Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

Egads, I forgot to do a wrap-up readathon post. Uh, so, yeah. I read some stuff and ate some stuff and only lasted 16 hours and then I went to beddy-by.

Moving on.

So, Cakes and Ale happened. Let's talk about this. It's about an author who is old and who is having flashbacks of his younger days when he hung out with ANOTHER author who has recently died. The dead guy was considered a Super Genius and The Last Great Victorian and whatnot and WAS PROBABLY Thomas Hardy even though Maugham was all what? I did no such thing. This character has nothing to do with Thomas Hardy even though he has pretty much everything in common with Thomas Hardy except POSSIBLY hair color. Wait, did I get the hair color wrong? SHIT.

That's really the most interesting bit: reading this slightly-boring-but-not-difficult-and-mildly-entertaining thing that to most people is an obvious sketch of Person A and then reading the introduction wherein Maugham spends several pages explaining that it can't be Person A because Person A's wife had a different favorite color and Person A was from a different -shire and Person A's uncle liked MILK, not BEER, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

There's also a fair bit of focus on Person A-who-isn't-Person-A-why-are-you-still-saying-that's WIFE, who marries the great literary genius even though she's a bit of a trollop and was a bar wench and is very pretty in an country sort of way, etc.

So she's subjected to a good bit of snobbery because she's a country-pretty bar-wenching trollop, but We The Readers are supposed to like/pity/empathize with her because she's "natural" and has "feelings" and follows her natural feelings, which are generally summed up in how much she sleeps around. Because other than the sympathy-inducing sleeping around, she never really does/says anything that inclined me to like her. It reminded me of Tess of the D'Ubervilles in it's "don't you love this character because she's a soft and down-to-earth" thing, and also in my reaction: no, I don't love her. She's boring and silly and vapid and I don't care.

Anywoot, my experience with Maugham thus far (this book included) further cements him as a Just Fine and Commercially Successful period writer who is entertaining but challenging in pretty much zero ways.

Three stars out of your mom.

THON Update FOUR

Updiddle the Fourth: 7 p.m.- DINNER TIME!

Time to take a break from the snacking in order to eat. I've got a homemade pizza in the oven...mm..pizzaaa....

Read: I just finished my third book, Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own by Jenna Woginrich. I have a secret love for farming memoirs. I read homesteading blogs. I tell myself that I would love to have a small farm while trying to ignore the fact that I don't like dirt or manual labor and that knitting makes me stabby. BUT I WANT TO BE THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO DOES LOVE THOSE THINGS. Sigh. Onward to Toni Morrison!

Snacks: Braided cheddar and asiago cheese sticks! Brownies! And now on to pizza!

THON ON.

THON Update TRES

Updiddle the Third: 3:30 p.m.- I Am Le Tired

So, right about 2 p.m. I remembered that I'd been up since 5 a.m. and then I looked outside and it was dreary and rainy and the world started singing WHO WANTS A NAP? 

So I may have cheated a bit and slept for like 30 minutes....while the other people in my house read without me. I'm nothing if not a good hostess. BUT! The cat nap re-energized me (as did a grande iced coffee brought over by a good friend) and I have FINISHED another book. HOOZAH!

Read: I just finished Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham, which I've renamed Cakes and Who Gives a Shit? because EGADS, it's boring. That makes two books down (the other being The Wordy Shipmates).

Snacks: MOAR COOKIE BUTTER. Also, Starbucks. Also, pineapple. 

THON ON.

THON Update DOS

Updiddle the SECOND: 1 p.m.- The Party Coninueth
Sigh. The twins will not stop with the fussing and the yelling and the general thon-interruption. For LO! There are people in the house and there is odd, off-schedule SNACKING and all of this is STRANGE and UPSETTING.

For the most part, the Husband is handling the fuss and the protestations of the wee ones, but not now. Now he is on the floor reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. Party on, Husband. Party on. Now for updates!

