A Work in Progress

Bad Blood: A Memoir

I seem to be spending a fair amount of reading time lately in Wales (figuratively that is).  First with Edith Pargeter's The Brothers Gwynedd and its Medieval setting and now with Lorna Sage's memoir, Bad Blood.  Whatever the Pargeter might be lacking in prose style, Sage more than makes up for with her artful recollections of growing up with several generations worth of a dysfunctional family in Austerity Britain.  In a way it's as bleak as it sounds but Sage never falls into a trap of self-pity.  Her storytelling is all quite matter of fact and at times verges on the humorous--even if the recollections had to be painful (at least at times they were for me).  I wish I could write a post about it as brilliantly as she writes her memoir, but maybe this will at least pique your curiosity enough to go find this book, which I highly recommend.  (Note--possible spoilers in the last few paragraphs).

Bad blood is what she inherited from her rather colorful grandfather, a vicar, who had  a tendency towards roaming hands and a small problem with alcohol.  This is not the sort of vicar I've come to know in cozy mysteries or entertaining television dramas.  Exiled to the outer nowhere of rural Northern Wales he quickly found solace in the arms of a nurse and later the company of his daughter's schoolfriend, which would forever drive a wedge between them.  Sage's grandmother resented the fact that she had to leave her comfortable home above a family shop in South Wales, and never let him forget it.  She went so far as to blackmail him for money, threatening to share his personal diaries with his superiors.  Always considering herself above the parishioners of the village they were just as dirty (her cleaning abilities left much to be desired), but she believed the vicarage dirt was of a different class. 

To young Lorna, however, who must have been unaware of the family drama unfolding at the time, she followed closely on her grandfather's 'skirts' wherever he went, and from him discovered a shared love of books.  Her grandfather had the habit of blacking out the titles on the spines so that no one would want to borrow them. 

"He died when I was only nine, but that strengthened his hold on my imagination. He did not let me down as he had all the others, starting with my grandmother and my mother, their daughter. Instead he vanished into the dark with his mystique intact."  (Guardian)

I had the feeling while reading that his work in the vicarage was a little suspect, though perhaps I wasn't given the whole story, as he would spend the occasional day quietly ensconced in his rooms reading while anyone who came visiting would be told he was away on business.  After his death the family had to vacate the vicarage and his successor saw the dirt and dilapidation as not only a hygienic but moral shortcoming.

Valma, Sage's mother, had married shortly before the war and lived with her family while her husband was off fighting.  It was left to her to try and take care of the household as best she could, a job she was singularly unsuited for.  When the war came to an end and her husband returned, the family (with grandmother in tow) moved into one of the new council house estates.  It was easy enough to get away with bad housekeeping skills in the mess that was the vicarage, but the new open-plan houses were something else entirely.

"My mother's acquired ineptitude fitted this post-war pattern.  And she did, the propaganda said, try to turn herself into a housewife, although she was very bad at it.  Quite how bad only became clear once we'd moved to the council, house, for vicarage ways were ingrained; she couldn't be expected to make much impression on that Gothic grime and disorder.  But in 'her' brand-new house full of light and hard, washable surfaces (even the window-sills were tiled) she was horribly exposed.  According to the advertisers and social psychologists, housework was her calling and she simply couldn't do it; she had a kind of genius for travesty when it came to domestic science."

Because of her 'bad blood' acquired from her grandfather--"vanity, ambition and discontent along with literacy" her parents were in public proud of her but in private thought this bookishness only added to her delinquency.  Her parents seemed to fold into one another, her father fiercely protective of her mother despite her shortcomings, leaving no room for Lorna.  At one point she writes, "there are too many children in our house", no one wanted to be the parent. 

