Could you spend the rest of your life reading Joyce Carol Oates?

Probably. Hell, if you're old enough, and/or a slow reader, you could spend the rest of your life just reading the Oates books we happen to own at the FKCC library -- 43 titles according to my quick search of our catalogue -- and that represents a small portion of her oeuvre, I'm sure. But if you're going to read just one, and especially if you're an unrehabilitated English major, I can recommend Wild Nights -- my review is in today's edition of Solares Hill, available as a downloadable PDF (the review is also posted on the Citizen's website).

What else? I went on a reading binge last weekend -- finished up "The Man Who Made Lists," Joshua Kendall's biography of Peter Roget, of Roget's Thesaurus fame. It was OK but I didn't feel like I knew the guy -- the way I already feel I'm getting to know the characters in my current reading, Patricia O'Toole's "Five of Hearts," a group portrait of Henry and Clover Adams, John and Clara Hay and Clarence King, all post-Civil War movers and shakers in Washington. This is the first book of hers that I've read and it's great. Can't wait to see her at the upcomng Key West Literary Seminar.

After my disappointment with Alison Weir's Elizabeth novel, I turned to Jhumpa Lahiri and, after finishing the Roget bio last weekend, I finished "Unaccustomed Earth" -- the stories got more powerful as the book went along, especially the last three that were linked stories about a man and woman. And the ending, which I should have seen coming but didn't, was surprising and moving.

After that I temporarily lost my mind and persuaded my husband to embark on a long-overdue attic cleaning (it cooled off a bit on Monday and we figured this was our last shot at working in the attic without serious overheating issues). It needed to be done, I'm glad we did it, but it was an exhausting end to the holiday. Since then, all I've been able to take in is a couple episodes of "Deadwood" and a couple New Yorker "Talk of the Town" pieces. Hoping to make a full reading recovery this weekend, though. (Speaking of Deadwood, after starting the show I noticed that we happen to have the Pete Dexter novel of the same name on the shelf at home -- it turns out it's not the basis for the series though it shares some characters, ie. Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane -- it may have just moved up the stack just out of western curiosity ... I don't think I've read one since the fabulous "Lonesome Dove," which is getting close to, um, 20 years ago.)

Time to let go?

When I was 10 or 11, visiting my grandparents, I came across a copy of "Elizabeth the Great" by Elizabeth Jenkins. Since then I have, to varying degrees, been obsessed with the various versions of the Tudor story -- mostly nonfiction, though more recently supplemented by fiction (I like to call this genre Tudor Trash) and movies. Antonia Fraser, David Starkey, Alison Weir -- I've read them all. Obviously, from looking at the sales numbers for Philippa Gregory or the investment of the Showtime tv show "The Tudors," I'm not alone. And why not? It's an insanely dramatic story with so many elements: sex, politics, religion, birth, death. I've watched the old Glenda Jackson miniseries and I'm still bitter that Cate Blanchett was robbed of her richly deserved Oscar for "Elizabeth." But I'm afraid this 30-year affair may be over. "The Tudors" is enjoyable as camp, but I can't really buy it. More worrisome, "The Other Boleyn Girl" left me cold. "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" didn't live up to its predecessor and managed to sap the swagger (and acting ability) from Clive Owen. And now, Alison Weir's second novel, "The Lady Elizabeth," is ... boring. Yep, that could well be due to the writing not the story. But what if it's really over? What if I'm just sick of this story?

Well, there's always the Stuarts and the drama of the English Civil War. But those Puritans just aren't much fun. In the meantime, I'm going back into the archives to see if there's any spark left. The college library has a pretty decent collection of movies on VHS, should you still have a working VCR, and I happened to bring home a 1940 swashbuckler called "The Sea Hawk." Errol Flynn is Capt. Thorpe, a Sir Francis Drake-like privateer, and Flora Robson is Elizabeth. Next, I'll have to check out "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," with Flynn again and Bette Davis as Elizabeth. And, in an earlier wave of Tudor novelization mania, Jean Plaidy wrote a whole series that I've never read. Maybe they'll renew my obsession.

