies of the romance, but rather focused on the amount of work that it produces. For example, after an opening sequence that illuminates the drudgery and physical discomfort of doing laundry by hand with harsh lye soaps, Lizzie's walk to Netherfield in the mud to check on Jane becomes less of an act of admirable disregard for convention than a heedless act that someone else will have to clean up after. I, for one, won't be able to read about all those walks to Meryton and elsewhere again without thinking of the servants' chapped hands.

Other aspects of the narrative look different through the servants' perspective, as well. Mrs. Bennet is still a foolish character, but Baker softens the caricature giving us a glimpse of Mrs. Hill's insight that Mr. Bennet's disregard for his wife has led to her hypochondria. Likewise, Mary's failure to attract Mr. Collins gets as much sympathetic narrative attention as Lizzie's from servants who notice her as much as the more glamorous sisters.

Apart from its re-imagining of Austen's novel, Longbourn has another, related story to tell about pleasure and desire. The tragedy for Sarah, the novel's protagonist, is that as a servant there is no space for her own interests or pleasures. Every hour of her day is claimed for someone else, and when she has her own concerns or desires, they must be squashed. When she asks Mr. Collins whether having interests of her own is wrong, he tells her that it is a question of domestic discipline and refers her to the housekeeper. Similarly, the story of Lydia's flight with Wickham becomes secondary to Sarah's own agonized need for information, but as a servant she's not even allowed to ask questions. In order to resolve Sarah's narrative, she has to leave Lizzie's love story entirely behind--and, in Baker's capable hands, that feels right.

Pets, Bosszillas, and a Little Romance: Andi Brown's Animal Cracker

Andi Brown's new novel Animal Cracker has many of the elements that have made chick lit such a successful genre: it is told with a light touch from the point of view of a smart, funny female protagonist navigating the twin minefields of a career and romance. The protagonist, Diane Salvi, has found a job doing what she loves (writing) for an organization that she cares about (a pet rescue non-profit), but her boss is a nightmare. He's self-centered, vulgar, and unwilling to exert himself unless there's something in it for him. Unsurprisingly, Diane's idealism quickly comes into conflict with her boss's selfishness. To make things worse, she's become romantically involved with her boss's son, despite the fact that he has many of the same annoying personality traits. Add to this mix a mystery that involves both her boss and her romantic interest, and this novel has many of the elements of a great beach read--or, maybe, Thanksgiving busiest-travel-day-of-the-year read.

At the same time, despite being a pretty fun read, this novel doesn't quite come together the way that it should. Transitions between sections are sometimes abrupt, leaving me to wonder if I had skipped a page by accident. Likewise, the direction that the narrative is taking doesn't come into focus as early as it might: it's not really clear until about the last third of the novel what the narrative's main thread is. It's clear from the beginning that there are problems at the pet rescue organization; it's clear that the boss is a problem; and it's also clear that the romantic entanglement will need working out. However, what's less clear until well into the novel is which of these elements is driving the narrative.  When the focus of the plot becomes clear, though, it is an absorbing read. However, despite Animal Cracker's strengths, I'm not sure all readers will have the patience to get there.

Catching Up, Part I: Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed

I clearly have a lot of catching up to do. In an earlier post, I talked about rediscovering what I liked about reading when I started reading Kindle books on my phone. Since then, I've discovered that I have been *way* out of the loop, pleasure reading-wise, and I'm trying to catch up. This week's catch up has been Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed, which came out in 2005 and --wow, how did I miss this?--was made into a movie with Kate Hudson.

The movie isn't particularly good, despite having a great cast, and feels flat, but the book is an absorbing read. Giffin draws you in right from the beginning with the tension between Rachel and Darcy. The jealousy that Rachel feels, as well as Darcy's characterization as self-centered and attention-seeking, is believable. Giffin offers a clear picture of how competitive "friendships" can be, and she hints at the insecurities behind Darcy's treatment of those around her. Giffin plants the possibility that Darcy's need to put Rachel down stems from her own sense of failure: she didn't get into Notre Dame, Ethan didn't choose Darcy over Rachel, etc.

