10 Overlooked Novels

The Guardian posted an article about Overlooked Novels. I've never even heard of nine of them. But one, #9, is actually something I spent a lot of time on in college. 

I took a course on utopia from a literature professor with a large background in, and professional and focus on, Chinese culture. So, while studying portrayals of utopia (and dystopia, which was just as fun) we naturally combined both his interests through the 18th century epically long Chinese tale, The Dream of the Red Chamber also called The Story of the Stone.

The book is generally in five parts when translated to English, and while we were acquainted with the beginning of the story, we focused on the second book in the series, "The Crab-Flower Club."

This story inspired our final group project in the class, creating our own crab-flower club, and writing poetry, decorating pages with pastel pencilings of flowers, drinking tea, and other experiential recreations of the book and utopia, creating both our own characters and channeling those in the book. I honestly LOVED this project and the story itself, so I ended up a little hooked on the books and asked my parents for the whole series that year for Christmas or my birthday or something. 

(I didn't get them. Hello, buy a freshman a five-book series as she's embarking on a four-year English education that will cost hundreds in novels that she'll have to read each semester? Terrible trap that my parents avoided.)

But that's neither here nor there, because there's this list of ten obscure books, see, and I know and really like one of them. This is me, feeling like a smart, worldly nerd and loving it. 

Most Challenged Books of 2013

Last week, as part of National Library Week, the ALA released the 2013 list of the 10 most challenged books.

In order of most challenged...


#1 Captain Underpants series (published 1997-present)
#2 Bluest Eye (1970)
#3 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)
#4 Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)
#5 The Hunger Games (2008)
#6 A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl (2006)
#7 Looking for Alaska (2005)
#8 The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)
#9 Bless Me Ultima (1972)
#10 Bone comic book series (1991-2004)

See other years' top-10 lists or read a little more about this year's list.

If you didn't get a chance to fully appreciate National Library Week by visiting a local library last week, take an opportunity sometime in the future to check out one or more of these books as a sign of support for your library's decision to carry them. We can support the freedom to read every day, and every week, not just BBW and NLW!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

Dumas' works have always been a little daunting to me. But, as I looked for a venerable classic available on audiobook download from my library, The Count of Monte Cristo seemed the perfect foil to fluffier books I'd just read for book clubs.

I followed the book with interest, but little thought or judgment, until Dantes' vengeful plans began to be revealed to the reader. While I really enjoyed seeing how Dantes would avenge his wrongs (the elaborate impersonations, the network of friends and compatriots carefully curated solely to exact revenge), I was pretty quickly struck by his playing God. Why does he get to decide their fates? Didn't his own experience with others unfairly commanding his future teach him anything?

Thankfully, for both myself and Dumas' moral and God-fearing readers at the time, Dantes did realize his fault, even sparing the life of one enemy. And it wasn't a sudden feeling of remorse or change of heart--which I think would have felt too cheap--but the incidental death of a child that woke him from the automatic pilot of complete devastation to all.

The relationship between Dantes and Haydee is the one part of the novel I didn't enjoy. His love of the young girl surprised me, because I took him as a only-love-Mercedes kind of guy. The romantic in me wanted him to be devoted to her, although I understood his coolness and yet absolute compassion for her, which was necessary for the advancement of his character from a wronged, heartsick man to a worldly, manipulative Count. All that aside, I still don't get where Haydee fits. Dantes' revelation of being in love with her seemed as unexpected to him as to me, which didn't fit the way the novel tended to allude to things as they developed. And then there's the way they come to their realize they're in love with each other: some sort of middle school s/he thinks s/he doesn't like me, can you believe it, can it be true? And this conversation is even facilitated through another person, so it might as well have been middle school. Why did his second love have to be assisted? Why weren't they mature about their relationship? Why wasn't the novel more gratuitous with their growing relationship? It's such a small part of the book that I can hardly get hung up on it--and I certainly don't strongly judge the book for this reason--but I did find it worth noting.

A final note, I highly approve of the sentiment of the ending, which is about the bigger picture over all, and certainly the lesson that Dantes learned as a prisoner, as a vengeful man, and as a lover: '[A]ll human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope.'

Millennium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson

Can I just start by saying, This series has the best damn audiobooks I've ever listened to, and I don't even care that the bolded sentence within this sentence ends in a preposition. It's that damn fantastic. Thank you, thank you Stieg Larsson and Simon Vance. I could not stop listening!

A couple people who have read the books told me they thought this would be hard as an audiobook. I presume listening to someone speak about the gruesome rapes and murders would be worse than reading them--you can always skip over uncomfortable parts when you can see the words to know when you're in the clear. However, it didn't particularly bother me. Was it easy? Of course not.

