By Jennie

The holidays are over, but there is still plenty of winter left. Just as summer tends to bring to mind a specific kind of reading material – often good, light ”beach reads” – winter may engender the desire for a different kind of book. Possibly something longer and meatier, well-suited to whiling away a weekend afternoon before a roaring fire. I live in a temperate climate; there’s no chance of me ever being snow-bound (more’s the pity), but there’s nothing like curling up with a good book on a cold and rainy Sunday. I think of winter as a good time to tackle classics, either for the first time or as re-reads. Even though I see winter as a time for more substantial literature, I still try to stay away from anything too dry or downbeat – the short days and lack of sunlight can be enough to put even me, a Californian, into a funk. I don’t need help from Les Miserables.

How about you? What are you reading this winter? What’s your ideal winter book?

By Jennie

I recently wrote a piece on Banned Book Week. My disdain for censorship of books was tested this week when a brouhaha erupted over a title that Amazon offered for Kindle download. The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct by Philip Greaves II is an apparently self-published book that “offers advice to help pedophiles avoid breaking the law, while still exhibiting love for children.” The book was published on October 28, but apparently escaped notice (as well as a single sale) until this week. Amazon initially declined to pull the book, but relented in the face of public outrage. By some reports some 72 copies were downloaded before the book was pulled from Amazon’s website.

My first thought on reading message board discussions that decried Amazon’s “censorship” was that the company’s action does not constitute censorship. Censorship is widely perceived as involving action by the government to suppress speech or literature. In fact the definition of the word does not specify that the suppression must be government-led. Given that the book is unlikely to find another sales platform – certainly not one so widely used – Amazon’s action could be considered censorship in the broadest sense. However, retailers make decisions every day about what merchandise to carry or not to carry, based on any number of factors. Amazon was not motivated by any desire to suppress Greaves’ book – they simply made a business decision based on the bottom line. Keeping the book would undoubtedly lose them sales, probably many more dollars in sales than downloads of the book could make up for (at least, I would hope so – I’m hoping/guessing that the majority of those 72 downloads were news organizations wanting to see what the book actually said).

So, it’s not censorship in my mind, or if it is, it’s an acceptable type of censorship. But was it necessary or right? Here’s the other point I’ve seen made many times now – Amazon sells many offensive books and many dangerous books. Examples of the former include Mein Kampf; examples of the latter include The Anarchist’s Cookbook. It doesn’t sound (from what I’ve heard) like Greaves’ book is dangerous – it’s not likely to recruit anyone to pedophilia, and it apparently does not advocate the breaking of laws nor give any useful advice on how to get away with such crimes. I suppose that one could argue that any attempt to normalize pedophilic tendencies is inherently dangerous. But, let’s face it, the book’s greatest offense is that its subject matter is abhorrent to decent people. Again, that probably describes a lot of books on Amazon. Even a number that aren’t self-published, but put out by major publishing houses. In the end, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct is the sick, sad product of a sick sad mind.

My conclusion is that I don’t have a problem with Amazon pulling the book, but I’m backing down from my outrage over it even being on the site in the first place, and I guess I would not have had a problem with Amazon holding firm if they had chosen to do so. What do you think?

By Jennie

“You have to read this book!” – words guaranteed to get my back up. There is nothing that guarantees quite the same combination of annoyance, guilt, resentment and the fear that I may be missing something as those six little words. My aunt (much loved by me in a general sense) is a great one for insisting that you read something that she loves (she does the same with movies), and usually my desire to read said book diminishes in proportion with each mention of it. Her latest recommendation is “The Help”, by Kathryn Stockett, a book I probably would have little interest in anyway, but one that goes on my “not if it were the last book on Earth” list simply because of her repeated raves. A few years ago, she nagged Anya into reading “The Secret Life of Bees”, and while Anya said it was a good book (she was much less effusive than my aunt, though), there is little that would convince me to read it at this point.

Is it stubborness on my part or just petty meanness? I’m not sure. I do feel guilty about it, but the guilt makes me even more resentful. Part of it is that I just know from experience that my aunt and I have very different tastes (something I don’t think she realizes); part of it is the hard sell, which tends to make me dig my heels in. I don’t know; I may be missing some great stuff this way, but it’s something I find hard to change.

