Blind Assassin

Day 256 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and a young woman will be reading or re-reading a stack of bestsellers that includes The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, The Hours, by Michael Cunningham,  The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, and The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and here's why:

1) She is going on a long trip and will have hours to read!

2) She is working on an assignment to examine issues of appearance, specifically dress and behavior, in a recent bestseller.

What a great assignment!  Now I want to read or re-read a novel with that in mind.  She was particularly excited about The Blind Assassin, an Atwood novel she hadn't read yet, which she found next to The Handmaid's Tale, the one she had asked about. (I had just placed them side by side on the floor, where they tend not to be an alphabetical order.  They are [supposed to be] in alphabetical order on the shelves, and are sometimes in alphabetical order on the floor, our overflow spot, but not always.)

She hadn't read or seen the film of The Hours, which I had recently watched (half of), so I alerted her that the three main female characters are explored in three different time periods, so behavior, dress, and "appearance" in multiple meanings of that word are intensely present in that novel.

She had read and remembered The Secret Life of Bees, and was excited to compare child and adult, black and white cultures, and matters of "appearance" in that novel.

And I said, "Oh, I have been wanting to read The Shadow of the Wind," and her friend sweetly showed me that we have another copy of it there at Babbitt's on the Select New Arrivals shelf!

While the cover art and content of Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, directly address issues of clothing, behavior, and appearance, it is indeed a memoir, and she must read a novel for this assignment.

Cemetery of Forgotten Books

Day 114 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and David, with whom I will be swimming soon in the early mornings, is reading "the next Zafon novel." Because David is a Spanish teacher, he may be reading it in the original Spanish, but I would need to read these novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafon in the translations by Lucia Graves.*

And it looks like I will need to, because they are about books! Or this one is, anyway:

The Shadow of the Wind is about a boy named Daniel whose father is a bookseller. He takes Daniel to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (were Barbara Pym's books there for those 20 years she went out of style?!--see yesterday's entry...), where he chooses, yes, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. And now I know I will get confused by the many character names, and lost in the "Borgesian labyrinth" as Richard Eder calls it in his New York Times review. Let's just say the Devil makes an appearance.

(Which reminds me of one of my favorite books ever, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Anybody reading that right now?)

The Shadow of the Wind takes place just after the Spanish Civil War, in Barcelona. And now the lovely, funny song "Barcelona," from the musical Company, will be playing in my head for the rest of the day. As will one of my favorite lines of dialogue, ever--forgive me: "I'm a living thing, too, you shithead." Oh, my whimsical mind, God help me. (God has surely averted his/her/its eyes from my book blog, and yet will also forgive me.)

Anyway, Wikipedia informs me that Zafon was controversial in Spain for writing his novels in Spanish rather than Catalan. And that the follow up novel to Shadow of the Wind is actually a prequel, The Angel's Game. And, in another attack of whimsy, I keep hearing the author's name in my head as "saffron," an expensive yellow spice. Hence, today's picture of a saffron crocus.

*Translator Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves. Phyllis is reading I, Claudius, a perennial favorite, by Robert Graves! And Phyllis is an excellent cook, who probably has some saffron in her spice cabinet.

(They are going to bury me in the Cemetery of Forgot What I Was Writing About.)