As mentioned in our inaugural post, books are everything to Mallory and me. We are lifelong fools for books, and we want to share that with you. One way we’ll be doing that is our Emily Books Book Club, which you’ll be hearing about shortly from the titular Emily, one is the glorious Jaya Catches Up, and another is probably going to be me just telling you what I’m reading, and how I feel about it. Like this! I’ll be here every Monday afternoon at three.
I had a really transcendent reading experience over the weekend, in the guise of an eight-and-a-half-hour flight. The earlier part of the week, of course, was completely caught up in the site launch and the hacking and the constant re-reading of complimentary tweets about pubes and occasional stabs at being a parent, so all I’d managed to do was finish Yael Kohen’s delightful We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, which I am very happy to recommend to all comers interested in that topic.
On the flight, prior to being permitted to access my Kindle, I opened a review copy of Rebecca Mead’s new book, My Life in Middlemarch. I am linking it for you below, but it literally does not come out until January 2014, so there is no reason to bother. I just can’t wait to talk about it, essentially, and what I’d really love is for all of us to commit to reading or re-reading or re-re-re-reading Middlemarch prior to next January, so we can have a glorious group discussion of both George Eliot’s masterpiece and Rebecca Mead’s brilliant memoir/biography/personal history/book review/conversation on said topic. For the record, you do not need to have read Middlemarch to appreciate it. It has been years, for me, and diminished my enjoyment not a jot.
Mead’s book grew from “Middlemarch and Me”, a piece that appeared in The New Yorker in 2011. Paywalled, so do what you have to do, subscribe, ask your friends. It was pretty much the best thing ever. It was beautiful, and astute, and penetratingly intelligent, and it was the sort of thing that makes you sick with envy if you’re in the habit of writing about yourself while pretending to write about other things and will never, ever be this good at it. And, as you may recall, it included these words: “But ‘Middlemarch’ is not about blooming late, or unexpectedly coming into one’s own after the unproductive flush of youth. ‘Middlemarch’ suggests that it is always too late to be what you might have been–but it also shows that, virtually without exception, the unrealized life is worth living.”
No, I know. I know. So I was excited to read the book, which offered the ultimate dream: that the magazine article you are devouring might suddenly say, “hey, do you want to meet up later?” and continue on for a few hundred pages in much the same vein it started. I do not want to get too much into the book itself, here. I’d like us, ideally, to read it together (AFTER Middlemarch, come on, you guys), but I will say that it is a work of exceptional generosity of spirit, and this paragraph hit me like the Ghost of Christmas Present lobbing a mincemeat pie at my head (I am totally not supposed to quote it, because these are uncorrected proofs, so keep it to yourself):
I didn’t go to libraries so much anymore. I’d become a journalist, so rather than immersing myself in books I tended to consult them fleetingly, then shelve them. I read much less for pleasure than I liked, and my grasp on literature–the field in which I’d sought to distinguish myself at seventeen–grew a little shakier every year, like a foreign language I didn’t have sufficient opportunity to speak.
So, obviously, newly chastened, freshly aware of the dangers of juggling four books and two thousand RSS feeds and kicking over piles of unread galleys to get to my bathroom, I read all 672 pages of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall in one go, finishing the last one as we began our initial descent into Newark. One mini-bottle of wine, two bathroom breaks. AFTER finishing the 278 pages of My Life in Middlemarch, because this girl’s still got some obsessive immersive literary gluttony left in her.
It was incredible. Oh, Wolf Hall‘s great, had you heard? Had you heard that mentioned somewhere? You may have, because everyone else read it in 2009 and awarded it prizes, and I only pretended to, because it’s 672 pages long and about the Tudors, so I knew I was GOING to love it, someday, eventually. And lots of people don’t like it (they are wrong, seriously, seriously wrong), but it’s extraordinarily good and I cried, embarrassingly, on the plane, at several parts, such that the painfully correct German man sitting next to me could no longer ignore my tears and began offering me his Swiss Air International chocolate squares to make me stop.
