A Work in Progress

The Docks of London

Last week I was really in the mood for a travel essay, but could find nothing in the anthologies I am reading from that would work.  It dawned on me, however, that I did have a book that might give a sense of touring or visiting though not technically a collection travel essays.  Several library sales ago I lucked out and found a wonderful little book by Virginia Woolf called The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life.  Now for me London is faraway and utterly cosmopolitan and a place I have visited and loved and would love to visit again, so as travel goes, it counts for me.

It's a lovely little edition--hardcover with deckled edges (I'll ignore the library stamps--it did come cheap from the library discard shelf, so I can't complain), pencil drawings before each chapter and a London city map on the end papers.  All in all a happy find.  Virginia Woolf had been commissioned by British Good Housekeeping to write a series of essays entitled "Six Articles on London Life."  They began appearing in the magazine in 1931 and five of them were later collected and published in 1981. The last essay had gone missing and was only discovered in the Sussex University archives in 2004 and was published for the first time in the US in this little edition. 

"These six essential essays capture Woolf at her best, exploring modern consciousness through the prism of 1930s London while simultaneously painting an intimate portrait of this sprawling metropolis and its fascinating inhabitants."

I plan on reading them all, but will start at the beginning with "The Docks of London".  You wouldn't think something as drab sounding as docks on the river would be terribly interesting, but Woolf paints a colorful picture beginning with the variety of boats that drop anchor along the London docks.

"They take their way majestically through a crowd of tramp steamers, and colliers and barges heaped with coal and swaying red sailed boats, which, amateurish though they look, are bringing bricks from Harwich or cement from Colchester--for all its business; there are no pleasure boats on this river.  Drawn by some irresistible current, they come from the storms and calms of the sea, its silence and loneliness to their allotted anchorage.  The engines stop; the sails are furled; and suddenly the gaudy funnels and the tall masts show up incongruously against a row of workmen's houses, against the black walls of huge warehouses."

Woolf marvels at the array of vessels coming up the Thames from all corners of the world.  Turning away from the ships, however, is one of the most dismal prospect of the world.  The romance ends and instead are the decrepit warehouses with broken windows blackened by a recent fire.

"Behind the masts and funnels lies a sinister dwarf city of workmen's houses.  In the foreground cranes and warehouses, scaffolding and gasometers line the banks with a skeleton architecture."

Looking further on it's most disconcerting as there are glimpses of fields and crops, old stone houses and trees, even an old inn.  This former world survives incongruously next to factories.

"Now pleasure has gone and labour has come, and it stands derelict like some beauty in her midnight finery looking out over mud flats and candle works, while malodorous mounds of earth, upon which trucks are perpetually tipping fresh heaps, have entirely consumed the fields, where a hundred years ago lovers wandered and picked violets."

Perhaps the world hasn't changed so much (though in this case I hope it has), as moving up the river to London the barges with refuse float down and the dumps get fuller and fuller with rubbish that ends up in the dust bins.  And yet beyond all this one is surprised once again by the stately buildings, the columns and domes in perfect symmetry and in the distance Tower Bridge.  London rises up--

"The sky seems laden with heavier, purpler clouds.  Domes swell; church spires, white with age, mingle with the tapering, pencil shaped chimneys of factories.  One hears the roar and the resonance of London itself.  Here at last, we have landed at that thick and formidable circle of ancient stone, where so many drums have been beaten and heads fallen, the Tower of London itself."

And after the sweeping gaze up the river, Woolf looks into the heart of the ships and sees all the many and various products from distant and exotic lands.  The cargo is unloaded and crates opened.  Everything there because Londoners demand it.

"One feels an important, a complex, a necessary animal as one stands on the quayside watching the cranes hoist this barrel, that crate, that other bale from the holds of the ships that have come to anchor."

Sorry, so many quotes, but I can't possibly improve the on the prose of Virginia Woolf, so better to just share it with you.  What's interesting is this view of the docks that must have changed drastically after WWII when so  much of London was bombed.  Still, there is a timelessness to what she writes about.  Lovely essay and now I must read more by her!

