We Interrupt this Blog . . . A Tree Grows . . .

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A TREE GROWS IN BALTIMORE

Okay, so I’ve become persuaded that I can keep the Memory Project on track, if I a) post less often and b) cannibalize my pre-teen youth, while saving my teen years for the next book.

But I also want to add a new feature to this blog, a reading project. As some of you know — hey, Joe! — I’m a huge fan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a book that has been held back from straight-up classic status, IMHO, because it has a female protagonist. Anyway, those who know the book well may remember that Katie Nolan, the matriarch, is given some interesting advice by her mother.

“The secret lies in the reading and writing . . . Every day you must read one good page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be done until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret.”

Her mother advises Katie to read from Shakespeare and “the Protestant Bible.” (“It’s not fitting for a good Catholic to say but I believe the Protestant Bible contains more of the loveliness of the greatest story ever told on this earth and beyond it.”) Katie follows through, with some interesting results: Frannie asks another little girl to wait while she “begats” her jump rope.

So, in 2006, I’m going to try it. A page a day, from each volume. I have a new Bible and an old collected Shakespeare. And when I travel, I figure I can take photocopies to cover the days I’m away.

But I also have another ambitious reading project, and I’m not the only one. Like a lot of folks, I’ve fallen hard for Jane Smiley’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.” As Jenny Davidson reported on her blog there are blogs set up for those who want to read Smiley’s list of 100 books (actually 101) in order, month by month. I’m going to go backwards, starting with Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me, and I’m allowed to make substitutions as I reach books I’ve read. (On the other hand, I’m also allowed to re-read those books I just don’t remember. Yes, that’s you, Moby-Dicky!)

I’m going to use this blog for interim reports on both reading projects. And if you know one thing about me, you know I’ll be honest, even if I’m an abject failure or if my self-imposed required reading makes me start reading all sorts of contraband, anything but the books at hand.

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37 thoughts on “We Interrupt this Blog . . . A Tree Grows . . .”

  1. My daughter set a goal last October of reading 100 books. She read and cataloged each one and also wrote her first book during this time! I’m so impressed..

  2. But which Shakespeare play will you begin with? The first one in the collection? And which one is that? My former Shakespeare professor once said that only very old people can read King Lear and understand it. I found that when I was 20, but your challenge to yourself has made me think about going back and seeing if I’m old enough yet…

  3. I anticipate I’ll read 100 books, easy, in 2006. (I’m no Sarah Weinman, but I read a lot.) However, it’s less likely that I’ll read the 101 books on the Smiley list. (Really more than 101 and some are REALLY long.)

    Here’s how odd I am. I checked into Palm Beach airport yesterday with a wonderful manuscript. But I’m supposed to be reading it, right? (And I did read 100 pages.) But I bought a very odd business book called The Big Moo, on the theory that innovative ideas about business can be applied to other things.

    And it’s a darn good read.

  4. I’ll start with the first play — as soon as I find my collected Shakespeare, which isn’t where I thought it was.

    I also have a multi-volume set that was owned by my great-grandmother, but it’s missing one volume of the histories and it’s much too precious to be handled.

  5. I reviewed a book a while back whee someone set a goal of a book a week; I wasn’t really impressed by the book but I was pretty impressed by the goal, since the author was someone witha career, a spouse, a kid, a life. Those of us without those commitments find far more time to read. And still we goof off! (ok, well buying that HUGE collection of Sunday NYT crosswords guaranteed i’d be distracted.)
    I’d go for used pb copies of the Shakespeare, just so I could carry them with me and not LUG the collected works from room to room, to say, the cafe. But I suppose photocopies would do; I just dread lugging things (and the copy shop’s not far but still. I like handy…and what if I read a little more than the pages I had with me?
    Laura, do you read more than one thing at a time? Will you be reading a Shakespeare play and something else AND something else?
    I DO recommend you help things along by going to http://www.sarahsmith.com and looking at some of the vastly amusing “Shakesweird’ that Sarah collected while writing her CHASING SHAKESPEARES.