Wolf Hall is far too long, and not nearly long enough. If I were Mantel’s editor, I’d have made her cut a hundred pages for publication, then, as punishment for verbosity, write me four hundred more for my own pleasure. Yes, I know there is a sequel. Yes, I bought it before getting to Passport Control. All my life I’ve longed for someone to turn a gimlet eye on Thomas More’s murderous, heretic-torturing ways and tedious sense of moral superiority, and now I can rest.
But the experience, just the simple experience of reading an entire novel in one go, as I used to do three or four times a day, was immensely meaningful to me. No looking to see if Thomas Cromwell has any living descendants who are roughly my age. No image-searching “Wulfhall” to see if the ancestral seat of the Seymours is still around. No getting distracted by re-reading Royal Bodies. I’ve been working on devoting an hour a day to cordless reading, it’s been okay, but it’s rarely the same book. I dip in, I dip out. It doesn’t really work.
So, as we stride forward together into The Toast‘s books coverage, let’s try to give them what they deserve: our full and undivided attention. I don’t know what we’ll talk about next week. Probably Bring Up the Bodies, and Helen Garner’s The Spare Room.
Works Referenced:
George Eliot, Middlemarch (Indiebound | Amazon)
Helen Garner, The Spare Room (Indiebound | Amazon)
Yael Kohen, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy (Indiebound | Amazon)
Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (Indiebound | Amazon)
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Indiebound | Amazon)
Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch (Amazon)
Tags: books, george eliot, hilary mantel, reading with nicole, rebecca mead
Yes, Wolf Hall; IT REFORMATTED MY BRAIN PARTS. In a good way, baby. And you’re going to love the living hell out of The Spare Room.
when will the third book come out so I can stop avoiding all Tudor-era Wikipedia pages and the spoilers therein 🙁
Ha, right? Wolf Hall made me oddly glad of my relative ignorance of that part of English history because I really wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.
I am a voracious reader, and if allowed will sit and read for 6 hours at a time (when does that ever happen anymore? never. But I did it once upon a time) – but even so, I could never read as much as you describe on the plane. I’m just not that quick! Despite years of practice! So I envy you, and it looks like I have some work to do if I want to participate in these Monday chats, because I am coming up 0 for 6 on this one. (Well, obviously one is not an option yet…)
I can read really specific things on a plane, but not just anything. That is, extreme to medium trash, basically. In a very classy moment I once galloped through The Buccaneers from London to NYC and that was super fun, but usually it’s Harriet Evans all the way.
que me, opening a new tab to my local library to place a bunch of holds.
ugggggh, I totally got WF finally this past january the WEEK I left the country for a month and a half 🙁 And I am only permitted three holds at a time, and they are already full. TOO MANY GOOD BOOKS
I am so excited about this. The promise of great books coverage was what got me here, and I’m so glad it’s happening. (But really, talking about a book that sounds amazing but won’t come out for six months, that comes from an article that sounds like it was written FOR ME but lives behind a paywall–torture!)
One thing that I loved about Wolf Hall was the view of this insane, bloody, brutal fight about “traditional” marriage. How it’s at once this sacred, permanent thing that’s tied up in omnipotent institution; a grim, functional tool for social climbing; and also for Cromwell a quiet source of comfort that leaves an awful void when it’s gone.
I mean, at least we don’t have to burn Scalia at the stake, right?
I also liked its reframing of Henry’s first three marriages: with hindsight it’s easy to say that obviously England would survive a ruling queen and think of Henry as a horny oaf, but the contemporary concern that “If there’s no male heir EVERYTHING WILL BURN” was…not entirely unfounded.
Right! Look at what happened in Westeros.
Or, I mean, England thirty years previously…
Yes! I love this post, and especially this: “All my life I’ve longed for someone to turn a gimlet eye on Thomas More’s murderous, heretic-torturing ways and tedious sense of moral superiority, and now I can rest.”
