Olive Kittredge

Olive Kittredge, by Elizabeth Strout. Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Oh, dear. This book is not always pleasant, but it tells some truths about life and the way people really are.

I read a book review in which the reader/writer said that she didn't like the book because she didn't like Olive. I thought, exactly--the things we don't like about Olive are just the kind of things that people wouldn't like about me if they only knew!

Revealed through a series of short stories, different truths about Olive begin to pile up. You might decide that your first impression was wrong, then you will be introduced to and possibly confused by yet another facet of this woman. You might decide you don't know what to think about her since she is, by turns, a person you want to sympathize with and someone you want to shake; someone you might trust with your secrets and someone you might not want to be in the same room with.

Here, laid out before you (like starfishes drying above the tide line), are all the arguments showing that a person has many facets and can only partially be known by any other single person. You might just have to admit some truths about life in general and about yours, specifically. It's that kind of book. But oh, dear, not pleasant reading. Just reading that keeps you up at night. As some of Olive's Maine coast neighbors might say, in that terse way of theirs: Might make you laugh. Might make you cry.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. They could be spoilers if I told you when and in what circumstances they appear, but I like how they resonate:

Didn’t plan on things working out like this.

But people endure things.

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.

The Power of the Dog

Poor me. I thought this book, found on some forgotten list of best books and jotted down in my little notebook, was perhaps a nice dog story. And so, I was almost driven away by the first paragraph, which is a brutal and graphic description of what happens when a calf is castrated. 

I can just hear my sister saying Oops, not a happy novel for Princess Bluebird! Even when I was halfway through this book I considered setting it aside and giving up. However, I'm glad I stayed with it, because it is the kind of novel that will stay with me--tough, gritty, and with many, many layers to continue to think about long after the book is finished. A complex novel (oh, no, I'm talking book reviewer talk, and you know I don't like to do that) wherein one diabolical and secret plot is played off against another far more diabolical and secret plot. 

Fascinating characters--weak, strong, good, evil, sometimes sadistic and often more than a little strange--populate this chilling, taut, and very tense novel of the west. I can say no more. 

The Power of the Dog, by Thomas Savage. First published  in 1967; reprinted in 2003 with an afterword by Annie Proulx. 

Tea Time

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith. 

This is the latest book in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and it will have you longing for a nice cup of bush tea. As with the other books in the series, nothing much happens, but somehow many things are learned. 

This quote will give you some of the flavor of the book. Mma Ramotswe loves her little van but it is not doing well, mechanically speaking: 

She continued her progress down Zebra Drive, steering the van carefully through her gateway with all the care of a nurse wheeling a very sick patient down the corridor of a hospital... As she went inside, she debated with herself what to do. She was married to a mechanic, a situation in which any woman would revel, especially when her car broke down. Mechanics made good husbands, as did carpenters and plumbers--that was well known--and any woman proposed to by such a man would do well to accept. But for every advantage that attended any particular man, it always seemed as if there was a compensating disadvantage lurking somewhere. The mechanic as husband could be counted on to get a car going again, but he could just as surely be counted upon to be eager to change the car. Mechanics were very rarely satisfied with what they had, in mechanical terms, that is, and often wanted their customers--or indeed their wives--to change one car for another. If Mma Ramotswe told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that the tiny white van was making a strange noise, she knew exactly what he would say, as he had said it all before. 

"It's time to replace the van, Mma Ramotswe," he had said, only a few months earlier. And then he had added, "No vehicle lasts forever, you know."

"I know that, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni," she said. "But surely it's wrong to replace a vehicle that still has a lot of life left in it. That's not very responsible, I think."

"You van is over twenty," he said. "Twenty-two years old, I believe. That is about half the age of Botswana itself."

It had not been a wise comparison, and Mma Ramotswe had seized on it. "So you would replace Botswana?" she said. "When a country gets old, you say, That's enough, let's get a new country. I'm surprised at you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni."

This unsatisfactory conversation had ended there...

The Whistling Season

Thank you, Linda, of the 7MSN Ranch, for suggesting The Whistling Season to me in a comment on a recent post about another book that I had read. I love to discover a new author, and can't wait to start reading more of Doig's books. 

The Whistling Season introduces us to Oliver Milliron, a recent widower with three sons. The Milliron family is living on a dryland farming homestead in Montana in 1909. In the first chapter, Oliver discovers an ad in the local newspaper that reads as follows: 

Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite: Housekeeping position sought by widow. Sound morals, exceptional disposition. No culinary skills, but A-1 in all other household tasks. Salary negotiable, but must include railroad fare to Montana locality; first year of peerless care for your home thereby guaranteed. Respond to Boxholder, Box 19, Lowry Hill Postal Station, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

That's all I'm going to tell you about the book, but I should think that it is enough to have you hooked. It certainly grabbed me from the first page. 