  7. I’m the “daughter that read 100 books”. To tell you the truth, I should have read many more than that, but I didn’t really consider doing it until sometime in June. I started my list in Oct. of 2004, just as a record of all the books that I had read. At the time, I was 28, my goals were as follows: to have a fairly comprehensive outline of a novel written by the time I was 29, to have written the novel by the time I was 30, to have read 100 books in one year and have my novel published by the time I was 31. Well, it is a few short weeks before my thirtieth birthday, and I have finished all of these in a little over one year except for the publishing part, which I’m just about to start working on. Something else to keep in mind: I work 8 hours a day, six days a week, have a husband that I enjoy spending time with, go to the gym, cook dinners, and socialize. I found myself reading anywhere from three to seven books a week. I began writing my novel in March of 2005 and finished in May, worked a lot over the summer (we live in Ocean City and I’m sure most of you are familiar with how crazy that can be in the summer!), and I’m just finishing the revisions. Maybe I’m a little strange because I read so much so quickly, but I have always been an avid reader, and I realized that the more I read, the better my writing would get. I can tell you that it definitely makes a difference – all I had to do was go back to my writing in the beginning when I had just begun my reading goal! And thanks to my mom who has given me a lot of great criticism and a ton of support!

  8. Bianca, would you consider forwarding your list of 100? Also, if you’re looking for an agent, go to http://www.lauralippman.com, click on archives and look for a section called “Self Help.” It’s everything I know about getting an agent.

    When I was a Sun reporter, I wrote an article about a man (Syd) who was determined to read 10,000 books. His wife, June, is a visitor to these parts, so, June, could we have an update?

  9. I’ve been keeping a book journal this year for the first time. I didn’t set out to read a particular number of books or any particular type of books. I just wanted to keep track for a change and to force myself to slow down and savour and remember. (I’m another fast reader.) I’m up to ninety books now and have no doubt I’ll surpass 100 by the end of the year. However, it is definitely not as exalted a list as Jane Smiley’s 100 novels! I plan to take stock at the end of the year, and perhaps to set some more concrete reading goals for 2006. Flipping back through my book journal, I can already say that my reading patterns are not quite what I thought they were. It’s been an interesting exercise.

  10. Okay, I have a spouse, two kids, writing deadlines, and a new puppy. But even before these all entered my life, I just didn’t read as quickly as many of the people I knew. I wish I did! But my list for a year will never include 101 books–especially not if I segue from GONE WITH THE WIND (just finished) to JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORELL (next on my list). Do books of more than 200,000 words count double??

  11. Personally, I could read the tragedies every year for the rest of my life, but after appearing in a production of Loves Labours Lost, I’m done with the comedies for a while. And what does it say about my early curmudgeonly ways that Lear has been my favorite play since college?

    I’ve embarked on my own related project, and that’s to read all the books in my TBR pile before Christmas.

    I’m just not saying which Christmas.

  12. I’m getting lots of great ideas from all of you on books to look into.I tend to get stale and read the same genre for a while. But no matter what i get from the library it ALWAYS includes a good mystery!

  13. I may be coming in too late to get any responses but I have a couple of issues to raise. I read very little now (off the top of my head, I can think of only three books that I’ve read this year!) but it’s not because of a lack of time or desire to read. I find I can’t read when I’m working on a book, and even between projects, other people’s work tends to send me back to my own. Does no one else have this problem.
    Second, I write short, fast books, but I write for slow readers. Except for Sarah Weinman (who of course isn’t a person but a government facility deep under Utah) I’m pretty certain most fast readers would miss a great deal of what I put in because I write in such a spare style. Is there not something wonderful about the leisurely read? We can’t read ALL the books, so why not read and (dare I say it, reread) a handful really well?

  14. Kevin,

    You raise a good point. My sister is a slow reader, but a diligent one. (She’s also one of the smartest people I know and one of the purest intellectuals.)

    And writing crime has somewhat ruined reading crime for me, a sad irony, as crime novels were my pure pleasure reading, which is how I came to write them. I still read it and try very hard to keep up with friends’ work while checking out new writers on the scene. But I now feel that I’m being “good” when I’m reading crime novels, and I most enjoy reading for which I get no credit.