I will never be able to think of More in the same way again post-Wolf Hall.
I read Middlemarch several years ago and liked but didn’t love it. I also recently bought a lovely hardcover version for rereading purposes. So I am on it. (I also work in a bookstore and we happen to have a proof of Mead’s book, which I am immediately going to claim as my own.)
Oh, this is wonderful.
I read my first Agatha Christie this weekend: Murder on the Orient Express. I already knew how it ended (thanks, Frasier, in the one episode of Cheers), but it was so much fun to read. Up next on my list is Dune. I have a feeling I might hate it, but I’m going to give it a shot.
Read more Agatha Christie instead!
ALWAYS MORE AGATHA CHRISTIE.
Yes, more Agatha is always the right answer. I suggest more Poirot: Mysterious Affair at Styles, or The Big Four, or The Labors of Hercules. If you’re looking for even more intense than Orient Express, try And Then There Were None.
Frasier gave away the ending of Orient Express on Cheers? Glad I missed that one. And shut up already, Frasier.
Thanks! I’m definitely up for more Poirot! And yes, Frasier did, along with Citizen Kane and Return of the Jedi, as payback for the gang spoiling a movie he hadn’t seen yet.
Oh man, I’m finally almost through A Place of Greater Safety, Mantel’s book about the French Revolution, and it’s right up there with Wolf Hall in the “this is so good but we all know that it will Not End Well” sweepstakes. One friend refused to read Bring Up the Bodies until someone reassured her that Mantel’s writing Cromwell’s life as a trilogy and that he (“he”–I think I can see why she did that, but as a reader I found it maddening) isn’t dead at the end of Bodies.
The ‘He’ is distracting, true. Have you read Beyond Black? Oh man, Beyond Black, for sadness.
Vote 1 Beyond Black for Most Aptly Titled Book, Like, Ever!
Not yet, and I think Mantel is one of those authors whose work is so rich that I need to take a break after each book; otherwise it’s like mainlining plum pudding. (For contrast, I find Pat Barker light and almost airy, prosewise, although the substance of her books is so wrenching that they reward multiple rereadings. Oh Billy Prior, oh Sarah Lumb.) But Beyond Black will go on the list for some indeterminate period after I recover from Safety.
WOLF HALL! I just reread it and Bring Up The Bodies, and I was trying to figure out What It Was About, because, well…Cromwell is kind of the historic-figure-equivalent of a Mary Sure, isn’t he? Self-made, intelligent, educated, liberal, irreverent and unsuperstitious, respectful of women.
But I was thinking about Hillary Mantel, and how she’s, you know, incredibly brilliant, and how long it took for anyone to notice that (at least in part because she was writing about women, and being a woman, and the “domestic sphere”) and now I’m thinking that the Cromwell arc (#spoilers #history spoilers) is a sort of fable about how terrible and dangerous it would be to be to be brilliant and educated and tremendously powerful; how it would end up destroying you.
Yes yes yes. My heart will break reading the third book. I know it will.
I didn’t know about what happened to Cromwell until reading a New Yorker article about Hilary Mantel. (I hope this isn’t the literary/historical equivalent of not knowing what happens to the Titanic. I knew that Anne Boleyn and Thomas More were doomed! But I think I had my Cromwells mixed up.) I loved Wolf Hall but I’m not sure I have the heart to read the sequels.
You should totally read Bring Up the Bodies – I loved it even more than Wolf Hall, actually! (but I think I have A Thing for the Boleyns’ story which I haven’t entirely figured out yet)
A million times yes to a Toast reading of Middlemarch. George Eliot is so amazing. I came to her relatively late and am blown away by her ability to be absolutely clear-eyed about people’s motivations and shortcomings, yet not have contempt or bitterness for any of her characters. Plus her books are this constant reminder of both the continuity and discontinuity of human nature – sometimes I was shocked at how well she understood some psychological quirk that I was just observing in my coworker yesterday; other times (particularly with the religious stuff which is very embedded in a time and place and also her particular preoccupations) I barely understand what she is trying to say.
