A bona-fide star performance.

Unlike the last book I found while browsing at Memorial, Lee Server's new biography of Ava Gardner was not at all difficult to get through, in spite of its 500 pages of text. Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing" moves along swiftly and with as much spirit and vest as its subject. Today, Gardner isn't as well known an actress as her contemporaries Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn, but at the height of her career (late 1940s-50s), Gardner was the femme fatale of Hollywood. Her private life often topped her on-screen persona: much of her notoriety came from her affair with the then-married Frank Sinatra, but previous marriages to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw had already set the pattern for Gardner's heady and reckless love life.

Server has a lot to work with, detailing Gardner's rise from the North Carolina backwoods to through her rise to stardom and her slow decline as she became disillusioned following failed movies and love affairs. A combination of mistreatment by her studio (MGM almost made it a point to cast her in terrible films) and insecurity about her acting skills led Gardner to develop a legendary drinking habit, even for alcohol drenched Hollywood. In time, her destructive lifestyle would leave her restlessly wandering, searching for a permanent home and a man who wouldn't break her heart. In spite of her flaws though, Gardner remained a compelling figure. Server brings this aspect of the actress alive through a writing style that echoes Gardner's often ironic tone and extensive, explicative-filled quotes from Gardner and those who knew her.

I really didn't have much familiarity with Gardner's work, only having seen her in Mogambo and Show Boat a long time ago. In a way, though, Gardner's greatest dramatic turn was in the making of her own life, with held as much melodrama and triumph as any screen saga. Like the best type of director, Server frames his star so that her character can shine through to tell her own story. And for both author and star, it is a great performance.

Lose this book.

Believe me, I really wanted this book to be good. It's a clever concept, a collection of all the great books that might of been, a body of ethereal literature tantalizingly out of reach, by many of the greatest writers. So, it's ironic that The Book of Lost Books' should have the subtitle "An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read": for me, it will remain a book that's never read.

One thing about my reading: I make every effort to make it through all the books I begin. I really wanted to get through this one. And it started out fairly promising. The author, Stuart Kelly, writes in his introduction of his obsession with completeness, beginning at a very young age. Originally confined to novelizations of Dr. Who, Kelly's fixation soon extended to all aspects of literature, culminating in this volume. Beginning with Anonymous (who else?) and working through mostly western literature to postmodernist Georges Perec (d. 1982), Kelly muses over lost, never completed, never started, or otherwise not-with-us-here-today works. There are a few gems in his series of essays: the ancient Greek plays of Menander, praised by ancient authorities and thought lost for hundreds of years, were miraculously rediscovered in the twentieth century--only to reveal the great comic playwright was in actuality an overrated hack. Or the case of Camillo Querno, whose (mercifully) lost epic The Alexias was deemed so awful by Pope Leo X that Querno was awarded the post of poet laureate on the basis of his chutzpah in claiming authorship of such trash than from any artistic merit.

Unfortunately, such good moments are buried in dense, uninteresting verbiage that quickly becomes tedious. I pressed on into the account of Gottfried Vilhelm von Leibniz's Universal Encyclopedia before Kelly's pontificating just became too much. For those serious readers (and I mean those who read their Euripides in the original Greek), Kelly's book might hold their interest; for those not interested in dense, speculative prose, leave The Book of Lost Books on the shelf.

An entertaining murder romp from inside the Beltway.

I hadn't planned on reading this book. I occasionally succumb to the 'gee, this looks interesting' impulse, drawn to a book because of its cover or the particular mood I'm in. In this case, I was looking for a copy of Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel Thank You For Smoking, partly because I'd heard good things about it, but mostly because I'm too cheap to go see the movie. Alas, another cheapsake had the same idea and had absconded with Memorial's only available copy. So, I instead grabbed the next book on the shelf: No Way to Treat a First Lady, Buckley's satire on Washington life and its legal tangles.

Part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, Buckley's quickly paced plot centers on the mysterious death of a first term, war-hero president following a late-night 'consultation' with a well-known Hollywood actress and party donor in the Lincoln Bedroom. When the president is found dead in his wife's bed the next morning with a sizeable imprint from a Paul Revere silver spittoon on his forehead, suspicion naturally falls on his publicly despised and headstrong first lady, Beth MacMann. Lady Bethmac (as she is fondly referred to in the press) turns to the only lawyer who will be willing to go to the lowest depths to keep her from a lethal injection: Boyce "Shameless" Baylor. That Baylor also happens to be the man Lady Beth dumped to marry War God is only the first of many twists.

