Tag: october

What was She Thinking?

gr4c5Leave a comment

Heller, Zoe. What was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal. Read by Nadia May. Blackstone Audio, 2006.

Reason read: I needed a book about a teacher for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge. This is a doozy.

The slow decline into obsession is like a slow growing cancer. The sickness of the heart soon controls the soul. Barbara Covett’s long teaching career at St. Georges School affords her a critical opinion of her colleagues, old and new. With barely any friends, scarce family ties, and no love life to speak of, Barbara is an aging spinster alone with an ailing cat. Such bitter loneliness entitles Barbara to scoff at any relationship until she meets Sheba Hart. Sheba brings out a strange possessiveness in Barbara. As a pottery teacher Sheba is new to St. Georges and it’s politics. Barbara takes Sheba under her wing and desires to be her only friend. Except Sheba is capable of making a variety of relationships which fuel Barbara’s jealousies. Barbara reminded me of the manipulative Iago in the way that she slyly pushed Sue, another St. Georges colleague, out of the friendship with Sheba. Three is definitely a crowd.
As mentioned before, Sheba is capable of making connections quickly. When she starts a physical relationship with a sixteen year old student in her pottery class, Barbara seizes the opportunity to be Sheba’s only nonjudgmental confident, further pulling Sheba into a sick dependency. However, Barbara’s immature need to be on the high horse of morality gets the better of her and she risks Sheba’s friendship by keeping a journal. The more obsessed Sheba gets with the schoolboy, the more reckless she becomes. How long before the house of cards come crashing down?

Author fact: What was She Thinking is Heller’s first novel.

Book trivia: this should be a movie.

Nancy said: Pearl said nothing in particular about What was She Thinking?

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Wayward Wives” (p 231).

Childhood’s End

gr4c5Leave a comment

Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End. Random House, 1981.

Reason read: October is Science Fiction Month for some people. I also needed a book set in the future for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge.

Confessional: this review will be very brief. As I have said before, I am not a fan of science fiction. Boo. The first section of Childhood’s End is based on a short story called “Guardian Angel”. Earth is controlled by the Overlords. They provide security, peace and prosperity but their interests lie in human psychology, mysticism, telepathy, the occult, second sight, and psychic phenomena. Fact meets fiction. The Republic of South Africa had racial tensions for over a century. U.S. and Russia did have a race to space. I found those elements to be interesting. The other aspects of Childhood’s End I found curious were the social commentaries Clarke was making about the human race. When we cannot pronounce a name that is unfamiliar to use (like Thanthalteresco) we come up with nicknames (like the Inspector). The Overlords are like parents, banning something (space) because they think their children (humans) are not ready for it. My favorite part was when Jan Rodricks, a Cape Town engineering student, pulled a Trojan Horse stunt and stowed away in a giant whale replica to visit the Overlords on their turf.
The moral of the story could be that without conflict there is no passion. Without passion there is only apathy and with apathy comes boredom. With boredom comes the need to rile things up.

Author fact: Have you seen the list of books Clarke has written, both in fiction and nonfiction? It is impressive. I am only reading Childhood’s End for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Childhood’s End was originally published in 1953 and considered way before its time. It took almost a year to write.

Nancy said: Pearl said Childhood’s End was a great read.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fictions, Fantasy and Horror” (p 213).

Bluest Blood

gr4c5Leave a comment

Roberts, Gillian. The Bluest Blood. Ballantine Books, 1998.

Reason read: to finish the series started in July. Yes, I definitely took some time off from reading the series.

Amanda Pepper is back! This time she is on the case for a different kind of mystery. Pitted against the Moral Ecologists, a group hellbent on censorship, Amanda must stop them from ruining her ability to teach English. The plot thickens early on when Reverend Harvey Spiers, leader of the Moral Ecologists, shows up at a fundraiser hosted by Edward and Theodora Roederer. The Roederers are wealthy staunch supporters of free speech and annually give a ton of money to the community, including Amanda’s prep school. First red flag? Spier’s son and Roederer’s son are close friends. Second? Jake and Griffin are in Amanda’s class. Both are angsty teens with family issues that go beyond morality and wealth. Of course, the protesting gets out of hand and someone winds up dead. But it wouldn’t be an Amanda Pepper mystery if Amanda didn’t find herself in a wee bit of danger herself.
The ongoing joke is that Amanda does not know Mackenzie’s full name so whenever she goes to introduce him to someone new she stumbles. Why she can’t call him “C.K.” is beyond me.
As an aside, the details are a little dated. This was written in an age when photoshopping the Mona Lisa with a scowl was good fun. Technology has come a long way since the days of putting grins on dogs.