As a child in the 1950s the world was changing, and she was part of this new more worldly generation, but she was unprepared for what her actions would bring.  At sixteen she became pregnant, not realizing that what she had done could even result in pregnancy.  Keeping with the times it was expected that she would go away to have her baby and then give it up for adoption.  Now more than ever her mother reminded her of her bad blood as she followed in her grandfather's footsteps, yet she decided to not only marry the baby's father but do her A Levels and go to University.  As an aside, did any woman in the 1950s have a decent, happy childbirth?  The attitudes and actions of the time were really deplorable.

Sage went on to not only receive her her English degree (as did her husband), but became a noted literary critic, a Professor of English Literature and wrote several books.  She won the Whitbread Prize for Bad Blood: A Memoir in 2000, but sadly several weeks later she died of emphysema.  It was her grandfather that inspired her to write her memoir.

"I still thought of him - still think of him - as my great familiar and mentor, the making of me, though I now see that that carries all sorts of baggage with it that I had not expected. Writing about his sins, his sermons, his last illness (he had a stroke in mid-flow in the pulpit, I was there in the front row of the choir), I gave myself the impetus to go on to explore my parent's lives and my own first marriage, at 16.

Indeed, marriage, and its changing nature over the years, became one of the book's themes, and so did secrets and lies. He represents for me now the glamour of the past, and its sinister pull, like the force of gravity inside your life."  (Guardian)

Recent Library Finds

It's both a good thing and a bad thing that I not only frequent my local public library and work in a university library.  Good because I have twice the chance of finding the books I want (no matter how obscure), but bad because my pile never seems to dwindle (though some may also see that as a good thing).  I don't usually share my university library finds (not sure why), but I have a couple in this particular pile.  My most recent finds:

I think when I got in line for Julie and Julia I must have been something like #145, but weeks and weeks later, here it is.  I've heard it's good and finally get to see for myself.  Am I going to want to read the book next?  Maybe a biography of Julia Child as well?  Maybe even be inspired to do a little French cooking (that might be taking things a bit too far)?  Time will tell.

Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room was not only suggested to me as a possible read, but it also happened to make the 2010 International Dagger Shortlist.  As it turns out this is also set on an island off the Swedish coast--a thriller set on an island that includes lighthouses--perfect.  It fits in well with my 'beach and seaside reading' that I am doing this summer.

I've been seeing Edith Grossman's Why Translation Matters popping up all over the place recently and thought I should take a look at it as well.  It's a slim little tome and I'm curious to see what she has to say about the subject (a lot I'm guessing).  I've read a few things that she has translated including Don Quixote a few summers back.

I'm sure I've mentioned I've been in a spy/espionage mood of late (watching MI-5 episodes every weekend as I make my way through all the seasons in one big go), so I suppose it's this fact that made me look up John LeCarre's books in my university's library catalog.  We actually had quite a few of his books, so I grabbed The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which I think is one of his more famous novels?

I actually had Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal requested long before it made the Orange Longlist, but it has only been published here recently.  The blurb reads--"an exhilarating, darkly funny, provocative novel about the complications of human desire, a tender portrait of teenage yearning and regret."

Ted Mooney's The Same River Twice sounds like a bit of a thriller.  It's about a Frenchwoman who smuggles a May Day ceremonial banner out of the Soviet Union, a supposedly easy job, but then finds herself mixed up in something bigger than she expected.  I'm not entirely sure what period this is meant to be set in but perhaps contemporary times as it may touch on human trafficking and the Russian mafia as well.  Could be a good thriller.

Steven Polansky's The Bradbury Report is set in the not too distant future when cloning is an accepted practice in the U.S.  The idea is if something goes wrong with the original, the clone is handy to basically harvest parts from.  Everything is fine until one of the "copies" escapes his sequestered area.  It sounds like Polansky is exploring the same area Kazuo Ishiguro did in Never Let Me Go, but with a slightly different slant.

What's new at your library?

The Mystery at Hunting's End

Many a time I've thought to myself (and probably mentioned it here) I could happily exist on a reading diet of detective fiction (or mysteries in general).  So when I discovered the Classics Circuit was devoting its next tour to The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, it had my name written all over it.  Welcome if you are following the the tour, it's always nice to have a new reader drop by, and regular faces are always appreciated.  Of course I agonized over just which author and which book to choose, but for something a little different I thought I would try an author who might be unknown to many of you, and one I've wanted to read for ages. 