As a former speechwriter for Bush 41 and possessor of a tony conservative pedigree, Buckley brings insider savvyness and a never-ending dose of cynicism to the inner malfunctionings of Washington. A few well-known media personalities pop up, and it's likely that some of the fictional characters will bring to mind flesh-and-blood equivalents. Much like Carl Hiassen's novels, Buckely's line between fiction and reality is blurred enough to make No Way to Treat a First Lady both outlandishly funny and wryly believable.

Out of the closet.

I have a confession to make.

For the past few months, I have been an abject, utterly devoted, borderline-obsessive fan of Sex and the City. In fact, the past few minutes between me writing that sentence and creating the link to the show was spent aimlessly browsing through the fashion shots on the official site. Every evening at 10 o'clock finds me devotedly tuned in to the WB to see the criminally censored, yet still appealing re-re-runs of episodes that I've already essentially committed to memory. Of course, when faced with such an inexplicable possession, there's really only one course of action to take:

It must be analyzed to death.

Which brings me to the topic(s) of today's post. I mined the library resources I had available to me, and spent the last week and a half reading. I started with Candace Bushnell's original book of the same title. I'd heard mixed reactions from fans of the show, so I knew not to expect the same stories, or even the same characters. Still, Bushnell's sharp, cynical prose takes some adjusting to, as does her rapid changes of setting and mood. Some of the storylines from the earliest part of the first season are here (modelizers, the Bone and Carrie's first encounter with Mr. Big are among them), but those looking for the strong friendships between the leads in the series are likely to be disappointed. But one thing that I liked about Bushnell's original columns over the series is the use of multiple perspectives: it's not all single people, and we hear as much from the toxic bachelors as we do the women who are scheming to have their revenge on them.

Amy Sohn's Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, as one might guess by the title, is meant to be the official fan book for the show. Packed with pictures, brief synopses of each episode, the obligatory quiz, it has the flashy, magazine type of layout meant for periodic skimming rather than long, readable text. Probably the most interesting is the interviews of the individual cast members as to how they came to the show and the perspectives they bring to their characters. I was a little surprised that fashion didn't play a larger role in the book--each character gets a double page spread, and designers' names are dropped everywhere, but on the whole, the focus is on the writing, which is where it should be.

But, if we want to forego the frou frou and lend an air of academic respectability to all this, there's Kim Akass' and Janet McCabe's collection Reading Sex and the City. Consisting of essays primarily focusing on the feminist ramifications of the show, the works also discuss the fetishization of Manolo Blahniks and the elusive nature of the show's New York fantasy. Reading Sex and the City was originally published in Britian, and most of the writers are English, so there's some references that don't register for Americans. For the casual fan or even diehards, it's a skippable title. But the points raised by some of the less dense essays bring a different kind of perspective for those who have to have everything footnoted in life (not that I know anyone like that).

Whatever the opinions on the show (and I was entirely skeptical about it before I chanced on a few reruns), Sex and the City is likely going to remain a subject of study, at least in terms of feminist studies. Consumerism, the changing role of the single woman, the discussion of social taboos--there's a lot to get through, and a lot yet for me to analyze.

Growing up, wallflower-style.

...Then, Patrick pointed at me, and said something to Bob.
"He's something, isn't he?"
Bob nodded his head. Patrick then said something I don't think I'll ever forget.
"He's a wallflower...You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand."

Charlie has already seen a lot in his life, and he's only about to begin his freshman year of high school. In a series of letters to an unnamed friend, Charlie records an angst-filled year of love, betrayal and becoming infinite. Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower could succumb under the weight of all that it tackles: teen suicide, molestation, forbidden love and nasty acid trips--and that's all within the first third of the book. But somehow it all seems to work.

This is due to most Chbosky's believable characters: unlike many high school dramas which try to pigeonhole the players into preconceived types. They may make wrong decisions, but that doesn't immediately set them on an inevitable course that other authors might resort to. In a nutshell, that is really what the story is about: even though wrong decisions might be made, there's always an undercurrent of hope running through the narrative. Observing all this is Charlie, in whom all the characters tend to confide their fears, hopes and frustrations with their own lives. Ironically, Charlie's desire to do right by his friends and remain on the sidelines nearly costs him his own chance at living.

I found this book after noticing that it often came up as a title that has been challenged. True, it deals with some sensitive topics and does contain some objectionable language. But after reading Wallflower, I'm rather at a loss to say why it comes under attack. While one would hope that all teens wouldn't have to face some of the situations present in the book, the reality is that many can relate to similar problems. At the close of the book, the story isn't so much about the ordeals the characters have gone through, but about how they've lived and grown up in the process. It's a conclusion full of hope, and you can't help but feel that in the end, the kids will turn out just fine.

And you think you work with divas.