At a certain point in the book, though, Rachel's anger toward Darcy becomes a little weird. It's not surprising, especially if Darcy has been using her as a way to make herself look better all these years, but it's not clear that book means for Rachel to seem as spiteful as she does. What I mean by that is that the logic of the novel seems entirely weighted toward supporting Rachel's side of the story, and Rachel gets the prize at the end as the ultimate validation. There doesn't seem to be an element of the story that questions Rachel's anger, only her passivity. And Darcy is ultimately shown in the most monstrous light possible, likewise validating all of Rachel's feelings. It feels a little one-dimensional in this way.

As for the infidelity plot, which many of the reviewers on Goodreads found unacceptable, I'm bothered less by it than many readers. I think that's because the story is about deciding not to make the wrong decision, rather than cheating once the decision has been made. Sure, Dex and Rachel should have been more honest with Darcy, but this particular fictional universe doesn't leave much space for that. It is striking that the movie tries very hard to mitigate Dex's waffling between Darcy and Rachel by creating a drama about his mother and about his wishing he pursued a different career. In the book, he took the unusual and decisive course of choosing not to pursue law and return to the business world. The movie Dex is much less in control of his own life.

Something's missing from the new Bridget Jones novel

About halfway through reading Helen Fielding's new Bridget Jones novel, Mad about the Boy, I realized that something was missing--a re-casting of one of Jane Austen's plots. This might seem unimportant (and obvious), but may also explain why the plot feels, well, a bit slack.

Here's what I mean: without the framework--even broadly adapted--of a Jane Austen novel, the plotting for this novel seems to meander. It starts out in the present, then it moves backward in time, but that movement back in time requires more flashbacks to explain Mark Darcy's death. I don't quite understand why the first shift in time was necessary, and it made the jump forward--to the "real time" of Bridget's relationship with her Toy Boy--less interesting.

To be honest, I found this new installment dull at times (that is, when I wasn't tearing up over Mark Darcy's death), and that was partly because the plot didn't seem to have a whole lot of tension. I wasn't that caught up in Bridget's obsession with Roxster, and I wanted her to stop texting during meetings (I know that's absurd, but there it is). The ending also feels rushed, even though Fielding has been planting clues all along.

This wandering plot feels a bit like the one non-Bridget Jones novel by Fielding that I read many years ago, Cause Celebre. Cause Celebre also felt sort of meandering, and that's what makes me wonder if the plotting of the first two Bridget Jones novels needed the Austen underlay, not just because of the ways that they updated the Austen story (and Fielding gives a sly nod to this practice by having Bridget reinvent her own career by updating classics), but because of the way that they structured the plot.

Chick Lit and Gender Politics in the Workplace: The Case of Sophie Kinsella

I’ve just finished Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me, and I’m starting to see a pattern to the workplace gender politics in her novels. Although her novels tend to focus sympathetically on single women struggling with their personal and professional life, she also repeatedly creates fiendishly ambitious working women who torment the protagonist. For this recurring character, ambition has taken a destructive turn.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

1) In Twenties Girl, Lara Lington’s business partner, Natalie, is set up as an explicit contrast: she is so ambitious that she will do anything to succeed. Natalie is widely condemned by other characters, but it takes a while for Lara to realize that Natalie is toxic and reject her tactics.

2) Remember Me’s plot revolved around discovering why Lexi Smart’s character has become a “bitch boss from hell.” The second half of the book focuses on rehabilitating her bitch boss persona so that she can get back to being her original, less polished, less driven self.

3) In the first two Shopaholic books, Becky Bloomwood is terrorized by Alicia Bitch Longlegs, a relentlessly ambitious character. It’s not that Becky is a more ethical character than Alicia--Becky will happily lie her way out of any uncomfortable situation--but Alicia is vilified for trying to cheat her way to professional success.