Most people probably think of British authors such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers or Ngaio Marsh (to name only a few) as the biggies when it comes to mysteries from the 1920s and 1930s, but there were a few practitioners of the genre on this side of the Atlantic as well.  Fellow Nebraskan Mignon Eberhart was known as the American Agatha Christie (a label she didn't like) and according to the introduction in my book:

"By 1940 she was arguably the leading woman mystery writer in America and, after (Mary Roberts) Rinehart and Agatha Christie, the highest paid anywhere."

Eberhart was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1899, and educated at Nebraska Wesleyan University.  She later settled for a time in Valentine with her husband who was an engineer before moving on to bigger and more exciting places.   Her career lasted some six decades.  She wrote more than sixty novels for which she won an assortment of awards, including A $5000 Scotland Yard Prize for The Mystery at Hunting's End (published in 1930) the book I chose to read for the tour. 

The Mystery at Hunting's End is Eberhart's third mystery featuring nurse Sarah Keate, a plucky woman of middle years with a "tart tongue".  According to the Wikipedia Eberhart favored female sleuths, which was an unusual twist for the time.  After her first mystery was published in 1929, Agatha Christie followed up by introducing her own very famous Miss Jane Marple.  Sarah Keate may get involved in murder but she doesn't necessarily seek it out and knows enough to be scared at the right times.  Having served in the Great War in 1918 as a nurse she knows what she's about.  If you're curious about her character, here's a little insight.  When offered a cigarette--"I refused, having been brought up in the days when silk stockings were doubtful, rouge suspicious, and cigarettes conclusive."  (I had a good chuckle out of that).

Nurse Keate accepts an offer to join a party traveling to Hunting's End, a lodge out in the lonely Sand Hills (very reminiscent of those Eberhart would have seen while living in Valentine).  Matil Kingery has asked her to act as private nurse to her wheelchair-bound aunt Lucy Kingery at the request of Detective Lance O'Leary.  Sarah and Lance have had run ins before, and knowing her adventurous heart O'Leary trusts her observant eye will come in handy on his latest assignment.  The group they're joining were guests at the lodge five years earlier when Matil's father died in mysterious circumstances.  She's sure it was murder and hopes that by bringing the suspects together one more time O'Leary can discover just who is the culprit. 

The Mystery at Hunting's End is very much a traditional cozy mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie.  Eberhart gives the reader all the clues, including a map of the lodge with each guest's room clearly marked.  If you follow the twists and turns, avoid the red herrings and logic things out, you might just figure out whodunit.  I didn't, but I wasn't keeping very good track of the clues.  Matil's guests are a well-heeled crowd that dress for dinner, even when yet another murder is committed, but things become claustrophobic when no one can leave the lodge after a few snowflakes turn into an outright blizzard.

"And I must say I have never seen the like of that snow in all my life.  It was not an honest, out-and-out snowstorm which comes down cheerfully and rapidly and is over with.  There was something unbelievably sinister about the relentless, smothering fall of snow and the swirling of wind and the bitter cold.  It surrounded us, threatened us, held us helpless and immovable in its menacing, stifling white folds.  As early twilight finally came on and there was no letting up of that merciless onslaught I began to feel that existence itself was merely a matter of waiting and waiting in bewildered, numb suspension in a dizzy white fog."

Eberhart was known for her atmospheric settings.  The lodge's lighting consists of pewter lamps.  It's cold.  It's dark.  And after three days straight of nothing but whiteout conditions you can imagine the guests start climbing the walls as no one can leave the lodge and no one can get to it.  A dead body sits in the same room where Matil's father died and then the food starts running out.  Nerves run high.  Even the reader begins feeling a little jittery.  What's worse is the murder has been committed in what appears to be a locked room--one of the lodge's bedrooms.  One of the guests is a murderer, yet seemingly none of them could have been in that locked room with the victim.

