Bengfort.com

J: Could you possibly think of a more boring topic than Wisconsin in winter? Nothing but cold and snow and dark, right? But even though those descriptions certainly fit Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife, I promise, you will be entertained—if not driven slightly mad.

B: Madness being the key phrase, this book was dark and cold — it’s an enticing read, and it takes you to the places in your mind that you might not like to go. The characters are too real, too identifiable, you know that you’re like them– even though you try so hard not to be.

J: Reading this book is like falling into a deep well of sex-laced insanity. It’s one of the only books we’ve read that I’ve lost sleep over—I stayed up all hours reading, stopping only when my brain shut itself down in protest!

B: I lost sleep even after finishing the book. It sticks with you like a shadow.

J: Hopefully, Ben, you didn’t feel the need to compare the wife in this book to me?

B: I don’t really know what arsenic tastes like, Jaci. Also, which wife?

J: Some might argue that it’s too over-the-top—a palazzo? Poison? Murder? Lies? But, having grown up in the big, empty plains, I’m glad that Goolrick finally gave this part of the country the big operatic story the landscape cries out for.

B: I agree that this story only works in the setting that it does; in a place where raw humanity is not suppressed by culture or society; but is also not allowed to devolve to wildness.

J: I don’t want to give away the ending, but I do want to urge you to read this book. Especially if you think a winter in Wisconsin is boring. He’ll change your mind.

J: For our next book, after two computer-and-tech-heavy choices, Ben and I read Saul and Patsyby Charles Baxter. It’s based on a series of related short stories that were recommended to me after I wrote a vignette about a man who completely duffs up trying to get his wife to the hospital to deliver their first child. It’s about (surprise!) Saul and Patsy, a young couple who move to the Midwest after marrying, and it follows them for several years.

B: Jaci’s story was probably more entertaining than the whole of the book, though. I kind of groaned when I heard we’d be reading a story about marriage, because the novels on the subject are usually about the decline of marriage or the collapse of the honeymoon period, or a partner wrestling with infidelity, or boring. At any rate, they usually make you paint your own marriage in the context of the novel, and that’s usually not too great.

J: It’s true (the part about comparisons, not that part about my story being better)—Ben is constitutionally unable to read a book or watch a movie concerning marriage without comparing them and us. The best part about this book, though, was that Ben and I got to read parts of it together! Ben flew to Palma de Mallorca for three days to visit me when I was there. Of course, he was far ahead of me in the reading as I’d been focusing on another project in the knowledge that wed be together soon, and was extra busy with the work I actually get paid to do on top of that.

B: Turns out our marriage is way better than Saul & Patsy’s– even if their marriage was some fictional ideal! (Stuff happens to them, not because of them, and they stick together). After spending 4 months apart, Jaci and I were perfectly in sync and knew each other’s thoughts and feelings- much like Saul & Patsy; but we were on a Mediterranean vacation instead of in a goth-infested Midwestern town. Ha- take that, Saul!

J: I do like Baxter’s writing. Ive been assigned to read The Next Building I Plan to Bomb in one of my classes, and its a great story, also set in Five Oaks. I thought that the novel, while there was a central storyline, had the randomness of life, which perhaps resulted from its origin as a set of stories. In that way in reminded me a bit of The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, another book I read recently, only that one was published in serial (and is a little lighter in subject matter).

B: I was asked to write about my favorite scene in the book. I spent most of my time in the book wondering why the characters were doing what they were doing (weird, stalker-like things). I guess the scene that interested me most as a husband was where Saul talks down a bunch of angry teenagers who are trying to vandalize his house. He puts on a mock funeral for a kid that, until he was dead, no one cared about- thus redirecting (not diminishing) the hormonal anger away from his wife and child.

J: For me, the final scenes were the best ones. Toward the end Saul buys some lemonade, and I adored that scene (I won’t go into any more details than that). And Patsy’s pride in Saul—how the characters “end up”—I found strangely satisfying.

B: I also enjoyed the final parts of the book better, it seemed kind of disconnected at the beginning (probably because it was the combination of a bunch of short stories), but the plot managed to come together in the end. And it was a satisfying ending- no divorce or adultery to be had.

J: Currently were reading Stranger in a Strange Land, a book by my favorite former-naval-officer-cum-novelist, Robert Heinlein. I first read this particular novel back in Washington state while Ben was living in North Dakota. I’m interested to see what he makes of it.

