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J: Ok, ok, so Ben and I have been neglecting our book reviews, I admit. The last book we wrote up was Saul and Patsy, way back in July. But we’ve still been reading! Stranger in a Strange Land, A Changed Man, Spies of the Balkans, and A Discovery of Witches entertained us in tandem in the time between then and now. We also had our first book club failure (both of us became busy and couldn’t get into Suite Francaise—but we’ll make it up later!) and read our first short story (“The Adjustment Team,” chosen for Ben’s marathon week). So, in an effort to catch up our meager band of followers, I propose we do four mini-reviews, and knock out those four novels here and now.

B: Agreed, but just so you know, this post then encompasses some of my favorites–especially Spies of the Balkans; I can’t recommend it enough! I would also like to add my apologies for not getting posts up sooner; but rest assured, we’re still trucking through the book club, one book at a time; even if we can’t write about them. I blame new houses, new commutes, and new job situations for the delays!

J: New jobs, at least, in my case. But enough preamble. First up: Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. This was a reread for me, so I’ll let Ben give his take first. B?

B: I’m not sure I grokked this story. Also, apparently grokked is in the spell check dictionary- that just says how important Stranger is in popular culture! In 1976, the Viking program was launched to send unmanned probes to Mars; during the Viking mission and subsequent missions afterward, we learned that there is no identifiably sentient life on Mars. So from that understanding, it was actually kind of tough to read Heinlein’s 1961 novel about a race of Martians, one of whom returns to Earth. That was the easy bit to get past, though, because once on Earth, said Martian pursues a social and religious agenda that is mind boggling and cult-like with many sexual and pagan ideas interwoven. Fitting these two strange stories together was actually kind of a headache.

J: I’ve only read two Heinlein novels—this, and Time Enough for Love—and it was strange to reread it, especially knowing Ben was reading it to and trying to guess at his reaction. There are some fairly shocking views on women, but at the same time I like his no-nonsense approach to human relationships (even if it’s not entirely realistic). And strangely, I had forgotten the climax, and was surprised a second time over.

B: After our science fiction interlude, we moved back to more contemporary social issues, namely reformed neo-nazis trying to redeem themselves by assisting with Jewish run peace and aid foundations; we read a second Francine Prose novel; A Changed Man.

J: I wanted to read another Prose novel since we were both so fascinated by Blue Angel. I feel like I really need to study Prose’s writing because she does tension so well. I hate conflict in my real life and have a hard time introducing it in my stories. She heaps it on. And her novels are driven by conflict, and made compelling to read because of it. My only complaint: I would have cut the final chapter.

B: I didn’t really identify with any of the characters in this book; and to tell you the truth, most of them really angered me- but you know what they say in the WWF; you’re either loved or hated, you don’t want to be in between! It was interesting to see the collision of three different classes, though- Norman from the poor or working class, Bonnie firmly in the middle class, and the disgustingly rich, and somehow guilty-about-it Meyer Maslow.

J: I agree—she fills her books with only marginally likeable people and somehow, it still works. Then we went to one of Ben’s choices: Spies of the Balkans, by Alan Furst. He’s been waiting to read this one for a while; it was on the list for our last bookclub before I knew I would be getting home early. It was a bit of an awkward read for me—a strange mix of historical novel and thriller.

B: A spy novel during World War II in Greece, Macedonia, Southern France, Paris, Turkey! It was exciting, dark, thrilling, and excellent. I can’t wait to go back and read more Furst! I also don’t want to say much here, because as with any good spy thriller– you want to be surprised, and I can’t give anything away. But it was a good book, and you should go read it- now.

J: I was a little more lukewarm on this one—but it was good nonetheless. I probably won’t be joining Ben on his historical thriller bent, though.

B: Last up on our list of catch-up review books, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

J: Twilight for grown-ups.