A Homemade Life

Kudos to Molly Wizenberg.  Anyone who can make cooking sound not only appealing but downright enjoyable deserves serious credit in my book.  The kitchen is not my favorite place and cooking more a chore than a pleasure, but Molly Wizenberg has such a charming style, writing about something she obviously feels passionate about, it's hard not to get caught up in her excitement.  Her delight doesn't end with food, but it extends to her family, friends and places she's lived and visited, too.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table.  This isn't a book I would normally pick up on my own, but Darlene was so enthusiastic about it (and then later other bloggers also heartily recommended it), I had to at least give it a look, so a request went in at the library.  It's a cross between a cookbook and a memoir.  The chapters are short anecdotal writings that relate in some way to food, and at the end she shares the recipe.  The writing style is actually quite similar to a blog post, which makes me wonder if she had edited her work  to move it from one format to the other.  In this case it works since it's all about food she loves and how it relates to her family or an experience in her life, so the short chapters seem very suited--both style and content.

Molly seems most at home in the kitchen, a place where she spent much time while growing up in Oklahoma during the 1980s.  For her family, restaurant cooking could never compare with meals cooked at home and enjoyed together around the table.  Both parents passed on their love of good food and cooking to her, and even her siblings have cooking related jobs or a love of cooking as well.  One of the pivotal events in her life was the death of her father, an almost larger than life persona who taught her how to live life with gusto and introduced her to a place she would come to love, Paris.  She writes at length about him and with great affection.  I read an interview with Molly Wizenberg and writing about him was both a way of remembering him but also part of her grieving process.  Setting down her memories of him meant she could "store them somewhere else."

Burg's death (as he was called by his family) was really a turning point in Molly's life.  It was in part the impetus for her to travel once again to Paris, ostensibly to finish her dissertation.  But when she spent more time gazing into windows of French food shops than doing research, she knew where her heart really lay.  She gave up her studies when she returned to Seattle, where she had moved to go to school.  She started her now-famous blog, Orangette, and began sharing her love of cooking with others.  It's all very fairy tale-ish really, as it was through her blog that she met her husband, who was living on the other side of the country in New York.  A wedding and a book later, they now run a Brooklyn-style pizzaria in Seattle and Molly writes a monthly column for Bon Appetit magazine and is still blogging.  How's that for fame, fortune and happiness all (well, at least in part) thanks to the internet? 

Although very different in subject matter A Homemade Life reminded me a lot of Eat, Love, and Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Both have a chatty, confessional style of writing, and both authors were reworking their lives and learning to follow their dreams, and both seem like they must be as nice in person as they appear in their writings.  A Homemade Life accompanied me to the gym this past week or so, perfect reading for a place that can be hard to concentrate in.  I will say I was happy I read the chapters about Burg's death when I was alone as it was heart wrenching, and it only takes a Kleenex commercial to make me sob sometimes, so imagine reading about someone being diagnosed with cancer.  Despite the moments of sadness, this was an enjoyable read and it's something that can easily be left on the bedside table to be picked up and dipped into at whim (which I think I would have preferred to do had I not waited until the last minute with a due date hanging over my head).  It's a very quick read, though.  My favorite parts were about her experiences in Paris and I agree that French bread with a square of chocolate in the middle is indeed delicious.

In case you were wondering.  I did copy out some of those recipes (how could I not?).  When I am feeling especially brave (and industrious) I will make one and share it here (virtually anyway).

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Angel Deverell is one of the most infuriating characters I have come across in literature in a really long time.  She is intensely disagreeable (see scene where her dog Czar meets a small fox terrier), and I at times relished disliking her as I was reading.  Ultimately though, I found that despite being such a prickly person, it was hard not to feel some amount of sympathy for her.  Misunderstood?  Misguided?  Probably yes on both counts, but very very complex and human.  Such are the abilities of author Elizabeth Taylor to create such a humorless woman that the reader can't help but be curious about.

And Angel really is without humor.  She inhabits the worlds, at least in her mind, that she will come to write about so successfully.  Born at the end of Queen Victoria's reign, Angel is the daughter of shopowners.  Her maiden aunt is a lady's maid and might just be able to get Angel a position in the Great House where she works, but Angel has other ideas.  Named after the daughter of this landed family, Angel fantasizes about Paradise House.  She embroiders stories about her life there that she passes off as real to her school friends.  And when at fifteen she sits down to write out her daydreams, she discovers she has a knack for it.  She leaves off school altogether and pushes aside any plans or hopes her mother and aunt might have had for her.  Plans she disdains as she knows she is destined for greater things.