J: In a Ben double-feature, we read Daemon by Daniel Saurez, followed immediately by Makers by Corey Doctorow. Daemon was a reread for him.

B: It’s a me double feature, mostly because it involves things I think about on a daily basis at work. In fact, I have written my share of Daemons- computer programs that run in the background of your computer with no human interaction- and I really wanted Jaci to get a taste of what I was thinking about. Makers, was a subtly different technological view of the future, and I couldn’t resist the accolades of this book from my fellow nerds, and had to read what all the buzz was about.

J: Daemon was a bit rough-going for me. While Ben assures me that everything in it is based on actual, existing technology, it grew increasingly far-fetched as it went along. It also assumes a predictability of human response that may or may not be valid.

B: The question for me wasn’t about far-fetchedness; thinking about the future is hard- could folks in 1984 have predicted cell phones and global wireless coverage (I know, I know- the example that’s always used) even though it was less than 10 years away? Probably not, even though the basic technology was available, it required will to make the reality that we know now. I think that is where Jaci had the problems- whose will is actually at work in the book- the designer’s, the daemon’s, or the darknet (made up of people)? Jaci, like most people, is uncomfortable with the possibility that it was the will of a less than intelligent computer program, and fixated on the fact that it must have been the designer that had such good predictions. I, however, viewed the darknet as a democratizing tool, much more powerful than the Internet, and it was the will of the human nodes in a distributed fashion that made the decisions of the daemon.

J: For me, Makers was the better book. Doctorow writes people, not characters. I felt for everyone involved, but particularly for the three people/characters at the center of the story. I had some complaints about the first part—a lot of monologue that seemed like it would be written, not spoken—I think a lot of these problems were worked out in later parts of the novel.

B: Makers represents an uncertain future that is full of both economic hardship and human ingenuity. What I liked was that Doctorow made all his future ideas (Fatkins, corporate nation states, shanty towns, investment litigation) show two sides; no one idea was all good or all bad.

J: There were some amazing images in the first part of the book—basically, these two young men are inventors who create just incredible things. And in the end, after many twists and turns, they are just older versions of themselves, still creating incredible things from the flotsam of technological innovation. It’s a big, messy book that really captures something of life and, unlike most literary fiction (with a few notable examples; see Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story), Doctorow doesn’t eschew technology. He lets it be a part of the story as it is a part of our lives and will remain.

B: That’s true. A couple of the concepts were almost sidenotes, and you didn’t really see any bearing on the story until the very end! He creates a whole future world, not just the bits with flying cars or teleportation.

J: Maybe in part though I just liked this novel because of it’s strong anti-corporation vibe, which jives with my distrust of large corporations. Doctorow really goes after “Big Company X” (don’t want to give spoilers!), although we are assured that any trademarks are used fictitiously. And, at the end, he basically promises that if someone is putting an artificial impediment on the distribution of his novel and you let him know, he’ll help you out. I happen to be a little in love with the ideas of community and groups of people getting together to do cool things and making stuff by hand. Point of clarification: I’m a Bohemian, not a hippie.

B: To be fair, Doctorow is just enforcing a creative commons copyright on his work; he just tends to enforce it better than other authors!

J: So Ben, what’s our future: super high-tech secret computer-based warfare, or third world filled with 3D printers and thin binge-eaters?

B: It will definitely be 3D.

J: Our second book, a five-weeker, was Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. I chose it because I had read a brief passage from it during one of my writing classes and found the description of “Lemon Tarts” and “Social X-rays” amusing. I did not realize that, to roughly quote Ben, we were getting into “a cross between Wall Street and Shaq.”

B: I’m not a hundred percent sure that was my quote, but it does sound like something I’d say. The burning vanities were those of impotent, self important characters involved in a class struggle between the Bronx and Park Avenue that manifested itself in the form of a criminal trial of a bonds trader. The characters were simultaneously unlikable and uncomfortably recognizable, and so the complex plot was not the only tricky part of reading the book.

J: It was a bit of a struggle in the beginning to plow on in the book. It starts out, basically with two very different men in very different circumstances, but who are essentially the same in a few things: vanity, ambition, and a real dislike of their wives.

