Quick Roundup (Week in Reading)

Holy smokes, bookworms. I cannot believe it is halfway through April! Already! So soon! But then the weather tells me it must be - 80 degrees one day than cold and raining the next. It could not be any month besides April.

Work and life have been hectic, which means blogging and thinking about interesting things to blog about have been limited. It's a directly inverse relationship, and I fear it will always be that way.

I did manage to review Enough About Love this week, a fabulous French translation that centers on love and relationships in the most French way imaginable. I also posted my one-and-only-ever complaint about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which I love with my whole heart, it's fabulous and wonderful and spectacular, but in re-reading does have some noted flaws. Not that this means I do not love it, of course. Just that it means that Books 8 and 9 were a tad bit on the slow side. But now I'm almost finished with the 11th book which means I can start reading 12 & 13 which aren't re-reads but first reads and oooooooh boy I can't wait.

More interesting than either of those things, though, I had an article published elsewhere besides here! Check it out - over at Bibliobuffet I wrote about my home library and what I think it says about me as both a person and a reader.

Despite not posting much recently, I did finish Meghan Daum's amusing memoir on home ownership, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, during my pseudo-participation in yesterday's Readathon. Congrats to everyone who participated for reals and planned it out and even had snacks on hand (which I did none of) - you rock!

Moral Illumination (Quote of the Day)

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” - Elizabeth Hardwick

Great Idea Friday: Little Golden Books GOWN

Yep, that's right. Someone took Project Runway inspiration and made a GOWN - yes, a real gown - out of Little Golden Books. The skirt is made of pages, the bodice of the gold from the spines. How freaking cool is this?

Photo from Ryan Novelline's website.

The "someone" who gets credit for the design is designer Ryan Novelline. You can see the entire process of the making of the gown on his website. It's worth checking out the rest of the pictures, I promise.

And thanks to Eliza at The Book Case for featuring this story in a recent round-up of weekly links.

Re-Reading Repetition: Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart, by Robert Jordan

In case you somehow missed it, I'm in the midst of re-reading Robert Jordan's incredible - and incredibly long - Wheel of Time series. I've been listening to them in the car on my commutes to/from work. I'm up to Book 11. I started a year and a half ago.

The first time I read this series, I was living in France with no access to television and a limited supply of English-language books (at least until I discovered Shakespeare and Co., but that's another story). As such, Wheel of Time was my daily distraction; on the Metro, on the numerous flights and train rides I took to visit other parts of Europe, for countless hours between classes at the American University of Paris.

Despite the distractions of a European setting, I finished all 11 books currently in print at the time in a mere six months. That's approximately 10,000 pages.

In hindsight, I couldn't be happier that my first read of the series hit when it did; otherwise, I'm not sure I would have made it through Path of Daggers (Book 8) and Winter's Heart (Book 9). As much as I love Jordan and the impeccable world he has created with this series, Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart, are slooooow. And repetitive. Maybe it struck me more the second time through because it was the second time through. Or maybe it was listening to it (and therefore not being able to skim through the slow parts in a rush to find out what happens next). But if I hear one more time how Nynaeve pulls her braid, or Mat wishes for embroidery, or Rand needs to learn to laugh, I just might scream. The two books could have been consolidated into one, as the bulk of the 900-page volumes strikes me as repetitive descriptive one-liners and set-up for books 10 and 11 (and 12 and 13 and 14, I suppose).

Whew. There. That is the one and only time you'll hear me voice a complaint about Jordan. Now that I've got that off my chest, I can turn back to reviewing Crossroads of Twilight (Book 10) and powering through Knife of Dreams (Book 11) with clear conscience. And with any luck, I'll be up through Book 13 before the 14th - and last! - volume is released.

That said, if you enjoy epic fantasy novels and haven't read this series: What on EARTH are you waiting for?

Book Review: Enough About Love by Hervé le Tellier

Hervé le Tellier's Enough About Love is the kind of very French book that seems to lose none of its Frenchness in translation, which is a wonderful, difficult, marvelous thing. The novel traces the love lives of four characters, whose infidelities and romances intertwine with one another, leaving a tangle that is not quite a love triangle, not quite a love square, but not quite expected. Set against a backdrop of modern Paris, these four characters are French to the core, in style, character, thought, and deed, but their stories are easily carried from one culture to another.

Le Tellier's writing is strong and well-crafted; he weaves a complicated web of storylines without ever losing track of where he is or where he is going. His writing is neat and orderly and philosophical; his characters are messy and deep and confused. He is eminently quotable, with passages speaking to the nature of love, reading, romance, sex, friendship; his story is heartfelt and meaningful, flawed in the way that real life is flawed. He is an author tackling big life issues in small life events; his work is very, very French.

Enough About Love is intriguing from the first you read the title - which, to be frank, is the main reason I was drawn into this book - to the moment you turn the last page and realize with a startling frankness that really, there never is "enough about love." It's a subject we will continue to muse over, meddle with, write about, etc. It will at once give us a place in which we belong and yet continue to break our hearts. It will keep poets writing poetry, singers singing songs, author crafting novels. And precisely because he understands this, le Tellier's Enough About Love is intriguingly relevant, no matter what language you read it in.

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Thoughts from other bookworms:

Literary License: Short Reviews with Real Opinions
My Books. My Life.
The Book Lady's Blog
The Boston Bibliophile

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Many thanks to Other Press for providing an e-galley of this title for review, via NetGalley.

Books Do Furnish My Home

“What better place to kill time than a library? And for me, what better way to get to know someone than her choice and treatment of books?” - The Thirteenth Tale

Hop on over to BiblioBuffet this week for my guest column on my own choice and treatment of books, and what my library says about me as a reader.

Passionately in Love with Language (Quote of the Day)

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden

Happy National Poetry Month, folks. With any luck, I'll even read some poetry this month myself (something I've always meant to do and never truly done).