The thing is, greater things do come her way.  Angel is nothing if not tenacious and when Oxford University Press, the only publisher she knows of, turns her down for publication, she doesn't give up.  A small publisher's interest is piqued when she sends them her manuscript for The Lady Irania.  They expect the author to be an "old lady romanticizing behind lace curtains", but get Angel instead.

"Gilbright & Brace had been divided, as their readers' reports had been.  Willie Brace had worn his guts thin with laughing, he said, The Lady Irania was his favorite party-piece and he mocked his partner's defense of it in his own version of Angel's language."

"Kindly raise your coruscating beard from those iridescent pages of shimmering tosh and permit your mordant thoughts to dwell for one mordant moment on us perishing in the coruscating workhouse, which is where we shall find ourselves, among the so-called denizens of deep-fraught penury.  Ask yourself--nay, go so far as to enquire of yourself--how do we stand by such brilliant balderdash and live, nay not only live, but exist to..."

"You overdo these 'nays'," said Theo Gilbright.  "She does not."

"There's a 'nay' on every page.  M'wife counted them.  She took the even pages, I the odd. We were to pay a shilling to the other for each of our pages where there wasn't one, and not a piece of silver changed hands from first to last."

"So Elspeth read it, too?"

"Read it?  She devoured and gobbled every iridescent word."

"So will other women."

"I should hope more reverently."

Angel's books are truly awful, at best potboilers, sprung fully developed from her vivid, if wildly incorrect imagination.  She does no research basing her stories on what she thinks life might have been like in another time in another place.  And when later in life she does get to visit the places she has written about, she's absurdly disappointed.  Nothing lives up to her expectations, her imagination.  Her books, though are a great success and immensely popular.  

So.  Angel.  She is completely narcissistic, arrogant, self-absorbed, unable to empathize with those around her.  She doesn't get subtle jokes and isn't able to laugh at herself.  She writes but she doesn't read books.  Oh, the thought.  She is a prickly pear, but I knew that surely she must have a soft spot somewhere inside.  I think what it comes down to is she wants to be be loved and understood (though I'm not sure I entirely ever figured her out).  She's haughty and doesn't try to understand anyone else.  However she does love animals (despite that fox terrier scene).  The best moments are those when she lets the veil down ever so slightly and her husband or publisher sees a side of her that they (and the reader) wishes were the true Angel, or at least the Angel that she would allow the world to see.

The critics excoriate her, but her readers adore her.  She wants to live her own life and she does.  She gets everything she desires and becomes rich and reasonably successful in the process.  The novel follows her life's trajectory from humble beginnings to the arc of success, but as the times change and the war comes she isn't able to change as well.  Her books, as outlandish and risqué as they once were, become dated and no longer read by the younger generation.  Angel always carries on.

The story is a bit like Cinderella's.  When the ball is over and midnight chimes the magic vanishes.  Towards the end Angel's life is pitiable, yet she still lives in a pleasing fantasy not seeing the world crumble around her.  I wonder if she ever quite grasps the reality of her life?  And when she does get a glimpse, it is too painful and she is only too happy to have someone else gloss over the messy parts.  Do I care for her at the end finally?  I'm still not entirely sure.  She is a very provoking character.  The last sentence, though, was heart wrenching.

Teaser Tuesday: More P.D. James

I had optimistically thought I would finish P.D. James's Talking About Detective Fiction over the weekend.  I had optimistically thought I would finish a few books actually, but time seems to contract on weekends rather than expand, or is that just me?   I'm not sure where the time goes or how I pass it.  Gazing out the window?  Playing with the cats?  Or this weekend, pulling weeds in the yard?  In any case I feel like my time wasn't exactly spent constructively, so I can't start any of my new books until I finish my (soon to be late) library books.  (There are only two by the way). 

So, I am going back to P.D. James for my teaser today.  By the way I know I bend the rules when it comes to my "teaser" and maybe I shouldn't even call it that, but it gives me a chance to write about something I am currently reading, and I do like chatting about what I'm reading. 

