A Work in Progress

Manderley

When it gets really hot outside, like it has this week and is going to be this weekend, I need something really engrossing to read while I walk on my treadmill.  Something to keep my mind off the sweat pouring off my face as I trudge uphill (I like to challenge myself so I set the machine on an incline) for forty or so what can often be Very Long Minutes.  See, my house is really old.  Although we have air conditioning the upstairs still gets very warm and after a few really hot days in a row all the heat just sits under the roof and refuses to dissipate.  It's at moments like this I dream of really cold January days, which I would normally complain about (and no doubt will do so when the time comes, so I must remember this feeling for later when I can use more reverse psychology).  All this is neither here nor there, though.  What did I choose to take my mind off the heat?  Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca!  And it did the job quite nicely.

When last I left our narrator, which was a couple of weeks ago, she was just getting ready to finally go to Manderley as a (very young) newly married woman.  I'm sure I said it before, and I'm going to say it again.  If you have not read this book and have any inkling to do so, I highly recommend it.  Daphne du Maurier does Gothic so well.  She does creepy, nightmarish scenes so well.  Let me share a little.

"Suddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads.  We were amongst the rhododendrons.  There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery.  The woods had not prepared me for them.  They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had every seen before."

Can't you feel the foreboding of the place?  And now a glimpse of Manderley.

"We were not far from the house now, I saw the drive broaden to the sweep I had expected, and with the blood-red wall still flanking on either side, we turned the last corner, and so came to Manderley.  Yes, there it was, the Manderley I had expected, the Manderley of my picture post-card long ago.  A thing of grace and beauty, exquisite and faultless, lovelier even than I had ever dreamed, built in its hollow of smooth grassland and mossy lawns, the terraces sloping to the gardens, and the gardens to the sea.  As we drove up to the wide stone steps and stopped before the open door, I saw through one of the mullioned windows that the hall was full of people."

A lovely house, but I think the narrator is in for more than she bargained for.  And did you notice this is set by the seaside?  Perfect.  I think this will do very nicely for me, in the heat or in the air conditioning (and preferably the latter!).

Next Up and Other Reading Notes

Since I've finally managed to finish a few books I'm ready to move on to a few new ones.  Next up:

Ever since Oxford University Press was kind enough to send me a few of their newly redesigned World's Classics I've been itching to start reading one of them.  I've also been planning on reading something by one of the Brontes this year, though I had thought it would be Anne rather than Charlotte.  Still, Shirley sounds good and I'm looking forward to it.  Hopefully there will still be time to fit in Anne later this year.  As for Shirley, this is what I have to look forward to:

"Shirley is Charlotte Bronte's only historical novel and her most topical one.  Written at the time of social unrest, it is set during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when economic hardship led to riots in the woollen district of Yorkshire.  A mill-owner, Robert Moore, is determined to introduce new machinery despite fierce opposition from his workers; he ignores their suffering, and puts his own life at risk.  Robert sees marriage to the wealthy Shirley Keeldar as the solution to his difficulties, but he loves his cousin Caroline.  She suffers misery and frustration, and Shirley has her own ideas about the man she will choose to marry.  The friendship between the two women, and the contrast between their situations, is at the heart of this compelling novel, which is suffused with Bronte's deep yearning for an earlier time".

I enjoyed my last nonfiction read so much, I decided to stick with the diary theme and have started reading Lily Koppel's Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life through the Pages of a Lost Journal (more lost diaries!).  This book received a lot of press a few months back, so you probably already know the premise--Koppel saved the diary from a dumpster outside her NYC apartment.  It had been abandoned in a steamer trunk for three quarters of a century.  Koppel tracked down it's owner and The Red Leather Diary is the result.  I've already started this one and I have to say she's grabbed me right from the first page.  I'm looking forward to reading this and I have a feeling I won't be reading at my usual slow nonfiction pace!  You can check out the author's website here.

