The Overflowing Reading List

One of the many great things about working in a library is the unfettered access to just about book that catches your fancy. Then you go and retire. The economy tanks. Libraries cut their book budgets. What’s a reader to do? Wait for months on end to see if your local library even orders the more obscure titles, or just give in and buy them? The answer is obvious.

Suddenly, my bookshelf is overflowing. Titles from the past mingle with new ones. When I was a public librarian, part of my collection development assignment was “esoteric fiction.” This usually meant “translated from the Bulgarian” or “First time in print since 1927.” I’m happy to say that, due to my endless promotion of these out of the mainstream title, they all circulated well.

So, for the foreseeable future, I’ve given up buying books and am going to read the ones I have bought. And here they are:

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) by Lionel Shriver. A novel in letters, a woman writes to her former husband trying to decipher her tortured relationship with her son, Kevin, a high-school mass murderer. Recommended by John Waters.

Turn of Mind (2011) by Alice LaPlante. The novel features a hand surgeon with Alzheimer's who may or may not be complicit in her best friend's death.

Sarah’s Key (2007) by Tatiana de Rosnay. Alternating between 1942 and the present day, this novel chronicles the gleeful collaboration between the citizens of Paris and the Nazis, when the city’s Jews were rounded up and housed in the Vélodrome d’Hiver as a way-station to concentration camps.

The Tiger’s Wife (2011) by Téa Obreht. A young Croatian women tries to solve the mystery of her beloved grandfather’s death. Winner of the 2011 Orange prize.

Tigerlily’s Orchids (2011) by Ruth Rendell. I try to read every Rendell (and Barbara Vine) book that’s published. It’s not just that the stories are so engrossing, but also that she knows how to use the English language to it’s best effect.

Stones from the River (1994) by Ursula Hegi. I missed this one when it came out, despite all the favorable press and its main character is a librarian and a dwarf. The fourth volume of her “Burgdorf” series. I like long series, having made my way through The Forsyte Saga (John Galsworhty), Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell), and Strangers and Brothers (C.P. Snow).

The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead. The unrelenting story of the ultimate dysfunctional family, this Australian novel has been equally praised and damned. Another John Waters recommendation.

Harvard’s Secret Court (2005) by William Wright. In 1920 Harvard University went through system-wide homosexual panic. A secret panel was set up that made the HUAC investigations a walk in the park. Now, 90 years later, gays can marry in Massachusetts.

As Meat Loves Salt (2001) by Maria McCann. An historical novel set during the English Civil War, with love, passion, and obsession. Not my usual fare, but it was recommended by Lionel Shriver.

The Borrower (2011) by Rebecca Makkai. Lucy Hull, a young children’s librarian, finds herself both kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, a ten-year-old boy, runs away from home. Recommended by a fellow Infopeep.

The Indian Clerk (2007) by David Leavitt. In this novel, based on the true story of the strange and tragic relationship between British mathematician G.H. Hardy and self-taught Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, Cambridge University comes alive with the luminaries of the day.

Time’s Arrow (1991) by Martin Amis. Another recommendation from Lionel Shriver, the novel centers around Tod T. Friendly, a doctor living in a peaceful American suburb, who once worked in the medical section at Auschwitz. There’s a doppelganger narrator living inside him who has a separate consciousness that travels from death to birth, trying to understand his life history.

Queen Lucia (1920) by E.F. Benson. Not many laughs in the titles above, so here’s the start of a great six-novel series in lovely little English villages between the wars.

The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing (2010) by Tarquin Hall. A friend reviewed another book by Hall on her reading blog, so I thought I’d give the one, a mystery featuring Vish Puri, Delhi’s most private investigator.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) by John le Carré. Back, yet again, to an old favorite, the first part of the “Quest for Karla” series. The best spy novel by the best spymaster. And, thank you, Costco, for having all three volumes on sale. The others in the series are also on this list

So, I’m going to stop reading the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and just about anything else that may tempt me into adding to this list before I’ve finished reading everything on it. And the way I read, it should take me a couple of years!

WATCH: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

OK. The party’s over. The kids have all grown up. Evil is vanquished, and a new generation is on it’s way to Hogwarts. All is well with the world.

When I came out of the theater today I looked up at the marquee and saw this. My iPhone captured a Kodak moment! Funny, I don’t remember Winnie being bossy at all. Wait. Didn't they used to call Winston Churchill "Winnie"? Hah. Now it all makes sense. Disney does WWII.

WATCH: Damages Season 3

There are so many wonderful things about Damages that it should be banned as a class A drug. There are so few good people, and the bad ones are so very bad. It’s better than chocolate!

The third season has old favorites from the past, Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and Tate Donovan. But the new cast members surpass even those from the first two years: Len Cariou, Campbell Scott, Martin Short, Keith Carradine, and a frightening Lily Tomlin.