4) Emma Corrigan in Can You Keep a Secret? is tormented by her ambitious and successful cousin, Kerry, who takes every opportunity to show her up and belittle her.

5) And, in the most unsettling of all of Kinsella’s books, The Undomestic Goddess, Samantha is so burned out by her high-powered career that she flees, takes a job as a housekeeper, and falls so in love with that job (and the position of subservient employee) that she is determined to keep it even when it no longer makes any sense plot-wise. This is, in my opinion, the most unsatisfying of all of Kinsella’s books because the resolution is so strange.

Sure, there are plenty of examples of nasty careerist men in Kinsella’s novels, so maybe it’s less about gender politics than about wanting success no matter what. However, it is striking that Kinsella’s female protagonists are consistently rewarded for rejecting careerism (or, at least, its most vicious forms) and that she so frequently paints the ambitious woman in the workplace as a twisted character.

Perma! Making (some of) the Internet forever

I heard a piece this morning on Marketplace Tech Report about Perma, which is a program started by a group of libraries in order to make online materials cited in scholarly journals permanent. The members of Perma are trying to solve a real problem: scholarly articles regularly cite links, and there's no guarantee that those links won't become obsolete. This problem, called link rot, is pervasive; according to Perma, 70% of the links in articles published in legal journals between 1999 and 2011 direct users to irrelevant content. Perma creates a permalink to an archived version of the original page.

Perma has some gatekeeping built in: once you register a link that you want to preserve, the scholarly journal that you are citing it in has to verify (or vest) the link to say that, yes, this is being cited in a scholarly source. The journals themselves have to be verified (or sponsored) by an institution. So, you can't just register every website that you think it would be great to have a copy of (NOT that I was tempted to do that. Certainly not).

Perma sounds like a great idea, but I have some questions...

1) If I'm understanding Perma's mission, a lot of the links that get perma'd are going to be to scholarly journal articles. If that's the case, how do we handle paywalls? I access journal articles through my library's subscription, and the link is generated through our proxy server. How do users from different institutions (or those who aren't affiliated with institutions) access subscription content archived through Perma?

2) Likewise, how does Perma overlap with other archiving programs like LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)?

3) How will this impact open access journals that may not have institutional backing? Can they also be sponsoring journals so that the links in their articles are archived?

4) This only solves part of the problem for researchers using online sources. Wouldn't it be great if we could also solve the problem of archiving content that isn't necessarily cited in scholarly journal articles (or that future scholars might want to cite, but wouldn't have access to because it will have disappeared)? Too bad the NSA's new data farm in Utah can't be put to this use...

Linking the Man Booker and the BBC’s All-Female National Short Story List

There were two big stories out of the British publishing world this week that don’t at first glance seem to have much to do with each other: the Man Booker announced that they would accept entries from any English-speaking country and the BBC’s National Short Story award revealed--and then felt the need to explain--an all-female shortlist. The change in the Man Booker was the more obviously controversial event, but both announcements are linked because the anxious discussions around them say quite a bit about how we think about literary categories today.

First for the Man Booker Prize’s global expansion: this was a controversial announcement because it means that American authors will now be eligible to compete for a prize that had previously been open only to British, Irish, and Commonwealth writers. Many who were critical of the move, like Philip Hensher, say that the prize will lose its uniquely British identity by going global, whereas those who support it say that it’s time to open the prize up to all English-speaking writers. Critics like Hensher fear that opening up the prize means that it will be dominated by the economic clout of the U.S., and thus British authors will lose a major international stage on which to showcase their work. On the other hand, Gaby Wood at the Telegraph and others argue that U.S. authors aren’t likely to crowd out British ones. Further, as Wood puts it, if that’s the fear, maybe British authors “should perhaps think of upping their game.” Liz Bury at the Guardian offers a useful overview of both sides here.