But one benefit outweighed that negative: Listening to the books produced the distinct advantage that I didn't have to guess, or just ignore, the names of persons, places, and things that I couldn't pronounce. It was fabulous!

Something else about the audiobooks that I enjoyed? The reader doing different voices for the characters. That can be kitschy and annoying rather than helpful. But these books were so dialogue-heavy that simply reading the text without tonal clues as to who was speaking, would have produced some confusion for the listener. Simon Vance is a master, and I could not only recognize the different voices for the main characters, I honestly was not distracted by the variety. It felt almost like listening to a TV show, but was less jarring than the books that include different readers for the different characters.

Now, a quick word on the books themselves: Compelling. Literally, if I only had one word, that would be it. This is a damn compelling story. 

These were a whirlwind of twists and turns. Some things I never saw coming. Others I thought would happen but did not. Uh, Lisbeth's twin, anyone? Where is she! The characters were familiar by the end of the third book, but not so familiar that the plots were entirely predictable. I love the extremely despicable bad guys and the flawed but loyal good guys. They were easy to hate, easy to like, and most importantly: easy to judge. I felt the books required a lot of passing judgment or assessing others' judgments was an integral part of the book for the reader. No one was perfect--even Blomkvist who oddly never abandoned Lisbeth had his downfalls with the womanizing. Where did Harriet Vanger go, by the way? She just disappeared. Is that one of the other women he referenced toward the end of the third book? And did he stay in love (so very out of character) with that muscular woman? Also in the world of loose ends: whatever happened with Hacker Republic? Did they just leave Sweden one day? These sorts of soft endings and ghost-like characters may have been answered in later books (almost undoubtedly would have, actually).

One thing I did not do while listening, surprisingly, was question the legitimacy or the reality of anything happening in the books. Realistic? Hardly. But it didn't bother me, and I assume it's because how, for lack of a better word, real the characters were in contrast to their amazing skills and situations.

I do so wish this series had made it to the 10 planned books. We're definitely suffering a loss with Larsson's death.

This is a must-experience audio series. Get to it! And if you've already read the books but would consider rereading them, pick audiobook instead for a likely different but highly enjoyable experience.

Liminal in the Kitchen

In undergrad, I developed a love of the liminal space as a sexual arena. The "liminal space" being a transitional location, something of a grey area. For most of my last years and my brief stint in grad school (and really still today) the most enticing liminal space, for me, has been nature. Gardens, barns, forests, you name it—nature is sexy and literature proves it. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jane Eyre, and Lady Chatterley's Lover all include characters that let their guards down in the leafy greens. (For the record, it's not just sexually charged acts that occur in nature; sexual descriptors and adjectives are also very common when encountering or describing nature.)

Now, I'm a big fan of Downton Abbey, like many Anglophiles, and this season has me interested in liminal spaces yet again! Not just the great outdoors—although there was some groping on a bench and touching in a pig pen very recently—but also the kitchen!

I'd love, love, love to re-watch all the seasons and note the liminal spaces that show up, and how the differences or similarities in such spaces also include class. I think there is a brilliant article somewhere in there. 

So I started Anne of Green Gables

This girl is the most annoying character I think I've ever encountered. Seriously! She's worse than all those horrible people in The Great Gatsby!

Is this supposed to be some satirical rendering of Romantic literature, a la Jane Austen? Because I feel like I'm trapped inside the YA alternative to Mysteries of Udolpho. But worse, because there's no mystery and it's short. This is vaguely what I think Little Women must be like, but with less attractive characters.

What also scares me is that, if I had read this in my youth (about age 11 much like Anne), I probably would have developed a knack for hyperbole and flowery language  even more than I was already prone to do with my incessant poetry writing.

I can't decide if it's better or worse that I'm encountering Anne of Green Gables as an audiobook. I'm not sure if it's better that I'm listening to it (less effort than to have to read her stupid wandering commentary, which I actually probably wouldn't do) or worse because I have to hear the whiny insipid annoyance. 

Oh, the tragedy! Anne would approve of what she's putting me through right now.

Web Whoops

I know it's hard to get things out quickly with hot hot news--like today's Oscar announcements--but it still is embarrassing to publish mistakes on timely stories, like this Huff Post "TK" that leads the second paragraph (among others). 

Panic at Pemberley is right!

Remember that time I told you I was listening to Death Comes to Pemberley on audiobook? It was awful. I would never, ever recommend it to anyone. I wanted to like it, because look at that pretty cover. But really, it was probably the worst book I've ever entered into Goodreads.

Now, I just stumbled across this article "Now panic comes to Pemberley: Pride and Prejudice director fears backlash from fans." First of all, well-done with the catchy article title related to the book. Secondly, you're damn straight there should be some concerns. Janeites did not like the book, do you think they'd like the movie? No. But do I think the movie will be better than the book? It has to be.