B: Hmm… I’m surprised that you only talk about the two men at the beginning. Towards the end there are many men all involved who are all vain, ambitious, and who really don’t like their wives. In fact, women, gays, and homosexuals don’t fair so well in this book at all- especially at the hands of powerful (or seemingly powerful) white and black straight men. Those two men are the central antagonist and protagonist, but I don’t think they were in control of their own story (they were not heroic even a little bit)

J: Toward the end, the pace picked up and I ended up finishing about ten days ahead of schedule (lucky, as I have another novel to squeeze in for a class before I start on our next book). I think Wolfe did a really good job of capturing a specific time and place and the ways of life of a specific group of people—New Yorkers c. 1980. And he wrote some really wonderful, if slightly florid, passages. Description is not a problem for this writer.

B: I agree- I wasn’t a fan of the plot so much, I felt that there was a shallowness in it due to the fact that a lot of it assumes contemporary knowledge of the characters and setting. However, the description and prose was really quite delightful.

J: He also got deeply into the heads of his two main characters (a Wall Street bonds salesmen and a Bronx District Attorney). I felt locked in step with these two preening, silly men. And in the end they really truly are silly men. Their ends are flippantly detailed in the epilogue, and really, in the end, they have only themselves and their baser desires to blame.

B: But what about the English reporter? The fat rich man? The black reverend? The financial representative of the Episcopal church? The judge? The sleezy criminal lawyer? All characters equally silly, equally preening men. It was a bonfire, after all! The thing is, sometimes the stark relief of these characters makes it all to easy to reflect on some of the shared thoughts that you have in your own head, and that is very uncomfortable.

J: It’s interesting to read something like this and realize how vastly different our (or at least my) perceptions of NYC have changed over time. Twenty years ago, it was a dark, dangerous place. Now, I think we’re all more likely to think of it as a city of possibility.

B: Huh… unless you’re on Wall Street, those dudes still think they are the “Masters of the Universe” by selling credit default swaps…

J: For our first book of the new while-you’re-away bookclub, Ben and I chose The Postman Always Rings Twice. Let me talk for a minute about the book-choosing process. As before, it was a difficult one, though we both (I think) did a better job picking a first round that both of us could enjoy. But this list is a much longer one than our previous, and so we found ourselves with my dad in the car driving to Norfolk two days before I was to leave, still trying to finalize the list. So, I went to Modern Library’s list of the best books of the previous century, and we started the debate.

B: I guess I wasn’t too interested in James M. Cain, or really any turn of the century who done it type fiction (I just don’t trust that gum shoes can be effective crime solvers, especially now that I’ve been taught that it requires intensely scientific forensic work to solve crimes), so this book was going to be at the top of the debate pile. Fortunately for us, Jaci ended the debate quickly by informing me that this book had been an inspiration to Albert Camus; since he was one of my favorite writers in high school, I was forced to allow the book in at spot numero uno.

J: And so it made the list as our first book. It’s a short one, but we split it into two parts since we would both be busy. And as you might expect, we both ended up finishing it early.

B: Truth be told- the book was exciting, and even with my bias towards the characters in the novel and their naiveté, so the book flew right by. Had it been what I expected, I could imagine that it would have taken the full two weeks.

J: While there were definitely a few aspects of the novel that I didn’t completely grasp (why are they suspected of a crime? what is at the heart of this central relationship?), I found myself completely engrossed. It reads like an extended conversation with the protagonist, and he’s so frank and forthcoming about his every thought and whim and dark wish that you keep reading to find out what twisted path he’ll lead you down next.

B: I also firmly believed that they could get away with their deeds. I felt that rural California during the depression would be the perfect place to commit the perfect crime and get away with it. For some reason though, the authority characters in the book were blessed with both good sense and amazing intuition (bordering on bigotry). I knew the postman was going to ring again (I mean, Cain laid that out right on the cover of the book), but I spent the whole story firmly believing that they would be Bonnie and Clyde. I was almost relieved at the ending (which I won’t spoil here, but let’s just say fate, not Dick Tracy intervened).

J: It actually reminded me in some ways of Blue Angel, the Francine Prose novel we read last time around. The protagonist isn’t terribly admirable or likeable, but you’re somehow on his side.

B: Yeh, both the protagonist and his accomplice are gross characters whose motive appears to be simple bloodlust– or at least, Cain does such a wimpy job of their motive that you can’t help feeling that way. They’re basically like your dumb, brutish nephew– you can’t help wondering why he does the things he does, but you feel affection for him all the same.