The story concerns a Bernie Madoff-like character and the hunt for his hidden assets. That’s just the major theme. It’s all the little and big moves each person makes that turns every episode into a chess match. And who is there to root for? Every one – all the time.

As in previous years, the main story is told in flashbacks. We know who gets murdered, but not why or by whom. As the story slowly unfolds, more people die, and it’s impossible to tell who’s lying and who isn’t. It doesn’t matter. We’re in it for the ride.

In Episode 5, Lily Tomlin gives a look to Tate Donovan that is so full of hate, contempt and animus that I just know in my heart of hearts that she’s the person responsible for his murder. (That’s not a spoiler. He dies I Episode 1.)

Unfortunately, Season 4 is only available on DirectTV, so I guess I’ll have to wait for it to come out on DVD. I can hardly wait.

READ: Cinderella & Company by Manuela Hoelterhoff

Like many arts organizations these days, the New York City Opera has fallen on tough times. Really tough times. Low funds, a seemingly inept board of directors, a company manager in over his head, unhappy employees from singers and musicians to house staff and management. The blogosphere is hopping with interest, opinion, and bloodlust.

One place to read opinion, heated and calm, outrageous and commonsensical, is the blog Parterre, owned and managed by the music critic for the New York Sun. (No wonder it’s so bitchy!) One name that crops up there constantly is Manuela Hoelterhoff, a former writer for the Wall Street Journal who won a Pulitzer Prize for “cultural criticism.” She now writes for bloomberg.com. She’s been a figure in the NYC art world for decades, and she can be just as bitchy as those opera queens on Parterre. It’s an awful lot of fun at other people’s expense.

Anyway, in 1998, Knopf published her book, Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera with Cecilia Bartoli. It covers one year (1997-98) and follows the great Italian mezzo around the world, chronicling her triumphs, fears, family problems, artists’ managers, and just about everything else. It also tells lots of stories about other popular singer, including Deborah Voigt, Roberta Alanga, Angela Gheorghiu, James Levine, and especially the two main tenors from the Three Tenors gang. Some of the anecdotes are pretty funny, some just sad. The reason she shows up on lots of opera blogs is her view of musicians, as quoted from this book: “making videos is increasingly hard to do in a world of larcenous unions who work hard at working as little as possible for as much as possible.”

What’s also interesting is how much things have changed in the dozen years since the book was published. In spite of her forays into esoteric music, Bartoli is still the best-selling classical vocal artist, the dream husband-and-wife team Alanga and Gheorghiu have gone their separate ways, Pavarotti is dead, and Voigt is now as thin as her voice. But Domingo just keeps going like the Energizer bunny, while Levine tries to just keep going. But, as she rightly observes, “There’s always someone in the wings.”

WATCH: Three Idiots

3 Idiots, the story of three friends at the top Indian engineering college, is the highest-grossing Bollywood movie in India of all time. It uses the conventions of the typical Bollywood genre while expanding and twisting them into a wonderful tale teetering between broad comedy, tragedy, and just plain silliness.

The pressures to succeed at the college are intense, with the emphasis on rote memory, scoring high on exams, and following the rules to the letter. The love of learning, science or engineering is considered heretical and anti-productive. Students struggle, some contemplate suicide while other actually do. The toll on all the students is apparent, but harshest on those who have commitments to care for their families when their studies are complete. Get a degree, get a job, support your elders. That’s the pattern.

Told in a flashback, the film is framed by the story of two of the friends, now successful in their chosen fields, who are looking for Rancho, played by the delightful Aamir Khan. He was the only student who seems to be able to combine his genius for engineering with his delight in learning. He mysteriously disappeared on graduation day and no trace of him can be found. When, at last, the friends think they’ve found him, it turns out Rancho isn’t Rancho.

But all ends well, of course, and it’s well worth watching.

WATCH: Flood

Disaster movies pretty much follow a predictable plot with stock characters and situations. There’s the slightly befuddled professor who used to be at the top of his field but is now out of it due to drink who has alienated his family; the professor’s former smart graduate assistant who is now some high mucky muck in the government’s science section; the two scientists with conflicting opinions on what’s at stake; the room full of data crunchers trying to predict when and where disaster strikes; they have something in common, usually a woman or love interest; and the government officials who just don’t get it and don’t know what to do.

It doesn’t really matter what type of disaster is approaching: freezing; meteor impact; alien creatures; enormous wildfires; gigantic sea creatures; or the catastrophic earthquake. I can’t even count the number of times Los Angeles has been leveled by a ten-plus quake. But for my money, the one that gets me is the giant storm at sea that creates massive tsunamis. The one recurring nightmare from my childhood involves being swallowed up by huge waves.