There's so much of interest in the James book it's probably just as well that I split it into several posts anyway.  Really she writes about the genre in a very general way, so you are just getting a very broad overview, but it's a nice place to start if you're interested in the subject.  And she's so very well read, I feel like I am listening to an expert talk. 

At the moment I am reading a chapter called "Setting, Viewpoint and People".  I'm all for a good sense of place in the books I read.  As a matter of fact I will often look for a book depending on mood with a very particular setting--Vienna, maybe sunny Italy, or perhaps the English countryside.  Once again I am getting the view from the author's point of view and it's fascinating stuff.

"One function of the setting is to add credibility to the story, and this is particularly important with crime fiction, which often deals with bizarre, dramatic and horrific events which need to be rooted in a place so tangible that the reader can enter it as he might a familiar room.  If we believe in the place we can believe in the characters.  In addition the setting can from the first chapter establish the mood of the novel, whether of suspense, terror, apprehension, menace or mystery." 

James goes on to give the example of the very sinister and atmospheric mansion set in the middle of a shrouded moor in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that it probably wouldn't work so well in a more usual setting.  The setting can convey a sense of terror and also provide relief from the horror as well.  Murder might take place in as innocuous a place as a drawing room, but is perhaps all the more frightening for it because it is so unexpected.

And I like what she has to say about the reader and writer working together.

"Reading any work of fiction is a symbiotic act.  We the readers contribute our imagination to that of the writer, willingly entering his world, participating in the lives of its people and forming from the author's words and images out own mental picture of people and places.  The setting in any novel is therefore an important element of the whole book.  Place, after all, is where the characters play out their tragicomedies, and it is only if the action is firmly rooted in a physical reality we can enter into their world.  This is not to suggest that setting is more important than characterization, narrative and structure; all four must be held in creative tension and the whole story written in compelling language if the book is to survive beyond its first month of publication."

I'm guessing this can be applied to a straightforward novel as well.  Lots of good stuff in such a small book.  I think I may have to buy this one when it comes out in paper. 

April 26: Reading Notes - May Books

Although May is still a few days off, I think it might be wise to perhaps start one or two new books now, as May is going to be a busy reading month!  Along with my daily Anna Karenina reading these are the books I'd really like to get to as they are either book group books or books for the Classics Circuit and one is an ARE that is also going to be a group read.  Of course along with these I will still be dipping into books on my sidebar, too.

Mignon Eberhart's The Mystery of Hunting's End is my choice for the Classics Circuit's The Golden Age of Detective Fiction Tour.  I'm really looking forward to this, especially after having read P.D. James's Talking About Detective Fiction.  Although Eberhart was writing at the same time, she is probably what you would call a second tier author.  She is also American and was born in Lincoln, Nebraska.  The book is set in the Nebraska Sand Hills, so this should be interesting reading.  I'll be writing about it on May 28.  I thought it would be fun to read a more traditional Golden Age author, and you can't get more traditional than Agatha Christie.  I've pulled out Murder at the Vicarage to read as an extracurricular book.  I've never read any Miss Marple mysteries, and I believe this is the first one where she was featured.

Claire at Paperback Reader and Verity at The B Files are hosting their annual Persephone Reading Week from May 3-9, so of course I have to join in. It's been far too long since I've picked up a Persephone title and am very much in the mood!  I've decided it has to be a Dorothy Whipple book, so I'm giving Someone at a Distance a whirl.  I've heard so many good things about this author that I am happy to finally read something by her.  A little warning, though--I'm going to have to cheat and start early and I might finish after the actual week, as I am not the fastest of readers.  In any case I'll set aside a day that week to post something about the book.

Cornflower has chosen Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel as her next book group read to be discussed starting May 22.  I read this when I was younger and am only too happy to read it again.  I loved Rebecca more the second time around, so I'll be curious to see what I make of My Cousin Rachel (though to be honest I have forgotten quite a lot of it, so it will probably be like starting from scratch).

I know I have already mentioned The Slaves of Golconda will be reading Lorna Sage's Bad Blood to discuss beginning May 31, so I probably won't be starting this one right away yet.  I've already got a copy ready to read, however, checked out from the library.