    I have failed again and again and again at every organized approach to reading. I will fail at this one, if failure is defined as completion of Smiley’s list. (Hey, why do you think I’m going backwards? If I had to start with #1, I’d be stumped right there. And I’ve been defeated by Proust before, and I’ll be defeated by him again.)

    I read a lot of junk when I was young. I still read some junk, although by trash may be other’s treasure and vice versa. Junky reading makes me a junky writer, while books that challenge me — and Smiley’s list, interestingly, is full of books she didn’t like, but found engaging — seem to sharpen my skills.

    Finally, I find short books often to be the most demanding things I read. Ken Bruen’s “A Last Call for Louis MacNeice” was so intense that I alternated it with a big, fat, “prestigious” read — title now forgotten — so I could have some room to breathe. Ditto for The Wheelman, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone (to be published next year, I had the great good fortune to read an ARC), and Kevin’s own Among the Dead.

  15. Kevin–

    I know what you mean about reading while you’re writing. It’s one of the things that slows me down too.

    I find I can read nonfiction while I’m writing fiction…but I can’t read anything close to what I’m trying to write.

    And Laura, I agree about the short, intense stories often having the most impact.(Unfortunately, the bestseller business model seems to involve longer and longer books). Glad to hear about the new Woodrell–he’s one of my favorites, an author I first heard raved about by people like you, Lehane, Hall, etc on the late, lamented Hardboiled Board.

  16. Does watching The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s video over and over count for anything? Can I use Cliffnotes? It’s just that those histories are going to kill me!
    This year has been the year of The Pratchett in our house – I discovered him this year and will have read everything the man has written by the end of the year.
    Another idea that I’ve been playing with as my kids get older and read all the books I enjoyed at their age: A list of the 100 best YA/chapter books I ever read, and maybe some I missed. Many YA’s are better written than adult novels, and the themes are still beautiful and heart-wrenching in many cases.
    For starters, S.E. Hinton, Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Paul Zindel, M.E. Kerr, John Fitzgerald, Katherine Paterson, and of course, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would be right up there.

  17. “And for the record, I read 100 books between August and now…”

    Now I feel even worse….

    Oh, re: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I’ve always loved reading, I grew up in Brooklyn, we even had Trees of Heaven on my block….but I never read this book until two years ago. I was surprised, even stunned, to see how undervalued it is. Okay, okay, it’s proclaimed a “classic,” but a school classic, along with, I don’t know, “The Yearling” and “Of Mice and Men.” Stories that are good for you, which you should therefore dread reading and should never think about again once you’ve grown up.

    When, in truth, “Tree” is one of the best books ever written about the urge to create…it’s as vivid a portrait of a place and time as I’ve ever read…and it predates (and surpasses) the modern-day memoir in its clear-eyed honesty.

    Why doesn’t it have the reputation it deserves? Obvious: Because,as Laura says, it’s about a girl.

  18. I love the idea of compiling a personal list of best 100 YA/chapter books. In addition to the authors that Heidi mentions, my list would have to include Maud Hart Lovelace, Elizabeth Enright, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, E. Nesbit, Eva Ibbotson, Louise Fitzhugh, P.L. Travers, Lucy Maud Montgomery & Dodie Smith. Of course, since many of those authors wrote fabulous series, it would be difficult to decide whether to single out best books from those series for the list or just to put the whole series on as one item.

    On the point about pace of reading, although I’m generally a fast reader, my pace definitely varies depending on what sort of book I’m reading. For example, I tend to linger over short stories. And for those books that I am more likely to speed through (suspenseful mystery novels, and kidlit fantasy), if they’re really well written I will often read them a second time to savour the prose after I’ve satisfied my need to find out how the story ends.

  19. —Maud Hart Lovelace—

    One wonderful thing Laura did was turn my then-9-year-old daughter on to the Betsy-Tacy books…which then became perhaps her favorite series of all, a regular re-read.

  20. Well, with six weeks until this kicks in, I went to my bookshelves last night and grabbed one of the hardcovers I bought because I just had to have it . . . What Was She Thinking, by Zoe Heller. It’s probably been in trade paperback for at least a year by now. That will be my “bedtime” book as another manuscript is my daytime one.