In my mind, this is a tough one. I both accept the argument that placing international boundaries around the prize is artificial and wish the prize could stay as it is. The prize is, in some ways, more meaningful as a measure of literary merit if it takes into account the entire world of fiction in English. At the same time, I like the idea of the prize as it is because it highlights authors that don’t necessarily get the same attention here in the U.S. The question is, what is the prize *really* about? It seems that U.K. and Commonwealth authors would answer that question differently than the Prize organizers.

As for the BBC’s National Short Story shortlist, for the second time in its eight-year history, it is composed entirely of women. The Chair of Judges, Mariella Frostrup, explained that:  

“The 2013 shortlist is all female, which suggests the short story is a form much suited to the innovative brilliance of women writers. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman - author of the enormously influential The Yellow Wallpaper - onwards, many favoured short story writers are women. Now we have five new names to add to the list of skilled exponents.”

The novelist Peter Hobbs made no attempts to explain the list in terms of gender: "We've got to the stage where an all-female list is not even worth mentioning, [...] I don't really pay any attention to gender."

I agree with Hobbs. I think that the attempt to explain the list as reflecting women’s particular talent for the short story makes an awkward gendered argument that doesn’t quite articulate its assumptions: is it that the smaller canvas of the short story is more suited to a woman’s interest in smaller details? What do we say, then, about the expansive canvas of something like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall? I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with working on a smaller canvas or paying attention to small details, but it feels like any attempt to explain an all-female shortlist for short stories will necessarily get mired in weirdly essentialist statements about what women are really good at.

On the whole, both of these announcements, and the conversations circling around them, have just as much to say about the state of literary and cultural studies as anything else. The last 10-20 years have called into question our ideas about the importance of national boundaries when talking about artistic production. The map of the Man Booker (which I discussed in my last post) shows how global and fluid the prize already is--although it also shows some parts of the world that it has not touched. Likewise, how do we talk about women’s literature (and women’s interests) these days? Feminism, and feminist recovery work, continues to make the point that women (and men) are interested in everything. Can we say there is a certain brand of literature that women are particularly good at? What would that even mean?  

On the whole, these two announcements have raised some essential (or essentialist) questions about literature: is there some inherent quality to a national literature? Or women’s literature? Are these questions still relevant?

Digging into the Man Booker Map

Because I'm a big fan of using maps--and mapping software--as a data visualization tool, I was really excited to see Nick Sidwell's map of the Man Booker Prize in the Guardian's Books Blog. This map, showing the setting of every book that was either shortlisted or won the Booker prize since 1969, shows the global reach of those 267 books. The densest cluster is in the U.K., with South Asia, the U.S., Africa, and Western Europe following not too far behind.

While Sidwell offers some reflections on the importance of literary setting for readers, in particular how readers become attached to real or imagined locations (think platform 9 3/4), this map offers more possibilities for thinking about late twentieth and early twenty-first century fiction as an imaginative space.

And, as is often the case with large (or modest) data projects, the most suggestive possibilities come from using the map as a way to start asking questions rather than answering them. What I mean is that the map only tells us so much--the Booker Prize has spanned the globe, with some locations getting considerably more attention than others. This is interesting, but it's most interesting because it leads to other possible questions about imaginative locations and the Booker Prize. We'd have to look more closely at the novels, and the authors, to really dig into why these locations matter.

Such as:
1) How are those locations being used in the novels? Do they map onto particular political and social events?

2) What are the authors' relationships to these locations? Is the map telling us about the global reach of the prize (i.e., because it is recognizing authors from a broad range of backgrounds) or about the global imaginative reach of the authors?

3) If we were to layer the data so that we could look at the authors' national origins, travel, and places of habitation, what would that tell us?

4) What about the characters' relations to these locations? I'm reading Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire, which was longlisted but didn't make it to the shortlist. The novel takes place in Shanghai, but part of the novel's power comes from the fact that all of the characters are from somewhere else, trying find their place.

