The Manticore. Book two in the Deptford Trilogy. Usually, when you really love a book and then dive straight into the sequel, there is at least a moment of disappointment, especially when the narrator changes in the second volume. This time, I went straight from the end of The Fifth Business to the beginning of The Manticore without a hitch; I read thirty pages and I already love this one as much as I loved the first one. Such a relief — it’s been a rotten summer, reading-wise.

Now if I could only get to the halfway point in David Copperfield I could guiltlessly quit that and everything would be perfect.

Fifth Business. I loved this book. I loved it so much that I don’t really want to talk about it, lest I spoil the enjoyment with the kind of quibbles and criticisms that I always seem to come up with after I’ve finished a book.

I will say that this is my very favorite kind of book, in a way that I can’t really explain except to say that it manages to capture the fun and magic and mystery and good story-telling that I associate with my best-loved kids’ books, but adds enough complexity and depth of character and untidiness that it satisfies me as an adult reader. Other writers who can pull that mix off include Michael Chabon, Salmon Rushdie, and David James Duncan. Since I am running out of things to read by those guys, I am more pleased than I can tell to you to have found another prolific (if unfortunately deceased) author who can also pull it off.

So it’s been a while. The last couple of months have been bad ones for me, book-wise and otherwise. I haven’t read much, I haven’t finished much of what I’ve started, and I’ve been kind of down in the dumps in general.

I’ve decided to blame David Copperfield. Because I hate it, and I have been listening to it for a month and a half and I am not even to the halfway point. I am currently trying to convince myself to give up on the audio version and just read it so I can get it over with, except I hate it, and I don’t have a lot of energy for reading anything except cases and law review articles right now, so why would I want to waste that energy on a book I hate?

I am going to try to catch up briefly here today, but I am not even going to bother trying to do full reviews of anything I’ve read, mostly because it hasn’t been very exciting. I would just like to get back in the habit of posting here, and this seems like the best way to do that.

Fifth Business. I just started this but already I love it. I desperately needed to read something like this, a book I could just dive into and love from the get-go, and this seems to be perfect. Maybe the reading slump is over.

Box Nine. A friend told me to read this book while I was in my reading slump, because it was a quick and simple read that would entertain me and not piss me off. I agree on all counts except that it somehow took me a month to finish. Kind of a contemporary noir mystery, the novel is dark and violent and occasionally genuinely scary. I had guessed the big plot twist within the first few chapters, but I always do that so it’s not a strike against the book. I will definitely add O’Connell to the very short list of mystery writers I am willing to bother with these days.

I, Robot. I made it through the first story — Gloria? I already forgot her name — but I couldn’t go on. I started with an audio version, which was fine, but skipped to paperback to get it over with faster. I still couldn’t do it. He may have been brilliant and visionary and all that crap, but Asimov could not write a sentence that didn’t include a couple of cliches and a whole bunch of extra words. Horrible.

The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake. When I was a kid, I didn’t own a lot of books, but I spent as much time as possible at the library, and one of the books I checked out over and over was a big fat collection entitled The Melendy Family. It contained these two books plus a third, Then There Were Five. I loved these books without reservation, and I continued to love them into adulthood. For as long as I can remember, this series (plus the Narnia books) have been my literary comfort food of choice. A couple of years ago I even happily traded in my cheap paperback copies for an old library collection exactly like the one I read when I was a kid.

But this summer Enright let me down. I made it through the first two books but didn’t even bother with Then There Were Five, because it appears that at 35 years old, I am finally too old to read children’s books. I was annoyed all through both readings, not because of the anachronisms but just because the story and the characters and the dialogue and the situations and the emotions were too simplistic to be interesting. Fine for an eight-year-old, irritating for me.

This seems like an obvious conclusion, I know, but I know a lot of adults who read children’s literature exclusively, or who never get tired of their childhood favorites. I think I am officially no longer one of those adults.

The Headless Cupid and The Velvet Room. What I wrote about my recent experience revisiting Elizabeth Enright applies to Snyder, as well, except these two books are a little more sophisticated and so irritated me less. Actually, I continue to love both of these although I don’t know that I will ever read either of them again. I am still irritated that The Velvet Room is out of print: if I had a ten-year-old I would definitely want her to read this one.

I also wonder if books like The Headless Cupid are still permitted in school libraries — I think the religious right has become a lot more active since this book was published in the seventies.

Absalom, Absalom!. Also for our Faulkner seminar. We will begin discussing this one in mid-August.

I have in the past cited this as my favorite book of all. I will see if I still feel that way after this reading.

The Sound and the Fury. Yet another TUS reading seminar. We are on week two right now, making our way through the Quentin section. I finished the book a few weeks ago, my fourth reread. This is one of my favorite books of all time, but this time through I can’t help but compare it to Joyce. My first reaction is to say that Joyce possessed more technical brilliance but Faulkner is ultimately more effective and affecting, but then my second reaction is to wonder how much of my first reaction is based on the fact that I am an American and thus Faulkner is more accessible to me on every level — linguistically, historically, emotionally.

I don’t know. I just know I love this book.

Ulysses. We finished this just around Bloomsday, which was unplanned but kind of neat. I am not sure I have much to say that I didn’t say already in our final chat session. Obviously I admire the book a whole bunch, and there were parts I almost loved. I disagree with the recent criticism about Joyce failing to touch the heart, because I think he does; you just have to work pretty hard to get to there. He is, in the end, writing a rather simple story about human connections and failings and the way that we wind up most alienated from those to whom we ought to have the deepest connections; this is possibly the most depressing work ever written about marriage, and maybe the only thing that ever needs to be written about marriage. But all the brilliant bullshit surrounding that story kind of leaves the reader as alienated as Bloom and Molly, which is possibly part of the point, but also probably the reason that readers admire this book but don’t really love it.

I am sure that I will read this again some day. I am very, very glad that I had the group to get me through it.