My lone ARE is Edith Pargeter's The Brothers Gwynedd.  I struggled with Margaret Irwin's novel on Elizabeth I, so I hope I have better luck with Edith Pargeter as I am going even further back in time with this story.  Is anyone familiar with her work?  The book is comprised of four novels, and there is a group of us reading it.  We are going to read just one novel a month for the next four months, so I'm not overly worried about the size of the book (nearly 800 pages!).  I'll only have to worry about the first 200 in May.  I'll be writing about it May 19.

I'm going to be busy in May, aren't I.  I hope that it won't be too overwhelming as things are staggered a bit and the book groups are set up so you can join in as you have time.

Oh, and I mentioned wanting to find a good thriller.  I started with Michael Robotham's Night Ferry and have been glued to its pages from the very beginning!  I do have Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sitting in reserve, though I think I will wait to start it.  It's probably not a good idea to have too much excitement going at once when it comes to thrillers!

Anna Karenina: Week Two

I've finally met Anna Karenina.  Invited to Moscow from her home in Petersburg by her brother, Stepan, she seemed to be there to work a little damage control.  Remember Stepan's affair with the French governess?  Her journey by train was spent by passing time with Count Vronsky's mother, also traveling to Moscow to visit her son.  I have a feeling the train scene is going to be very telling in a couple of ways--not only is it the fatal meeting between Anna and Vronsky, but perhaps a view of Vronsky's personality.

As Vronksy enters the train carriage to collect his mother he catches sight of a lady belonging to high society and does a double take.

"...he felt the need to glance at her once more--not because she was very beautiful, not because of the elegance and modest grace that could be seen in her whole figure, but because there was something especially gentle and tender in the expression of her sweet-looking face as she stepped past him.  As he looked back, she also turned her head.  Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on his face, as if she recognized him, and at once wandered over the approaching crowd as though looking for someone.  In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips.  It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.  She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in barely a noticeable smile."

Have they met before?  He is certainly very taken with her.

Although Vronsky is a charming and very dashing man, I did wonder about his feelings towards his mother. 

"In his soul he did not respect her and, without being aware of it, did not love her, though by the notions of the circle in which he lived, by his upbringing, he could not imagine to himself any other relation to his mother than one obedient and deferential in the highest degree, and the more outwardly obedient and deferential he was, the less he respected and loved her in his soul."

Somehow I've always thought you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their mother, but I think I don't have the whole story yet, so I'll reserve judgment for later. Besides, he is deferential and obedient, but what other feelings is he suppressing.

I think Levin is going to turn out to be a very interesting character.  I feel for him.  Nowhere near as dashing and attractive as Vronsky, I have a feeling he is going to be far more steadfast.  He seems quite intelligent and caring.  He has two brothers, one very bourgeois and the other living in penurious conditions and committed to the cause of the worker.  Levin fits in somewhere in between.  After being refused by Kitty, he returns to the countryside where he lives and farms.  But has Kitty done the right thing?  At a ball she is left to stand out alone, almost a wallflower until her hostess rescues her, as Vronsky invites Anna Karenina to dance.

I'm just nearing the end of part one (there are eight parts in total).  I don't think I've given anything of importance away as characters are still being introduced and the stage is still being set, but I promise to warn of any possible spoilers in my future posts.  And I am being very careful not to give too many details away.  I hope these posts don't become too boring for those who haven't read the book--perhaps I'll limit them as I go, but they are almost more for me to keep track of characters and action in the plot--a virtual reading journal. 

I wouldn't mind to read some criticism along with the text, but I have a feeling anything I pick up is going to give the story away, so I will wait until the end.  I did find a list of questions here, but again they give away plot so beware of reading them ahead of time.  If anyone knows of anything that can be read alongside the book (or after as well), please do share as I any additional insight into the story is always welcome. 

So far I am finding the story quite easy to get into, and if I was devoting all my reading time to it I think I could make fast progress indeed.  But it's kind of nice taking it slow and thinking about it along the way, too. 

So, now I am wondering about Anna's husband, Alexei, and just how Anna and Vronsky hook up.  Read on.

Novels and Their Readers

Yesterday I came across a really nice bookish blog.  Very simple and understated and inhabiting its own quiet part of the blogosphere and I thoroughly enjoyed going through reading posts.  I want to be able to write in a concise and perceptive way about books, yet still manage to convey what works and maybe what doesn't like that blogger does.  I felt happier when I discovered the blogger is also a writer...that explains a lot.