Line I liked, “Sometimes a speaker needs a soliloquy” (p 74).

Playlist: the Three Tenors

Author fact: Gillian Roberts, also known as Judith Greber, wrote a bunch of Amanda Pepper books, but this is my last one for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Sasha and Amanda’s mom are repeat characters.

Nancy said: Pearl mentions Bluest Blood first when naming good Amanda Pepper mysteries.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: the Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 31).

Writing New York

gr4c5Leave a comment

Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. Library of America, 1998.

Reason read: First and foremost, the Portland Public Library has an annual reading challenge and this satisfies the category of anthology. Second reason: the New York Gypsy Festival takes place in October and November.

Literature written for and about New York is organized in chronological order in Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. In the diary of Philip Hone you will read about a child abandoned on his doorstep. Henry David Thoreau goes wandering around Staten Island looking for nature. You will read the day-long observations of Nathaniel Parker Willis. Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener has a place. Fanny Fern, also known as Sara Payson Willis, contributes as the first woman newspaper columnist in the United States. You’ll learn that O. Henry started writing fiction in prison. James Huneker will tell you about the New York public urban parks: Battery, Corlears (which I had never heard of before), Gramercy, Bronx, and Central, to name a few. Charles Reznikoff would walk twenty miles a day and by default find interesting material for his poetry. (All I want to know is what happened to the lost shirt.) E.B. White chimes in. William Carlos Williams was called the “bard of Rutherford, New Jersey”, but he wrote about New York City with such eloquence. You will read a fraction of a biography of LaGuardia by Robert Moses and hear from Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, and so many more. The mini biography of Lady Day was my favorite.

As an aside, you know I can’t write a review about a New York book without mentioning Natalie Merchant, right? When Lopate mentioned the contrasts of New York, I instantly thought of “Carnival” when Natalie sings about wealth and poverty. Later on, Walt Whitman has a poem about New York and that instantly reminded me of “Song of Himself” off Natalie’s new Keep Your Courage album.

Favorite lines. From Philip Hone The Diary: “It is too much for the frailty of human nature and I am off to the Springs tomorrow to get out of the way” (p 32). I can only assume he means Saratoga Springs. Here is another from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, “New York City’s the most fatally fascinating thing in America” (p 387). “Thus I take leave of my lost city” from F. Scott Fitzgerald (p 578), and “Laughter is a beautiful obituary” from “Lou Stillman” by Jimmy Cannon (p 933).

Confessional: I skipped Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos because I had already read them. I also skipped the excerpts from Dawn Powell’s diaries because she is on my list for another time.

Editor fact: If you Google Phillip Lopate, you will find a picture of him with a cat.

Book trivia: the copyright page is cool. Words form the shape of the Empire State Building.

Playlist: Beethoven, “Blue Bell”, Bessie Smith, Benny Goodman, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Chick Webb, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, “Charlie’s Elected Now”, Coleman Hawkins, “Danny By My Side”, Duke Ellington, E. Power Biggs, Ethel Waters, Fats Waller, George Gershwin, Gladys Bentley, “Hello, Central, Give Me No Man’s Land”, “He May Be Your Man But He Come to See Me Sometime”, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, “Orange Blossom Waltz”, Paul Robeson, Prologue to Pagliacci, Puccini, Roy Eldridge, Roland Hayes, “St. James Infirmary”, “Swanee River”, “Take Your Time, Miss Lucy”, Trixie Smith, Thelonious Monk, “Under the Bamboo Tree”, and “You Called Me Baby Doll a Year Ago”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Writing New York “a deliriously diverse mix of writers…too bulky to carry around” (Book Lust To Go p 152).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “New York City: a Taste of the Big Apple” (p 151). To be fair, Writing New York is about more than just New York City. It covers people and cultures as well.

Rome From the Ground Up

gr4c5Leave a comment

McGregor, James H. S. Rome from the Ground Up. Bel Knap Press, 2015.

Reason read: Kisa and I are going to embark on a roman holiday at the end of the year.