J: I think we’ll draw it to a close here, because I don’t want us accidentally to give away spoilers. If you’re looking for something a little dark and scandalous to read, read The Postman Always Rings Twice. Just don’t let the title fool you. It’s a literary Andalusian dog.

B: Next up is Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, a drama about ambitious, greedy white and black people who don’t seem to like each other very much set in a very classist 1980s New York.

Jaci: For our final bookclub book until I next depart, we returned to A Game of Thrones. Or, I returned to A Game of Thrones. One of the benefits of a paper book–it can’t be accidentally archived mid-read. Ben finished it back when we started it.

Ben: So just a note, this was published on January 31, but due to some issues with the website, it only just showed up now. But hey- perfect timing- the HBO miniseries Game of Thrones is coming out on April 17, and there has been a lot of buzz about that!

Jaci: This books is a pretty straight-stick high fantasy, a genre that I enjoy on occasion. My favorite examples of the genre are the His Dark Materials, Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter series. By comparison, this seemed a bit…hokey. And yet, at sea, it was impossible to stop reading. The themes of separation from loved ones and decisions almost made for you, in particular, rang true for me.

Ben: Oh come now, hokey? George R.R. Martin is considered a king of this genre (and he even looks like a part of it, if you’ve seen his interviews). Now a big miniseries is coming out, this has to be more than just hokey! I think the issue was that once you dive into a fantasy world, you have to stay in that world, coming in than out of it causes fantasy-reality lapse issues.

Jaci: Once I finally reloaded the book to my Kindle in Rome, I had a much harder time getting back into it. Because, at that point, I was only ten hours away from reuniting with Ben. It was as though I was the King’s Hand and my time in the Red Keep was drawing to a close at last, allowing me to return to Winterfell and my family. (Is that too much? And is it any wonder that I’m a big fan of Arya?)

Ben: Ok, or that- maybe I am just better than fantasy!

Jaci: Ben’s response to my complaints on the length of the book: stop bitching and read it.

Ben: I devoured this book pretty quickly, and the next one too, but I didn’t quite make it into the third one. Length isn’t really a problem for me, and now that I have a new Kindle also, it goes so quickly. There are so many varied story lines- Jon, Arya, the various houses and kings that are all in conflict, and even politics on the other side of the world, and they never seem to intersect! In fact, the lack of intersection kind of drives you, you push forward hoping that you aren’t reading 8 different stories and that they’ll all come together in one giant climax.

Jaci: Toward the end I got back into the flow of the story, and the last 20% or so flew by. I was actually thinking about adding the rest of the series to our refreshed bookclub list come summer, but Ben’s already ordered the rest of the series, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to wait that long!

Ben: I think we can put the rest of them on, you just have one book of catch up to do, and the rate we’re going, you mind as well!

Jaci: So, at this point I would like to comment on the utility of the bookclub in general. In my opinion, it really helped. Couples that live together all the time don’t have to try as hard–they have a shorthand language of shared experiences. We were able to mimic that effect to a certain degree by reading the same books. If I blurt out, apropos of nothing, “I don’t want our children to be like Sansa!” Ben immediately gets that I don’t want them to be idiotic spoiled brats with nothing but fantasies and fairy dust between the ears. And, even though we were apart, the bookclub was a way to spend some time on our marriage every week. It helped us put in the work.

Ben: I can’t agree more. I’ll bottom line it for everyone- the book club saved our marriage from the Navy, period.

Jaci: And with that, the bookclub is officially on pause. Look for us to resume Summer 2011!

Note: this post is very, very late.  But, as ever, a good excuse: Jaci got home earlier than expected!  While in the long run this is not positive news (she’s leaving again soon, for longer), it was wonderful to have her home for Ben’s graduation and Christmases in North Dakota and Maryland.

Jaci: For our most recent books, the contrast could not have been more extreme. First, due to my Kindle fat-fingering, we had to skip forward to Blue Angel by Francine Prose (which, oddly enough, got us back on schedule), a two-week read that took me more like six days due to the pairing of addictive writing and a new assignment as the “Ship’s Lady” (i.e. the officer so close to transfer that she has no job to speak of).  Then, for a complete change of pace, we moved on to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity, a dense philosophical defense of the ethical grounding of existentialism.  I think.  It turns out that being away from this kind of reading for over two years made it harder than ever it was for me completely to follow the intricate explanations by which she differentiates a humanistic existentialism from a dark, hopeless nihilism.