    Other recent reads: Linda Barnes’ latest Carlotta Carlyle, in ARE; Lisa Gruenwald’s Whatever Makes You Happy; Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle; Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.

    Joe: Smiley claims to be a slow reader. I’m relatively speedy; I once read 11 books while on a week vacation, and one of them was Crime and Punishment. But there’s a case to be made that my retention isn’t what it should be. Especially when it comes to nonfiction. Here, two years after completing it, is what I’ve retained from the John Adams bio: he and Abigail truly had a wonderful relationship; they were progressive re: African-Americans, refusing to own slaves and attempting to open an informal school; they had a wretched time in France; by the end of their lives, Adams, Jefferson and Franklin disliked each other heartily.

    Clearly, I think about the world through the prism of relationships and that’s what sticks with me when I read.

  21. Since I do not have children, a full time job, etc., I find a lot of time to read…I just love it. So 100 books in a year is nothing…when on vacation, my goal is to read a book a day. I’ve gotton to the point where I’m now buying books on buying books. “Book Lust” has introduced me to different authors that I’ve never heard of that I really have enjoyed. Trouble is, finding their stuff.

    So, where can I find the Jane Smiley list? I’ve already read everything by her. I’m through everything by Ms. Lippman, of course, so I’m always looking for new things to read.

    I loved “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” but I don’t agree with her mom…Shakespeare is better seen than read in my humble little opinion.

  22. I love the idea of this project! I esp. think the Shakespeare part of it is a fabulous idea, I love those plays. (And it will save you from writing up all your good stuff about early life rather than saving it for the novels, for sure.)

    I thought “Look At Me” was a fantastic novel, will be curious to hear what you think. Also, I just went last night to see my colleague Andy Delbanco read from his new Melville biography, and it really looks great–might be a good supplement to the Moby Dick rereading. I want to also put in a plug for my favorite novel of all time–haven’t checked to see if it’s on Jane Smiley’s list–Rebecca West’s “The Fountain Overflows.” Her nonfiction is fantastic too, but this seems to me by far her best novel, and it’s available from the NY Review of Books reprint series. Do include it if you can, I think you will love it (it’s even got a good murder trial).

  24. How about the C. S. Lewis “Chronicles of Narnia”? Along with the Anne of Green Gables series, these were my all time favorites growing up. As always, it will be interesting to see how well (or not)the The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe has been has been adapted into movie format.

  25. I agree that the later Anne books don’t hold up very well, but I would argue that Rilla of Ingleside is an exception. I think it’s a rare and brilliant depiction of WWI from the perspective of women on the homefront.

  27. Could be I was coming from the wrong…culture, but I found the Narnia books increasingly tedious and preachy as they went on. The first three or so worked much better than the later ones for me.

    We’re currently engaged in reading LOTR to our kids–started more than a year ago, and just finished reading the Battle of Pelennor Fields in Return of the King. It’s been fun, though I have to admit I occasionally hurry through some of the pages-long poems and descriptions of scene.

    There’s a line from the Robert Downey, Jr., character in the new movie KISS KISS BANG BANG. He’s also the narrator, and as the story’s wrapping up he says in voiceover, “I saw the last Lord of the Rings movie and I promise I won’t end this one like seventeen times.”

  28. Let me swoon at the very mention of Enright — I still reread the Melendy books, which do something very rare in children’s lit: The narratives allow boys and girls to be the central characters, by focusing on a family of four (very different) children. I suppose Randy (Miranda, that is) came closest to being the lead, but each novel provided plenty of storyline for Mona, Rush,Oliver. (And, later, Mark.) The exception is the exquisite A Spiderweb for Two, which belongs to Randy and Oliver. Even here, Enright balances her protagonists. One memorable chapter has Oliver setting off on an almost Ulysses-like journey; a woman he meets that day later tells him a story that helps him solve another clue.

