Hell, yes,

Merry Christmas!...

and--

Happy

Everything!

My Pick for Best Fiction Read 2010: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay, the book has been out for a couple of years, but I just read it this year, so I'm counting it in this year. I love Olive! This book goes to my One-of-the-Best-Books-I've-Ever-Read list. Elizabeth Strout has done an excellent job of showing the complexity, frailty, and joy of being human. Olive is rude and unlikeable and vulnerable and good... by the end of the book, I wanted to go find this woman and hug her!

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The Orchard Keeper

Wheee! I finally finished this book! Which means that I've only started. Now I have a ton of questions... obviously I'll need to do several re-reads. I'm sorry now that I waited so long to read it... I really, truly wasn't interested in reading it at all at first. It really is a fast read, and I might have had time to do an immediate second reading before feeling threatened by my (teetering) to-be-read pile--or at least a closer read (though I don't know that I was ready for a closer read the first time around--one could get mired in the confusing bog of the story--or the furred green pit of it, as it were). Faulkner-esque? Perhaps-ish, but clearly Mr. McCarthy is a brilliant and capable writer in his own right. This is the first book of McCarthy's I've read (it's his first book, too), and now I'm asking myself what took me so long; I've always avoided him because his subjects seem so dark, in that Southern way that makes my skin crawl, and I can take a novel that leaves me feeling disturbed every now and again, but I have to be either up for it or tricked into it...interestingly, I didn't come away from this book with that troubled feeling at all--though some parts rattled me. Perhaps it was McCarthy's exquisitely lush prose, which mesmerized me. I could smell it and taste it. 

The characters, John Wesley Rattner, Marion Sylder, and Arthur Ownby (Uncle Ather), possess a certain quality of tragedy, but they are wily and hard to really connect with; however, the post-prohibition-era Tennessee countryside is lush and delicious. The three men are bound together cryptically and inexplicably by a decaying body in "the pit"; the story explores the push and pull between loyalty and love, and destiny and self-determination. It's not quite a 5 out of 5 for me (not yet anyway), just because it was so confusing and therefore hard to read. I still don't feel like I really know what just happened. However, that's not a complete negative in my little book of what-makes-a-best-book-I've-ever-read... it just hints to me how much depth this novel may have lurking beyond its fog-inducing difficulty. This story has many layers, and so much condensed into its stunningly breathtaking descriptions of the Tennessee mountains and eerily realistic rendering of local dialect, that it haunts me... I imagine one could re-read it an infinite number of times and get something more out of it every time. I will be curious to see how well the story continues to thicken and set as I pass through it on subsequent reads. I think I've just become a McCarthy fan.

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Yep: the weather outside is frightening, and

what a co-inky-dink... the following, one of my favorite Frosts, was in my inbox today, from poem-a-day (poets.org / Academy of American Poets) (I love this poem!). It conjures up the holiday spirit for me--the invigorating and serene beauty of nature on a cold winter day; the anticipation of coming home to a fire in the fireplace and a soul-warming hot toddy or spiced wine; relishing the  good company of friends or the (sometimes even better) company of a good book, maybe after a day of cross-country skiing or snowshoeing...

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Freedom

Phase I. November 2.
I'm halfway through Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, and I have to say that I am enjoying it much more than I thought I would. It's a truthful tale of middle America; the characters, I find very believable, even if they are not all likable. I suspect that many of us know people like the Berglunds... I may change my mind by the time I'm finished with the book, but so far, it appears that Franzen has hit on the state of the American family, and by the looks of the voluminous criticism the book has received, both good and bad, it appears he has hit a nerve as well.

***

Phase II. December 12.
Ugh... finally finished. In the end, I give it a 3 because I enjoyed it and am glad that I read it but was slightly disappointed in that it didn't quite measure up to all the hullabaloo and hype and therefore my expectations. For me, a great book is one that I just can't put down, can't stop thinking about, and really, really don't want to end--so much that I end up dragging out the last chapters so that I can linger. This book dragged for me alright: I read it; I finished it; in parts it even really caught me up in its spell; but overall, I had to kind of discipline myself to just get the darned thing finished so that I could get on with it--those last 100 pages or so really dragged.

I liked the story, I appreciate the pathos of Patty and Walter and the rest. I appreciated the messages I got out of it: the elusive and ambivalent surety of "freedom" --and even the meaning of it-- and the whole Big Question about life and why we're here and what, in this contemporary, modern world we have created, we're supposed to do with it