5) What would this map look like if we showed how these locations have shifted over time?

6) How representative is the Booker of modern fiction? What other groups of novels might it be useful to compare the Booker map to?

What other questions would you ask?

Still working out what I think of Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon--and that's probably a good sign

I’ve held off on posting about this novel because I really couldn’t decide what I thought of it. I found it completely absorbing and read it in about two days. It’s not so much that the plot is absorbing--in fact, it’s hard to say exactly what the plot is aside from the suspense about whether the protagonist’s rough situation is going to improve. Instead, what’s really compelling about this novel is the voice of the protagonist. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani describes The Panopticon as a voice-driven novel, and that is exactly right--and that’s the real success of this novel. Fagan has created a central narrative consciousness that is absolutely charismatic. Anais doesn’t pretend to be anything other than completely messed up, and she doesn’t try to deny her bad behavior, although she can’t always remember what she’s done. In a less dark novel, I might be tempted to label her spunky because of her energy, but resilient is really closer, although that signifies a harder and much less likeable character than Anais. I don’t know exactly how to describe her, but Fagan’s characterization is brilliant.

On the other hand, I have my doubts about the narrative itself, and by that I mean that Fagan piles on the unpleasantness until it begins to feel absurd. Terrible things happen in this world, but at a certain point the narrative as a whole strains credibility. Of course, that’s also part of the point, I suspect, since neither Anais nor anyone else seems completely sure of the facts. Anais has one view of “reality,” and Fagan gives her enough charisma to make it possible, all the while undermining everything she says. In fact, as I write this, I’m beginning to doubt whether the realism or otherwise of the narrative isn’t actually a strength. Similarly, there is much talk about how oppressive the home Anais is living in is (the eponymous Panopticon), but the characters who are stuck inside it have a surprising amount of freedom of movement, and they seem to have internalized the disciplinary surveillance that the panopticon is designed to evoke. On the whole, the situation of Anais’s world feels like a distraction from the main interest, which is Anais herself.

On my shelf right now

Like most people, I’m reading several books at the same time right now, and I’m more likely to finish some than others. In honor of the beginning of a new semester, and the subsequent shrinking of free time for reading, it seems like a good time to take stock. The following is a list of what I’m currently reading, ranked from most to least likely finishers.

1) Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw. Although it took a few chapters to get my bearings in this novel, I was immediately drawn into each character’s story. Unlike some multi-character narratives where you enjoy some of the narratives and feel like you're just waiting to get through others, so far each of Aw’s storylines is equally absorbing. I’m definitely going to finish this one--and soon.

2) Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. This novel feels comfortable, if that makes any sense. It’s a rich, but understated narrative, and I enjoy the leisurely way in which the plot is unfolding. Ishiguro draws a perfect balance between inviting the reader to identify with the first-person point of view while giving you enough hints about the narrator's unreliability to feel superior.

I’m definitely finishing this one, even though it's an effort not to think *too* much about Jeeves and Wooster while I’m reading. Can any narratives about the perfect butler *not* feel like a parody in a post-Wodehousian world?

3) The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen. This one has been slow going for me, even though it’s relatively short. This is what I get for having been attracted to a book by its cover when I saw it in the library’s new books shelf.

4) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I keep feeling like I should like this one more than I do because I’m always seeing references to how brilliant it is.

5) Dear Life by Alice Munro. I usually really like Munro's work, but the first story in this collection felt meandering and slack, so I didn’t feel like continuing with the next one. I’ll probably give it another try before giving up, though.

6) Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. The title story in this collection is a pleasure. Russell plays with the vampire motif in a way that feels new and that also creates a rich sense of tragedy and loss. I thoroughly recommend it, so I really have no excuse for not having read any further yet…

7) Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I’ve been working on this novel *forever,* or so it seems. If I were still teaching, I’d be eager to add Kim to my syllabus because I'd look forward to unpacking the geopolitical elements with a group of students. I love the way that this 1901 novel feels like a cold war spy novel. On the whole, though, I think that I like the idea of this novel more than the actual reading of it.

