Ok so I'm no
Melanie Steimle, whose literary prowess can shock and amaze, but I'm proud nonetheless of the few little bookies I read in 2011. Many of these are now on my favorites list. Despite the pleasure reading hiatus that is known as "first semester of grad school," it was a good reading year. Here are some of my thoughts:
Category 1: Paris
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Marie-Antoinette: The Journey, Antonia Fraser
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, Amanda Vaill
The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun
On Paris, Ernest Hemingway
The Ladies’ Paradise, Emile Zola
The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
Hemingway's writing is just...life changing. A Moveable Feast is captivating from the first sentence, "Then there was the bad weather." as if you were just sitting with an old friend in the midst of one of his good stories. The problem with Hemingway though is he didn't have any old friends. But he knew Paris was the best time of his life, for he ends this novel with my favorite line of his of all time, "But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."
Marie-Antoinette: The Journey had been on my list for years. When I walked into Shakespeare and Co. it was the first book I saw on the shelf and I picked it up and bought it. Done. It took me quite a while to read it. It's a thick book. She became real to me-- flaws and all. But I came to adore her all the more. I loved Lady Fraser's writing--straightforward, unapologetic, with sparks of charm and humor. Like any biography steeped in politics and history, there were a few dry parts to this book, but what I learned in the end fed my passion for this era.
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story. This book was given to me by one of the curators at the National Portrait Gallery. I don't know why I waited so long to read it, because it was delightful. Amanda Vaill's writing is an absolute inspiration. I looked up every word I didn't know and learned so many adorable terms and phrases I'm dying to remember enough to use in my own speech. She truly captured the atmosphere of the lost generation in her writing and made Sara Murphy a sparkling heroine to me. I mean anyone who says, "Is there anything so satisfying as to be picturesque?" is a dream-boat in my eyes.
After visiting Zola's tomb at the Pantheon, I bought a cheap copy of Au Bonheur des Dames in the bookshop you pass through before exiting. I started reading it, but switched to the English version, The Ladies' Paradise instead. This is my favorite book. This time I read it with specific research topics in mind and came out with hundreds of little neon sticky tabs plastered throughout. No matter what, Denise's goodness and virtue will always be the theme that means the most to me... "There she was, patiently waiting, alone, formidable in her gentleness."
Knowing Marie-Antoinette had commissioned Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun as her portraitist and learning of the pleasant interactions they shared, I'd been wanting to read The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun since college art history. It's an important and astonishing read, learning what success a female painter could have in the 18th century. She was a proud woman and a little hoity later in life, but was devoted almost to a flaw to a husband that took advantage of her success. At times the memoirs were dry, but some were so delightful, any art historian would find this a must-read.
I can't recommend enough reading The Paris Wife, en pair with Everybody Was So Young. How amazing to read the same experiences from the viewpoints of two different "Lost Generation" women. And OH the love story between Hadley and Ernest. The book could make any girl fall head over heels for Ernest Hemingway then devestatingly watch it fall apart. Paula McLain also did a fine job at truly writing the voice and atmosphere of Hemingway, though who's to say Hadley thought and spoke in that same cadence? The narration was perhaps a tad predictable though. I must ask: Is it better to face the flaws of a hero and learn he's not the man you hoped he was? Or is it better to naively cling to half truths? After reading this, if you loved Hemingway before like me, you may find you love him in a far different way.
Lastly in the Paris category, I read Hem's collection On Paris, essays he wrote for the Toronto Times. Some were not at all what I expected to read--very reporter-like explaining politics and current issues at the time.
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Category 2: Feel Good Historically-Based Novels
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Annie
Barrows
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
All three I had heard of long before I actually had a desire to read them. But once I did, I did not regret it. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was delightful as promised with such quirky characters. I'd love to see this book made into a movie a la Babe style or Big Fish. There's something very down home yet fantastical about each character and their stories. I loved the narrative, or lack thereof, considering the entire novel was a series of letters--you could get the gist of something that happened based on the letter-writing discussion that followed. Hilarious!
I enjoyed reading The Help and loved seeing the movie with my sisters afterwards. The author had a way of helping you love or despise certain characters.
Memoirs of a Geisha is brilliant. Or the author is brilliant. I'm still blown away that the work is a piece of fiction because the author does everything to make you believe it's not. This novel is a touch graphic here and there and maybe I thought I shouldn't be reading it, but I'm glad I kept reading because it was so stunningly beautiful and unique.
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Category 3: Kind of Hated it but glad I read it anyway
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris. Loved it. Hated it.
Museum Administration: An Introduction, Hugh H. Genoways. Wanted to get a leg up on the Museum Management class I was taking in the Fall so I read the textbook during the summer. Learned a little, but mostly distracted that it was so old and the "internet" was still a novelty in the time it was written. GET A NEW TEXTBOOK PLEASE.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot. Never in million years would I have chosen to read this book, but someone gave it to me and I thought, "Why not?" especially since I saw on goodreads a couple of my friends were reading it. I learned quite a bit and gained a better understanding of the history of medicine and how it related to the Black population. I enjoyed learning about Baltimore and Johns Hopkins especially since my brother is there. I felt like I could relate to the author's experiences after serving a mission in Cleveland. The end.