It's also time that I started reading this book for my postal reading group (if you are in that group and happen to be reading this post, please don't click on the link and spoil the surprise) that I was sent earlier this month.  It's a fairly slim little novel, so there should be plenty of time to read it before mailing at the end of August.  It looks right up my alley, and I can't wait to start it.  A quote on the cover reads, "Unlike anything else in modern English literature"!

This last book is a little iffy as I really should stop at the above three books, but I really want to read Tobias Wolff's Old School, which Cornflower's book group will be discussing soon.  I've heard marvelous things about it.  Thankfully the discussion date was just pushed back to September, so I might just have a chance to read this as well.

You've probably already heard that the 2008 Longlist for the Man Booker Prize was announced yesterday.  I've actually read one of the titles on the list, Tom Rob Smith's Child 44.  It seems sort of an unconventional choice for the Booker, but I loved it when I read it earlier this year.  I'm not familiar with a lot of the authors, and some of the titles don't really appeal to me, but there are a few that have already gone on my wish list. 

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (am waiting for a library copy)

The Girl in the Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (not due out until December in the US)

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (am waiting for a library copy of this one, too)

Northern Clemency by Phillip Hensher (may have to get this one from the UK, as I don't see a listing for a forthcoming US edition at all)

I know that these sorts of prizes can be controversial and how can you choose the best of the best when it comes to books, and likes and dislikes are so subjective, but for me this is a great way to be exposed to new authors and books, so I always look forward to these lists.

Rosamond Pinchot: The Loveliest Woman in the World

Bibi Gaston's The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home is a compelling multigenerational biography of a remarkable though troubled family.

In 1926 when Rosamond Pinchot was only nineteen she was discovered on board the RMS Aquitania by theatrical producer/director Max Reinhardt.  She had been on a shopping trip to France with her mother, preparing for her coming out party later that year when Reinhardt spotted her.  It was serendipitous as she had originally been due to travel on another ship but at the last minute had been diverted to the Cunard Line.  It sounds a little bit like a fairy tale, doesn't it?  To be spotted in a crowd of people by someone who wants to make you a star?

Tall and attractive, Rosamond was exactly the face Reinhardt was looking for to star in his Broadway production of "The Miracle".  The play was a huge success both in the US and abroad and Rosamond became the next "It" girl.  One newspaper named her "the loveliest woman in America".  She was sought after by fans and the press even when she spent a year in California trying to get by on her own skills without the help of her famous name or family connections.  Some fairy tales don't have happy endings, though.

Born into a wealthy and distinguished family that included governors and an uncle who was head of the U.S. Forest Service, she was destined to lead the life of a socialite before she became famous, no doubt ready to enter the marriage market.  She was athletic and extremely close to her father who shared her love for the outdoors.  Her fame came fast and furious, but in the end it was short lived.  In 1938 at the age of thirty-three, Rosamond's life ended in tragedy when she committed suicide.  Estranged from her husband she left behind two young sons and many questions that would take decades to answer, if they could be answered at all.

Bibi Gaston, Rosamond's granddaughter, knew very little about her, only that she had been beautiful and she had killed herself.  When dining one evening with friends, she noticed a framed photo from a magazine on the wall of a beautiful woman advertising the new Hupmobile.  It was Bibi's grandmother Rosamond.  Later when Bibi was given a box full of Rosamond's diaries containing over 1,500 pages of her most intimate thoughts, it would be the beginning of a seven-year odyssey to discover the answers to not only Rosamond's life but her father's as well.  Carrying on Rosamond's legacy, Bibi's father abandoned her mother and their family when she was very young.

"Within the first few moments of opening Rosamond's box, I knew that understanding her life would help me to understand mine.  I couldn't say why at the moment.  Perhaps it was hope.  Hope that her diaries might explain the warring tribes and the hoarding of furniture.  Hope that I would understand all the straightening, the abysmal choice of men, all my moving about.  The Buddhists say that a suicide affects a family for ten generations.  Understanding Rosamond's life and death seemed to me like a prerequisite to hope.  Or maybe it was hope."