8) The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin. When I started this, I thought I would enjoy it. A few pages later, though, I wasn’t so sure. The writing doesn’t seem as strong as I expected, and the interactions between the characters don’t seem believable. I don’t see myself finishing this one.

9) Summer and the City by Candace Bushnell. I was pleasantly surprised by The Carrie Diaries, but this one doesn’t feel as fresh.  

What’s on your shelf?

Professional vs. Pleasure Reading

This summer I rediscovered pleasure reading. Or, maybe closer to the point, I rediscovered what it is that I love about reading. As a librarian who works 9-to-5 and tries to keep up my scholarship--and a mother of two relatively young kids--my reading time is squeezed into the rare spare moment. This is especially true since our children don’t seem to need sleep, but you don’t need to hear about that….

Anyway, my main point is that although my reading time has almost entirely vanished, I’ve been trying, grimly, to keep up the professional reading that is key to my scholarship. That means that I’ve spent a lot of nights trying to slog through some work of literary criticism just before bed and getting about a page and a half read. When I do give myself freedom to read a novel, I try to pick something useful--i.e., something from the 19th century that is relevant to my scholarship. I’m not quite sure when reading stopped being something that I enjoy, but I’ve been so caught up in obligatory reading that I almost forgot how much I enjoy reading for entirely different reasons.

This summer’s vacation was different, though. Unlike trips where I load my suitcase with books and articles that I really *should* read (and that I wind up avoiding), I gave myself license to download whatever I felt like reading that was available through my library for the Kindle app. Sure, there are some 19th-century novels in that category, but there are also a lot of totally irrelevant books (from a professional point of view), like the Shopaholic series and a completely nonserious romance/mystery by Janet Evanovich called *Foul Play* (there’s a love story and a missing dancing chicken. That’s probably all you need to know). Since I was on vacation--and I was really trying to leave work behind--I stopped feeling guilty about reading them.

Along the way, I re-discovered contemporary fiction, like Jenni Fagan’s *The Panopticon* and Kathryn Stockett’s *The Help.* I used to enjoy reading pretty broadly in contemporary fiction before I specialized in the nineteenth century and became overwhelmed by the sheer number of novels, poems, plays, and short stories produced in that period (this is a big part of Franco Moretti’s claims for the value of distant reading). I’ll never get through all the works that I *should* read from the nineteenth century, much less everything else that relates to my research.

I’m not saying that I’m giving up on reading nineteenth-century literature and literary scholarship: one reason that I chose to specialize in the nineteenth century was because I’m interested in that very explosion of literature. At the same time, I recognize that it enriches my scholarship to keep up with what is being produced today. After all, an article that I published recently on Coppola’s Dracula and early film owes as much to my consumption of period films and Sarah Waters novels as anything else. I also think that it’s important for my quality of life to remember that reading can be a pleasure, whether that means *Lady Audley’s Secret* or Maria Semple’s amazing *Where’d You Go, Bernadette?*

The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell (Or, Waiting for Mr. Big)

First off, I have to admit that I haven’t seen the series on the CW, although I’ve read a few snarky posts about it by Tom and Lorenzo, and I don’t feel compelled to watch it. I’ve always kind of thought of Square Pegs as the Sex and the City prequel, and I love the idea of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Patty Greene growing up to be a smart, stylish writer in the city. The Carrie Diaries, however, is surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because I wasn’t all that impressed with *Sex and the City* when I read it several years ago. If I remember correctly, it seemed as though the HBO series had taken fairly thin material and made it into something much more compelling and interesting.