You have to hand it to Joe Volpe. Releasing a memoir of his tenure as head of the Metropolitan Opera could put one in a ticklish situation; doing it before he actually steps down (his last official day is in July) could be construed as downright foolish. Yet if there is one underlying theme that comes out of The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera, it is the gutsiness necessary with successfully running the nation's largest (and some would say premier) performing arts organization.

Opera exists for conflict, and Volpe's 43-year career at the Met certainly saw its fair share: the struggle to get the new Met house built, the 1980 labor strike that saw part of the season canceled, and, most famously, Volpe's dismissal of soprano Kathleen Battle. Volpe (with co-author Charles Michener) frankly describes the twists and turns of keeping the pressure-cooker that is the Met functioning and even thriving. That Volpe ended up as the head of the company is in itself due to a twist of fate. As a carpenter working on sets for a production of Turandot at the old Met, Volpe wasn't even interested in opera until he happened to hear Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli rehearsing the trial scene in Act 2. Hooked, he eventually worked his way up the Met ranks, eventually rising to the rank of general manager in 1990.

Volpe's reign has not been without controversy, and occasionally it seems like Volpe is directly defending himself from his critics, especially when the topics of the administration and management of Lincoln Center arises. Nor do some familiar faces from the Met survive Volpe's critique: snobbish administrators, clueless designers and even long-time music director James Levine get sometimes brutal commentary. Yet Volpe knows where to give credit as well, singling out Levine for the artistic strength of the company, and various board members and donors for keeping the Met afloat through tough financial times.

The Toughest Show is a friendly read for those without a background in music or opera, and contains enough Met history to acclimate the unfamiliar with the company's rich and occasionally stormy history. Those already acquainted with the Met will appreciate the generous use of photos and the chance to understand the lives of the people working behind the gold curtain.

A life in full, c. 1785

I recall seeing someone with this book when it first came out waaaay back in 1998, but as all the readers I know who typically read this sort of bio deny ever having laid eyes on the book, it is possible that I've been hallucinating about this book for the past eight years. Maybe.

But now I'm quite glad that I happened upon Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. A 200-year dead member of the British aristocracy may seem an odd choice for a modern biography, but Georgiana was a surprisingly modern figure, even for our time. Foreman follows her subject from her marriage at the age of 17 to her death in 1806, at a time when the world of British politics was as much about backroom deals, social backstabbing and sexual intrigue as it was about the proceedings in the House of Commons. At the very center of all this upheaval (and some contemporaries would say the cause of part of it) was Georgiana. She was constantly in the eye of the public, not the least for her controversial manipulations of the Whig party and her savvy use of fashion and celebrity to influence popular opinion. Yet behind her public persona was a woman who suffered from an unending feeling of inadequacy, resulting in a gambling addiction (she racked up debts of $6,000,000), the loss of an illegitimate daughter, and the reliance on a bizarre menage a trois to sustain the appearance of her marriage.

Portions of the book dedicated to the finer points of Whig and British politics are a bit of a slog for the uninitiated, but Foreman recreates the personalities and atmosphere of this world so well that Georgiana sometimes reads like a novel. With revolution, sex and politics the norm in her life, it isn't surprising that many of Georgiana's letters were censored by her prudish Victorian descendents. Yet enough of this remarkable woman's personality comes through to reveal her zeal for life, centuries after it ended.

06.06.06: The Beginning

No, the Rapture didn't happen, planes did not fall out of the sky, nor did the sun explode. But the day hasn't been an entire bust. On this auspicious date, I'm finally undertaking a project that I've been kicking around for the past few months: blogging about the books I've read. I don't claim to be an expert on much of anything, but as a recently minted (albeit unemployed) librarian, the need to proclaim the virtues or failings of my recent reading is in my blood. Hence this blog. It will chronicle my thoughts, opinions, adulations, pet peeves, rants, and other emotions triggered by my recent reads. It may be coherent. There may be links to other book-related sites or stories, and perhaps commentary on other cultural events that catch my interest. One thing is certain: it will evolve, as I'm fairly new to the blogging world and will have to learn by doing. Mostly, A Reader's Year is for my own benefit: a record of what I've read recently and what I thought of it.

A note on what I read: pretty much whatever strikes my fancy. I tend most towards nonfiction: history, memoirs/biographies, works on social topics, books on quirky subjects. Whatever. If I were stuck to reading only books on a particular topic for an extended period of time, I would start crawling up the walls. I'm also interested in literary fiction, mysteries (of the British, civilized murder sort), art books, women's studies, cultural studies, graphic novels, and young adult books. I have a strange desire to read as many of the Penguin classics as I can before I expire. So, in a nutshell, I read random books. What may capture my interest one week might be old news the next.