Other reading? I finished Tony Horwitz's new book, "A Voyage Long and Strange." He's in fine historical travelogue style -- not as good as "Confederates in the Attic" but that's a very high bar indeed and I like it better than "Blue Latitudes." Look for a review in Solares Hill when I get to writing it. And I was inspired by an NPR piece on Kate Christensen winning the PEN/Faulkner award to see if the public library had any of her books. They have several and I just finished her first, "In the Drink," which is very good. I read about 60 pages of the new Alison Weir (fulfilling the Nancy Pearl 100-minus-your-age-page-rule -- minimum page number before abandoning a book) and turned to the "Unaccustomed Earth," the new Jhumpa Lahiri story collection for relief.

I'm back!

Yes, this blog hit a sophomore slump for awhile there. But I have been reading and even reviewing, if not writing about it in this forum. My latest was a book called "Literary Seductions" by Frances Wilson -- I saw it referred to somewhere, looked it up in our catalogue at work and got it through interlibrary loan. Last weekend, I read it. It was OK though not to my standard of high-end literary gossip/lives for regular readers ("Parallel Lives" by Phyllis Rose being my high watermark in the genre). It was kind of a hybrid between academic treatise and layperson read. Maybe that's how they do it in the UK. Anyway a decent read. But not as good as the previous one, "Wild Nights!" by Joyce Carol Oates, which I have reviewed for an upcoming edition of Solares Hill. I know, I know, JCO's prodigious output can be intimidating. And I even made sure to write this review without using the word "prolific." But this is a good one, maybe because it's also on the literary lives vein -- but with the Oatesean twists of eerieness and weirdness pushed a few shoves beyond comfort level.

The stories are all very different from one another, which is good, and makes it difficult to choose a favorite. I might have liked the first one the least, perhaps because of all the writers I've read the least Poe, perhaps because the 19th century diary style was a tad offputting. The Emily Dickinson robot story is savagely funny, the Hemingway story full of pathos. And, in an additional Key West link, the book is dedicated to Joyce and Seward Johnson, of sculpture and Key West Literary Seminar scholarship fame.

I also read "The Princess of Burundi," another Swedish mystery, this one by Kjell Eriksson (and from the FKCC collection). I thought it was a better read than "Sun Storm," and I enjoyed a little brain candy. But I think I'm done with the Swedish mystery genre for the moment -- my list of other reading, for review and for the upcoming seminar, is just too long. Fortunately the next is a combo: Tony Horwitz's new book, "A Voyage Long and Strange," about European interactions in the New World between Columbus and the Pilgrims. "Confederates in the Attic" is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, so I'm hoping Horwitz is on form with this one.

Review and reading

My review of Quiet, Please, Scott Douglas' memoir of working in a public library, is in today's edition of Solares Hill and on The Citizen website. I liked the book, but not as much as I'd hoped to. But it's still a great behind-the-scenes look at life in the library. And definitely check out Scott's blog. I also FINALLY finished Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, a historical novel about Nikolas Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. It's mostly set in the early 1940s in New York though it contains extended flashbacks, mostly to Tesla's life. I liked it a lot and hope we may see Hunt down here for the 2009 Literary Seminar. It's going to be a great one, and there's lots of reading to do. Lots and lots.

And some really great news: We're getting a lot of new titles onto the shelves at the college library, from donations and other sources. Every day I go in and find a new book I just have to read. Since I don't finish a book a day, this is a bit of a problem. But at least they're library books so I have to give them back and they won't add to the book storage issues already occupying my house. (And I always assume people know this but many don't: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT TO BORROW BOOKS FROM US!!!!!)

A few notes

After a good start to the year, my reading pace slowed considerably -- but I wanted to make a few notes. 1) I just finished "Quiet, Please" by Scott Douglas, which I'll be reviewing very soon for Solares Hill. I found the book an enjoyable read, though my expectations were raised a little too high because I so like the author's blog, Speak Quietly. Still, good to see young librarians out there telling stories. I'm about halfway through The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which I like a lot so far despite the fact that the author seems to be the hot new thing, went to my high school, is a couple years younger than me AND lives in Brooklyn. (Also, check out her website from the link on her name -- it's very cool.) And last weekend, I accompanied a bunch of birders to the Tortugas (for more on that trip, you can read my husband's column in the Citizen) -- the trip reminded me of a book I liked a lot and reviewed for Solares Hill a few years back: "Assassination Vacation" by the multi-talented Sarah Vowell. Vowell writes about being seasick on the trip to see Dr. Mudd's cell at the Tortugas but the really good parts of the book, to me, were about lesser-known assassins, namely the guys who shot McKinley and Garfield.