Early on, though, it’s clear that the Carrie Diaries is an engrossing novel, primarily because Bushnell riffs on the idea of Carrie without trying too hard to create a mini-me of her adult self. The high school Carrie has her own life, problems, and interests, and these seem only distantly related to the adult Carrie. I, for one, would have been really annoyed if high school Carrie had been obsessed with shoes, for example. She isn’t: she’s a smart, believable character who is making her way through the drama of high school.

Likewise, she is surrounded by a group of friends who make sense in high school--as opposed, for the most part, to being previews of her later friendships. This is not an ensemble piece, but Carrie's friends and antagonists are a fully realized group of characters who give a sense of a "real" social world. I say this because sometimes the surrounding characters in a novel are largely indistinguishable from each other and you have to keep flipping back to remind yourself whether this is the one with the sick mother or the one who can’t keep a job (or whatever). Bushnell’s skill here is that she creates an engrossing plot *and* set of characters.

That is, except for Mr. trial-run-for-Mr. Big, Sabastian Kydd. Like Mr. Big, he’s more of an idea than a real character. Most of his dialog consists of cliches, and Carrie’s relationship with him is so clearly an ugly break-up waiting to happen that it’s almost a relief when it does. Much of his life is kept a secret--like, why he left private school--but what we see isn’t very interesting.

After the inevitable breakup with Mr. Big-Kydd, Carrie moves to New York. It is here that you can sense the prequel machinery lurching into motion, and I get less interested. The charm of most of the book is that it feels fresh and you don’t quite know what’s going to happen (except for the romance part), but that gets lost when you know exactly what the New York move is leading up to--right down to the last-minute introduction of one of the later characters. For this reason, I’m not sure whether I really want to read the next one, *Summer and the City.* I probably will, though...

Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

I know this one's been out for a while, but I've only just gotten around to reading it. I understand why Kinsella is so popular--she's expanded on the Bridget Jones formula with a compelling central

character who is both deeply flawed by shallowness and much smarter and more capable.

At the same time that I understand the allure of Kinsella's compulsively readable books, I also find them extremely stressful to read. I almost wasn't able to finish *The Undomestic Goddess* because it made me too anxious. The experience of reading reminded me of watching *I Love Lucy* as a child--whenever Lucy was about to humiliate herself, I'd run out of the room so I didn't have to see it. Likewise, Rebecca Bloomfield, the protagonist, sets herself up for similarly excruciating moments of exposure. This is, of course, a device for creating narrative suspense: an author can create such suspense in a multitude of ways, anywhere from having a character stalked by a mass murderer to overspending on her Visa. If you want to see the literary roots of

the financial plot as narrative device, you have only to look to Trollope. On the whole, though, I enjoyed the characterization of Rebecca more than the agony of her bad choices. The two are inextricable, however, and I was able to enjoy the novel (and its follow-up, *Shopaholic Takes Manhattan*) much more when I realized that everything was going to be okay. Kinsella’s not really interested in punishing her characters, and Becky’s solution to her shopping problem in *Manhattan* is absolutely inspired.

Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling

As soon as I saw a tweet about JK Rowling's pseudonymous mystery, I wanted to read it, even though I gave up on *The Casual Vacancy* after only a few chapters. Something pseudonymous, presented as a newbie's work, would have undergone much more strenuous editing than her other work, something that I felt had been the major problem with her final Harry Potter books (my husband refers to Deathly Hallows as Harry Potter and the Grumpy Camping Trip). I love mysteries, and I (mostly) loved the Harry Potter books, so I really wanted to give this a try. I was also searching for the perfect airplane book...

Overall, *The Cuckoo’s Calling* is a satisfying mystery, and it also shows Rowling working to develop her craft. The story begins with a hook--not so much about the mystery, which only really gets interesting later, but with the introduction of the lead characters. One of Rowling’s trademarks, or at least in these last two books, is an elaborate device for introducing characters. In *The Casual Vacancy,* the death of one character becomes a lens for introducing others. Likewise, *Cuckoo’s Calling* begins with several elaborate devices to introduce the characters--life-changing events that allow for reflection and a literal crash that brings the protagonists together. It seems like Rowling is trying out these narrative devices, and the opening shows much more thought about the shaping of her narrative than the ending, which is pure exposition.