I really enjoyed this, and if you like Agatha Christie mysteries you might as well.  In a strange way it's a gentle sort of read, despite all the dead bodies popping up.  Her characters are interesting, though you don't necessarily get a great sense of them.  I need to go back and read the first two Sarah Keate mysteries to get a better feel for Sarah and Lance, who enjoy a playful sort of relationship.  What Eberhart excels at is creating a perfect environment for murder and then puzzling it out.  Apparently Eberhart wrote only a handful of Sarah Keate mysteries opting instead to create a younger heroine open to more dangerous and romantic situations.  Her novels seem to have veered off the traditional path to stories of romantic suspense.  In any case I'll be seeing what else Nurse Sarah Keate has been up to.

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction on Tour lasts from May 17-June 11.  Check here for a complete list of books and blog stops.

Three New Persephones!

Although Persephone Reading Week is long over I do have a few things to show for it.  I might not have finished Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance that same week, but I did finish before the end of the month, so I've finally had a taste of her work.  And as threatened I placed an order with Persephone Books (my first in about a year, so I think I was due for three shiny new books).  As they recently arrived on my doorstep, I thought I would share my new goodies with you.  I always have a hard time deciding on only three--I make lists and then rank the the books and then reread the descriptions.  This is not a decision to rush.  I'm sorely tempted to sign up for their book subscription.  Imagine getting a new book every month.  I think you have to pay up front, however, which means a tidy little sum spent before I actually get the books and more than I can afford at the moment.  So I will be content with my unread stack and my three new books.  So, without further ado, my purchases:

I've only read one of Irene Nemirovsky's novels (have more to read in my piles...), but short stories in general appeal to me at the moment.  Dimanche and Other Stories contains ten stories that I believe Persephone Books commissioned specially to translate into English.  "As in a Chekhov short story, little happens but everything happens."  Nemirovsky is called an "astute observer" and one reviewer compared her to Chekhov, Maupassant and Colette--high praise indeed! 

I've heard many good things about Marghanita Laski in general, though I've only read The Victorian Chaise-longue.  To Bed With Grand Music is another novel about infidelity, though this story told from an entirely different perspective.  What happens when a wife sees her husband off to war, promises to be faithful and then isn't?  This should be quite a different picture of the WWII British homefront.

I had to have another Dorothy Whipple (though I do have The Priory already).  Another hard choice, but I thought the most recent Whipple title, High Wages might be a little lighter than some of her other books.  I like the idea of "a shop girl made good story".  I already know she's a master of characterization, so I have high expectations for this book, and I am sure she'll live up to them. 

So, the anticipation of choosing, ordering and waiting for the books is over and now I have them in my hands.  As soon as I finish my Virago read, I'll ge to choose one of these next!

May 26: Reading Notes - Bits and Pieces

Sometimes it takes very little to make me happy.  A coworker went to London on vacation (am very envious) and she was kind enough to think of me and bring a few little things back.  So  my day was made with a few postcards, a very cool bookmark and my favorite--dark chocolate!  The chocolate is from Sir Hans Sloane, and since its so warm out and I wouldn't want it to melt I think I may have to indulge later--the perfect accompaniment to a good book.

I've finished reading Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance, which was excellent.  I've started writing about it, but as I am low on energy (the heat tends to zap my ability to think), I will aim for next week to share my thoughts.  Now that I've at least one Whipple novel under my belt I no longer feel so left out as I know she is quite popular amongst Persephone readers.  And this won't be the last book I read by her either.