Ben: I’m more to blame for the delay of this post rather than delay of reading books. I finished all of these books (well, most of Ethics) by the deadline, including Game of Thrones, but was hard pressed to find the time to write this post. And to be honest, these two books inspired such a wide array of emotions and criticism that I may have been subconsciously avoiding the post in my “angst of the now”.

Jaci: I had read one book by Francine Prose earlier–a nonfiction piece about how to read like a writer.  By the end I knew I wanted to read one of her many fictional works, and I always like a good campus novel, so I chose Blue Angel for the bookclub.

Ben: So I heavily resisted adding Blue Angel to the reading list. I imagined that this was a book Jaci was putting on the list to punish me- some sort of pseudo-feminist, anti-man, coming of age story about girl students and their evil male professors. It turned out I was right, but what was unexpected was how much I enjoyed the book- and I flew through it. It’s a credit to Prose that her writing is so fluid and engaging, that even while you’re being beaten by a seriously uncomfortable plot, you just keep hoping that things will end well. (Spoiler: they did not.) And yes, for those of you critiquing my critique, it was a coming of age story — just because the male professor, who was the protagonist (pseudo-feminist), was upper middle aged doesn’t mean it wasn’t coming of age for him.

Jaci: Reading Blue Angel was a strange experience: I wasn’t certain I wanted to know how it would end (the ending is clear from the beginning, and I think she planned it that way).  But despite not really liking or respecting the main character, a has-been novelist working as a writer-in-residence at a small liberal arts college, I found myself in some way on his side.

Ben: I dreaded every paragraph that I devoured- it was like watching a train wreck, fascinating in that you can’t look away, but you desperately hope that superman will show up and pick one of the trains up! I was actually kind of empty at the end, just from shear hope exhaustion. Most of this was because Francine Prose (a woman) managed to tap into a deep-seated male fear and insecurity in such a spectacular way (sorry to reveal secrets) that it became less about the surrounding characters in the book, and really just the reader (of any gender) identifying completely with the protagonist.

Jaci: In short: the tone of the book was fresh despite the well-used subject matter; the writing is addictive; the reader’s emotional response is marvelous.  Read it!

Ben: And then it was time for Mademoiselle de Beauvoir.

Jaci: Ben claims I snuck this book onto the list without his knowledge during the bargaining phase; I claim I added it after he added Heaven so that we would have a nice pair of nonfiction books on the list, and if he didn’t know I had added it, well, then, he needs to pay attention when I’m babbling along!  In the end, though, I think he ended up enjoying it more than I did.

Ben: Luckily I do have some philosophical education, as well as a background in existentialism (like most teenagers), so I was ok with the ideas in the book. It’s just unfortunate that the prose was so dense. As I was reading (on a flight from Seattle to North Dakota), it kept putting me to sleep! I wondered out loud (on the plane) if this was due to the heavy material, or if perhaps there was a better way to communicate these particular ideas (they are mind-bendy), but authors choose to present it a certain way (Descartian drama paragraphs) just to give weight to their ideas.

Jaci: While it was a challenge to hold my greatly-shortened attention span in check, I found that I did learn things from this book.  Reading actual philosophy (as opposed to second-hand descriptions of the positions of a philosophical camp) is always illuminating, and there were some amazing things written.  Most of my notes from this book are simply direct quotes.  And I was glad to find that despite difficulties I could still draw something from a challenging (and long) argument.

Ben: And she definitely reinforced my postion as a Kierkegaardian existentialist. I had never considered her definition of ambiguity before — (although exactly what was ambiguous led to a rather ambiguous debate between Jaci and I!) — and I was interested to contemplate my current philosophical outlook from this new perspective. I highly recommend this book along with some sort of stimulant!

Jaci: So there it is: morals and ethics, all in the space of three weeks’ reading.  Skipping forward in our own story, I was able to restore Game of Thrones to my Kindle in Rome.  And now, for once, we’re waiting on me to finish a book.  It turns out that a fantasy of this type goes easier for me when I’m someplace I’d really rather not be–reading it during my extended vacation has been difficult.  Once I finish it, we’ll be temporarily closing shop and updating the inventory in preparation for my next long time away.  Until then…

You are in a rut.  You are having the same food, night after night.  You are going out to eat, spending too much money, and your wasteline is suffering.

