Community Reads: A Response by Chris

It's no mean fete to get a community reading. It's even tougher to get everyone to read the same thing. Or is it? A recent New York Times article about the launch of area book clubs ("Launched for the Next Round of Read-Ins," March 4, 2009) struck a chord.

Maybe it was the Web title that belittled the practice: "Like Book Clubs on Steroids, Communities are Set to Read a Single Title and Discuss."

Maybe it was the lead that presented the image of a group of women (and a few men) reading together, quietly, in the same room, the book The Shawl (which seems more sterile than communal).

Maybe it was just me having a bad day. But all I could think of is, Please, not in my community.

It's not that I don't like "sensitive" topics, or ones that are moving or emotional or historic by nature. I know it's a challenge to get any community to read a single book — unless you're Oprah or Richard and Judy. And that's what I realized stuck in my craw: with the wrong book, a community read feels cheap.

A celebrity or Hollywood has a hankering for a title and everyone reads it. It's the first thing propped up in the Borders promenade, it's at the top of the bestseller list. Everyone has seen the movie, so the book is consumed like cheap sweets because if [fill in the blank] liked it, it must be good. These pop book-choosing entities select titles that fit a Topic. Lately, it's been the Holocaust — because, really, that is the only reason a book like The Reader could possibly be a bestseller and an award-winning movie.

To be fair, attention to such a tough topic have brought to light some terrific stories, such as the Bielski brothers who created a safe haven in the Bellarussian forests, and Oskar Schindler. I hope these kinds of stories continue to be shared because they are important and, let's be honest, entertaining. I'm sure The Shawl has that potential. And in this world, remembering the atrocities of the past are important to the success of preventing them in the future. And the modest volume Night seemed to survive Oprah's onslaught.

But other Oprah books on the Holocaust and Other Important Topics haven't been able to survive the glare of the spotlight, and have brought as much embarrassment as they did success to their authors. (Gawker's article has a little salty language, but is an excellent list of pop failures.)

Don't get me wrong: I am a communal reader. I love suggestions from my local libraries, colleges and other trusted sources and, so far, these books have been winners in my book.

I know I fret about books, worrying that people will dis my favorite pastime if the bestsellers are more like The Reader than Water for Elephants. Maybe I'm a little bit of a snob, too, which has made me skeptical of popular books that really are that wonderful, like the Harry Potter series.

At any rate, I will continue to read with my community, as long as it's not a mawkish book that doesn't deserve our time. However, my local librarians haven't disappointed me yet. They know their community, which I suppose is the key to success.

Maybe Oprah's selection of A New Earth was the best choice for her community at that time; she did choose The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which has reviewers raving (and, yes, I will read to see if it's all that and a hedgehog bookmark).

Maybe it doesn't matter who chooses what — librarians have long advocated any kind of book to keep people reading.

Maybe the magic of communal reading is that it creates discussion and encourages reading. And that is a good thing.

Bookish News: "Can 'The Reader' Win Best Picture at Oscars Without an Editing Nomination?"

This particular piece of Bookish News caught my eye. As an editor, my short answer is "No".

But this begs a larger question to me: Should The Reader be nominated for Best Picture at all? Chris and I read this book together at the beginning of our blog, and we both found it loathsome. We spent an entire afternoon trashing this book as we consumed pie (we need consolation after reading a book we hate). We were dismayed to find that it was being made into a movie. And now it is up for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. How discouraging is that?

Populated with unlikable, unsympathetic characters, this story is depressing, but for all the wrong reasons. Bernhard Schlink's tells us the story of a young boy who is seduced by an older woman. She has a dark past to atone for--she was a prison guard at a Nazi concentration camp. But we're supposed to feel bad for her, you see, because she can't read. Huh? (Oh, and by the way, NO way this character looks like Kate Winslet, who plays her in the movie.)

I'd love to hear that you think I'm wrong--someone please enlighten me. What am I missing here that others find fascinating and worthy of note?

The Reader - Review by Chris

Books in translation have a hard road to travel: they have to retain their quality and depth while being worked into an unintended language. Anyone who understands a second language winces at the cinema as the subtitles of a movie lack the depth, subtlety or specificity of the original language on the screen.

I would like to blame Bernhard Schlink’s flatness on the translation and hope the original German relays more of the character’s humanity and depth. I fear that is not the case. I fear, instead, the narrator, the author, did not get close enough to the characters or the story to reveal enough to engage me, let alone let me understand their motivation for such odd actions. The resolution was unsatisfying, incomplete.

In The Reader, an adult Michael recalled his relationship with Hanna that started with their chance encounter on the steps of her apartment building. He was sick and she helped him. When he returned later to thank her, he got dirty helping her in her with chores and she offered to wash his clothes and bathe him — a bizarre leap for a 15-year-old boy and a woman old enough to be his mother.

I never understood the relationship because there never appeared to be a connection or passion between them (and I never could get past their ages at the start of the situation). The story of a teenage boy was told by his adult self and the narrator never allowed readers either in the present or in the past. The narrator kept a distance between the reader and himself at every age. Indeed, the narrator keeps distance between himself (and, subsequently, the reader) and every other person in his world. I never got close enough to understand if it was the nature of the narrator or the shortcoming of the author.

The book is completely void of the smoldering eroticism described on the book jacket. The descriptions of their sexual encounters were cool, distanced, like everything else in the book.
Finally, The Secret was not enough of a shocker for me to consider it with a capital-S. Although Hanna’s deficiency was surprising for that moment in history, it is not enough for most people to keep secret at the cost of their reputation and personal liberty. Plus, a woman who would molest a young boy has bigger secrets than the one that sent her to prison for nearly two decades.

Most stories set in Germany during and immediately after World War II feel the need to address The Question: how could an entire nation allow the Holocaust? Michael was a teen and blissfully unaware; indeed, his self-centeredness was stifling and nearly cauterizing, but not completely unrealistic for a boy coming of age. Later, he took his parents’ generation to task for their sins — but not Hanna, who was of their generation and actually accused of crimes. He refused his grandfather’s blessing, he would not address his father, but he separated Hanna from the adult fray. I wonder why he afforded her such unwarranted innocence (lack of guilt or guile, not ignorance) — because he chose to see her as a contemporary, or because her Secret made her an innocent, a brainless idiot who allowed herself to be railroaded because she was not intelligent enough to understand the case and the world around her?

I have no idea why Oprah would choose this book over so many other better ones. Her selection of non-English authors in the past was more unerring, as with Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River, a haunting and rewarding read.

In the end, the book was uninspiring, uninteresting and a complete puzzle not worth trying to unravel.

Postscript (1/7/08): The Reader is being made into a movie which as of early January 2008, would star Nicole Kidman. I'm sure it's because Carole read it. Practically every book she reads is made into a movie.