I read the Mead New Yorker piece soon after I finished Middlemarch, while I was trying to process it. I remember arguing with it in my head a bit but I don’t remember on what grounds. Jealous that you’ve read the book, already, Nicole! I suppose you can’t mail it around like samizdat.
OH OH OH. OK. Nicole, are you secretly accessing my wishlist of articles written by you through my computer and writing them one by one? IN SERIOUS THOUGH I am attempting my third bash at Middlemarch right now, and am loving it entirely. For ages I thought it was ok NOT to finish Middlemarch because of this quote, from To The Lighthouse:
“She was by way of being terrified of him—he was so fearfully clever, and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked about George Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left the third volume of MIDDLEMARCH in the train and she never knew what happened in the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself out even more ignorant than she was, because he liked telling her she was a fool. ”
But then I realised Woolf also called it “one of the few English novels written for grownup people” and that I should try again. One thing about Middlemarch that I hadn’t realised before? HILARIOUS. I mean, viciously, bitchily, brilliantly hilarious while breaking your goddamn heart with generosity, all the time.
omg yes! I bought the complete works of George Eliot for like $3 for my kindle when I first got it, knowing basically nothing about any of her books except that she was a Serious Lady Author at a time when that was a hard and rare thing (well, you know, harder and rarer than now), and I knew Middlemarch was her most famous so I started that first, and then like twice a chapter she delivers these hilariously biting witty asides and I was in. love.
I read the first half (almost exactly) of Middlemarch all in one gulf a couple of summers ago. And then I went back to work and I read and edit all day for my job so I find it really difficult to read for pleasure anymore, especially when the prose is dense. And then I got up to the funeral and OH NO BAD THINGS are going to happen and I just stopped.
I have tried three or four times to start again and always fade out which is upsetting because I am so so enjoying it. In my head it’s still ‘in progress’ reading, I am DETERMINED to finish it. Determined. So I think I will try to pick it up again now. I wonder if my eversion of it has footnotes? I found them very useful the first time around.
I over identify with Mary Garth. And in fact several people have independently told me ‘I’m reading Middlemarch. Holy woah does Mary Garth remind me of you!’ I am taking this as a compliment and hoping the second half of the book doesn’t make that an insult.
Ooooh, I LOVED Wolf Hall, but Bring Up the Bodies is EVEN better. Cannot wait for the new Hilary Mantel. These satisfy my cravings for the Tudors without having to read Philippa Gregory, which makes them pretty much perfect.
You can pry my historical escapism PG novels out of my cold dead hands. (My love for her grew after reading multiple interviews when she is completely unabashed about her “Yes I am a feminist, what of it???” attitude.)
I think it’s the high school flashbacks I have while reading them that makes me unable to handle them anymore. I need more recommendations for historical escapism, though.
Once I’m in front of my bookcases I will get back to you.
Have you read the Ursula Blanchard books? I cannot recall the author, sorry. I really enjoyed them a lot, although I think they would benefit from reading in order, which I did not do. They are about a woman in Queen Elizabeth’s court, and are mystery novels.
Do you have a favourite historical time period? Or is it just whenever. (HEYER! GEORGETTE HEYER!)
Oh, I will definitely check these out. I will read ANY escapist historical fiction — nothing better to flush out the work day.
Yes very much to Georgette Heyer! And also Sarah Dunant, who’s written four books that I like and that are described on Wikipedia as “extensively researched historical explorations of what it was like to be a woman within the Italian renaissance”.
Love everything about this post, Nicole & looking forward to more!Completely understandable re: wanting to read a whole book, hungrily & uninterrupted. I started 3 different books over the long weekend and was getting so upset that nothing was grabbing me & taking hold and finally found one on Sunday which was too late to fully enjoy all weekend long! Curses!