I like to switch back and forth between Persephone books and Viragos, though this year I've not read many of either.  So next up is a Virago and after much consideration I've chosen Margaret Kennedy's The Constant Nymph.  It was written in 1924, and while I want to read all the Viragos on my shelves the clincher was when I was reading the introduction to one of Rumer Godden's books and I saw it was compared to Godden's The Greengage Summer and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, two books I love.  Coming in a close second was Elizabeth Von Arnim's The Solitary Summer.  It's a companion to her Elizabeth and Her German Garden that I read a few years ago.  Seeing as I am totally shameless when it comes to books, I might just start reading it anyway.  

I really hate setting aside books, especially when I am more than 70 pages in, but I've set aside a book I was enjoying to begin with but the more I read the more it was just not clicking with me.  So I've had another look at my 'beach reads' stack and am trying to decide between Joanne Harris's Coastliners and Rumer Godden's Coromandel Sea Change.  I'm thinking that chocolate bar will help in my decision making.                    

One last thing--I've discovered there is an official Agatha Christie website complete with lists of her books and the best order to read them in.  Although I don't do this all the time, I like to read mysteries in the order they were written as the characters and storylines tend to develop with each new title.  I have a feeling that Agatha Christie's books are going to turn into my latest little reading project.        

Teaser Tuesday: Murder at the Vicarage

I hate to admit this, but I've never read a Miss Marple mystery.  I've read several of Agatha Christie's books, but they've all either featured Hercule Poirot or simply been straightforward mysteries.  I've started reading Murder at the Vicarage in order to remedy that situation.  Whatever anyone says about Agatha Christie's style or characterization, she tells a good story.  Only a few chapters in and she has already hooked me, but then I do enjoy a nice cozy mystery, and I don't think you can get any cozier (or more traditional) than this one. 

Set in the little English village of St Mary Mead and more specifically in the vicarage, something sinister is about to happen.  The story is told in first person, which is not at all unusual in itself, but what I find surprising is its told from the point of view of the vicar, rather than Miss Marple.  A little gray-haired spinster she has a reputation for being a very clever woman.  Here was my first encounter with her:

"With a sigh, I realized that the hands of the clock on my writing table pointed to a quarter to five, a sign it was really half past four, and I made my way to the drawing room."

"Four of my parishioners were assembled there with teacups.  Griselda sat behind the tea table trying to look natural in her environment, but only succeeding in looking more out of place than usual."

"I shook hands all round and sat down between Miss Marple and Miss Wetherby."

"Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle appealing manner--Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush.  Of the two Miss Marple is much the more dangerous."

I love that description.  I already have this vision of someone who doesn't miss much despite her kindly demeanor and probably won't let you forget it! Griselda by the way is the much younger and very pretty vicar's wife. 

Murder at the Vicarage was published in 1930, the same year as Mignon Eberhart's The Mystery at Hunting's End, which I read for the Classics Circuit and will be writing about later this week.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to compare the two authors and enjoy a couple Golden Age detective stories.  I have a feeling this won't be my only Miss Marple mystery (and will write more about Nurse Sarah Keate, Eberhart's sleuth, later).  It's funny how so many of these mysteries take place in quiet, bucolic settings.  Bodies in vicarages and fields and libraries and all sundry of locations.  Maybe I should be happy I live in the city. 

A Few Needlework Finishes & What I'm Stitching Now

It's been a while since I've shared any of my needlework with you, but I've got several things that I've properly finished and thought you might like to take a peek at.  I was working on this for quite a while during this past winter, and voila, here it is as a cushion.  I am pleased with how it turned out but admit I struggled quite a bit with it and the sewing machine--had to pick out the stitches and remove and resew the fabric not once but twice!  Well worth the effort I think.

 

This is one of the very first "samplers" I ever stitched and it sat for years in a plastic bin waiting to be finished in some way.  Cushions are relatively easy to sew, so here is another.  There's a little blue bird sitting at the top (you can see more of it here).

 

Another design that I grabbed from the finished but not 'finished' bin is this Fourth of July design.  These pin pillows are the new thing in the stitching world--at least they became popular when I wasn't stitching in the last year or so, so I had to try my hand at them.  (You can see more if it here and here). 