Sometimes it seems that self-destructive behavior is passed down from generation to generation.  Bibi was seeking answers to why her own life had followed the same troubled and uncertain trajectory as her relatives.  Each generation seemed to appear to make the same mistakes over and over--failed marriages and empty relationships, estrangement from families and siblings.  Bibi was determined to change the course her ancestors had set forth.

I found this to be an engrossing read about one woman's search for answers to a past no one seemed willing to talk about.  It was also a fascinating look at an era long gone, particularly Hollywood in the 1920s.  Some things never seem to change, however, as even then Rosamond was hounded about her looks and weight and pressured into following fad diets and getting injections.  The people she hob-knobbed with reads like a veritable who's who list of everyone who was anyone--Eleanor Roosevelt, George Cukor, David O. Selznick, Elizabeth Arden, Katherine Hepburn, Dorothy Parker to name just a few. 

Bibi Gaston covers a lot of ground in her biography (too much for me to try and convey to you here).  She weaves the stories of the disparate lives of her family together seamlessly into one whole even though the strings attaching husbands to wives and parents to children were broken long before she ever knew it.  There were parts that were heartbreaking to read, particularly when she talks about her reconciliation with her father and of course the subsequent search for who her grandmother was.  She liberally sprinkles the narrative with quotes from letters and Rosamond's diaries, though to be honest I wouldn't have minded hearing Rosamond's voice a bit more.  Still, I found it to be well written and highly readable.

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility

While I think Persuasion still ranks as my favorite Jane Austen novel (out of the four I've now read), Sense and Sensibility turned out to be a far more engrossing and entertaining read than I thought when I first started it.  She wrote it when she was just nineteen (a year before Pride and Prejudice) and called it Elinor and Marianne.  At twenty-two she reworked it into Sense and Sensibility.  It was finally published when she was thirty-six.  In the introduction to my edition David Lodge writes:

"Like most first novels, it lays out what will be its author's lasting preoccupations: the 'three or four families in a country village' (which Austen told her niece in an oft-quoted letter, was 'the very thing to work on').  The interlocking anxieties over marriages, estates, and ecclesiastical 'livings'.  The secrets, deceptions, and self-deceptions that take several hundred pages to straighten out--to the extent that they get straightened out.  The radical skepticism about human knowledge, human communication, and human possibility that informs almost every scene right up to the sort-of-happy ending.  And the distinctive characters--the negligent or overindulgent parents, the bifurcating siblings (smart sister, beautiful sister; serious brother, coxcomb brother), the charming , corrupted libertines.  Unlike most first novels, though, Sense and Sensibility doesn't need our indulgence.  It's good to go."

You're probably already familiar with the story?  Upon the death of their father the three Dashwood sisters and their mother are thrown into a life of genteel poverty after a privileged life.  One of my favorite scenes, if only because it shows Austen at her satirical best, is when John Dashwood, the elder half-brother by an earlier marriage, is talked out of providing any sort of financial assistance by his greedy and insipid wife, Fanny.  At first he mentions what would be a very agreeable sum that he would give to the girls, as he did promise his father he would look after the rest of the family.  By the time Fanny works him over he isn't even willing to give them the family china!  Classic Jane Austen.  The Dashwoods must move to a much more realistic situation.  They go from a grand manor house to a small cottage. 

Life isn't all bad though.  Fanny's brother Edward turns out to be nothing like his sister.  As a matter of fact he and Elinor are so much alike as to make a perfect couple, being both reasonable and sensible individuals.  Fanny frowns upon this of course and wastes no time letting Mrs. Dashwood know he's destined for great things, which don't include Elinor, as she has neither the money nor the title to make such an advantageous match.  Elinor still hopes.

While Elinor is levelheaded and thinks before she acts, her younger sister Marianne is guided by her emotions.  She's a passionate girl and when she's rescued from a fall by a handsome young man, it's not surprising she falls for him.  She falls for him hard when she discovers his love for music and literature she's done for--there is no other man for her.  The road to happiness is never an easy one, and it won't be for either Elinor or Marianne.  If you've not read the book, I don't want to give anymore of the plot away, and if you have you already know how things work out.

This is a wonderful novel--everything you'd expect from Jane Austen, characters with depth, good, bad or otherwise, witty dialogue, and a clear eye trained on human foibles and short comings.  And yes, a happy ending included.  I've watched the first of three parts of the recent BBC adaptation.  To my untrained eye I thought it was well done (though I still have the other two parts to watch--hopefully this week).  I may follow that up with the Emma Thompson version, too, which I think I have squirreled away somewhere.

I've not forgotten about my Jane Austen project.  I wrote about Northanger Abbey earlier this year.  And I plan on rereading Pride and Prejudice next.  Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in the rest of her novels in this year and maybe a biography as well.         

A Mishmash of Short Stories

Although I've been very good about reading a short story every weekend, I've not really gotten out of my old habit of not picking up a short story anthology to read for pleasure.  I still choose a novel when I grab for a book.  I've managed to accumulate a small pile of short story collections without making any real progress in any of them.  I thought this weekend I should revisit a few books I've started this year (and am determined to finish before the year's out).

I have read several stories from Wave Me Goodbye: Stories from the Second World War edited by Anne Boston.  I first mentioned it here.  The stories are presented chronologically according to the events they describe, so I've been reading them in order.  Today I read Rose Macaulay's "Miss Anstruther's Letters".  She was asked to write a story for an anthology by British authors for an American audience after the US entered the war, and the story is autobiographical in nature.

"The war years were deeply troubled for her personally.  In 1939 her married lover was seriously injured in a car crash while she was driving.  'Miss Anstruther's Letters' was written when she was dying of cancer in 1942, shortly after her flat and all her possessions were destroyed in an air raid.  She wrote few short stories; this outstanding exception, which she described as 'unoriginal, but veracious (mainly)', was written at the request of Storm Jameson for London Calling."

In the story, Miss Anstruther's home has been hit by an incendiary bomb.  "Her life had been cut in two on the night of 10 May 1941, so that she now felt herself a ghost, without attachments or habitation, neither of which she any longer desired".  Already bereaved by the loss of her lover, she now loses her home as well.  What she laments the most is that in the madness of the moment she returned to her apartment to grab what she could and when it's too late she realizes what she took are all possessions without any value, and when she tries to enter her apartment a second time even those things are stolen.  What she valued most and lost were the letters her lover had sent her over a span of twenty years.  She had been waiting to read them again until the pain she felt from his death was less sharp, and now they're gone.  This was another excellent story in an excellent collection.

Many of the stories in Rudyard Kipling's Selected Stories are very short.  So far the stories I've read have all dealt with Anglo-Indian life and I'm curious to see what other subject matter Kipling writes about.  In "The Story of Muhammad Din" Muhammad Din is the son of the narrator's khitmatgar or 'table servant'.  He's a young boy, "a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt, which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach" who has his eye on a polo-ball that belongs to the narrator.  An unlikely friendship begins when the narrator gives the boy the polo-ball.  Muhammad Din becomes a bit of a fixture in the house.

"From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din.  Never again did he into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the garden, we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was confined to 'Talaam, Tahib' from his side, and 'Salaam, Muhammad Din' from mine.  Daily on my return from the office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly."

It's a bittersweet story, however, as one day Muhammad Din is not there to greet him, and instead the narrator watches as the boy's father take the small body to the burying ground.  He had died of a fever.  I wasn't sure how I would react to Kipling's stories, but so far I've really enjoyed them, sad though they've been so far.

I also started reading another story in Susan Vreeland's Life Studies.  I wrote about the first story in the collection here.  Vreeland's stories are a bit longer than the rest I've read today (I've actually read more than I'm writing about), so I didn't quite finish it.  I'm working on a story called "Cradle Song" about Berthe Morisot.  A the center of each story is a painting.  This story is a fictional account of the genesis of Morisot's Summer Day.  The story isn't told from the perspective of the artist but of Morisot's young, provincial nurse caring the the artist's baby, Julie.  Sylvie's own newborn son is still in the country with her mother and sister, while she tries to earn what money she can in Paris to send home. 

I'm really enjoying each of these collections of stories.  When I do pick them up I want to keep reading.  It's just a matter of getting into the habit of picking up short stories more often than I do.        

A Case of Stitching Start-i-tis

I'm sure I've mentioned before finishing Drawn Thread's Toccata #1.  I've finally managed to start Toccata #2.  I had planned on starting this at the beginning of the year, but better late than never.

The design is made of up various motifs as as well as an alphabet and numbers.  I seem to be more inclined to pick up and work on a project like this than one with just straightforward cross stitch. 

Case in point...I've not made much progress on this one, since last time I showed you a month ago.  A few more letters and nothing more.

That doesn't stop me from pulling out two more projects that I'm contemplating starting.  Both are by the same designer of my Toccatas, Drawn Thread.  As you can see both are more motifs.  The left is called "Souvenir" and it actually consists of a few set motifs and letters, but for the rest of the designs you are given options.  You can choose the motifs to personalize the design and you use your own buttons and embellishments.  I have the supplies for this and might start it this weekend.  The design on the right is called "Random Thoughts".  I want to stitch it as well, but I don't have the fabric yet.  I also won't finish it using the hanger as shown in the chart photo.

Then today when I was out doing errands I stopped to look at magazines in the supermarket.  I love magazines, but I rarely buy them.  I splurged today and bought a cooking magazine (I hate cooking, but I like cookbooks and cooking magazines...go figure), the latest Victoria magazine and a stitching magazine.  I was drawn by this one chart by a designer called Mirabilia.  I love her designs, but I've never stitched them.  Although it is plain old cross stitch, they are actually sort of hard--so many color changes and blending of colors and half and quarter stitches, which always confuse me.  I frame some of my work, but I'm not sure where I would put a design like this.  Still, I couldn't pass up a magazine with this design, which would cost far more if I were to buy it in chart format. 

Can you see what I'll be busy doing?  Stitching and watching Sense and Sensibility.  And I'm close to finishing a book, and I have lots of short stories to read...     

Six Things about Me (the book version)

I'm ready for the weekend and hoping to finish a book (or maybe two), so I think a meme is in order about now (easy to answer and gives me more reading time).  I'm going to nab Susan's version of the 'Six Things About Me' meme, but put a bookish spin on it, too.

1. I Hope I'm not the only one who does this, and I probably shouldn't even admit to it, but I have a big metal tin of bookmarks, and when I'm starting a new book I carefully choose a bookmark that suits the book.  I guess it's like wanting to color coordinate your clothes, which I also do.  I need to be more adventuresome.
2. When I was younger, and especially when I worked in a bookstore I would never lower myself to buy a used book.  They had to be crisp and clean and new.  Used books were only for when a title was out of print.  I have no such qualms anymore and it seems almost to be the reverse--I buy more used books than new.  In any case I rarely pay full price for a book.
3. I can't say the same for library books.  I'm not fond of heavily read books, which is why I try and get in line early for the new titles.  Used is fine, but battered and beaten up is not.  Library books withstand all sorts of indignities--food (well, let's just assume it's food) spattered all over the place, water stained pages, crumpled pages, and even the odd hair or two.  I'd rather not read a book filled with someone else's DNA.  Sorry, that's pretty gross, but you get the idea.  Thankfully the vast majority of books are not like that.
4. Although I'll pass on a book littered with someone's DNA, I'm intrigued when I buy a used book that has ephemera in it--notes, ticket stubs, receipts or other loose papers that give me some hint to the journey the book has been on. 
5. I'm only just coming around to turning down corners of my own books, or underlining (usually only the introductions or afterwords). I like using those little post-it notes darts to remember passages, but I never seem to have them handy when I need them.  I never use a highlighter though.  I only use a pencil.
6. I'm an easy-going and generally forgiving reader.  I like most things I read (at least to some degree). If I don't like a book I will usually set it aside and won't bother talking or writing about it.  I tend to be more critical of a work that is considered a classic or an award winner, and try and read those more carefully.  If I can escape into a book and be carried away, I'm usually pretty happy, however.  I don't quite know what I would do if I didn't have access to books and never understand people who say they're bored (when they could be reading a book)!    

A Month by the Sea: A Thursday Thirteen

I've been having this recurring fantasy of traveling to the seaside (not tropical, however, somewhere more temperate) and spending a month living in a little house all by myself with just a big pile of books and the sound of the surf to keep me company.  Unfortunately it's just going to have to remain a fantasy, but I know there is a book out there (lots probably) that is as close to wish fulfillment as I'm going to get.

In the past I've come up with a Seafaring Tales list, but this time I'm in the mood to stay firmly grounded on land, just close to the sea.  I've read most of these books, and the rest are on my TBR pile.  They are partially or wholly set in a seaside town.

1. The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim - My ultimate sunny, seaside book.
2. The Sleeping Beauty, Elizabeth Taylor
3. Lighthousekeeping, Jeanette Winterson
4. Frenchman's Creek and Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier
5. Sea Glass, Anita Shreve
6. The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald
7. The Season of Open Water and Moon Tide, Dawn Clifton Tripp - I really like her work and wish she would write more.
8. The Lighthouse, P.D. James
9. Persuasion, Jane Austen
10. The Country of Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett
11. Sylvia's Lovers, Elizabeth Gaskell
12. Snow Island, Katherine Towler
13. The Ripening Seed, Colette

I'm always happy to take suggestions.  I'm sure there are many books set in coastal towns.  If you have a favorite please share.

More Library Temptations

I've succumbed to yet more bookish temptation.  I didn't even try to resist actually.  I knew I would be interested in S.J. Bolton's Sacrifice and I started reading the moment I brought the book home from the library.  How could I resist the description, "a bone-chilling and spell-binding debut that will grip readers from the beginning to the startling end"?  I just couldn't.  The story is set on the "rocky, windswept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from the northeastern tip of Scotland".  I don't know about anyone else but I tend to search out books with a setting in mind and this one is a perfect sort of setting for me.  Of course when I finish it may not be so appealing if the story does indeed have a startling ending. 

The book begins with Tora Hamilton burying her beloved and very dead horse Jamie.  As she digs into the peaty ground her mini-excavator catches on something and she stops to investigate.  Whatever it is, it's wrapped in linen, and though she knows she should call the police ('crime scene' flashes across her mind) she cuts away linen to reveal a human foot.  A woman's foot.  Initially she and everyone else thinks the remains are those of a bog body centuries old, but it's not long before its decided the remains were buried far more recently.  Tora is an obstetrician and she'll get pulled into the mystery when her expertise is required during the post-mortem.  The story reminds me a bit of Erin Hart's mysteries, which are set in Ireland and feature a forensic pathologist.  Bolton doesn't hold anything back, right from the start she grabs you, and even her (or Tora's really) description of the process of a decaying body is scarily fascinating (I wouldn't have thought so when I was younger).  The story is also based on local folklore and I'm looking forward to reading this one!

I brought home a couple of other books as well. 

Alexia's Secrets by Una-Mary Parker.  This is published by Severn House Publishers, which seems to put out a lot of historical fiction.  I'm wondering if they deal primarily with libraries, as my library has a fair amount of their backlist, and I've never seen these titles in my local bookstore.  I've got a couple of their titles at home now, both appear to be historical romances set in the interwar period in England.  They sound good, though I'm not familiar with the authors, so I don't know what the writing will be like.  Has anyone read anything by this publisher?   

An Expert in Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery by Nicola Upson.  I've heard good things about this mystery.  It's set in 1930s London featuring a real-life Josephine Tey solving a fictional murder.

Well, I did say I wanted to read more mysteries this year, though a lot of what I'm reading seems to be of the thriller-ish type.  I seem to getting in my quota of this type of book lately.

I also grabbed the August issue of BookPage.  I'll be getting in line for these:

A Manuscript of Ashes by Antonio Munoz Molina.  This has been translated by Edith Grossman.  I've noticed lately there seem to be more translated works from Spanish popping up, which is a good thing.  BookPages says, "Munoz Molina's novel is a dense, at times devilishly complex tale that yields its secrets slowly, all the way up to the astonishing final pages.  It's a challenging metafictional work that demands close reading, but one that in the end will gratify those willing to make the commitment".

The Seamstress of Hollywood by Erin McGraw.  "McGraw has taken the skeleton of her own grandmother's story and turned it into a frant and engaging depiction of one young woman's attempt to reinvent herself".

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.  "Part historical novel, part romance, part mystery".  The reviewer said if you're going to read just one book this summer, this should be it. 

The Glimmer Palace by Beatrice Colin.  This is set during the heyday of the Weimar Republic.

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple.  "The first book to portray one of the most remarkable friendships in American letters, that of Emily Dickinson—recluse, poet—and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, literary figure, active abolitionist."

A Chronic Case of Start-i-tis

I've got this very bad habit of wanting to start reading new books even when I've not yet finished reading something I've been working on (even when I am really enjoying what I'm reading).  I'm also really good at rationalizing this desire.  In the case of Georges Simenon's Bar on the Seine my excuse is it's a Blog a Penguin Classic book.  They give you six weeks to read the book and then report back your thoughts on the title that was randomly selected.  I lucked out, as not only is the Simenon a slim little paperback, but I've wanted to read him for some time now.  He seems like an important mystery writer and I'd like to read broadly in the genre, and especially all the 'must-read' authors.  My copy is from the UK, and it looks like the book on the left.  The US version, on the right, is much more noir-ish looking.  At first I preferred the US cover and was disappointed to get the UK edition, but I have to say it's growing on me.  It's a nice compact size and fits easily in the hand.

Simenon wrote something like 70 books over the course of his long writing career.  I'm not at all familiar with Inspector Maigret.  Has anyone read any of his mysteries?  What I do know--he is a French detective.  He is married, and in this novel, which is set in Paris in the hot summer month of July (not sure of the year, perhaps the 30s?), Madame Maigret has traveled to Alsace for her yearly visit to her sister.  She expects Maigret to follow, but won't be surprised when he doesn't show up at the station.  He seems to be a bit of a workaholic.  I'm hoping that as I read more, his character will fill out.  I like having a strong visual image of my protagonist, but I realize I'm not starting with the first Maigret mystery and therefore might be missing out on his back story.  I'll save plot descriptions for later, but I have fallen into this story very easily and am curious to know more and keep reading.  I love the feeling of place I am getting from this novel.  I want to travel to Paris and drink Pernod, though I don't think I'd like the taste (but doesn't it sound very exotic?).

I finally decided to start reading Megan Chance's The Spiritualist.  Mostly it was a matter of just picking it up and reading a few pages and it caught my attention, so I'm willing to keep going.  Besides the book is set in the upstairs/downstairs world of 1850s New York City, and there are supposed to be elements of the occult and supernatural in the story as well.  Why does everything sound so tempting right now?  To make matters worse I stopped by the library today to pick up a few more holds.  And I have several other miscellaneous books sitting in a little pile by my bed that I've been contemplating starting.  Don't be surprised is something else new pops up here in the next few days. The only cure for this chronic condition is finishing a book every now and then, which I'd really like to do sometime soon.  I'm working on it anyway.