Read: I've finished The Wordy Shipmates, and I loved and cherish it, especially the bits about how Puritan Christianity was a far cry from modern evangelical Christianity, despite the fact that modern evangelicals have a tendency to worship at the altar of This Here Be A Christian Nation And We Here Folk Must Obey Them There Founders, Mkay? Them there founders would burn you at the stake for your "holy spirit indwelling" and your general showy, emotional business. Heretic. ANYWOOT! On to finish the Maugham, and perhaps dip into some Homer.

Snacks: COOKIE BUTTER has been opened and spread upon a warm baguette and swiftly consumed. Brownies are cooling on the rack. Ok, on top of the stove. I don't have a rack. I also had lunch, which was just a leftover chickpea/feta/roasted red pepper salad from yesterday. 

THON ON.

THON Updiddle UNO

UPDIDDLE THE FIRST: 10:30 a.m.- Getting Crazy in the Hizzy

Read: I'm on page 134 of The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, and I'm on page 146 of Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham. Buuut I started both of these before today, so I'm not sure exactly how many pages I've read the past two hours. 

Snacks: The Husband brought us Chick-Fil-A breakfast biscuits and some ghetto-sweet sweet tea and there is NO BETTER WAY TO START A THON, LET ME TELL YOU. That is all the snacking I've done THUSLY. 

Where are your children? I dunno. The Husband took them away. It is quiet and I am reading and it is quiet. Shush.

THON ON.

THE THON! Not to be confused with Tron.

I neglected to make a post about what books I selected for this thon. Then I couldn't find my camera. SO! I made a video. Thon on, folks. Thon on.

If you haven't signed up for the thon and would like to, here's a link. 

The Thon Cometh.

Fellow readerly types! Our bi-annual celebration of Ignoring Everyone In Our Lives And Not Putting On Pants Approacheth! What's that, you say? You know now of what I speak? Why, it's the READATHON, silly pants!

It's where the cool kids hang. Except in their own houses. I still plan to wear a headdress.

ANYWAY! The Readathon is a 24 hour reading fest that begins Saturday, April 21st at 8 a.m. EST. Of course, this is your jam, so you can start and stop whenever you bloody well feel like it. In my experience of doing...one...in the past, my eyes start bleeding around hour 16. That is where I stop. Bleeding eyes is not a good look for me. You can sign up/ read about the readathon here.

I encourage you to have people over to THON with you. Brittney from The Souls Of Thought will be joining me at my house, along with a few non-blogger friends. There will be snacks, which is our festival's version of free shit for celebrities.

That is all! Go forth and sign up for the THON! 24 hours of ignoring your family and all other responsibilities- WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME, PEOPLE?

The Book Blogger Unconference

Non-bloggers, avert thine eyes! This will be of no interest to you.

June, she approacheth! Which means BEA (BookExpo America), SHE approacheth! And attached to BEA we have bloggery-type thingys. Jeff over at The Reading Ape is organizing a Book Blogger Unconference, the goal being to have a small, conversation-driven event with a more "for us, by us" type of feel. Participants decide the panel topics (and run the panel topics, natch), resulting in an organic event with sure-to-be relevant shtuff happening. Also, the Unconference is free. So there's that. The Uncon is Monday, June 4th. If you want more info, check out the Uncon's website.

(Of course, the regular Book Blogger Conference will also be happening, if you want something bigger and more industry-focused with more presentation-style sessions. I just like the grass-roots feel of the Uncon myself. And the freeness. If you're going to a book blogger event to meet publishing types or just want something more formal, BBC is your jam.)

There's been a call for bloggers participating in the Uncon to talk about what kind of sessions they would like to see. I've been thinking about it all day and all I've really been able to come up with is how much I realllllyyy want some feta cheese right now. I'm easily distractible. In between cravings for feta cheese, I've had a few thoughts:

1. AUTHORS ARE ON TWITTER, EGADS! They've never been so accessible. Gone are the days of the unassailable hermit author (mostly, and only for authors who want to sell books and aren't already Stephen King). What does it mean for us to be able to talk to them so readily? Does it change how we review, knowing that they could yell at us (and some do)? Does it change how we feel about author intent, since we can, you know, ASK?