Anyway.  On one post a comment was left by the author of the book the post was about.  The author (of the book being discussed) wrote "Sometimes a novel gets into the hands of the reader it was meant for."  With a thank you for "getting what it was all about."

I've always wondered if authors write with a certain audience in mind, or just write with the hope of being widely read and appreciated.  I suppose every author is different.  I wouldn't mind getting that sort of response from an author someday on my blog.  I also always wonder if I "get it" when it comes to books.  I've always had this idea that books were open to the reader's own interpretation based on what experiences they bring to a novel.  This is the second time in a month now, that I have seen an author talk about his/her writing in this way--with a "it's in the hands of the reader now--for good or for bad" sort of feeling.

Strangely (or maybe not so strangely?) when reading I am thinking less about the author than about the world s/he has created.  I only think about the author peripherally, especially contemporary authors.  S/he may be the creator, but for me the fictional world stands on its own.

Just thought that was interesting.

Satin Worship by Holly Welker

All right, did you do a double take on that heading?  No, no Satan Worship, satin!  I found no travel essays on my bookshelves, but I knew I wanted to read an essay by a woman writer (I'm trying to balance things out a bit and read both men and women equally, but I seem to find more work by men in anthologies).  I have a couple of those Best American Essays collections on my shelves, so I found "Satin Worship" by Holly Welker in Best American Essays 2005 edited by Susan Orlean.  The library where I work has the whole run of Best American Short Stories and we get the new books in annually.  I wish I could say we do the same for the essay books, but we don't and we only own about three or four of them, which is too bad really.

These annual collections have a variety of essays in them, which have been published in different magazines and journals over the course of the year.  In this case "Satin Worship" had previously been published in PMS (poemmemoirstory) an all-women's literary journal.  I wonder what the average "Best of" reader thought of it?  As an avid needleworker I found it entertaining reading.  Granted Welker is a seamstress, but anyone handy with a needle and thread would surely appreciate what she had to say in her personal essay.  I'll forgive her for "never caring for embroidery".  Yes, the stitches can be small and purely ornamental, but often times what is created can indeed be utilitarian. Much like quilting or knitting, as Welker enjoys doing, the act of creating something from fabric and thread (or in my case linen and floss) with a needle gives the needleworker a great sense of accomplishment, and in my case the process of doing is very calming. Besides, what's wrong with creating something beautiful and elegant and artistic that can just be appreciated for what it is.  A piece of embroidery or a sampler can also tell a story in a way that isn't so readily apparent in something knitted or quilted. 

Welker was raised in the Mormon faith and from a young age learned various homemaking skills such as crochet and knitting along with childcare.  She inherited her mother's 1955 Singer sewing machine as she was the only daughter with enough "patience to learn to read a pattern, to rip seams when I sewed the pieces wrong, to spend two hours pinning and hemming a dress by hand."  And she was the one to understand "fabric lust."  That's something I can understand as well.  When she was finishing her Ph.D. she worked in a fabric and craft store.

"The job had one primary perk: a hefty discount. More than once I spent my entire check on fabric that went straight into a storage box.  I rarely had plans for the fabric I bought; it was simply beautiful, and while I did imagine that someday I would find something worthwhile to do with it, there was the more pressing imperative to own it immediately, five yards of the charcoal flannel, six yards of this teal and gold paisley calico."  

Although the author's personal experiences were interesting, what I found most fascinating was reading about the literary and historical references to needles and thread and other aspects of needlework.  She mentions Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years--Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (a book I have on hand as well) as a resource, which confirmed her belief that needles must be one of the oldest tools invented by humanity.  She writes about scissors (I have an ever growing collection of them) and fibers that are turned into cloth and what it can be used for afterwords.  And there are words used in the business of creating--spinning, embroidering that have carried over into language and literature.

"'Spinning yarn' is a metaphor for telling a story, and stories can be 'embroidered.'  But quilting doesn't seem to be of much use as a way to talk about narrative.  Stitching contrasting pieces of fabric into a pattern, stitching that to another piece of fabric with some stuffing in the middle so that heat-trapping pockets of air are formed--that's too elaborate for the way our culture likes to talk about writing.  In fact, it's rather an insult to call a story a patchwork, but high praise to call it seamless."