I am here to solve your problems, with some slightly altered (lovingly borrowed) recipes you’re going to love. Break out your fez; tonight we’re eating North African-style.

Here’s what happened: I got one of my few cooking urges and somehow came up with the idea to make lentil soup in the crockpot.  A quick Google search led me to A Year of Slowcooking.

But I wanted more vegetables, and a few more searches led me to The Vegetarian Resource Group’s Egypt page.

Finally, I knew we had rice pudding in the fridge, so I came up with a quick dessert.  A run to the grocery store and I was on my way.  My altered recipes, based on those found at the links above, are below.  It’s all shockingly good, if I say so myself.  And I’m pretty sure the soup could be made on the stovetop in about an hour if you go our usual route of deciding on dinner when you’re already hungry for it.

Morrocan Lentil Soup

1 cup dried lentils
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 can black eyed peas, drained and rinsed
1 white onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrot coins
28 oz can diced tomatoes, with liquid
4 cups vegetable broth (I used a low sodium variety) + 1 cup water
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp ground red pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
course sea salt, to taste

In a large crockpot, combine all ingredients.  Stir, place on high heat, and let it go all day–at least seven hours.  When you’re ready to eat, use an immersion blender to partially blend the soup, leaving some of the vegetables and legumes whole.  I served mine with whole wheat pita rounds warmed directly over the fire of the gas stovetop.  A dollop of sour cream is a nice touch.  This will serve six people as an entree–more as an opening act.

Egyptian Spinach with Dill

1 white onion, roughly chopped
1-2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
1/2 loose cup chopped fresh dill
1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
10 ounces fresh spinach (1 bag–you can use the cheaper, tougher adult varieties)
1/2 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepot, saute onions in oil for three or four minutes. Add garlic and dill and continue to saute for two minutes. Add tomato sauce, bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add spinach and water–you will need to pack in the spinach and stir carefully to avoid losing it over the side! Once the spinach has wilted and you’ve given it a good stir, add your salt and pepper and cover and simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.  I poured this over a pouch of microwavable basmati rice–it will serve four to six (though the rice, only two!).

Jaci’s Easy Honeyed Fruit Pudding

1 tub rice pudding
dried whole apricots
honey

Put a scoop of rice pudding (about 1/2 cup) in a small dessert cup or parfait dish.  Array three dried apricots on the surface of the pudding.  Swirl honey to taste over the top of the pudding.

To accompany the meal as a whole, I recommend some kalamata olives (or similar) and mint tea; we also had a glass or two of a red wine that I picked up on a total whim, but which upon additional Googling I found enthusiastically reviewed here.

It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re avoiding your homework.

Jaci: For the last four weeks, we’ve been reading a book I chose based on it being an old favorite of Ben’s–Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.  And just to get the shock out of the way now–no, I hadn’t read it before.

Ben: First, I have to apologize for the lateness of this post. We finished the book a while ago, but I ended up being a week behind, and then got so busy that I forgot to get the post up. After finishing our last book in the series (which Jaci misplaced) I was determined to get this post up this weekend! Jaci has had her half of the draft post up for a while now.

Jaci: I’m not sure why I haven’t read more Dickens.  Up until now I had only read A Christmas Carol, but I used to read it every Christmas when I was younger, and adored it. It was probably (sadly) because the rest of his books are so thick, and I expected it to be a bit of a task, as the classics sometimes are.  But I was delighted.  Just as Jane Austen is wholly absorbing and simple to read, Charles Dickens sucks you in, and for many of the same reasons–brilliantly drawn characters and spare, witty sentences packed with observation without verbosity.  (Unlike a certain blogger we know…oops.)

Ben: I have read a fair amount of Dickens, and to be honest, I would have thought I might have had the same reservations about ‘classics’. However, I was wholly happy to have this book on this list. Dickens is extremely hilarious, and I think that if we ever had the opportunity to have a dinner with him, he would be just as entertaining in 2010 as he was in 1860. (I’m pretty sure the idea to have dinner with him is borrowed from an episode of Dr. Who). Also, we recently had Dickens to thank for a reference we used in a recent Zipline Show!

Jaci: Even though I knew the basic outlines of the story from glancing exposure in school, I still found myself guessing, right up to the last line. The story is incredible, yes, but he does it so well that you forgive him for the wild coincidences and verges on absurdity.