2. SPEAKING OF NEGATIVE REVIEWS, let's talk about that. We love the snark around here, but the recipients of that snark are dead and don't care. I don't know how scathing I'd be willing to be if the author was still alive and around with feelings and such. Where's the line between negative-hepful-for-readers and negative-just-being-an-ass-because-I-found-a-great-GIF?

3. DOLLA DOLLA BILLS YA'LL (Monetization) BUT- not necessarily a how-to sort of thing, but a WHY/WHY NOT sort of thing. Does it alienate readers when you monetize? Do people who monetize love books less than people who "are just doing it out of the love of literature" or whatnot? What are the ethical stuff people who monetize need to consider (like reviewing books from publishers who want to advertise with you, etc.)?

That's what I've got. If you have THOUGHTS about what would make a good session, stop over at the Uncon Prospective Sessions page and let them know. For shizzle.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

THE COLOR PURPLE, why you no let me love you?

The book starts with some major gut/heart wrenching. I mean, Alice Walker reaches into your chest and rips out these organs, Indiana Jones And That Scary As Shit Temple Guy style. It's an epistolary novel, with the first several letters written by Celie, who begins by talking about how her father first raped her at 14 and how she had two children by him. He then gives her away to a neighbor as a wife. Mister --- is equally brutal, beating her and treating her like a slave while openly pining for his mistress, Shug Avery.

AND THEN Shug Avery shows up and BOTH Celie and Mister ---- are like damn, gimme some of that. And it's understandable coming from Celie because no men have ever treated her like a human being. Celie's voice is earnest and intelligent and strong and stoic. I got about halfway through the book and became super-invested in Celie's relationship with Shug, and in Sofia, Celie's daughter-in-law who literally fights back when her husband tries to beat her. These characters GET IN YOUR HEAD.

And then (not as exciting as the previous AND THEN, and also, SPOILERS HERE) Celie finds letters from her sister that Mister --- has been hiding from her. Now the reader spends about 30 pages not with the characters you've come to care about, but with another cast of characters you were introduced to 100 pages earlier and have sort of assumed are dead. Nettie's letters all start with a prefix from Celie that reads "and here's what the next one says" and so on, until you're up to speed with THOSE characters. It's a bit jarring, and it seems like Walker could've found a different structural technique that didn't require abandoning the first set of characters for the second.

At about the same point, the book becomes less about Celie and more about Alice Walker's religious philosophy- which, hey, that's cool. I'm fine with a book with a Message. But she uses The Thing I Hate Most In Books- using dialogue and/or speeches to delineate a point-by-point explanation of the author's worldview. It wasn't ok when Ayn Rand did it, and it's not ok when you do it, Alice, even if it did win you a Pulitzer. It's LAZY. It basically goes like this:

Celie: God has abandoned us. 

Shug: No, you just don't understand God.

Celie: Exsqueeze me?

Shug: NO PROBLEM! Let me (a thinly disguised Alice) explain what God actually is and how one should actually interact with him/her, and all about his/her nature and life, the universe and everything.

Celie: Is it 42? 

Shug: No way! That would make this last section of the book much shorter! Instead, let's talk about it for many, many pages. Meaning I'm going to talk about it. And you are going to be a character-vessel for my philosophical ramblings. K? K.

I cannot. I just. I cannot tell you how much this irritates me. It's the literal opposite of show, don't tell. WRITING RULE ONE, PEOPLE. 

I know a lot of people love this book and I loved the first half of it, and I loved everything that wasn't a structural problem and a lazy dialogue-philosophy-religious essay ( FOR SERIOUS JUST WRITE AN ESSAY ok I'll stop). I loved Celie and I loved Sofia and I loved how unflinching Walker is in showing that yes, being black and poor and a woman immediately post-slavery was possibly the worst version of person to be because no one not no one treated you with kindness. It's a difficult novel in that way- there's injustice after injustice and you will probably cry. But it's not a stylistically perfect book and that can be a little distracting. But! Worth the read, I think.

Three stars out of your mom. Stupid preachy dialogue.