It's nice reading about an activity that takes place in the more domestic sphere of life, something that at one time was even a myth--that spinning women controlled the fate of humanity (I really like that).  An idea that has long been dispenced with, but like the author, I'd like to "try to spin and weave the fibers of my life into a tapestry both beautiful and useful, and of my own design."

Reading Through the Decades

Earlier this month I read a post at Savidge Reads where Simon was lamenting the fact that out of the books on his recent arrivals shelf very few of them had been published prior to last year and even fewer earlier than 2001.  My own reading tends to go in phases, but I think lately I've been reading a lot of very recently published books (even if they happen to be historical fiction set in earlier eras).  It's nice to think you're reading from a variety of periods, which made me wonder just how I was doing this year.  Last year Simon T. did a similar survey, but he chose favorites from each decade beginning in the 1800s.  I wonder if I've even read enough variety to choose favorites?  Maybe I should just content myself to see which decades I can even fill in--starting with books I've read this year and working backwards.

• 1800s
• 1810s
• 1820s
• 1830s
• 1840s
• 1850s - The Dead secret, Wilkie Collins
• 1860s - Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell & Therese Raquin, Emile Zola
• 1870s - Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
• 1880s - Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
• 1890s - Victoria, Knut Hamsun
• 1900s - A Room with a View, E.M. Forster & A Man of Property, John Galsworthy
• 1910s - The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
• 1920s - The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton & Greenery Street, Denis Mackail
• 1930s - Dance Night, Dawn Powell
• 1940s - Beware of Pity, Stefan Zweig
• 1950s - Frost at Morning, Richmal Crompton & The Tortoise and the Hare, Elizabeth Jenkins
• 1960s - Cover Her Face, P.D. James
• 1970s - The Honours Board, Patricia Hansford Johnson
• 1980s - The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
• 1990s - Ferris Beach, Jill McCorkle
• 2000s - The Crimson Rooms, Katharine McMahon

So my list is made up entirely of books read in the last two years (last year I started keeping a more detailed Excel spreadsheet in addition to my reading journal that only lists titles, authors and when I finished reading each book).  Although all the books on the list are books I've enjoyed  I might tweak it if I was choosing favorites that I've read in the past (would need to think harder and longer to create a favorites list).  I'm surprised I managed to go that far back, as glancing at the books on just this year's list, only two books I've read this year (three if you count Anna Karenina, which I did on my list--very optimistic of me) were published before the 20th century.  Nearly all my reads are 21st or 20th century and heavy on the latter part of the 20th century.

As long as I am reading good books that I enjoy, I don't necessarily mind when they were written, but it is nice to know you are reading books published prior to the 20th century occasionally.  Maybe it's time to pull out 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, edited by Peter Boxall, to get a few ideas.  (My copy by the way is the earlier edition, not the more multicultural later list--not sure that was ever published in the US?).  I wouldn't mind setting myself the task of choosing a book or two from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and maybe even a pre-1700s title to read before the end of the year.

So, as with my dozen or so other personal reading projects that I have going on, I'll keep this in mind, too!

Edited: As you might have noticed I've done a tiny bit of blog maintenance.  For a long while now I've wanted to use tabs on my page but I couldn't figure out how to do it.  Actually I think this is a fairly new feature, so I've added a few and will be adding more as I have time to work on it.  I'd like to clean things up a bit--do my sidebars look too busy?  I don't always like too much change, so I might not give it a total facelift, but a little editing might be nice.  And I've noticed that some bloggers respond to each and every comment individually--I just list names and leave my answers in one long comment.  Is this hard to read, or does it matter?  I'm not sure how often people come back and read responses (I like to go back and read responses to comments I leave but it might take me a day or two).  I think there is a way to make it easier to respond to individual comments--I just need to mess around a little in Typepad to figure out how.

