Baths and Books

Taking my daily trek around the bookweb brought me to a cute little article at The Guardian about reading books in the bath. When I was little, I took baths all the time. My parents were fans of keeping the house super cold, especially during the winter (cold weather aids sleep, my dad says), so the house was usually freezing. The joke was that I would run around a bit trying to get warm on very cold afternoons. Then I would disappear. A few moments later, Mom would laugh as she heard the bath tub water running. I would run the water as hot as I could stand it, the aim being to thoroughly warm myself and turn my legs that great cooked lobster color. Of course, I would take a book into the bath, too. Without it, I'd get bored and get out of the water too quickly, which was against the entire point.
Then I went off to college. There was a bathtub on my hall, but I wasn't about to put my bottom in there; too much opportunity for disease and dirt in that gross bathtub. The same was true for the bathtub in my first apartment. My husband's condo started out with a bathtub and then fell victim to overzealous home improvement...which lasted a year. But now, we're in a new house with a fabulous new bathtub, and my husband likes to keep the house just as cold (in the winter) as my dad did, so the old ritual of lobster roasting my legs and reading a great book at the same time is back in vogue for moi.

Alistair Harper had this to say:
Baths are one of the few pleasures body and self can appreciate simultaneously. This is entirely because reading in the bath is the height of civilization. Taking a bath instead of a shower is a philosophical decision - a declaration that the world will have to manage without me for a little while. And the world can stick it when I can be with a book while immersed in a coffin-shaped pool of pleasure.

Yup, I agree with he said.

Internet Reading

HarperCollins will capitalize on the power of the internet to sell books. They plan to publish the first portion of upcoming books on their website for people to read. Research shows that people will read around 40-50 pages of a book online before they want to buy it real form. HC hopes to propel revenue using this method.

Just another step towards the death of the physical book?

Kate Moses' Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's life was, relatively, uneventful. Tragic things happened to her, but they were not more tragic or more extraordinary than tragic events in other people's lives: her father died, she had a strained relationship with her mother, her adulterous husband left her for another woman, she suffered from, sometimes crippling, depression. These are all sadnesses, but not unique. Without poetry, Plath would have sunk from existence without mention. Without suicide, her poetry would perhaps have sunk to the bottom of book bins or slid behind other volumes in the library. One of the real, lasting tragedies is that Plath's poetical ability is truncated by the frequent mention of her suicide. Readers funnel her poems and thoughts about her poetry through a specific lense, rather than allowing the poems to sit by themselves.

Recently, Plath critics have tried to separate her writing from her life, but in the popular imagination, thanks to the movies, she is seen as a suicide and her poetry is boxed into a single interpretation. Her genius is disguised by her readers' interest in finding the reason why she did it. Her most popular poems, "Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy," are sensational and sloppy. They do not exemplify her deep knowledge of poetry and facility with language.

Kate Moses' novel, Wintering, creates the world of Sylvia Plath's mind, and provides an argument for the way her life evolved. Each chapter corresponds with a poem and title from Ariel, and Moses' ability to create the same mood of each poem in similar language is compelling. Moses' language is lush and immediate, much like Plath's poetry, and at moments it is difficult to remember that Plath did not pen this novel. In Wintering, Plath is a poet, a mother, a woman desperate to maintain the love of her marriage, but not a crazy person on the track to killing herself. In fact, Moses does not touch on this event at all, which is the true strength of the novel. She investigates the woman, not the action.

The brilliant language and heart of the novel reveals a breathing Plath, one who is capable, as we all are, of a range of emotions. After Ted leaves, Plath is anxious to be self-sufficient and a provider for her children. She carries a memory of attempted suicide and a strangled relationship with an over-bearing mother, but she strives daily for normalcy, order, and air. We know that she ultimately succumbs, but Moses' focus on her fight brings the attention to the woman rather than the act.

The novel ends on an upnote, with Plath rushing to meet Hughes, who has recently been to Court Green, the family's farm, to gather apples, onions, and honey for the winter. Plath thinks of the jars of honey safe and cold in the stone basement beneath the house as money in the bank: Ted will bring a few jars now and the rest will wait for the family and for spring time. The reader knows, as we follow Ted to Court Green, that he has brought, in his efforts to provide for her, all of the jars of honey. Plath's reverie and Ted's error seem to represent the disjointure of their marriage: he perpertually tried to give, but never knew how or how much, and she was a dreamer, trying to maintain something that it was not her sole responsibility to maintain. Either way, though, their paths are irrevocably separate, never to meet. Moses captures Plath's happiness, cleaning her golden hair, kissing the children goodbye, as she prepares to meet Ted and gather the honey, apples, onions, and attempt to save her marriage. Sadly, she met rejection.