B: It always upsets me when evil things don’t do evil. If they don’t do evil, then it suggests that they are not, so why be so caught up in their evilness? Luckily the evil things in this book are pretty darn evil, and though it is a bit romance-y throughout the book, Harkness could be setting up an epic cross-history battle; after all she teaches college-level history and history of science; so she knows her stuff! The bad news- it’s the first, and currently the only, book of a trilogy, so be prepared to have to wait to find out the ending. Also, since the beginning of the novel was set in Oxford, and included many of Jaci and I’s old haunts; it was nice to be a bit nostalgic.

J: Twilight for grown-ups, set in Oxford, then. And there you have it: July through October in books. We’ll review “The Adjustment Team” by Philip K. Dick in a separate post; I think it would be interesting to watch the movie based on it (The Adjustment Bureau, 2011) again after reading the source and look at how the concept was adapted, but that might take some doing, logistically, if it’s even out on DVD yet.

B: On to Oracle of Stamboul for our next book, and hopefully more timely posts, but we don’t guarantee it!

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.

Well, part two of the School of Love Syllabus is now posted, and though we’re already one book in, the website was down until recently and we didn’t get it put up. You can download the PDF version: SoL Syllabus Redux, or check out the HTML version below. Also new, is that Ben now has a Kindle, so the Syllabus is only in terms of Kindle locations. If you need page numbers, let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to work it out!

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…

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–

A prose poem about a prim reaper

Jaci: Well, if you’re following the bookclub at all, it’s probably obvious that Dead Souls took a toll on our timeliness.  First he reads ahead, then he falls behind…just kidding, dear.  It was a confluence of events that delayed us in finishing the rather slim novel.  First I got an unexpected two weeks ashore, then I started (and finished) The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova…

Ben: I had predicted that Gogol would be the potential downfall of the book club. At the time of my prediction, I thought it was because it was going to be a difficult read, full of nineteenth century Russian references that I wouldn’t understand, and because I felt that this was Jaci’s idea of “books as medicine”. I was wrong- instead the difficulty was caused by travel, new jobs, moving, and the fact that our being together while apart book club didn’t work so well while we were actually together!

Jaci: …and then, it turns out that the second half of this book is really just an incomplete fragment that sent its author mad, so it is more a literary curiosity than a complete “Part II.”  And hard going.

Ben: I kind of felt Gogol going mad across the course of the book. I’m not sure that I didn’t just project this on him, but since the author did a lot of communicating to the reader directly (and as the author, not just as an abstract narrator) it was very easy for me to imagine him slowly slipping into crazy. I’m not sure that matches the historical timeline of the writing, but hey- it gave me added interest!

Jaci: The first half of the novel, Part I, was actually quite funny.  I found myself making notes on the funny bits.  He’s scathing on female education (“French, piano-playing and knitting”) and Germans, for example, and the tone of the novel is very modern (it was first published in 1842).  I had expected something much more windswept and bleak and devastating, and what I got was a sort of Russian tragicomedy of manners.  I found myself asking: is Gogol modern, or are we moderns Gogolian?

Ben: And I will admit, I was amused. Perhaps I’ve travelled enough to get the jokes, or perhaps nineteenth century Russian references and inside jokes are universal, but it was funny. The whole idea of this man going around trying to purchase the tax burden of dead serfs really made zero sense to me, and I think that was what created the amusement. In fact, I did not really understand the reason for a long time. My initial assumption was that he wanted to claim he had so many serfs, and therefore was entitled to a higher social position (which is the actual reason as far as I could tell at the end)- but I soon pushed this off as unlikely. In fact, in the course of his business interactions with widows, landowners, and dandies – he seems to have a more nefarious goal, and I’m not sure that this was unintended, but the incompleteness of the second half makes this speculation difficult to prove.

Jaci: It was also interesting to read another translated work; I again found myself wondering how much of the tone of the book to ascribe to the translator.  Gogol has been translated by several authors, but we were confined to what I think is one of the earliest translations, and one that I could not find many opinions on.  In any case I don’t think it was a bad translation, but my knowledge of Russian and Russian literature is confined to four semesters in college (only two of them of real educational value) and three weeks in the land itself.