 

My latest project is this Mystery Sampler by Blackbird Designs.  It consists of five charts that are stitched on different color linens that will be hand sewn together at the end (see more here).  I've never tried anything like this so it will be interesting to see how it turns out!  Now that the weather has turned nice and I need to work in the yard more, it has cut into my stitching time, but I try and fit in a little when I can--usually on the weekends.  Maybe I'll finish this by the end of summer?  I'll keep you posted.

When It Rains It Pours: New Books

I've been meaning to share theses photos of new books for a while, and now I've actually got a few more so will post later about those.  This is a mishmash of new and used books and there are even a few that were found in places like the supermarket and a few are pre-order releases (paid for previously when ordered) from the Book Depository! 

When I was reading P.D, James's Talking About Detective Fiction I noted down quite a few titles and authors that I want to check out, and Sarah Paretsky was at the top of the list.  Apparently Paretsky's style is in the vein the hard-boiled detective story but with a contemporary setting (I think her earliest books were written in the 1980s), so I bought the first two to start, Deadlock and Indemnity Only.

I've got Jonathan Rabb's first novel on my reading pile (and really must get to it soon), but when I saw the next one out in paper, I had to get it as well, Shadow and Light.  The novels are crime stories set in 1920s Berlin.

John Hart's The Last Child won this year's Edgar Award.  It was my supermarket buy (It's not often I actually find a book I want to read in the supermarket book racks.  I think I might have passed this one buy had it not won the award, but I see it has gotten good reviews as well, so now I am looking forward to it.

I loved Michael Robotham's The Night Ferry, so I went looking for his other books.  Shatter is his most recently published novel here in the US (but I found a nice inexpensive paper copy that came from the UK).

I'm enjoying a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor at the moment, a travel narrative that is very eloquently written.  I had no idea that he had also written fiction, but I'm very curious about The Violins of Saint-Jacques.  It's set on an Aegean Island, so I might have to include it in my 'beach reads' stack.

I was telling a coworker that I am reading Anna Karenina and she highly recommended Tolstoy's Resurrection.  I think it might even have a happier ending?

I read a novel by Maritta Wolff years ago.  It was her final book, the manuscript of which had been kept in her freezer!  I believe she was quite popular when she was writing in the 1940s.  Since I've wanted to read more I thought Night Shift would be a good place to start.      

 

I've read and enjoyed Thomas Cook before, but when a reader here mentioned she was working on his Places in the Dark, a novel I wasn't familiar with, my curiosity was piqued. This is set in 1930s Maine.  It's been far too long since I've read any of his books so I am looking forward to this one.

I've had a few books that I pre-ordered from The Book Depository come in.  They are always nice surprises as in some cases I ordered them months ago.  I've now got Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys, Terence Frisby's Kisses on a Postcard (about WWII evacuees), and Jude Morgan's Taste of Sorrow (about the Bronte sisters) to look forward to. 

After reading Litlove's post on Heinrich Boll's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum I had to have that as well (I have a hard time saying no to a book that sounds interesting and that someone else has so obviously enjoyed or appreciated--I get myself into a lot of trouble this way).  My library also has a film by the same name (am guessing the film came later).

NYRB classics are such lovely books, don't you think?  I already have a used copy of Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy, but the new NYRB edition is so pretty I had to have it. 

Okay, last but not least is Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, set in a 16th century Italian convent, which I have heard many very good things about.

I know, I know, I shake my head at  myself all the time.  What can I say.  I'm weak when it comes to books.

How Should One Read a Book? (Revisited)

I read and wrote about Virginia Woolf's "How Should One Read a Book?" nearly four years ago, and was thinking it was time to revisit it after enjoying her essay "The Docks of London" recently.  You can read it online here (very nicely formatted and one of a group of essays published originally in A Common Reader - Second Series, all of which are now online).  I've read through this essay a few times now and am trying to distill Woolf's ideas down to just a few (which I'm finding to be very difficult), but please do go and read it for yourself as she has so many really thoughtful and smart things to say about reading.  She begins her essay with a question: How should one read a book?

