A Lovely Event
Typically, I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. Its a day that is seemingly invented for sheer consumerism. Many people find this ironic, because I am very happily married to my soul mate and love. The thing is, though, usually I’d rather curl up with a good book as I snuggle my honey, and not worry about what’s going on in the outside world as everyone else worries about things like “Is she going to like this gift?” or “What can I do for him that wont say too much and scare him off?”
You're Invited!
But this year, its been put in perspective of things I love and things I can do to make it more fun. This year, I’m an Event Coordinator for a bookstore I love and I get to make it what I want. This year, its about celebrating some of my favorite stories of all time (books like The Scarlet Pimpernel and Time Traveler’s Wife will absolutely be featured, as well as biographies on people like Nicholas and Alexandra and so on) and celebrating a fabulous little Italian restaraunt in Humble that I’ve grown to love. This year, you can come to the Humble Half Price Bookstore, buy your favorite love story and upon purchase be entered to win a dinner for two to Italiano’s in Humble. How much fun is that?
What’s even better? We’re doing it on the 10th, not the 14th, so people who already have big plans, or have to work because they are in the retail or service industry, or just don’t want to fight Valentine’s Day traffic can have a low-key but intimate date night with us. On top of that, some lucky couple will get to do Valentine’s Day, or some other special day they choose, practically for free!
My hope is that if we get a lot of people in the door, next year more businesses will donate gift cards and the year after that even more people! We could maybe one day build Valentine’s Day up to a bookstore extravaganza so that even the most non-Valentine-date night people ever, like me, will look forward to the month of February.
So, if you’re in the Houston area, come celebrate Valentine’s on February 10th with me as we bask in the loveliness of books – our mutual true love.
House of Mirth a House of Love, Scruples, or Selfishness?
Title: The House of Mirth
Gillian Anderson in the 2000 Major Motion Picture of The House of Mirth
Author: Edith Wharton
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Genre: Classic Literature
Length: 277 pages
My all time favorite questions when reading literature are: What is this character’s perception of love? What is the author telling us their own view of love is? And after reading this how do you view love? To quote Moulin Rouge: “Always this ridiculous obsession with love!” But it drives so much, and please forgive the pun, it is truly at the heart of every matter. So in reading The House of Mirth, my driving questions throughout the book have been: What is Lily Bart’s perception of love? What is Wharton trying to tell me about her own worldview concerning love?
Truth be told, I’m not sure what the answer is. She and Selden seem to have this constrained but meant-to-be-doomed-so-impossible love affair. “Ah, love me, love me—but don’t tell me so “? she tells him. She refuses Rosedale and all his money because she doesn’t love him. A lesson in morality from the beautiful Lily Bart? I’d say yes, except that she doesn’t run into the sunset with Selden when offered because he can’t support her lifestyle and she also seems to enjoy stringing Rosedale along, “the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him” not being voiced until very near the end of the book. So what is it Miss Bart? Money or love?
In the end, I have to say I think Lily is truly attempting to stand her moral ground but endlessly falls short via her own selfishness. Wharton would have you believe that this is an early stage of love, as she described Selden’s “impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.” However, by the definition taught to me, selfishness is the direct opposite of love. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 tells us,
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Neither Lily nor Selden seem to manage to maintain, much less attempt, these characteristics.
The dichotomy of Lily Bart is a fascinating one, probably one of the many reasons this book has been deemed a classic. One essayist wrote: “Lily’s distinction lies precisely in her ability to transcend such crude ambitions” as using her beauty to marry for money (Lahoucine Ouzgane). Wharton herself writes,
And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
Many believe this to be a tragic love triangle between Selden, Lily, and the nature of capitalism. Some people believe the work is Wharton making a statement about love, the nature of her own marriage, and the internal struggles she herself felt during the age. But what is The House of Mirth to you? Read it and find out. No matter what you discover of Lily, you won’t regret the experience, Wharton’s prose is lovely.
How to Buy a Love of Reading… Just buy Gibson’s book
Title: How to Buy a Love of Reading
Author: Tanya Egan Gibson
Publisher: Dutton, a member of Penguin group
Genre: Fiction
Length: 389 pages
I cannot begin to count, honestly, the number of times I was brought to tears by this book. Something that was supposed to be light and fun proved to be something beautiful and amazing, something that moved me more than words can express.
I cannot begin to count, honestly, the number I times I fell in love with Hunter. Over and over again, reminding me of boys I fell in love with in real life. Stranger still, reminding me of myself.
I found Carly amazing, and brave, and beautiful, a character who reminded me of people I both love and hate.
I found Gibson reminding me why I fell in love with Fitzgerald in high school and how I cherish every blessed word of Gatsby and every word written about it.
I found myself wanting to share this jewel with a dear friend who has already left this world and lonely because of all the disappointment in his missing it.
I sit here writing the most incoherent review in the immediate moment of completion because I’m blown away, dazed, and I don’t want it to end, even though the ending is so perfectly final.
Love in the Time of Cholera, an essay of love
(written based on notes from a book club meeting with Lauren Davis of http://lollygabber.wordpress.com/)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Much like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Florentino Ariza is in love with soap operas and romance novels, so much so all his letters to Daza when they are young read just like one. He is so involved with the idea of romance after Fermina’s rejection of him he makes a pass time writing love letters for other couples. Ariza is all youthful passion and intensity saying, “Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.” Needless to say, he’s all swoon and flowery words as he makes his way into the bed of over six hundred women in the course of his life while pretending to be faithful to only Fermina. None of the women know about the others and each is told that she is his first and only, perpetuating Ariza’s illusion of himself that he is a heart sick and loyal love puppy in need of nurturing.