Other times it’s not a specific person that makes me unwilling to read something, but just the general weight of public opinion. I used to joke that I was the only person on Earth who hadn’t read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, and while that’s a slight exaggeration, I do feel that it’s almost a perverse point of pride for me that I haven’t read it (again, this rule applies to movies, too – my mild interest in “Avatar” decreased every time I had to hear about it). I guess it’s a sort of snobbery, to a degree – even many who like the book admit it’s not great literature. But it’s not like I read nothing but great literature 24/7, anyway – right now, I’m reading the 10th Stephanie Plum book, for crying out loud. The fact is, I would probably like “The Da Vinci Code” if I read it – even if it’s dumb and badly-written, it’s supposed to be very entertaining, and sometimes that’s all I require from a book. But I feel weirdly as if I would be ceding some principal if I read “The Da Vinci Code” now. It doesn’t make any sense, I know.

The one I’m on the fence about now is not a single book but a trilogy, by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson: “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played With Fire”, and the finale, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” These books have been described as thrillers or mysteries, not necessarily genres that I habitually read, but they supposedly also have more to offer that standard genre fare. I tend to like series that follow characters over a period of time (assuming that I like the characters, of course), because it allows me, as a reader, to actually develop a connection to the story. These books have been extremely popular internationally; I believe that at least the first book has been made into a film in Sweden and is slated for a U.S. remake.

I’m intrigued but a little wary – I’ve known people who absolutely loved the books and others who couldn’t get into them. I tend to be very suggestible with books; unless you are someone (like my aforementioned aunt) whose tastes I am really clear on, I have a knee-jerk reaction that my impression will be the same as yours. If you hated a book, of course I won’t like it – it’s a terrible book! If you loved it, how can I not like it – it must be great! This reaction occurs in me on a visceral level, making it hard for me to really determine what I’ll like and what I won’t.

I think I’ll ask for the Larsson trilogy for my upcoming birthday, taking away some of the responsibility for it – everyone knows that if you get something as a gift there is less pressure to actually like it. In the best case scenario, I’ll find a new series I truly love.

What about you? How do you handle recommendations? Do you ever, like me, find yourself resenting subtle (or not so subtle) pressure to read something beloved by a friend or relative?

By Jennie

Redbook has a feature on summer beach reads for 2010. Do any of these books look appealing to you? Or do you have your own summer reading list?

I am not much of a chick-lit reader, and to some degree I do associate summer beach reads with chick-lit. That said, there’s something about the summer months, with their longer days, lazy vacations, barbecues and warm weather that I associate with a lighter read (besides, sometimes you just need a light read, you know what I mean?). Not all of the books on the list look “light”, necessarily – Alice Hoffman, the only author on the list that I’ve read before, is not someone I associate with fluffy books. But all the books appear to be by female authors and seem to deal with subjects of interest to women.

Do you like to read at the beach? What’s your ideal beach read? Do any of the books on Redbook’s list look like your cup of tea? Is there any other book you’re particularly looking forward to this summer?

By Jennie

I’ve read several good books lately: I recently finished Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (who wrote The Time-Traveler’s Wife), a sort of modern-day ghost story set in London, featuring two sets of twins, long-buried family secrets, and a sprawling Victorian cemetery famous as the final resting place of Karl Marx. I also read Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, a Victorian-era writer who is vaguely reminiscent of Jane Austen. Cranford is a slight, gentle tale of the goings on a small English town that is chiefly ruled by a group of middle-aged women. It was the basis for two miniseries that aired on PBS, Cranford and Return to Cranford. I highly recommend it. Finally, I discovered the Stanza app for my iPhone, and have been downloading free public-domain books. I read The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, which I’d never read as a child (though I was a big fan of the 1996 live action movie featuring several Monty Python veterans). I just love Mr. Toad (I even love the ride at Disneyland!).

Next up on the iPhone is something a bit more intimidating – George Eliot’s Middlemarch. From what I’ve heard, this is one of those books you either love or hate. I remember not being a big fan of the author’s Silas Marner , which I read in high school.

I was actually inspired to read Middlemarch by an essay in another book I’m reading, Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind, a series of essays she’s written on books and writing. Smith wrote one of my favorite fiction books of the last few years (well, I read it in the last few years; it was published in 2000), White Teeth. I liked it so much I can almost forgive Smith for publishing her first novel to acclaim at age 25 and being gorgeous to boot. Changing My Mind is a bit of a mixed bag, so far, as essay (or short story) collections tend to be, but it’s making me think, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s occasionally over my head, mostly in that literary criticism way where I have to remind myself that the point eludes me not because I’m dumb but because lit crit is a whole ‘nother language and I shouldn’t feel any more stupid for not understanding it than I do for not understanding Swahili.

I also just started The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007. I haven’t gotten more than five pages in, so I can’t say much about how I like it, but I’ve heard lots of good things about it, so I’m hopeful.

What is everyone else reading?