Also, I'm nearly finished with three books and I hope to get through all of them before the end of the weekend (am already looking forward to it), but I was thinking how much I would like to pick up a new book--and what I have in mind is something thriller-ish.  Preferably a contemporary setting, but in any case not a historical (pre-20th century anyway) time period.  Something a little dark and gritty and underworld-ish.  Not sure why I want something like this in particular, but when the mood hits, I just go with it.  I have pulled from my bookshelves a Georges Simenon mystery (Lock 14), a spy thriller by Stella Rimington (Secret Asset), and a novel by Michael Robotham (The Night Ferry).  As always I want something un-putdownable, and while a crime novel probably will fit the bill, it doesn't necessarily have to be.  I'll have another look at my shelves as I am sure there must be more to choose from.  Any ideas?

First, though, I need to choose an essay to read for this week.  I've looked the last couple of nights through the two anthologies I am mostly reading from, but nothing has caught my fancy.  Some weeks everything appeals, but I this week I am just not in the mood for what I am seeing.  I'd like a travel essay, but there don't seem to be any.  I have lots of short story collections, but not so many essay collections, but I'm off to see if something grabs me.  Maybe I am being too picky?  I'll let you know tomorrow what I've found.  

Unexpected Library Loot

I wasn't expecting to bring home a single library book last week, so I was surprised when I received notification that there were books waiting for me.  I didn't get a chance to post my bookish goodies, so I'll double up this week as I've already brought a few more home.  I'm sort of feeling inundated with books to be honest, but in a good way.  So many look really interesting, but I can already hear that clock ticking as the due dates inch closer day by day.  If ever I feel pressure with reading, I hate to say this is one of the major culprits.  I tend to choose too many books that are so new they have lines of readers waiting for them, and that means no renewals.  A story many of you know all too well!  My latest finds:

Tinkers, Paul Harding - Yes, this year's Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  I think there was only one copy checked out at the time of the award announcement, but the rest were quickly snapped up.  This is my chance to be on the cutting edge of reading.  It's a tiny book but don't let that fool you.  It's covered in many praiseworthy blurbs.  Everything from 'truly remarkable' to 'brilliant'.  It sounds dark, though.  This is an "elegiac meditation on love,  loss, and the fierce beauty of nature."  I should really read it right now, shouldn't I?

The Tale of Halcyon Crane, Wendy Webb - One reviewer called this a perfect cozy read.  It does look light and entertaining.  Set in the Great Lakes area, it's supposed to be an eerie ghost story.

A House to Die For, Vicki Doudera - A tale of suspense set on a Maine island (and you know how I love stories set on islands and stories of suspense).

The Hand that First Held Mine, Maggie O'Farrell - Some years back I read one of her earlier novels and was very impressed by it.  I was really excited to get this one, and have started reading, but I am not sure what to think.  She writes in the present tense, which I am finding a little jarring.  Actually I am not sure I would have known (though I suspect so), but my online reading group was talking about present tense stories, so I think it was just in my mind.  Do I continue on and see if I stop noticing it?  Has anyone read this one? 

And now this week's books:

  

The Language of Sand, Ellen Block - This looks like another comfort type read, which I am quite drawn to as it is set in Chapel Isle and the protagonist takes a job as a caretaker of a lighthouse.  Sometimes I feel like this is as close as I am ever going to get to the ocean, so I snap up any book that appeals at all with this type setting.   

The Birth of Love, Joanna Kavenna - She won the Orange Award for New Writers a few years ago.  This one really intrigues me, though I wonder if something will be lost as I am not a mother.  "From three perspectives spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Kavenna explores childbirth, the most basic experience of women and men, parents and children, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futuristic vision of technological oppression." 

Bad Blood, Lorna Sage - The Slaves of Golconda's next read.  It's been called a "ruthlessly funny, excruciating, inspiring memoir."  I can't wait to read this one.

Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto,  Maile Chapmen - I seem to be choosing lots of dystopian-ish sorts of novels lately, and this one seems to fit that description in its own dark way.  Junot Diaz calls it "a superb hallucinatory piercing, an ominous dispatch from that Gothic frontier of the female body."

Blackout, Connie Willis - I was reading this WWII time travel novel a while ago and had planned on returning it late so I could finish it, but decided I didn't want to cram a long novel into a few days so got back in line.  Now to figure out where I was in the story.

For once I've already dabbled a bit in a few of these, am halfway through one and have started another.  If only it weren't for those dreaded (and all too soon) due dates, I could really enjoy taking my time with these.