Scrivner

Since the Calgary Reads booksale was such a great deal last year, went again this year.  Well I went tonight, I should say because I might go again tomorrow.  This was the first time they’ve done a Friday night opening and it was lined up down the block!!  And we parked three blocks away!

I’m still a bit choked about the $2 ‘donation’/entry fee but my daughter pointed out that it might stop some of the browsers from attending.  What browsers?  the books are a dolla’ …holla’.  Word.  Lots of them.

So, here’s what I bought tonight (alas, they were unable to take credit cards just as I got to the teller so I had to put some back):

1.  Roses Are Difficult Here by W.O. Mitchell.  This dude is a prairie standard and I’ve never, ever read one of his books.  I took a writing course with his nephew, though, if that counts.

2.  The Spire and The Paper Men by William Golding.  I’m just going off of Lord of the Flies here.  I hope they’re good.

3.  The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Stories by Mark Twain.  This is a wee, tiny, odd shaped, little square book with a giant title.  Plus, I really like Mark Twain.  Plus, I might send this one to my friend B. because it would fit into a regular envelope.  The recesion is effecting my book choices now.

4.  Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.  I have a sneaking suspicion I might already own this book but the cover price was 75 (the original list price) and the cover is so cute and it is in super condition for having been printed in 1958.  Wow! I should really stop judging a book by its cover….(but I’m good).

5.  A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.  I think this is on one of my lists of books toreads before I croak or break a hip or something.  I recently bought her non-fiction title 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.  Yeah, haven’t started that one yet.

6.  The Time in Between by David Bergen.  This was my find of the sale.  It was on the Canadian Authors table for $1.  It was also in hardcover on the Bestsellers table for $5.  I got the $1 one, whoot!  Recession strikes again!

And that’s it!  The books I had to put back since that other $20 bill I thought I had in my wallet mysteriously disappeared (I think I spent it, no mystery there) were:  Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Labryinth by Kate Moss, and The Tiger’s Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin.  Oh well.  Next time I’ll tell my kiddies that a book about High School Musical movie is not as important as classic literature but since they actually let me look for nearly 10 whole minutes, I’ve forgive them this time.

I got this book for Christmas, as I made a plea for only two books for presents and my husband was kind enough to buy them for me.

So maybe I should check and see what the book is actually about before I request it. 

Wally Lamb – I loved his other two books She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True and generally one can go on the writing style of previous books in order to determine future enjoyment by purchasing books from the same author.  Now, let me clarify, Lamb’s writing style has not changed, and I enjoy his narrative style very much.  It’s just that I didn’t like the book.

First of all, it took me two months to read.  Two months!  If I love a book, I’ll finish it in a week or a few days.  Two months!  Even the horrible Portrait of a Lady by Henry James only took me six weeks.  Two months!

I must admit, some of that time, especially in the first part of the book, was needed processing time.  Lamb concentrates the first part of the story on the shootings at Columbine, putting our fictional married hero and heroine as workers at the high school.  The heroine is caught in the library as the shootings are occurring and the hero is out of town.  Being a victim of gun crime myself, I found Lamb really did an excellent job at getting at the trauma of the emotional aftermath of the victims of this type of violence, and was very sensitive to the fact that the people affected are not only the ones present.  Good job, Lamb! 

I suppose, if you boil it down, I didn’t like our hero, the narrator.  Simply put, he’s an ass. Regardless of how he tries to redeem himself, I didn’t believe it.  Three times married, and nearly three times failed, he suddenly has an epiphany of being in love with his wife (who has been unfaithful in the past) while he is frantically travelling back to Littleton?  The guy does show signs of incredible patience with her over the long haul of her emotional recovery and financial burden of her unemployment and later lawyer’s fee (can’t spoil it).  But is this love or simply commitment?  He seems to carry a bitterness for her and the situation she has put him in right until the end (and I can’t spoil that either).

Meanwhile, we lost sight of the heroine through the middle third of the book as we go on a meandering journey of the hero’s mother’s and grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s past as related to the reader through letters and other’s recollections.  This is where Lamb lost me.  I already don’t like the hero and I really don’t care for his mother or grandmother or great-grandmother either.  And, as a added bonus, who is real and who is fictional because I’m lost.  All of a sudden we have Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott popping up.  Huh?

Lamb, your writing is still great and I won’t complain over being entertained by it – but seriously, man, everyone does not get redemption.  Not everyone. 

And one last thing:  God with a small ‘g’ bothers me.  That’s his name, like Wally is yours.

p.s. I did really enjoy that Picasso painting of  Minotauromachia.