So, why oh why did I watch Flood, the 3-hour television series from Britain? Well, because of the cast: Robert Carlyle, Tom Courtenay, Joanne Whalley, David Suchet, Tom Hardy, and Susan Woolrich. The plot follows all the standard rules. When a raging storm coincides with high seas it unleashes a colossal tidal surge, which travels mercilessly down England's East Coast and into the Thames Estuary. Overwhelming the Barrier, torrents of water pour into the city. The lives of millions of Londoners are at stake. With only hours to save the city, will all these cardboard characters save the city and the day? Will the barriers hold? Will everyone pull together and make a plan and learn to love and respect each other? Is the pope a Nazi?

Well, the special effects are, well, pretty effective. And the really good thing about watching it on DVD – you can multitask! Read a book, or make one. Cook your dinner or eat it. Groom the cat. Heck, you can probably go for a walk and not miss much. But fun is fun, even if it’s recycled. Of course, you could just watch Independence Day. At least you’d get a few laughs.

WATCH: Mrs. Brown’s Boys

From my “Guilty Pleasures” list comes a new entry called Mrs. Brown’s Boys. It’s a sitcom created by Brendan O’Carroll, who plays Mrs. Brown in drag. So far, there is only one season of 6 episodes, which first aired In Ireland in January 2011. The cast is mostly Irish, and many of the actors are relatives of O’Carroll. The title character first appeared in his novel The Mammy.

Mrs. Brown is a widow who has six grown children – five sons and one daughter, and she sees it as her duty to help (interfere) with each of them. This is made fairly easy since 3 of her sons and her daughter live at home with her, as does her elderly father-in-law.

The humor is gross, the characters are stereotypes, the language raunchy, and it’s all so much fun. Filmed before a studio audience, Mrs. Brown often breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the viewers. Another really funny thing is that they leave the bloopers in and just keep going. When someone enters a room too soon or calls a character by the wrong name or the camera crashes into the set, Mrs. Brown will make some ad lib that’s right on target.

The series isn’t available on DVD in the US yet, but the full episodes are available on YouTube, starting here.

Interesting aside: Angelica Houston made a film of the book, which she titled Agnes Browne. It’s set in the late 1960s, when the characters children are all school age. The television version updates the time to the present and the kids are all grown up.

LISTEN: La Fanciulla del West

A bad experience with an opera can put you off it for life. That's what happened to me with Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West). I first encountered it in the 1958 London Records recording with Renata Tebaldi (Minnie), Mario Del Monaco (Dick Johnson aka Ramerrez), and Cornell MacNeil (Jack Rance), conducted by Franco Capuana. The smaller parts were sung by stalwarts such as Piero de Palma, Giorgio Tozzi, and others. All three main singers were at the height of their powers, but Capuana was reliable and dull. And therein may be the problem. The entire performance seems uninspired and certainly not engaging. The passion between Minnie and Ramerrez is non-existent, or so muted as to be hardly noticed. The overall effect was simply forgettable.

And that's what I did, simply forgot about it until the Met did a live in HD broadcast with Deborah Voight, Marcello Giordani, and Lucio Gallo, conducted by Nicola Luisotti. The 1991 production was designed by Giancarlo del Monaco, son of Mario. Here, the main problem involved the singers. Less than stellar in these roles, they walked through the performance, often seemingly unaware that they were supposed to be interacting with each other. The overly realistic sets and costumes distracted from rather than enhanced the music and storytelling, and did nothing to probe the psychology of the characters. Once again, I decided this was forgettable Puccini.

Then...One day last week I was listening to my favorite internet radio station, Otto All Opera, and heard something so riveting I had to stay put until it was over. Here was a performance from the Florence Maggio Musicale of Fanciulla. Recorded live on June 15, 1954, with Eleanor Steber, Mario del Monaco, and Gian Giacomo Guelfi. What a difference! Steber is so intense, and del Monaco seems only to have needed an audience to come to life and the bandit. But the main difference is the conducting of Dmitri Mitropoulos, who propelled the action without rushing it, lingered over the tender moments, and let the singers find their character's inner beings.

I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered a copy. The sound is typical (pirated?) 1950s sound. The beginning is problematic and distant, but it gets better. There is no libretto, just a plot synopsis and cast biographies. And, as with all these kinds of recording, it's the performances that are the reason for getting and listening to them. I've always loved Steber's voice, since I first heard her singing Samuel Barber's concerto for soprano and orchestra, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, which she commissioned. Del Monaco is always loud or, when needed, even louder, but he's wonderful. I've never heard Guelfi before, and don't recognize the name, but he's a fine Italianate baritone, and a terrific Jack Rance.

It's great to have a new opera in the listening queue, and really wonderful to have one that I'd dismissed and found again.

WATCH: The Trip

When Steve Coogan is asked by the British newspaper The Observer to tour the England countryside and review its finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she him and goes to America, he goes through a list of friends and acquaintances and decides to ask his best friend Rob Brydon, an irritating but really talented mimic.