Ben: I do enjoy translated work as well- but I’ve had better luck with modern translated work. Classic literature loses something in translation, even to read Greek literature, I often have to accompany it with history and philosophy in order to really understand. I’m excited to move to non-fiction. Heaven was my idea, and once again we’ll be getting an interesting new perspective!

Jaci: Next up is Heaven.  (I did that on purpose.)  If you’re reading along, your new dates are 30 Sep-6 Oct (for those of you east of the international date line) and 1 Oct-7 Oct (for those of us west of the international date line) to complete the introduction and the first five chapters.

Jaci: Book number two, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is complete!  And early, RIGHT BEN??

Ben: Stieg is an exciting writer–I couldn’t put it down because I kept wanting to see what happened next, so I kind of tore through it in way less than the allotted 3 weeks. Really, three weeks was a lot for this book, but I did pace myself somewhat, because I managed to stretch it to two weeks.

Jaci: I learned from my Kindle complaints during the last book–remembering that it was hard to flip back, the first thing I did was draw out the family tree from the early pages.  The notebook really came in handy.  And I found that I appreciate the anonymity the Kindle provides–when reading a book both wildly popular and gruesomely violent, I was happier not to converse about it with random strangers at the airport during my many hours waiting to board a red-eye to Maryland.

Ben: Jaci had a surprise visit home! But she discovered that my notebook was unused. My excuse is that I’m a reader, not an English major! Speaking of gruesomely violent (like when Jaci discovered the unused notebook…), towards the end of the book, I became less thrilled with the violence. Jaci mentioned that the original title was “Men who Hate Women”, and this is probably an apt description of the book, and while I’m desensitized to a lot of different kinds of violence thanks to TV, Stieg manages to properly shock you, and gives you an apprehension and disgust that takes talent to describe. The book attempts to take the edge off with humor and romance, but some sections were still tough on me.

Jaci: I didn’t make nearly as many notes for this book as I did for the last.  But I did use it as a meditation on translation.  The book isn’t exactly what most people would call “literary,” but I am a professed reading snob (and read like one–can’t help it), and it’s hard to know who to blame for, say, more than one cruise missile metaphor in a single chapter.  (Because someone must be blamed, sayeth the word nerd!)  And I also tended to wonder about cultural references.  The translator seems to have done a good job keeping the book as firmly grounded in Sweden as possible, and yet, at times I ask–when a reference to the Addams Family appears, is it because the Addams Family is culturally significant in Sweden or because the translator translated a cultural reference?  Considering my entire knowledge of Sweden is based on this book (which made Swedish prison sound like a writers’ colony retreat), a photograph of a farmstead at the local Noodles & Company (looks a lot like North Dakota), and some gifts Ben brought me after his Adobe Air Tour trip (tasty jam!  tiny painted horses!) I can honestly say I may be not just a bad but the worst person to judge.

Ben: I have actually been to Sweden! So I was amused at many references; in fact, I would argue that the translation was better than normal, simply because of the things that remained untranslated. For instance, holiday names were all untranslated, and the translator felt no burden with assisting English speakers with place names and Swedish proper names. It almost assumed a familiarity with Sweden that was very enjoyable, and also gave non-Swedish readers an education about Sweden without being overly pretentious about it. Jaci’s right, though, it is no literary masterpiece, but it is a good, quick, entertaining read. Jaci prefers to come out of a book being a better person for having read the book–which I suppose is a good thing. However, I like to be entertained by books more than anything else.

Jaci: I would classify this book as amusing, and I can understand why it was popular.  The real question: will we be reading the entire Millennium series?

Ben: Well, I’m interested and not interested in the rest of the Millennium series; interested because I want to find out more about the main character who is a hacker. She didn’t seem to be developed as well as she could have been in the first book, even though she was the girl with the dragon tattoo. Uninterested, because I don’t really want to put myself through the discomfort of reading descriptions of sexual violence.