This morning I read The Dinner by Herman Koch all in one sitting, which I also did with Room, so that it would be over sooner. I, personally, would embrace my own inner psychopath and kill Claire and Paul.
I’m decompressing with The Camomile Lawn.
No joke: I finished reading Wolf Hall in March, I guess? Or April? And I have Bringing up the Bodies on my kindle, and I can’t bring myself to start reading it because then it will be over and the third book isn’t even out yet. AUUGGHH. So I’m going to put it off by reading Middlemarch, which this post has totally sold.
Middlemarch!
I’m so excited for this feature. I want to be the kind of person who keeps up with all the latest literary stuff, but it’s never going to happen. I haven’t been able to keep up with my indiespensable subscription.
Well I am frothingly excited for My Life in Middlemarch now. And also for this feature! And all the book features!
I keep forgetting to borrow Wolf Hall from a friend who has a copy, and now I will go do that.
I finally started/finished a book this week, after going far, far too long without doing so. To be fair, it was relatively short, but it was such a great experience. It was Neil Gaiman’s new one, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I’m going to his talk and signing on Thursday, and I’m still in book haze mode. It’s magical and worth reading.
I started Wolf Hall forever ago but couldn’t get through it. I need a flight.
WOLF HALL. WOLF HALL IS THE BEST. And I say this as an early modern scholar who gets a wee bit tired of the romanticization of the Tudors.
So, do I re-read Wolf Hall first or plunge right in to Bodies?
P.S. The way Thomas More treats his wife (talking in Latin when she’s RIGHT THERE) makes me want to pinch him.
My Catholic school education always gave me a soft spot for Saint Sir Thomas More, but Hilary Mantel single-handedly destroyed it.
Just take the plunge. And then, when you are sad it’s over, do as I did and start down the long wormhole of books about the War of the Roses. (I, too, have an excessive amount of Tudors in my head and this has been a good solution to Tudor over-exhaustion.)
Ok, sold. Just bought Bodies and will be reading it on the bus starting tomorrow morning.
OOOH do you have any War of the Roses recs? I got halfway through Lancaster and York by Alison Weir earlier this year and have been meaning to get back to it… there are just so many Henrys and Edwards. I think I need to try the fiction route.
Shakespeare’s histories! Are hilarious! And feature Joan of Arc being sarcastic at the English army and torrid affairs and everyone is called by their title so it’s easy to follow. And if there’s more than one person who eventually has that title (see: the three dukes of Somerset), Shakespeare just pretends they’re all the same person, so no problemo!
I have never read any Eliot! I just bought the $0.99 Kindle edition of Middlemarch. I promise to have at least looked at it by January.
I read Bring up the Bodies two weekends ago and Wolf Hall two months ago. They are so wonderful and I spaced the second one out on purpose because I wanted them to last longer. I love how the characters have actual senses of humor and make jokes just for fun, not only plot advancement–it’s so much more lively and realistic than average historical fiction.
Also, I started rewatching The Tudors with my previously un-indoctrinated boyfriend last night, and the depiction of Thomas More without his heretic-torturing side just falls flat.
So those books sound amazing, and yes, please, let’s all read Middlemarch together, and then this book, and talk about it!
I so relate to somehow not reading as much as one used to; I recently devoured an entire novel in a day, and it was amazing, and I wonder how I got to this place where I don’t really read anymore. It’s shameful. Thank you for this inspiration.
I hate that I don’t really read anymore. There are lots of small betrayals of past-selves as we grow up, I think, and I’m ok with most of them but it really kills me that reading is not my first and last thing to do.
I tried to listen to Wolf Hall as a book on tape and it didn’t work because of course it didn’t, you can’t listen to something as dense as Wolf Hall while trying to do the dishes or whatever. And then I kind of abandoned it because I bore a Laziness Grudge against how much work Wolf Hall was clearly going to be.