In the mean time, Fermina Daza has married a very clinical man, its no mistake that Garcia has written this character to be a doctor by profession, who is overly concerned with appearances. Dr. Juvenal Urbino loves classic literature, does not listen to “popular” music like Ariza, but music he imagines gives him the right to look condescendingly on other’s tastes. Fermina takes part in this illusion of high society that her husband has chosen, most likely having married him for it in the first place as they have very little in common. She prefers all the opposite things, helping the reader understand why she was captivated by Ariza in the first place – he wrote to her beautiful letters, like the love stories she was enraptured by. Ariza learned to play the violin when they were young and played her beautiful music, “popular” quixotic pieces from the street.
Garret Wilson writes in his review: “[…]Fermina was trying to fool the world, Florentino was consumed with fooling himself. Fermina Daza’s claim that Florentino Ariza was not in love with her, that he was merely infatuated with some ethereal concept of the woman perfect for him, is certainly not baseless.” (http://www.garretwilson.com/books/lovetimecholera.html)
However, I also believe that the idea that the Urbino’s fifty one year long marriage not having a true element of love to it is also not unfounded. Their relationship was based purely on an act of will, as if willing themselves to love would be enough, as though creating an illusion of a happy marriage would trick not just the world but themselves that their marriage was a happy one. It becomes all too obvious that their relationship could not stand on its own two feet when after his death Fermina’s idea of his character is blown totally out of the water and she believes him to have had an affair with their family friend just because someone insinuates it. A woman with a true and solid relationship based in honest love could not go fifty one years and still not know if her husband ever loved her. Dr. Joyce Brothers says, “The best proof of love is trust.” Clearly, neither of them really loved the other.
Love is a choice, but it is also a passionate driving force. This book makes it quite obvious that two people must have more than just passion and more than an act of will, there must be balance. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, it states, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy. It does not boast and it is not proud; it’s not rude or self seeking. Love is not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrong, it does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” Needless to say, sometimes it takes a lot of work and a lot of persistence to love someone and in this both Urbino and Ariza had it half right. But there is also something to be said for the poetry of love, and in this Ariza went so far it seemed insincere, and Urbino neglected it altogether. When it came to having the whole package, all three of these characters seemed to have gotten it so wrong, treating love like the plague that swept through the nation: either something of great force that snuck up on them, or an ailment that they’d have to spend a long time living with.
A Tale to Swoon Over
Claire Danes in the major motion picture of Stardust, based on Neil Gaiman's novel
Neil Gaiman’s Stardust is delightful. A lovely little fairy tale for grown ups, the adventure sucks you through a wall into a magical world of falling stars, unicorns, witches, spells, and flying ships. Gaiman provides all the adults in the room a Faerie romance we can swoon over without re-reading Cinderella and Thumbelina for the hundred-thousandth time. We get a handsome Romeo, a bit of a love triangle, true-love from the stars, and a happy ending (even if it goes out with a limp – literally). Stardust made for a wonderful wintery read by the fireplace this Christmas.
Fantasy vs. Reality, Bella Swan Meet Emma Bovary
December 14, 2009 at 1:28 am (Reviews, The Whim) (austen, Bella Swan, book, cervantes, coming of age, edward, emma bovary, fantasy, fiction, flaubert, Kristen Stewart, love, review, romance, social commentary, twilight, twilight movie image)
Kristen Stewart, actress, as Bella Swan in the Twilight Saga movies
While reading Madame Bovary and coming to these conclusions, I couldn’t help but compare this theme to the realities of today – to the fad that is known as the Twilight Saga. Since I first read Stephenie Meyer’s books I have told people that the story-line of the Twilight Saga is terribly frustrating because it sets unrealistic and pitiful standards on the beautiful thing that is love. Not to say the books are inherently bad, they were entertaining and held my attention until the end, but there are so many things young men and women should understand when sitting down to read these novels. Well, one thing specifically: Edward is not real. Jacob is not real. These boys do not exist, they will never exist. And truth be told, they act don’t act like real men, and in the end, even if they did exist, you would be unsatisfied. Beware of expecting the wrong things and becoming the next Madame Bovary, wench of all wenches.
Below is a review of Twilight my sister Nikki Dawn Bratton wrote:
In short, read Twilight and New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn to your hearts content. Inwardly swoon all you want, but please, please, please, read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as soon as you do. Get acquainted with Emma Bovary and understand her weakness for all affairs and selfishness, and remember that is not a road you want to take. Real love, real passionate and blissful love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not rude or self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrong. It’s also a daily choice and a lot of hard work. Do it right and you will see the fruits of your labors. Do not expect butterflies and tingles every time you look at the object of your affection, but don’t be so certain that they ever completely desist either.
I love my fantasies, but I know I cannot be so involved in them to find reality boring. Books are awesome, but real life is the ultimate treat.
Buy Madame Bovary from Amazon.com
(And for fun, because I love this guy… http://musingsofahighschoolvampire.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/musings-of-a-high-school-vampire-cursing/)
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