McGregor starts off by saying Rome is an agglomeration of historical cities. That statement alone fires the imagination and makes one want to read on. Rome was not a planned city. It has gone through multiple redesigns. Each city section had its own purpose, much like New York City has it’s myriad of regions within the five boroughs. Yes, McGregor will walk you through every section of Rome and describe everything along with way with meticulous care. He encourages readers to take Rome from the Ground Up as a guide book to the city. He does not include restaurants or the best places to stay, as those will change over time.
Here are some of the things I gleaned from reading Rome from the Ground Up: the Mouth of Truth may have been an ancient manhole and sewer cover. There were two palaces of power, the Vatican and the Quirinal. Julius Caesar was assassinated and his body burnt on a pyre in the Forum. Later, a temple was built on the spot and dedicated to him. As an aside, I bet all dictators wish they had temples built in their honor. Laurel trees were sacred to Apollo. Read Rome from the Ground Up if you are into minute details descriptions of architecture, including details on the art within every museum, church, or chapel.

Some things I would like to research while in Rome: is the fig tree still standing in the Forum? Can you still see the collapsed bridge that was never repaired from 1598? What about the Seated Boxer? Is he still near the Baths of Constantine on the Quirinal Hill? What about the final resting place of St. Valentine? Are they still in the Chapel of San Zeno?

As an aside, if you know me then you know I find connections to music all over the place. When McGregor mentioned Stations of the Cross performed in the Coliseum by the pope every Good Friday, I thought of Josh Ritter.

Line to like, “Vows of celibacy could be difficult to maintain; pilgrims far from home turned into randy conventioneers” (p 193).

Author fact: McGregor has written a bunch of “From the Ground Up…” books. I am only reading about Rome for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Rome from the Ground Up has the most wonderful photographs and architecturally detailed plans.

Nancy said: Pearl said Rome from the Ground Up is great for architecture and history buffs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Roman Holiday” (p 188).

Tisha

gr4c5Leave a comment

Specht, Robert. Tisha: the Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaska Wilderness. St, Martin’s Press, 1976.

Reason read: October is the month Alaskans celebrate Alaska Day. I also needed a book for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge in the category of a book about a teacher.

Alaska, 1927. Anne Hobbs has traveled by ornery pony to be a teacher in the Alaskan remote village of Chicken. Tisha is a true story as told to Robert Specht. Barely twenty years old, Anne begins her adventure in Chicken battling sub-zero cold winters and even more frigid prejudiced hearts. The natives of Alaska are considered lesser people even though it is their land. The word siwash is derogatory, both as a noun and a verb. Even the children are not exempt from cruel words and actions of the white community. Anne is not fazed by the immature behavior of the white community and, after developing a fondness for one such “half breed” child named Chuck, insists he attend her school. The taunts and threats now targeting Anne grow louder when she develops an even stronger fondness for a “half breed” adult named Fred. It isn’t until Anne and Fred survive a terrible tragedy that the community starts to slowly come around.

Line I liked, “So I knew better than to judge somebody from what somebody else said” (p 129).

Author fact: According to the back flap of Tisha, Specht graduated from CCNY at 32 years old. At the time of publication he was working on a sequel to Tisha.

Book trivia: Other publications of Tisha credit Anne Purdy as coauthor. The title Tisha comes from young Chuck. With his lisp he couldn’t say teacher properly.

Playlist: “Home Sweet Home”, “Home on the Range”, Yes Sir, That’s My Baby”, O Susanna”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Sweet Rosie O’Grady”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Ta Ra Ra Boom Dee Ay”, “Yankee Doodle”, “Little Brown Jug”, and “Turkey in the Straw”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Tisha a good companion to Benedict and Nancy’s Freeman’s novel, Mrs. Mike. Indeed, the inside flap of Tisha also mentions Mrs. Mike.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “All Set for Alaska” (p 15).

Gathering

gr4c5Leave a comment

Enright, Elizabeth. The Gathering. Read by Fiona Shaw. Black Cat Publishing, 2007.

Reason read: there is a jazz festival in Cork that happens every year. The Gathering has nothing to do with music, but it takes place in Ireland. Good enough.