Ivan Doig, author of The Whistling Season, has a website that includes the following sections: 

* Reader's guides to some of his books; 

* An audio book section that includes links to Doig's recorded books, read by himself and by others, as well as a link to Doig's recording of Norman Mailer's A River Runs Through It;

* Ivan's Notes, which contain information about the man and his writing.

Here is a quote from the reader's guide to This House of Sky: 

Ivan Doig grew up along the rugged rims of the Rocky Mountains in Montana with his father, Charlie, and his grandmother, Bessie Ringer. His life was formed among the sheepherders and characters of small-town saloons and valley ranches as he wandered beside his restless father. ... What Doig deciphers from his past is not only a sense of the land and how it shapes us, but also of our inextricable connection to those who shape our values in the search for intimacy, independence, love and family.

Long-Nebbit Women and Babies That Girn

Angus wanted to paint something which spoke to that distinct human quality of kindness that, when experienced, was so moving, so reassuring, like balm on a wound, like a gentle hand, helping, tender. That was what he wanted to paint, because he knew that that was what we all wanted to see. ~Alexander McCall Smith, in The World According to Bertie.

Once again, I've come to the end of another in the 44 Scotland Street novels by Alexander McCall Smith.

I don't believe that I have mentioned before that these novels started as a single serial novel in the Edinburgh newspaper, The Scotsman. Oh, what I wouldn't give for such entertainment over my coffee every morning. For now, I have to make do with reading the lost and found ads in our tiny local newspaper. I find much amusement there:

1. Found, pet bull wearing leash and bow (it turned out to be a disgruntled pit bull, recently escaped from the groomer's)

2. Found, party poodle, black and white (apparently, it was a parti-colored poodle, although I pictured him wearing one of those little party hats one gets at the dollar store here)

3. Lost: Dockshand/Duckshund/Weenie Dog (you often see all three variations in the same day's column)

I keep a little notebook by me when reading McCall Smith's books. When I come to an unfamiliar word or phrase, I'm afraid that I still "hop over it," in the exact manner of my youth. That is to say, I do my best to discern its meaning by its context, and then move on. However, I believe that I show my great years of maturity now by at least writing it down to look up later.

I won't subject you to whole list from The World According to Bertie--you've read enough of such lists here lately. I will, however, put a few of the more sparkling examples of McCall Smith's art down at the bottom of this page.

In the meantime, I would like to recommend that you hop over to this wonderful author's website to read an interview with him, listen to some delightful music, see photos from his trip to Botswana during the filming of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and to look around at any number of other fascinating features.

A Tiny Part of My List; Heretofore Unfamiliar Words

and Phrases from The World According to Bertie

... a wee parliament... full of high heid-yins and tsars

there is a thrill which marks them out from the quotidian

striking adjectival saliences

none of your chippan fires over there

an echt philanderer

a very couthie place

... it's a funny wee place, very narrow, with a bunch of crabbit regulars...

a long-nebbit woman

a jumble of cromachs

[the baby] tended to girn

soor plooms (this may have been in a discussion of fruits)

laws of paternity and aliment of puppies

Favorite American Novels

Yesterday, I gave you the top 100 favorite novels in the U.K. It's not so easy to find a list of favorites (as opposed to bests) for the U.S., as I found out. I could find lists by the editors and by the readers of the Modern Library (Modern Library books only) by two Time Magazine critics, by librarians (which I like because I've read a ton--64--of them), but a general list of favorites by actual American readers took some searching.

This list comes from Best 100 Novels of All Time, but it's not really clear who compiled the list and who voted. If you can find a better list, please let me know. I've read 52 of these, at one time or another.

How is your reading coming along?

1984 by George Orwell

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

Ulysses by James Joyce

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Stand by Stephen King

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Dune by Frank Herbert

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Trial by Franz Kafka

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Persuasion by Jane Austen

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Emma by Jane Austen

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Light in August by William Faulkner

Favorite Novels in the UK

On its Big Read website, the BBC asked people in the United Kingdom to name their favorite novels. Here is the list in order, with the winning favorite, Lord of the Rings, at the top. Although this is not a list of the best books, only the favorites (and it includes quite a few children's books), I find it to be a much more friendly list than the English Major's Reading List that was given to me when I was 17, and which has been making me feel unsuccessful ever since. I've actually read 60 of these.

How about you?

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis

10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen

39. Dune, Frank Herbert

40. Emma, Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell

47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

53. The Stand, Stephen King

54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses, James Joyce

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie