A Work in Progress

Teaser Tuesday

Okay, so yesterday I said I might be posting a little less frequently, and here I am posting already!  But I realized I could share a "Tuesday Teaser", which would be quick, painless and easy. Besides I'm really enjoying The Alchemy of Paint, which I recently mentioned by Spike Bucklow and am now reading in earnest.  It's a book I'll be reading slowly as there is so much information to absorb.  I was afraid it would be on the esoteric side, but it's quite fascinating and very accessible.  Who would have thought a book on colors could involve so many things?  History, politics, science, nature, religion, art and even literature.  There is so much that's of interest that I'd like to pass on, but I'll start with this:

"We might know little or nothing about the chemicals that colour our cars, clothes, cosmetics or even our food, but this state of affairs is quite recent.  Consumers in the middle ages knew where their colours came from and what they meant.  Whether of animal, vegetable, or artificial origin, colours had stories to tell that touched all members of society.  For millennia, colour was not just another variation in manufactured  products.  It was profoundly meaningful.  Each colour had numerous values associated with it, and those values were coherant, stable and widely known."   

And this:

"Painters undoubtedly valued colours.  But they were also prescribed by physicians and taken by patients.  They paid rent for farmers and fishermen, paid taxes for entire nations and were the spoils of war."

I was reading this on the bus home from work today and a man leaned over and asked if my book was really all about 'paint'?  I nodded yes, and he looked a little flabbergasted.  It was nearly my stop so I didn't have a chance to tell him it wasn't the sort of paint that comes in a Sherwin-Williams can!  If he only knew what was in my book!

Book Notes: Peaks and Valleys

My reading lately has been all over the place.  I've been neglectful of some books and spending lots of time with others.  I'm making steady progress in some and in others not so much.  I have a roundabout way of reading and I know I take on more than I should, so my reading tends to go something like peaks and valleys.  I'll either have several at once finished and ready to write about, or, like now I'll be in the middle of a valley with no end in sight.  Add this to the fact that I'm not feeling terribly inspired at the moment, so my posting this coming week (and maybe beyond) may be a bit on the spartan side.  I'm feeling a bit overextended and unable to keep up, so I'll post as often as I can, and if it's not every day, please don't be concerned.

So, what am I reading you ask?

I'm really in the mood for mysteries, so along with the Tallis book, I decided a cozy was what I'm in need of.  It's been ages since I've read any of Carola Dunn's books.  There are about eighteen books featuring the honorable Daisy Dalrymple, but I'm only up to book seven, Dead in the Water.  It's 1923 and Daisy is off to Henley-on-the-Thames to write about the Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine.  She'll get involved in the murder investigation of one of the young rowers.  If you've never read any of Carola Dunn's books, they're very light, entertaining cozies with lots of period details and likeable characters.

I've been working on Elaine Dundy's The Old Man and Me for a while now.  I wasn't sure at first what I thought of it and had a hard time getting into the story, but all of a sudden it's just grabbed me.  It took a while to make sense of what was going on, but it's finally coming together.  American Honey Flood is off to London's Soho scene.  It's all very hip and of the times.  I'll definitely be writing about this one later.

Sarah Waters's The Night Watch has been a gripping read.  It's set during WWII and has an odd construction--it moves backwards in time.  It begins in 1947 where you meet an interesting cast of characters who the more you read about the more you see their lives are intertwined.  I've just started the second part of the book, which moves back to 1944.  I'm curious to see how she works the story.  I keep thinking that I've already read the ending--at least I have an idea how the characters will end up, so it feels a little odd, though I am thoroughly enjoying the story.    

I've also been reading a book by Thad Carhart called Across the Endless River, which is a historical novel.  It's begins in America in 1805 and follows the adventures of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, who was the son of Sacagawea and a French trader.  It's an interesting perspective--that of a 'mixed-blood'  young man who travels to Europe, so there's lots about identity and being of two different worlds yet perhaps never fully of either.  So far I'm really enjoying this.

If nothing else I've been marking interesting passages, so perhaps I'll share as I read!

Daphne du Maurier's "Split Second"

If I didn't set the task of writing about the short stories that I'm reading, I probably wouldn't get around to reading them. That said I enjoy them when I do, but I find it hard to write about them in a way that's interesting without giving the plot away!  This week's story from the NYRB Collection is a time slip story, though in the end it turns out to be something more.  I'm going to give a brief description that will give away a bit of the plot, but I won't share the twist at the end (a little warning in case you want to read this one).  

Mrs. Ellis is a fastidious woman, one who likes order and organization.  I might note that this is a woman who does not think outside the box.  A widow of two years, she keeps a respectable home with one maidservant, about whom she likes to complain. 

"Mrs. Ellis was methodical and tidy.  Unanswered letters, unpaid bills, the litter and rummage of a slovenly writing-desk were things that she abhorred.  Today, more than usual, she was in what her late husband called her 'clearing' mood; it remained with her throughout breakfast and lasted the whole morning.  Besides, it was the first of the month, and as she ripped off the page of her daily calendar and saw the bright clean 1 staring at her, it seemed to symbolise a new start to her day."

Most important in her life is her daughter, Susan, who is away at boarding school.  Mrs. Ellis would love it if Susan would stay at home and attend a local day school, but Susan likes being with her friends all the time and doing exciting things, things she wouldn't get to do at home.  So it's just Mrs. Ellis and Grace Jackson her maid.  After such a busy morning, Mrs. Ellis decides a walk on the heath is just the thing to clear her mind and relax her.  When she returns home, however, what she finds will make her anxious and worried.  Unable to open her door, the lock seems jammed, she calls down to Grace to let her in and is met by a rather slovenly man hanging out her kitchen window.  When she's let into the house she discovers a group of strangers seem to have taken up residence and removed all her furniture and knickknacks.  What springs to mind is that a gang of thieves have broken and are in the process of robbing her.    

It's obvious something weird is going on.  And things get weirder after she calls the police.  Rather than carting off the suspected thieves, she's the one brought round to the police station.  The detectives and the doctors think she's possibly suffering from amnesia.  While she can describe her neighborhood to a T, nothing quite matches up as neither she nor any of the people she knows seem to appear in the telephone directory.  And these detectives keep referring to things and events she doesn't quite understand.  Ration books and bombs falling.  She seemed to have left her house one day in 1932 and returned to it twenty years later all in the space of an hour.

The introductions sums up perfectly what happens to Mrs. Ellis:

"Her appalling sense of dislocation is handled with empathy, no small accomplishment on du Maurier's part, for she made the woman quite insufferable.  She foregrounds the intense distress the woman's predicament arouses, and once again supplies an elegant closure to this subtle tale of psychological horror."

This is another long story--over fifty pages, in which du Maurier slowly works her way up to the surprising denouement.  Du Maurier never rushes her stories, she slowly builds them with careful attention to detail which winds up the tension that breaks at the last shocking moment.

Next week: "Kiss Me Again, Stranger". 

A Few Book Notes

I mentioned that I have a growing collection of books about color, and I had planned to share the titles in a "Thursday thirteen" post, but then I discovered I don't actually have that many.  I still want to share the titles that I do have, though a few of them were already mentioned in the comment area of that post.  Let me know if I'm missing something good (I did say this is a growing collection)!

The Alchemy of Paint, Spike Bucklow - My newest acquisition and what started this discussion.

The Primary Colors, Alexander Theroux

The Secondary Colors, Alexander Theroux - Both these books are collections of essays.

Colors: The Story of Dyes & Pigments, Ber Francois - Great overview, sadly out of print.

Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky, Ellen Meloy

A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Conquest for the Color of Desire, Amy Butler Greenfield - Excellent book, as much a history lesson as a meditation on the color itself.  A definite book to reread.

Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay - I started this and then got distracted, but I can see from the number of times it was recommended that I need to pull it out to read soon.

And on my wishlist:

Blue: The History of a Color, Michel Pastoureau

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Cahnged the World, Simon Garfield

Black: The History of a Color, Michel Pastoureau

Seven Deadly Colours: The Genius of Nature's Palette and How it Eluded Darwin, Andrew Parker

One more thing--a link to check out.  I just recently discovered a new (to me anyway) small publisher, Maia Press.  A book I recently bought turned out to be published by them, so I had to go and investigate.  They seem to focus on original fiction, and works in translation.  They have lots of titles I'd love to try, so I might have to place a little order soon.  They are a UK publisher, however, and Amazon doesn't seem to carry their titles unfortunately.  Of course that's a problem easily solvable.

Happy reading everyone! 

Library Loot Redux

It's back to library borrowing in earnest again.  I had slowed down over the summer to try and 'catch up' on things, but I've come to the realization I'll never really catch up, so I might as well explore some new and interesting books I've come across on the new books list in my library's catalog.  My last visit yielded a nice stack, though I have a feeling I'll only get to a couple of them.  My finds:

Dreaming in French, by Megan McAndrew -- Too hard to try and summarize this one, but it's set in Paris and New York in the 1970s and 80s.  One reviewer called it a combination comedy of manners and coming of age tale.

Moonlight in Odessa, by Janet Skeslien Charles -- The protagonist in this novel works for matchmaking agency that pairs American men with "desperate Odessan" women.  It's supposed to be a "darkly funny look at marriage". 

Day After Night, by Anita Diamant -- I've already started this one as I won't be able to renew it and the line is too long so I won't want to go to the end of the line if I have to return it unread!  Set in 1945 it's about prisoners/"illegal immigrants" in the Atlit internment camp in Palestine.  The story is told from the perspective of four different women.  So far it seems interesting.

Past Imperfect, by Julian Fellowes -- Not sure about this one.  Has anyone read it?  I believe this is a satire of the English upper class.  I've heard good things about his earlier book, Snobs, which I have on my bookpiles. 

Martha Stewart's Cupcakes, by Martha Stewart (of course) -- Surely no explanation necessary for this one!  The cover shows the most scrumptious looking chocolate cupcake with mounds of yummy frosting.  Maybe I'll have to do some baking this weekend?

It's nice to get back to the library!

Breathe the Sky by Chandra Prasad

I'm more familiar with the death of Amelia Earhart and the mysterious circumstances surrounding it than I am with her life.  That's probably just as well as it made Chandra Prasad's Breathe the Sky an all the more exciting read having few preconceived notions in my mind about the famous Amelia Earhart.  This is perhaps not the best or right word to describe the novel, but it felt very impressionistic to me.  Not meant to be biographical or historical, Prasad calls her story a "creative rendering".  It's very  much a study of the woman Amelia Earhart was, her inner feelings and motivations.  Prasad doesn't set out to chronicle her life, but she does touch on certain specific moments painting a portrait of her.  Ultimately the novel focuses on her final doomed flight, her attempt to circumnavigate the globe flying east to west.

Amelia Earhart was a woman driven by her desires.  Not content with simply being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic she wanted to take the controls herself.  Despite being only a passenger, her first transatlantic flight made her a star.  Feted by the press, she enjoyed a celebrity status and hobnobbed with the likes of the Roosevelts, as in the President and Eleanor.  Extremely photogenic she was heavily marketed to the public and they couldn't get enough of her.  

"She gave lectures that made seasoned speechwriters green.  With efficient panache, she recycled what she said for the weeklies.  Emblazoned with her image, newspapers, books, and magazines sold themselves.  She upped her appearance fees, commanding as much as movie stars, sometimes more, for an hour's worth of appetizers and chitchat."

While writing her first book about her experiences crossing the Atlantic she met G.P. Putnam of the publishing family whom she would later marry, though not without significant hesitation.  She turned down his marriage proposals at least six times.  The feeling is that their marriage was based more on mutual respect than any sort of deep passion.  While Putnam was a driving force behind maintaining Amelia's status, she continually pushed herself even further.  Flying wasn't just a hobby for Amelia, it was who she was and what she did.  Although G.P. tried to convince her she had nothing to prove, she could never just sit back and rest, and her zeal was detrimental to her health.  Stress and worry caused spots to appear on her tongue and her hair would fall out in clumps, but nothing stopped her.

"She wants to be the one who creates art, change, beauty, not the one who pensively observes it.  The challenges dangle all around her: irresistibly juicy, ripe, heavy with their own promise.  Before anyone else, she yearns to pick them off."     

Amelia seemed to be pulled in many different directions.  While she loved flying and was ambitious, she didn't take her responsibilities, particularly to her family, lightly.  Criss-crossing the United States, she spoke extensively to public audiences to raise money, which she used in part to help support her mother and sister.  She eventually took a position with Purdue University as a mentor to the young female students, which enabled G.P. to wrangle enough financial support, in the form of a plane, for Amelia's 1937 world flight. 

Much of the story concentrates on that final punishing flight.  Amelia was assisted by a navigator, Fred Noonan, but she was at the controls.  Prasad methodically recreates each leg of the flight from continent to continent with a view to what Amelia's arduous journey must have been like.  I'd always had an idea that flying was glamorous, but it seemed as much a dirty, fearful business as it must have been exhilarating.  Sitting hour upon hour in what must have been a body numbing position in a cramped space, holding onto shaky controls, having to deal with storms of monsoon proportions and inhospitable conditions when she finally could put down for refueling and maintenance.  At times treated as an honored guest and other times having to catch a few winks of sleep on hard, dirt floors.  And remember this is 1937, so landing in third world countries often meant substandard conditions and unfriendly natives.  And there was a constant fear of being unable to land on difficult terrain at all.  This was a venture only for the brave and bold, I think, as it hadn't been done before.

Breathe the Sky is an interesting amalgamation of parts, as much a character study as an adventure story.  The novel is hard to put down once Amelia is in the air even though the reader already knows the tragic outcome.  That didn't stop me from hoping things would turn out differently...happily.  Amelia Earhart was a complex woman, independent and even in her day iconic.  But I got the feeling her choices caused her a certain amount of sadness, too.  The loneliness she felt was palpable, and how could it not be having achieved so much so quickly and always needing to stay on the top of her game.

I absolutely adored Chandra Prasad's earlier novel On Borrowed Wings.  It would be unfair to compare the two books, however, as the stories are so different, both in content and form.  While I felt a certain affinity for Adele in On Borrowed Wings, I always felt at arms length with Amelia, which is not to say I didn't feel admiration and sympathy for her.  Breathe the Sky is a very compelling read, and once again Prasad writes with an elegant simplicity.  It was hard not to get caught up in Amelia's life and the more I read the more I wanted to know about her.  Prasad portrays a very human woman behind the myth.  Interestingly Amelia Earhart made a cameo appearance in On Borrowed Wings, and a young admirer of Amelia's that was befriended by Adele turns up in Breathe the Sky. 

The timing for reading this book couldn't be better.  Now that my interest in Amelia has been piqued, I can follow up with not one but two new biographies:The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Mary Lovell (actually this one seems to be a reprint on closer inspection) and Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It by Susan Wels.  And a very convincing Hilary Swank (if you look at some of the movie stills, she's the spitting image of Amelia Earhart) stars in Amelia, which is due to be released next month.  

I'll leave you with one more quote from the book, which is the perfect image of Amelia Earhart:

"Why did she do it: that's what they really want to know.  She's tried to discern the lure of the air before.  It's the lure of beauty, of course, but it's more than that.  It's beyond words, beyond grasp, too wide and sacred to get her arms around.  She flies because it is her religion, her tonic, because the experience is wretched and beautiful both.  It's the end of the human experience and the beginning of what she imagines must be immortality.  And yet, this explanation is not nearly enough, and it seems unjust and dishonest to offer it."

"Why do you fly, they want to know, from Denmark to South Dakota.  Simply, why?

"She stalls, coming up with this--a blithe, whimsical line.  'I do it for the fun of it'."

Books and Libraries

I came across two interesting  articles to share with you. 

I find this one extremely disturbing.

And the discussion this blog post generated was interesting.  If not necessarily encouraging at least it's moving in the right direction.

Seeing Colors

I have a growing collection of books all about color.  Books about one color, books on how colors are made, books about the history of color, but I've recently come across a new book about color from an entirely different perspective, The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages by Spike Bucklow.  I'm hoping it's not too esoteric as it's written by someone who started out as a chemist with a very scientific background but has ended up as a conservator and teaches conservation science.  The author is going to look at color from a Medieval perspective.  I expect to learn about color, but in a way I hadn't thought of before.  Some of the recipes that Medieval artists were familiar with survived since before the time of Christ.  Imagine that, since color today is produced in a laboratory. 

I've only just started reading, but this is what I have to look forward to:

"This book introduces dyes, pigments and metals as items of importance outside the artists' workshops and then explores a few from the point of view of the artists who used them, starting with the story of a stone from beyond the center of the earth.  It looks at a chemical marriage that echoes a mystic marriage, stories about the influence of heaven, mortal combats and the quest for gold.  It will explain how color was 'read' in the middle ages, returning to materials to look at the hidden meaning of the artists' version of the Philosophers' Stone.  Following the wisdom of the ancients, the penultimate chapter explores the potentially life-changing secret that artists and alchemists saw hidden in gold."

It sounds a bit like a great adventure story, doesn't it?  I have a feeling that this is going to be about so much more than just color, but perhaps about the Medieval mindset?  I'm curious to learn about colors like dragon's blood, ultramarine and vermilion.  In any case the author writes that the first half of the book is a cookbook (he gives the recipes for the colors) and the second half looks at "how colors nourish the soul", since I expect for the Medieval mind color was more than something you simply slapped on a canvas. 

My track record for nonfiction books has been pretty spotty lately, so bear with me if I post on this one frequently.  If I know I'm going to write about a book, I tend to apply myself a little better (at least with nonfiction) than if I am only flitting from book to book (those books nearly always being novels!).

I might even start looking through other books I have on color to see which have been read and which are still waiting to be explored (like this one).

Sophia's Secret by Susanna Kearsley

It's a pity that Susanna Kearsley's novels aren't more readily available here in the US.  Kearsley is a Canadian author, who I was introduced to via Cornflower (one of my reliable sources for good reads).  It's strange to think I have to order Kearsley's books all the way from the UK when we're neighbors with Canada, but alas, that's the weird world of publishing for you.  If you're looking for a well written, engaging historical novel with a dash of romance, look no further, Sophia's Secret is the book for you.  Kearsley dips into Scottish history in this novel. 

I do think the cover illustration is a bit misleading however.  The book seems to have been retitled and rejacketed in its paperback form.  It was originally published as The Winter Sea, which is appropriate to the story.  Here it all looks a bit menacing, which wasn't necessarily the feel I got from the story, though there is indeed a certain amount of page turning suspense to it. 

There are two parallel plotlines in Sophia's Secret, which are cleverly told.  This is a story within a story, both set in Scotland but one in the present day and one in 1708.  Carrie McClelland is a successful author who travels to Cruden Bay to research her latest book, which is based on one of her own ancestors, Sophia Paterson.  When Carrie first sees Slains Castle she feels an instant connection to her ancestor and the story she's writing takes on a life of its own.  Although now in ruins, a bustling 18th century Slains Castle was once the seat of the Earl of Eroll who took part in the 1708 plot to bring King James VIII back to the Scottish throne.  Slains provides both inspiration for Carrie's novel and the setting for Sophia's adventures.

"I couldn't say how far away I was when I first saw the ruined castle on the cliffs, a line of jagged darkness set against a cloud-filled sky, but from the moment I first saw it I was captivated, driving slightly faster in the hope I'd reach it sooner, paying no attention to the clustered houses I was driving past, and feeling disappointment when the road curved sharply off again, away from it.  But then, beyond the tangle of a wood, the road curved back again, and there it was: a long dark ruin, sharp against the snowbound fields that stretched forbiddingly between the cliff's edge and the road."   

Sophia ends up at Slains, the Erolls being distant relations, after the death of her family, where she gets caught up in royal intrigues.  With Queen Anne on the throne and a newly united England and Scotland, being a Jacobite is a dangerous thing.  She must learn how to converse with the many visitors, not all of them friendly to the cause, without giving away any secrets. 

The stories flip back and forth, but as Carrie begins writing her story Sophia takes over the action making things feel very organic, and the lines between the two stories is sometimes blurred, and your find yourself not realizing you've switched from one period to the next.  Often with two storylines one overtakes the other, but these two were so intertwined they flowed nicely.  Kearlsey introduces the idea of genetic memory into the story to explain Carrie's abilities to draw on the past so flawlessly without having to depend on any sort of paranormal device, which can often feel clunky and unrealistic.  Kearsley has also done her homework as the historical aspect of the story is carefully detailed.  You can see photos of the real Slains Castle here.  All I can say is--What a view!  It must have been something in its day.   I've already got Mariana on hand to read very soon.

One more small note: You can check out the author's website here.  She notes that The Winter Sea is going to be published in the US by Sourcebooks in the fall of 2010!  

New Arrivals

I thought you might be curious to see what I bought with my Amazon gift card?  I went over the allotted amount, but oh well.  From top to bottom:

Prince, Ib Michael - Translated from the Danish, it sounds very fairy-tale-ish.  The Times called it 'a beguiling take of love in an ice-cold climate.  This spellbinding novel which recreates the details of childhood in a fresh and wonderful fashion."

The Ministry of Pain, Dubravka Ugresic - The author was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia.  This is a novel that seems to have made its way around the blogosphere, so I'm looking forward to reading it.  Susan Sontag called it "masterly".

Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay - The author is French, but this must have been written in English as I can't find any translation notes.  It's set during WWII, but secrets from the war come to light sixty years later in this story.

The Silver Spoon, John Galsworthy - Book number five of the Forsyte Saga.

Swan Song, John Galsworthy - Book number six.  I thought I had added book number four as well, but I must only have been looking and forgot to drop it in the basket.  Next time around, since I haven't even started book one...yet.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide, Rennie Airth - I read Rennie Airth's first novel when it was published back in 1999 and couldn't wait until he came out with a new one.  By the time that happened apparently the moment had passed for me.  Now he has a third one out and I want to read them all again.  I wonder if I should read the first one again?

Resistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France, Agnes Humbert - I've heard many good things about this book.  Humbert was an art historian and became part of the French Resistance.  It was originally published in 1946.  

If you'll excuse me now, I think I'll go and read...