Gathering. It is what friends and family and colleagues and sometimes even strangers do when someone dies. As an aside, I just attended my very first virtual funeral (a Doom Zoom, we are calling it).
In Elizabeth Enright’s Gathering, what is left of a very large family gather to say goodbye to Liam: a son, a brother, an uncle, a beloved who has committed suicide by drowning off the coast of England. Separated in age by a little over a year, sister Veronica Hegerty is Liam’s nearest and dearest sibling and more his twin in every sense. It is her responsibility to collect the body and hold the gathering. She tells Liam’s story through a series of childhood flashbacks and present-day adult manic musings. Growing up with Liam was a mixture of deep seated secrets and innocence lost. Veronica spends her time trying to puzzle the clues and remembering the memories. Here’s what we all do when someone close to us commits suicide: we sift through the ashes of a life burnt out, searching for clues to why they left us; trying to answer the questions of Is it our fault? Did we set the fire? What could we have done differently to save them? (To quote Natalie Merchant, “It was such a nightmare raving how can we save him from himself?” Are you surprised I went there? How could I not?) As for her adult issues, thirty-nine year old Veronica wrestles with problems with her marriage, confused by subliminal hang-ups about sex. She has inner demons that have haunted her since childhood. I honestly can’t say how well I enjoyed The Gathering. It did leave me thinking of the characters for a long time afterwards, so there’s that.

As an aside, no one can decide just how many siblings are in the Hegerty family. In some reviews I read nine, ten, or even twelve. Not counting the seven miscarriages.

Quotes to quote, “His compassion is a muscle” (p 70), and “What use is the truth to us now?” (256).

Author fact: Enright has written a bunch of stuff but I am only reading The Gathering for the Book Lust Challenge.

Book trivia: The Gathering won the 2007 Booker Prize.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about The Gathering.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 111).

Za’atar Days, Henna Nights

gr4c5Leave a comment

Masood, Maliha. Za’atar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East. Seal Press, 2006.

Reason read: October is hero month and I would consider Masood a sort of superhero for traveling around by the seat of her pants.

Masood straddles that line between American and Pakistani, Pakistani and American. Born in Pakistan, her family moved to America when Masood was in middle school. Now, eighteen years later, Masood is traveling haphazardly through the Middle East. She bought a one-way ticket with no intention of having a specific itinerary. It was a journey just be to on a journey. One could call it a trek to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey as some sort of spiritual quest to find herself or get back to her ancestral roots. Did she? I’m not really certain. To be sure, Masood had some crazy adventures (some more dangerous than others), she had a few cultural misunderstandings, and she relied heavily on the natives she befriended (I felt bad for the men who fell in love with her). All in all, she survived her seventeen months of travel relatively unscathed.

As an aside, I had no idea pollution was a thing in Cairo.

Confessional: Tommy Rivs got me interested in the poetry of Mary Oliver. Masood includes one of Tommy’s favorites, “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and call it a life?”
Second confession: Because of Natalie Merchant’s album “Keep Your Courage” I have been paying attention to mentions of Walt Whitman. Masood also reads Walt.

Reason read: there is such a thing as za’atar days, the celebration of the spice.

Playlist: “Staying Alive”, U2, Phil Collins, Pavarotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake”, Umm Kulthum, “Enta Omri” (as an aside, Masood spelled Umm’s name as Om Khoulsoum and the song as “Inta Omri”. I couldn’t find singer or song with those spellings) Amr Diab (as another aside, this guy is very good looking), Fairuz, Saleh, Wadi al Safi, Jose Fernandez, Elvis Presley, and Billy Joel.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Za’atar Days.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 148).

Bone People

gr4c5Leave a comment

Hulme, Keri. The Bone People. Penguin Books, 1985.

Reason read: October was the month the Booker Prize was awarded. Bone People won the prize in 1985. I also needed to read a Booker Prize winner for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

Hulme’s storytelling is punctuated with snippets of inner thoughts.