The two men have been friends for 11 years, and you can see their attraction to each other: they like and know the same songs, recite the same poetry and lines from movies, imitate the same famous actors, and enjoy getting under each other’s skin. Their personal lives are very different: Steve is divorced with a teenage son while Rob is happily married with a new baby. Steve “takes aim” at any woman in sight while Rob can only wait to get home to his wife.

In real life Coogan is most well-known for his British television character Alan Partridge, the awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality. Brydon is a stand-up comedian, BBC radio show panelist, actor and writer. Both starred in Tristram Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story, directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also directed The Trip.

Three things make this film a joy to watch. First: the rapport between the two actors/characters, which shows a real depth and caring in their friendship, even as it strains to the breaking point. Second: the preparation, presentation and discussion of the food in some of the most highly rated restaurants in England. Third: the breathtaking views of the Lake District and the North of England. A visit to Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s exotic Greta Hall are a bonus.

The Trip is just over two hours long, and there may be just a bit too many imitations of Sean Connery. And there’s a moment when you’re relieved that Rob finally tells Steve to just shut up. That scene is followed by a wonderful one in which Steve can’t shut up a hiker trying to explain the landscape in the same boring, factual detail the he’s just done to Rob. It’s wonderful. And so is this movie.

LISTEN: Opera on the Internet

Internet radio keeps expanding and, as everything connected to the web, some things are a lot better than others. Listening to opera on the radio is a mixed blessing. Performances, both recorded and live, from all over the world are easily available 24 hours a day, and it’s a great way to discover new works and hear unknown performers. The downside, of course, is sound quality. Some stations broadcast at very low bandwidth, while others support themselves by indiscriminately interrupting streaming sound with really annoying commercials, some on a ten-minute cycle no matter where they are in a particular work. And many stations don’t provide any information on what is being broadcast, so if you want to track it down on Amazon or iTunes, you are completely out of luck.

There are two sources for internet-streamed opera that are invaluable. The first is All Otto Opera, which broadcasts full-length recorded operas without interruptions. In between each presentation there’s about one minute of commercials. I recently heard Orazi e Curizai by Saverio Mercadante, which was a real find. I only knew the composer from his flute concertos and hadn’t realized he also wrote operas. This one is like early Verdi on steroids. What a never-ending rush! Obviously, it was a necessary purchase. When connecting through iTunes, All Otto Opera provides a scrolling bar at the top with enough information on the work being played to start looking for it. There’s also their website which lists items on their playlist. I found the Mercadante opera selling on Amazon for $60 on CD, but only $17.98 for download. It’s now a regular part of my listening rotation.

The best source for finding live opera is Opera Cast. It lists stations and performances from all over the world, listed by scheduled time using Greenwich Standard time as its reference. (There’s a handy Time Zone Converter here.) Divided by days of the week, you simply have to click the link you want to be connected to the performance. I recently listened to a great live performance of Die Walküre from Oslo. Opera Cast also lists operas being broadcast on over-the-air stations, including regularly scheduled programs, like The Sunday Night Opera on KUSC.

The easiest way to get to these internet stations is through iTunes Radio, but there are other sources. Just do a Google search on “internet radio guide” and you’ll find them. Hook your computer up to a good speaker system, and you can be lost in the world of opera for days and days. Not a bad way to be!

WATCH: The Shadow of the Tower

Henry the VII of England doesn’t have the larger-than-life image of his son, Henry VIII, or his granddaughter, Elizabeth I. He seems to have spent most of his time putting down rebellions and proving his right to reign. But his story contains the seeds of all those interesting events that took place in the other Tudor monarchs – the Reformation, the Armada, the question of succession, and more.

The Shadow of the Tower is a 13-part series from the BBC originally broadcast in 1972, and released on DVD in 2011. It stars James Marshall as Henry VII and begins with his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field and ends with the death of his son Arthur shortly after his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Overall, the series is very well written and acted. Some of the episodes are extremely interesting, particularly number 5: “The Serpent and the Comforter.” Written by Hugh Whitemore, it’s a discussion of faith, heresy, reason, mystery, and faith and how easily they intertwine and create a numbing confusion. Others episodes, such as Number 8: “The Princely Gift,” about the explorer Lewes Cabot, are uninvolving and seem to be taking up airspace.

As with all older BBC productions, actors who are now household names crop up in smaller roles in single episodes – John Castle, Geoffrey Palmer, and Peter Bowles to mention just a few. Stars of the British stage, like Rachel Kempson and Donald Eccles, appear in several episodes. Everyone, of course, looks so very young.

Another interesting thing about the series is that women play a very minor, almost invisible role. Unlike The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth R, the women in this retelling of history have little to do. It’s difficult to tell if Henry loved Elizabeth of York or not, since they rarely interact. This aside, it’s a great way to spend a rainy weekend.