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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: 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

After heated discussions at home and over email, much searching, and proposal after counterproposal, I unveil The Reading List.

• The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogal (trans. C.J. Hogarth)
• Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, Lisa Miller
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
• Blue Angel, Francine Prose
• The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir
• Daemon, Daniel Saurez
• A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
• Spies of the Balkans, Alan Furst
• Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

Thirteen books in all: a loose baggy monster* of nonfiction, literary fiction, suspense, science fiction/fantasy, and classics.  By my rough estimate, we have about 5000 pages to read, or, given thirty-five weeks, about 150 pages per week.

I also found the perfect notebooks for the bookclub today on my lunch break: two Mead spiral assignment notebooks, seven-and-one-half by five inches, with forty sheets each.  I’ve dated each sheet for a single week, and to make them more special, I’ll be doing some of my famous collaging.

Next: the syllabus!  And (ouch) the purchase.

*My professors used to refer to English I and II as “loose baggy monsters” because they were intended to cover…well, everything, with a reading list meant to satisfy everyone a little bit.  I have no idea if this phrase is in wider use.

When one is forced to face down the possibility–the inbound reality–of months apart from a loved one, one seeks ways to stay connected.  Letters long ruled as the king of connection; email is today’s parchment and plume, but we lose something in the transition from penmanship to pixels.  (Stay with me, I can alliterate all day.)  Care packages, while welcome, are a one-way communique.  (Rhyme!)  At pre-deployment briefs, would-be helpers offer discounted “flat daddies” that can be placed at the meal table to take the place of the missing three-dimensional version.

Mail at sea can be greatly delayed, along with care packages of hopefully well-preserved goodies; email can be shut down or lost for a variety of reasons; and I somehow think Ben would find a “flat daddy” more discomfiting than not.

My solution?

Ben and I are creating a bookclub for two.

I filled out this idea yesterday, while reading about “common reading” programs on college campuses, though some version of it has been percolating in my egghead for months.  The idea at university is that inbound freshman have at least one book in common–something to unite them and serve as a source of conversation.  My idea is that Ben and I, by reading the same books at the same time, will be carrying on a sort of psychic conversation through the nexus of the words we’re experiencing together.  Even if email goes down and it’s a month or more between mail deliveries, even if I can’t make an outgoing phone call or tweet a single word, in some way, we’ll be joined.

Of course, our very different tastes in reading makes picking books a fraught operation.  We want anywhere from eight to fifteen books; right now, we’ve agreed on four (E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, Daniel Saurez’s Daemon, and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land).  One of our “rules”–that anything we pick must be available on the Kindle due to my space limitations–has only compounded the problem.  We dropped the rule that all books must be new reads for both of us (which allowed two of our choices).  Most likely, it will take a few trips to the bookstore in the end, since we’ve pretty effectively shopped our own shelves at this point.

What else remains to make the bookclub a success?

-More books (obviously).

-A syllabus…I’ll take care of that!

-Notebooks.  We’ll each jot down a few thoughts on the books we read together, especially when our communication lines fail, so that we don’t forget the things we each want to discuss.

-A reining in of my book snobbishness, and a slowing down to savoring speed in Ben’s reading habits.  We’ll meet in the middle.

I plan to post the full list of books and syllabus as a guide for others who want to try this gambit to close the miles during long times apart.  Take that, sword.