As for the mystery itself, Rowling is in her element in this book and produces an engrossing puzzle with a plausible solution. Rowling handles suspense well, so that the narrative builds and becomes more absorbing as it moves along. Her central characters are fully fleshed out and are, for the most part, believable. The backstory for the main character, Cormoran Strike, is revealed slowly over the course of the novel in such a way that Rowling presents a double mystery. I do wish that she had done a bit more “showing” rather than “telling” in characterizing his ex-girlfriend, but that is the main area where her characterization falls short.

Since this is the 8th (or, rather, 8 and a halfth) book by Rowling that I've read, I feel like I've got some perspective on her as a writer. I’ve always thought that one unexpected aspect of reading multiple works by an author is the way in which the reader learns about the author’s preoccupations. I first noticed this in junior high school when my guilty pleasure was V.C. Andrews’ novels, which gave me the distinct sense that Andrews was highly suspicious of doctors. Likewise, I’ve been struck by Patricia Cornwell’s detailed interest in home security systems and Barbara Pym's insistence that one should always leave a bath "as they'd like to find it." In *Cuckoo’s Calling,* Rita Skeeter and the predations of the press make another appearance as still darker and more destructive creatures. The tabloid press and its insatiable hunger for information about celebrities becomes another suspect, one that is never exonerated, even if it cannot be held directly responsible. There's a clear sense in this novel of Rowling's own outrage at being hunted by the press. I suspect that the media frenzy over this new novel isn’t going to give her any reason to change her mind.

Reading on my phone

I've always been kind of attached to print books: I collect them, I love the way that they get worn in as you make your way through the text, and I like knowing that the print copy is mine as long as I want it (unless I sell it, loan it to someone, or lose it in a fire or flood). As a librarian and scholar, I also like the permanence of the printed book. I spend a lot of time trying to track down sources that no longer exist or were never collected. Thinking about future researchers, I want some sort of insurance that future researchers will have the materials that they need, and the printed book feels like a kind of promise.

On my most recent vacation, however, I discovered that I also love reading on my phone. Reading on my phone has other kinds of satisfaction: I can try out a multitude of books without having to lug them all in my luggage; I always have a book with me (because I *always* have my phone); and I don't need a light to read when we're all crammed into a tent in the middle of nowhere. As long as I have a connection, I don't have to worry about running out of books.

This is a change in attitude that has been coming on for a long time, and it's most closely tied to travel. Every time I go on a trip, I try to anticipate what I'm going to want to read. And I always guess wrong, mostly because my judgement is muddied by aspirational thinking as I try to select a book that is both enjoyable and professionally useful. Since my field is 19th-century literature, over the years I've stuffed my luggage with a lot of long, generally sentimental novels that I never quite feel like reading once I'm stuck on a plane.

On the other hand, I never try to be serious when I'm picking books to read on my phone. My first choice was P.D. James's *Death Comes to Pemberley,* a book that I *had* to read. Next was Rowling's pseudonymous *Cuckoo's Calling,* an indulgence that got me through a flight from LA to Detroit. Once I discovered that I can borrow Kindle books through my public library, I was hooked. On my most recent vacation, I ignored the modernist novel that I had dutifully brought along and indulged in chick lit and cozies.

This is not to say that I'm leaving print books behind entirely. Phone reading is best for light, beachy reads, and that's not my life most of the time. It's also kind of hard on your eyes to read on the phone (that's not so much the case on my iPad, but the kids are usually too busy playing video games on it). I also think that the phone isn't the place for the kind of reading that I do in my scholarly work, where I'm reading more closely, re-reading, absorbing, processing, and often annotating.

Of course, I have just discovered annotating software...