Kerewin and Joe are an unlikely couple. They come together because of a mysterious mute boy of four or five named Simon. Confessional: I was not sure I was supposed to like Kerewin. She likes to drink herself into a stupor and, as a self-exiled recluse, she has the time and inclination to take to the bottle often. She also spends her time making art, having won her independent wealth from a lottery ticket. She is estranged from her family, considers herself unlovable, and doesn’t like companionship so when she comes across mute Simon, she cannot explain why she takes him in. Second confessional: I wasn’t sure I was supposed to like Joe. Hard working and rugged, Joe has been a self-imposed foster father to Simon. When provoked he likes to beat the tar out of someone, but he gives just as many kisses as he does kicks. His passions are confused. Third confessional: I wasn’t sure I was supposed to like Simon. He’s a devilish imp. He has a way of stealing things and acting out when he doesn’t get his way. He can be just as violent as Kerewin and Joe in action and emotion. Yet…Kerewin, Joe, and Simon somehow belong together and I found myself rooting for them.
The Bone People is like a slow moving train. At first you are not sure if you are on the right ride, but once it gets going it’s a runaway success. I couldn’t put it down after the first hundred pages. Maybe it took me that long to get used to Hulme’s style?
You know a book is going to be good when it is endorsed by Alice Walker.

Quotes to quote, “Orion pales to a distant ice glitter, and one by one, his stars go out” (p 328) and “His bruised heart still beats, but he no longer cares” (p 410).

Author fact: Hulme is a Maori and is also an artist.

Book trivia: The Bone People is Hulme’s first novel and it also won a Pegasus Prize for Literature.

Playlist: “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”, “Recuerdos d’Alhambra”, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, “Pack Up Your Troubles and Smile”, and “Pavane for a Dead Infanta” by Ravel.

Nancy said: Pearl said Bone People is one of those books “you either love or hate” and that it is not an easy book to read.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Kiwis Forever!: New Zealand in Print” (p 123).

Bear

gr4c5Leave a comment

Engel, Marian. Bear. McClelland and Stewart, 1976.

Reason read: October is Animal Month.

Lou, an archivist for an Institute is sent to a remote Ottawan island to catalog the estate of Colonel Joycelyn Cary. The institute has acquired the Pennarth Estate’s books, journals, and other ephemera. Admittedly, I had to go into this story with an extremely open mind. From everything I heard, the only detail that stuck out to me was that the protagonist has sexual feelings for, and tries to copulate with, a bear. Say what now? The second thing people said, as if to follow up on that statement, was that Engel writes in such a way that a relationship between a woman and a bear is totally plausible. My first indication of realism comes when, even though Lou and the bear have a growing friendship, Lou is constantly reminding herself he is a bear that weighs over 300 pounds with claws and teeth. Bears are predators that are attracted to the emanating odors of blood and fear. To be sure, the writing is beautiful. The treatment of women in society (in the 70s) is accurately articulated. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that Lou’s choices for male companionship were so wretched that she had to settle for an animal. The end.

Author fact: Engel passed in 1985.

Book trivia: Bear is a ridiculously short book of less that 150 pages (at least my copy was).

Lines I liked, “It took the curse off his warnings about the bear” (p 75),

Playlist: “Old Black Joe”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Bear odd and strange and a gem. The cool thing is that she also mentioned it has been long out of print, but I was able to find it in a local library. Yay for public libraries!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Animal Love” (p 13). I’d say.

Staying On

gr4c5Leave a comment

Scott, Paul. Staying On. Avon books, 1977.

Reason read: The Booker Prize was awarded in October. Staying On is a Booker Prize recipient.

On August 15th, at the stroke of midnight in 1947, British rule comes to an end and India has gained her independence. Not all British soldiers have departed India in shame, though. Colonel Tusker Smalley and his wife, Lucy, have stayed on. It is now 1972 and the couple have started to fade in money, health, vitality, and the real reason they decided to remain in the remote hill station of Pankot. Everything is in question now. Complicating matters is their antagonistic landlady, Mrs. Bhoolabhoy. Bhoolabhoy is determined to humiliate the British couple into leaving her country. After all these years her tactics are getting more and more hostile, forcing the English couple to renew their commitment to one another.
A backdrop for Staying On is the tapestry of culture and caste. What it means to have wealth and status in a country on the verge of finding a new identity. The Smalleys and the Bhoolabhoys are no different in their hope for the future.

Author fact: Scott also wrote the Raj Quartet. I am only reading The Jewel in the Crown, book one of the four.

Book trivia: as mentioned before, Staying On won the Booker Prize. I probably should have read The Jewel in the Crown before Staying On. Oh well.

Quotes to quote, “I’ll sue the bitch from arsehole to Christmas” (p 29), “I feel worn to a shadow”, (p 125),

Playlist: “Onward Christian Soldiers”, “Flowers of the Forest”, “God Save the King”, “Abide with Me”, All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “These Foolish things”, the Inkspots, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore’s “Chloe”, and Ravi Shankar”.