Ben: I think Dickens is tapping into a feeling we all have– of wanting to be better than ourselves when we are young. We all have great expectations for our own lives. This is probably why I enjoyed it so much when I was young, it was very easy for me to identify with young pip who didn’t really understand what was going on with Ms. Havisham- and I probably felt he was heroic by his actions with Magwitch and Orlick. Now as an adult, reading the story again, I sympathize with older Pip, where things go sideways and are out of his control, yet he maintains his expectations, and is (probably) rewarded for his hope with the redeemed Estella.

Jaci: All in all, I am very pleased with this choice, because not only was it an “ought to” book (like Dead Souls), it also turned out to be very enjoyable. I’m trying to embrace a more freewheeling attitude in life–not forcing myself, for example, to read a book of poems in order if I’d rather flip through it in a wandering fashion, or read a book just because one “must” to be a real scholar or a writer or a better person, or eat the rice noodles because I worry about running out of udon when I really want to eat the udon now.  But only in moderation, because if I give up on improving pastimes and self-discipline altogether I will miss out on things like this–discoveries that I “ought to” already have made.  And now I’ll leave it to Ben to introduce our next book–a monster that has been assigned a full five weeks for completion, starting 12 November (eastern hemisphere) and 11 November (western hemisphere).  And thanks to changing plans, with any luck I’ll be home before we get to “THE END”!

Ben: The next book is Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin– a real change in the tone of the book club. It is the first book in a series of epic fantasy that has won several awards. [UPDATE] Turns out Jaci lost this book on the ship by accident, so we’re moving on to Blue Angel.

Jaci: With Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, Ben and I got back on schedule.  One of only two nonfiction books on our list (and Ben maintains that I snuck the other in without his knowledge), it was Ben’s selection, and we read through it in the allotted two weeks…just a different two weeks than originally planned.

Ben: Lisa Miller was actually on Colbert discussing her book, which is what got me interested in reading her book in the first place. What caught my attention was the fact that she wanted to discuss various religious interpretations of heaven, and compare them. I realized that even though I took religion classes in both high school and college the topic of heaven seemed to be an afterthought, or at least not very well discussed.

Jaci: I certainly enjoyed the book–it was very reportly (Lisa Miller is a journalist) and clearly had voluminous research supporting it.  At times, though, it was a little difficult to follow.  With such a massive topic and years of work, including extensive historical and theological research as well as numerous interviews, she seemed to struggle a bit with controlling the material.  At times, she circled back to touch on a topic again and again; at others, she glanced over a huge topic in a few paragraphs.

Ben: I agree that she did tackle a huge topic, and she might have been better served by a collection of essays on various heavenly topics. Her mixing of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perceptions in the middle of themes such as “Paradise”, “Is Heaven Boring?”, and “Relatives and Ancestors” became a little confusing. However, she seemed to equally and respectfully treat the various perceptions, and gave their point of view. She also tied in historical reasons for the various perspectives, which was excellent.

Jaci: Her writing was at its best and most affecting when she dove into her own life or the lives of those she interviewed.  A discussion of Islam’s houris is interesting, sure, but her descriptions of family life or her grandfather’s death actually brought tears to my eyes.

Ben: I actually was less pleased with her own personal life and feelings. I felt like she was trying to ward of criticism or give a feeling of being unbiased by presenting her own personal experience and perhaps by reducing the sting of the unknowable by pointing out that she herself didn’t know anything either. When I picked up this book, I wasn’t hoping for a religious discourse on the modern perception of heaven, I was looking for an intelligently articulated sociology or history of the human writings on heaven from many points of view. She approached her work more as a reporter and autobiographer.

Jaci: I actually think that given the amount of material, the book could have been longer.  It was nearly half notes and bibliography!  I would love to sit down with Ms. Miller and talk about heaven; I bet she has even more to say than she was able to put down on paper.

Ben: Not only would I like to talk to Ms. Miller, but also to many of her interviewees- she spoke to many amazing people who had much to say on the topic from aesthetics to Harvard professors- the book contained quite a lot of theological brain power!

Jaci: Next, we’re reading Great Expectations, which Ben once claimed as a favorite and which, despite reading middle school theatrical adaptations and seeing bits of a couple film versions, I’ve never read.  In fact, I’ve only read Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.  One of our longer novels, it will be read over the course of four weeks.  Until then–