"famous for the wrong book"?

I love this discussion of how authors are often famous for the wrong book -- Guardian writer John Self points to such classics as Remains of the Day or Catch-22 as not-bests.

What would you add to his list?

I'm hesitant. I feel like often enough, the famous books are most famous for their ability to transcend elitist or snobby particularities. For example, my favourite Atwood novels are The Edible Woman or Cat's Eye, but I'm well aware their experimental feminism and blending of the unrealistic with the everyday appeal to a certain narrow crowd. The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake would generally have wider appeal.

On the other hand, this sort of brings to mind a book club discussion once had in Edmonton, where one member pointed out that, failing to get his points across in books like Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell essentially parades a bunch of farm animals before the reader in Animal Farm, finally entertaining a wider crowd and allowing the political messages he wished to get across to shine through....

where Atwood meets Mad Men

I'm reading The Edible Woman -- Margaret Atwood's first novel, published in 1969 -- and I'm utterly struck by her main character, Marian McAlpin. Specifically, how Marian, in her struggle to be feminine and not be feminine, to be a career girl and not to be a career girl, is something of a blueprint for Peggy Olson.

I know, it's a terribly shallow comparison. But just 100 pages into the first part of Atwood's novel, there's such an obvious disconnect between who Marian is and who she thinks she should be, that a person who is obsessed with Mad Men can't help but draw a parallel.

If you haven't read this book at all, or not in a few years, please do pick it up and let me know if I've drawn a horrifying or appropriate conclusion.

Meanwhile, the last bit of millennium poetry I'll offer from Chasing Shakespeares:

"History is a point of view, over the same city, perhaps, but from a thousand eyes, not one. Wait five minutes, the light has changed, a wall has been demolished, a new window set in place, and from the top of the wheel another set of eyes are looking out over a different city. There's no one map, one story, one way to get to one truth; there is no single London and no single Shakespeare, no fact as sure as a story." (p. 329)

remember who you are

Ok, this might be my favourite book dedication ever:

Mom and Dad,

I could never have done this without your faith, support, and constant encouragement. Thank you for teaching me to believe in myself, in God, and in my dreams.

This book...aside from the nine F-words, thirteen Sh-words, four A-holes, page 257, and the entire Warren Beatty chapter...is dedicated to you.

You might want to avoid chapters twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, anything I quote Mom saying, and most of the end as well.

Sorry. Am I still as cute as a button?

Love,

Elna

Cute, right? It's from The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. So far, hilarious.

I'm in the mountains for a few days, and have a pile of books to read. Literally, a pile. Think Cameron Diaz in The Holiday. Yes, I watched that movie. What of it?

My get-relaxed-quick readings include:

Margaret Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers (a companion, it appears, to Laurence's A Jest of God);

Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman;

Michael Ignatieff's The Russian Album;

Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh;

Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery;

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa;

Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce;

and Elizabeth Hay's Garbo Laughs.

Yes, lugging this many books through an airport does land you in a conversation with security folks who have novel suggestions. (Apparently I should read Cormac McCarthy.)