Jaci: Next up: Ben’s most dreaded book on the list, Dead Souls by Gogol.  Lucky for him it is short (and we’ll actually be together when we’re reading it due to some scheduling vagaries that worked out in our favor).  It will be interesting to read another translated work, especially since the translation I chose wasn’t really a choice at all–only the Hogarth translation was available for Kindle at the time I put the list together.  Russian absurdist literature?  Given Ben’s affinity for French existential literature, I think he may enjoy it more than he expects.

The Lazarus Project (Cover)

Jaci: As the first of the thirteen books on the bookclub list gathers up its threads and ties them in tidy bows, I find myself very satisfied with both the novel and the bookclub’s success so far. The best part about it is that Ben and I have things to talk about that aren’t his thesis or my work, each of which take up such a large portion of the hours of our many days spent apart.

Ben: Jaci mentioned to me that there is actual science behind the book club–psychology says that couples that share mental space like this can span long distance relationships and become closer. It was a bit of a surprise, how important this was to me; instead of feeling helpless or separated, I can go grab the book of the week and keep my sanity. It’s more than just something extra to talk about, it’s a replacement for all the little things a person has to do on a daily basis to maintain a relationship.

Jaci: In order to fully occupy the psychic space we’ve set aside for each other, I find myself reading more deeply than I have since I left behind the fortress of academia for my floating fortress. The Lazarus Project was a good choice for book one–both literary and very readable (it’s one of the few on the list we chose without much debate or any sort of trade-off, which was why I placed it where I did).

Ben: It’s also helped my personal discipline! I’m not exactly a morning person, and with my busy days, I find it hard to get up before 6:15, which is the latest I can get up to do my morning routine and get to work by 8. Reading every morning gives me a reason to get up at 5, have some coffee, and get my day off on the right foot. The Lazarus Project was a good start because it’s not putting me to sleep when I’m reading so early and half awake! (Thank goodness we didn’t start with Gogol…)

Jaci: In some ways, it’s as though we are together, in 1908 Chicago or in eastern Europe circa today, or at least in Aleksandar Hemon’s versions of these places. This means, of course, that over the next several months we’ll be traveling to some very strange lands together, including (if memory serves) a few brief trips to Mars towards the end of the journey.

Ben: I’m really feeling connected to Brik (the main character). He has me in stitches, and he constantly says out loud what I’m thinking. His perspective on his marriage with an American, white, Catholic neurosurgeon really reminds me of the things I’m thinking in my own marriage. I wonder if the married life commentary has the same resonance with Jaci. Knowing that we’re reading the same things and at least getting the same input makes me read the book in a whole new way. I’m even embarrassed about the time in brothels because it’s weird to be there with your wife!

Jaci: I also like looking at the notebook I decorated for a few minutes before and after I start reading. The first few pages are already filled with notes, questions, observations. To be frank, however, I live in a paranoic haze, worried that my Kindle will somehow be broken in my semi-rough living conditions.

Ben: Ah, Jaci is going to get a little English teacher resistance from me here. Jaci isn’t in a place where she is reading and taking notes every day… but I am. I’ve been reading for enjoyment rather than taking notes or making observations. I feel like Jaci is going to make me pay eventually when she starts bringing up specifics, but I have a hard copy, so I can always flip through the book, whereas Jaci can’t with the Kindle!

Jaci: Ah, the Kindle. I love the dictionary feature, but I miss being able to flip back and review previously read pages with ease! Especially in a book like this, a book which is constructed as an echo chamber with two stories interlacing in subtle but significant ways, it would be nice to flip back to the third page of the second chapter where I remember seeing something (instead of finding location ####, which I will not remember when I get to it’s twin in a later passage). But it’s compact, it’s simple, and it’s working. Like the bookclub.

Ben: It’s kind of sad that Jaci has better electronics kit than I do, especially in a place without too much network connections. Meanwhile I’m back in the seventeenth century with mine! Someone get me an iPad!

It’s what you have all (all two or three of you) been waiting for…it’s the syllabus!  Click the hyperlink to download a PDF version, or see below for Ben’s shiny HTML rendition.

Driving home with the six books we had to purchase in actual (as opposed to virtual) copy, Ben called me a kid in a candy store.

Hers-and-His notebooks.

The notebook backs