Nancy said: Pearl compared Staying On to Women of the Raj.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: a Reader’s Itinerary (History)” (p 125).

Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks

gr4c5Leave a comment

Oswald, Michael Joseph. The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks. Stone Road Press, 2023.

Reason read: I am very excited about this Early Review pick from LibraryThing. I love to hike. I want to travel around the country and see every national park. I’ll be sure to take this book with me.

First impressions after cracking open The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks:

  • Beautiful color photographs in full page.
  • The copyright is amusing.
  • Easily organized by regions: East, North, South, Southwest (because it deserves its own chapter), West, Alaska, and Remote Islands.
  • Good to know the average distance of hikes is 5.8 miles (almost my favorite distance).
  • Maps are generated from USGS National Map data.
  • Terrain, elevation, trailheads, parking information – including parking spots (?!), and shuttle service information is included where applicable.
  • Elevation information is sourced from Google Earth.
  • Trail map legend is easy to understand.
  • Time zone information.
  • Inclusion of national monuments on historical sites.
  • No index so if you heard of a place but have no idea what state or even region it is in, you are out of luck and will have to scan the entire book only to find it might not be there.
  • Excited to try the online trail location map!

I have a question, though. Oswald makes a list of the best dayhiking parks? What makes them the best? What criteria did he use to come up with that specific list?

As an aside, my spellchecker did not like “dayhiker” as one word.

Author fact: Oswald is a hiking fanatic.

Book trivia: Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks includes 198 trail maps. You couldn’t find two more to make it an even 200? Just kidding! 198 is plenty!

Brideshead Revisited

gr4c5Leave a comment

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited: the Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. Everyman’s Library, 1993.

Reason read: Waugh was born in October; read in his memory.

Brideshead Revisited is twenty years in the life of Captain Charles Ryder and the relationships that sustained him. Friendships with the Flyte family and Brideshead Castle, the military, religion, romance. We learn early on that he compares his waning affection for the military to a marriage in the post-honeymoon phase. I found that to be a really interesting analogy.
I would compare Brideshead Revisited to a lazy river. There is no white water pulse pounding plot twists. Instead it is a pleasant, gentle read that meanders through Victorian life. I can see the reason for its popularity and the various made for television movies it spawned.

Line I liked, “He was the acid test of all these alloys” (p 9).

Author fact: Brideshead Revisited was Waugh’s most successful novel. It was made into a miniseries in 1981 and a movie in 2008.

Book trivia: Waugh made revisions in 1954 (the original was published in 1944). He was of two minds about Julia’s outburst about mortal sin and Lord Marchmain’s dying silioquy. Were they appropriate for the story?

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything about Brideshead Revisited in either chapter.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1940s” (p 177) and from Book Lust To Go from the chapter called “Oxford: Literary Fiction” (p 170).

God of Small Things

gr4c5Leave a comment

Roy, Arundhati. God of Small Things. Random House, 1997.

Reason read: God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, a prize that is normally awarded in October.

The God of Small Things opens with a lush description of the monsoon season of Ayemenem and the statement, “Baby Kochamma was still alive” (p 4). The simple statement hooks your breath back into your lungs while your mind jumps the rail, “what do you mean still alive?” Still? As in to imply not supposed to be of this earth? As reader, be prepared to bounce between time and space. In one chapter we will cremate a woman, in the next she will be alive and flirting.
Rahel and Estha, twins who are separated after tragedy. Death is a tragedy. Divorce is one, too. But lack of social standing is the most tragic of them all. Like a pervasive black and choking smoke, the ancient Indian caste system hangs dark and poisonous in the air. The ongoing separation of Paravan and Brahmin, touchable and untouchable, inhaled through nostrils and accepted as common as air to breathe. I was reminded of Dr. Seuss and his star bellied Sneetches. But like all unfair systems, the order of life doesn’t always work when there is a tilt, an upset in the balance. Especially when opposites attract. I don’t know how to review this book without giving too much away so I speak in circles. Jusr read it.