    In fact, one of Enright’s enduring themes is that people are more interesting than you might think. In the first book, The Saturdays, Randy discovers that Miss Oliphant, an old woman that the children have dismissed as boring, has a fascinating story about being kidnapped. Mona goes to a beauty salon where the manicurist also has a harrowing story to tell. Mr. Titus, a neighbor in the country, loves to bake and has one of the world’s best fish tales. A seemingly ordinary couple has an alligator in their bathtub. Another old woman unwittingly holds the secret to the Four-Story Mistake’s mystery. Everywhere the children go, they are open to other people and their lives, which strikes me as a wonderfully gentle lesson. Oh gosh, I love them all so.

    I also was wild about the Anne of Green Gables books, but they didn’t hold up as well for me. That said, I just found myself laughing the other day about Avonlea Improvement Society and the barn that was painted the wrong color.

  29. Laura,the total to date of the conquest of 10,000 is a figure of 9,856, which is pretty much closer to the goal that I wanted to achieve by age 75. Then life got in the way of being able to read like I used to. But as June says, we used to be 21. El Syd

  30. I’m glad you saw your way clear to keep the project going. I’ll be very brief. I think that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of the very best books I have read, and it just gets better with age (so few things do).
    I’m not so sure about King Lear, but I can tell you from experience that “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” makes much more sense to me as an
    old (but “youthful”) man than it did when I was young.

  31. As an unabashed L.M. Montgomery fan, I want to know why the books didn’t hold up as well. For me, the ones that still work best are the early ones. The first three — GREEN GABLES, AVONLEA, and THE ISLAND — have a lot of freshness. WINDY POPLARS and INGLESIDE were written near the end of her life and frankly, suck. I have a soft spot for HOUSE OF DREAMS and RILLA, though I do admit the latter’s kind of silly. Though not as much as the last of the EMILY trilogy (EMILY’S QUEST) which made me want to throw all my personal belongings at the wall when I reread it some years later.

  32. Sarah,

    The first three Anne books do hold up pretty well because Anne is still imperfect — and she still has Gilbert Blythe as a foil. But once her romance with Gilbert is a settled thing, Anne becomes a paragon. No more iodine in the cake, no more falling off roofs, etc. Windy Poplars, Ingelside and House of Dreams were the ones that disappointed me as an adult. I think I would still enjoy the first three — especially ISLAND.

  33. Gosh, Laura. My head was hanging also. But now that I know I am not alone re Tolkien,Harry Potter,etc.I can hold my head high around adult friends who especially love the world of Potter and think there is something wrong with me. June

  34. While I respect that Harry Potter has fans who are avid readers with broad, sophisticated tastes (such as my friend Dan Fesperman), I do think that Harry also has his share of fans who just haven’t read that much, so their passion for Harry is, in fact, a newfound passion for what a good book can do. It’s like someone tasting chocolate via the Hershey kiss — an excellent piece of chocolate, especially if one is just starting out — and preaching the power of the Hershey kiss while refusing to try any other chocolate.

  35. Laura, with your liking for Lemony Snicket, did you read Daniel Handler’s wonderful The Basic Eight? A strange book about very bright high school kids, absinthe, etc. Perri would have fit right in. BTW, my high school did Oklahoma my senior year, and our Laurey and Curly were still married last I knew. But I would have voted for Anyone Can Whistle, even though I think it’s an overrated score. A great title song is not enough.

  36. Mark, I haven’t read The Basic Eight, although I knew that Lemony had a prior life of sorts. (Years ago, Daniel Handler wrote one of the funniest Slate diaries I ever read.)

    Is Whistle’s score over-rated? I love so many of the songs — Me and My Town, Is There a Parade in Town?, There’s Always a Woman, Everybody Says Don’t, The Miracle Song, There Won’t Be Trumpets. I would have loved to see the concert version with Scott Bakula, Bernadette Peters and Madeline Kahn.

  37. Mmm, Scott Bakula. Maybe I don’t much like Whistle because I kept being told I was supposed to, that it was so special for being such a flop. But I adore Sondheim (oh, yes, tres gay, moi) and still can’t hear his voice clearly in Whistle. I have the same problem with Forum, other than Comedy Tonight. Both scores seem excessively conventional, with songs on predictable themes in the expected spots. Pleasant songs, cute, apt, clever, but maybe too nice, not ambitious enough. With Company he got angry, bitter, romantic. It’s far from perfect, but it can’t be faulted for excessive politeness or predictability.

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