Every once in a while I glance longingly at it and then look away, chagrined, because grad school broke me and the only books I can read for pleasure anymore are Gillian Flynn and Shirley Jackson novels about (delightfully) unpleasant women.
I am perhaps overly excited about Middlemarch book club! (and maaay have just written myself a note in my planner to start it in December)
Also, can we have a Toast Field Trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC’s stage adaptation of Wolf Hall?! http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/wolf-hall/
FACT: YES
So a creepy dude once tried to hit on me via references to Middlemarch, which was weird and awkward and pretty much ruined the book for me.
HOWEVER. I just finished reading all of Discworld, and need new things to read. Wolf Hall, eh? Alright then.
Long time lurker (‘pin, twitter, toast – not stalking, swear!), first time etc…. I read Middlemarch last year and kept trying to insert my views on Victorians and feminism in a rigid patriarchy into everyday conversations with unsuspecting family and friends. Really looking forward to discussing (or more realistically lurking in on discussions on) Middlemarch.
Thank you for the prior warning.. middlemarch is a tough one to pull an all-nighter on. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to get hold of Rebecca Mead (her book, not her) in time, but hopefully that will not be too much of a problem.
Is this where I admit I’ve never read Middlemarch? I’ve never read Middlemarch. But! When all of you endeavor to re-read it, I will be reading it for the first time. And first-reads, as we all know, can be pretty damn awesome.
Can I just say that I love love love love that there will be so much lit writing on The Toast? Augh books I love you.
Oh, does anyone have suggestions for George Eliot biographies? I read the Gordon Haight one, which seemed like the place to start, but I’d be very interested in seeing one that was not from the perspective of a 1960s white male Yale English professor.
Hilary Mantel impresses the shit out of me for her ability to get better all the time.
I read Wolf Hall and it took me forever even though I loved it. Bring Up The Bodies was a 2 day read. So mind-blowingly good!
Then I went out and bought an older book of hers, A Place of Greater Safety. And while I still love it intensely it is way less polished. And 900 pages long.
Nicole, how much money will you accept to secretly mail me your review copy of My Life in Middlemarch? I’m completely serious. I have the issue of the New Yorker with “Middlemarch and Me” saved in my archives with a post-it note on the article page. It’s gonna drive me crazy knowing this book is out there and I can’t have it.
True story: I read Middlemarch at age 23, while engaged to be married to a much older literary critic/professor who had been one of my seminar professors as an undergrad. He was at the time working on a critical study of Edward Said, which he had been writing since (deep breath) 1993. So I was literally with a man who had been trying to finish a book for well over a decade. For me, reading Middlemarch was like watching a horror movie – DON’T GO INTO THAT ROOM, DOROTHEA!!! DON’T OFFER TO HELP EDIT – HE GONNA GET MAD AT YOU!!!
I tried to watch the show after loving Wolf Hall too – but the only good thing about the Tudors is the casting of Anne Boleyn. Ugh, ANOTHER execution? Didn't we just HAVE one last episode?
I have never read Middlemarch. Be right back. Gets off couch, walks to new bookstore four blocks away. New bookstore! I can’t believe this is a thing.
Oh, I will definitely check these out. I will read ANY escapist historical fiction — nothing better to flush out the work day.
I thought about this a lot while reading it (because it was annoying me) and I decided that maybe it's to stress his centrality as a character? That all the plot threads and intrigues are woven around his and he's holding the threads to control them at the same time? Sounds like it could be plausible, anyway.
Now I'm in the middle of Bring up the Bodies and, sadly, not getting into it as much as I did with Wolf Hall, boo.
I can’t even express how excited I am about the books mentioned above, and The Toast’s books coverage in general. Here goes:
AAAAAAGHGJDFHKHEKLNVKE!!!!1
Hmm. Needs work.