Now I know where I can put all those books

A brief look at Critical Mass brought me to This Into That, a design site that features all manner of shelves and curios made completely out of books - and some other firmer elements, like wood. The artist has themed book shelves and cases, and can even make postboxes and birdhouses out of old books.

The Aviary Gate - In Bookstores May 2008

Katie Hickman’s romantic and historical mystery The Aviary Gate, set partially in present times and partially in 16^th century Constantinople, will transport you from your summer vacation to the wholly forbidden world of the Sultan’s Harem, a world full of beautiful women and intrigue.

In Cambridge, England, Elizabeth finds a fragment of an ancient manuscript, one that may hold the key to the resolution of a woman’s disappearance – 400 years ago. Cecilia Lamphrey left England in the late 1500s on a merchant ship destined for Constantinople to visit her fiancé, Paul Pindar, English ambassador to the Sultan’s court. When the ship wrecks off the coast of Turkey, Cecilia is believed to have drowned. Years later, two inquisitive Englishmen find the Aviary Gate, a small gate that leads into the forbidden Harem. As they surreptitiously spy on the Sultan’s beautiful women, they notice a girl with blond hair and blue eyes. Could this be Cecilia, Pindar’s lost love? Elizabeth reads the fragmented account and is spurred to Istanbul, modern-day Constantinople, to solve the mystery and escape her own traumatic love affair. As she ventures deep into ancient Turkey, she begins to discover truths about Cecilia and herself that she never expected.

The bright blue waters of the Bosporus, the spiced air of the Harem, and the beautiful tiles and lilting fountains of the Sultan’s palace leap off the page, as Hickman’s descriptive language fully creates life in the ancient Ottoman Empire. Hickman’s deftly created tale of passion, manipulation, and yearning is sure to delight and captivate any reader who is looking for a romance, mystery, or historical fiction novel that is a cut above the rest this summer.

Hickman's strength is her description and characterization in the historical sections. Her lush, vivid words create the entire scene, complete with sun dancing on the waves in the Bosporus and wind blowing through the wide atriums of the palace. Her descriptions of the characters are just as real. Ultimately, Hickman's efforts to tell the story in two different times is successful, the ending accomplishes this satisfaction, but getting there is a slog. The modern bits are more like a distraction: Elizabeth is sympathetic, but she is unoriginal and boring; Hickman's ability to create a scene from history does not extend to modern times, and the modern sections lack the rich setting descriptions and atmosphere of the historical sections. Hickman might have been better served by sticking only to 16th century Constantinople, rather than bogging her mesmerizing historical storyline down with modern day frills.

If you liked this, you might also like:

Courtesans by Katie Hickman - This was a bestseller here and in England and tells the stories of four actual courtesans and their experiences in 18th-19th century England and France.

Possession by A.S. Byatt: See above

Joshilyn Jackson's Art Quilt

Joshilyn Jackson came to the Margaret Mitchell House last night to launch her new book The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. I managed to secure a copy of Girl a few days ago to start reading it before Jackson came. (It's always nice to have a notion of what the books are about before the authors present.) It's a fun read with interesting plot twists and characters. More on that later.

Above are two pictures of the quilt from the book. Jackson told us, in her wonderfully dynamic and theatrical way, that she wanted to learn how to make quilts when she was pregnant. She admits that the quilts she made weren't great, but the experience of learning how to quilt and the people she met was. She met Pamela Allen, a fabric artist, for example. Jackson's experience with Allen and her work impressed her so deeply that she decided to have a character in her next book be a fabric artist. Laurel Gray Hawthorne, the protagonist, is a fabric artist, and Jackson created Laurel's quilts from her knowledge and admiration of Allen's work.

After she finished writing Girl, she asked Allen to create the quilt from the story. In the novel, the quilt, a rather morbid affair of a mouthless bride with blood on her hands (the blood is represented by red rose buds, presumably from her bouquet), represents some significant themes and Laurel's experience. (I haven't finished the book, but I think the representation is figurative; I can't fathom Laurel as a murderer.) In the book, Laurel creates this quilt with hidden pockets and even uses a human tooth in one of the flowers. Allen didn't plan to use a tooth in her creation of the quilt, but when an emergency trip to the dentist provided that option, she added the tooth to her quilt. The tooth is sewn into a hidden pocket on the boot of the bride.

I'm confused

After reading the two articles in The New York Times, one laudatory article before Margaret B. Jones was outed as a fraud and one after, I am asking myself: why write a memoir that's actually a lie? Haven't we already learned our lesson from Oprah and Fry? Didn't Margaret B. Jones, who is actually Margaret Seltzer, realize that if her story were compelling enough, she'd get readers regardless of genre? Yeeesh.