Quotes to quote, “On their shoulders they carried a keg of ancient anger, lit with a recent fuse” (p 67). I love it when writers take the intangible, like anger, and make it something touchable. Here’s another, “Shadows gathered like bats in the steep hollows near her collarbone” (p 154). One more: “They were not arresting a man, they were exorcising fear” (p 293). If that doesn’t say it all about racism…

Author fact: Roy studied to be an architect. she decided to write a book. God of Small Things is her first novel and wouldn’t you know it? she wins the Booker Prize.

Book trivia: I watched a short Ted video on why one should read God of Small Things. I don’t know if the makers of the video had this intention but I thought it was cute.

Nancy said: Pearl said God of Small Things was “simply glorious.”

Playlist: Elvis Presley, Handel’s Water Music, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, “The Sound of Music”, “Baby Elephany Walk”, “Colonel Bogey’s March”, Little Richard, “Ruby Tuesday”, “My Favorite Things”, “So Long Farewell”,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: a Reader’s Itinerary” (p 125). Also from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Scenes from Sri Lanka” (p 197).

Italian Days

gr4c5Leave a comment

Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti. Italian Days. Worldenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Reason read: there once was talk of going to Italy in September or October. Read in memory of that aborted excursion. Also, some people celebrate Italian Heritage Month in October. Read in the offchance that is a thing.

From the very first few pages I knew I was going to enjoy Italian Days. Harrison is funny, witty, smart, and even a little sarcastic at times. She peppers her prose with interesting personal annectdotes about her connections to Italy. Sometimes it is about motherhood or her marriage. She comes alive when writing about her daughter Anna. Other times she talks of old lovers and new friends with such a sensuality there is an undertone of sexuality to her confessions, as if to say “I know I am beautiful. What of it?”
Harrison’s observations about Italian people and places are spot on. She has a running commentary on everything from feminism in Milan to artificial insemination by an unknown donor. She enjoys movies and references them from time to time.
It is obvious Harrison has an appreciation for the words of others who have written so beautifully about Italy’s charms. There are lots of quotes from Stendhal, Ruskin, George Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry James, but mostly Italian Days is a thoughtful blender concoction of cultural, spiritual, historical, and personal observations. Art, science, food, family, architecture, memories, religion, philosophy, and society swirl on every page. You’ll pick up a little Italian in the process. My favorite phrase was “qui sono felice” or “Here I am happy.”
Interesting that Piazzare Loreto bears no recognition of Mussolini’s demise.
As an aside, since Italian Days was published in 1989 I have to wonder if Milan is still as dependent on America as some seemed to think.
Thanks to Harrison’s descriptions of Italy there are a few places I would like to go: the church of Santa Maria Sacravia with its basalt stones; Rome, the city of Saints Peter and Paul (does anyone else think of Josh Ritter’s “Girl in the War” when hearing those names?); the Capuchin Cemetery to “cultivate a taste for the memento mori” (p 300). I now want to see the statue of David just to see his curiously small…ears.

As an another aside, remind me never to try the chocolate panforte – Harrison’s description of it sounds absolutely awful. Who would want to eat a spongy rock impregnated with gravel? On the other hand, when I go to Italy I want to try every flavor of gelati and I want to find the final resting place of Patrician Cecilia, the virgin patron saint of music and musicians. Supposedly, she is buried in a catacomb on the Appian Way.

Favorite lines: First, this is the one that made me laugh, “I have never but once had the occasion to threaten to knock someone’s pearls down her throat” (p 5). Then came, “It is very hard to be charming in a foreign language” (p 13), and “I have always wanted to live in an enclosed world, but when I did, I wanted to get out” (p 348). Spoken like a true cat. Meow.

Author fact: Everyone has their “thing” that makes them nervous. It was interesting to learn Harrison does not like masks or puppets.

Book trivia: there is a nice section of black and white photographs.

Setlist: Bach, Prince, Ben Webster, Ethel Merman, Mario Lanza, Tina Turner, Mozart, Vivaldi, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, “Once There Were Three Marys”, “Amapola, My Pretty Little Poppy”, “O Sole Mio”, “Arriverderci Roma”, “Be Silent Mortal Flesh”, “Edelwiess Forever”, Frank Sinatra’s “New York”, “Agnis Dei”, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus”, “Day is Done”, “Little Boxes”, “Love Walked In”, “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild”, “Jesus is My Friend”, “Tea for Two”, “Ave Maria”,

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Italian Days other than to outline what the book is about.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao, Italia” (p 46).