"In the first place, I want to emphasise the note of interrogation at the end of my title. Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions."

As strange as it sounds I sometimes forget this.  I often look for some sort of guidance in my reading, and while I think there is definitely a time and place for this (particularly with more challenging works), I do need to learn to trust my own instincts.  Woolf says independence is the most important quality a reader can have.  There are some certainties in life, but who's to say whether King Lear is a better play than Hamlet?  It's a matter of choice and no one is more right than another. 

"To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions — there we have none."

So now the problem is how to choose, or where to begin?  How to bring order to the chaos of so many books and get the "deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?"  This is her first big question, or idea (there were two really big ideas I took away from this essay).  With every new book we pick up we carry with us a certain amount of baggage--our own experiences and ideas, but is it fair to thrust them on to a book? 

"If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite."

I am going to try and do this more often.  It's so easy to form opinions right off the bat, and I know I do it, but I like the idea of being an "accomplice" with the author and keeping an open mind.  Woolf suggests putting ourselves into the author's shoes and trying to write ourselves.  Pick an event and try to recall it and write about it, but faced with so many impressions you'll find it's not so easy to convey the emotion.  And then she turns to a few great novelists--Defoe, Austen and Hardy--to appreciate their mastery.  Each has their own perspective and reality.

"To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist — the great artist — gives you."

Faced with such a selection of books, though, the reader soon finds that very seldom will we see books by 'great artists'.  "Far more often a book makes no claim to be a work of art at all."  Do we refuse to read them, then , or "shall we read them, but read them in a different way, with a different aim?" 

"The greater part of any library is nothing but the record of such fleeting moments in the lives of men, women, and donkeys.  Every literature, as it grows old, has its rubbish-heap, its record of vanished moments and forgotten lives told in faltering and feeble accents that have perished.  But if you give yourself up to the delights of rubbish-reading you will be surprised, indeed you will be overcome, by the relics of human life that have been cast out to moulder."

I sort of like to think of some of these books as being comfort reads.  Woolf takes great delight in writing about these books that have piqued our curiosity as to how other people live their lives.  These books take us far away or throw light on places close to home even transporting us to another time.  It may not have any value and may even be negligible "yet how absorbing it is now and again."   At some point, though, the reader tires of the rubbish heap and moves on.

"'We have only to compare'--with those words the cat is out of the bag, and the true complexity of reading is admitted.  The first process, to receive impressions with the utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another.  We must pass judgment upon these multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting.  But not directly.  Wait for the dust to settle; for the conflict and the questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep.  Then suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the book will return but differently."

This second part of the equation to read deeply is much harder than it sounds.  Once again she notes how difficult it is to "sink our identity" when reading.  Inevitably it comes down to 'I love' or 'I hate' and we can't silence this inner voice easily.  A good reader needs to have imagination, insight and learning--not necessarily an easy task.  Ultimately it is being widely read that brings these two processes together.

"But as time goes on perhaps we can train our taste; perhaps we can make it submit to some control.  When it has fed greedily and lavishly on books of all sorts--poetry, fiction, history, biography--and has stopped reading and looked for long spaces upon the variety, the incongruity of the living world, we shall find that it is changing a little; it is not so greedy, it is more reflective.  It will begin to bring us not merely judgments on particular books, but it will tell us there that is a quality common to certain books."

I like how she gives power to the reader to influence the writer.  We don't have to be scholars or critics to read and appreciate and understand good books just a desire and love for reading.

"If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of the people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might not this improve the quality of his work?  And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching."

Thursday Mishmash

I'm officially 'on the wagon' when it comes to library books.  I took a serious look at what I had at home, what I am waiting for and what I can realistically read (or try to read anyway), and took a big bagful of books back.  It was a little painful as I want to read all the books I check out, but I'm just not a fast enough reader, so expect to see far fewer library loot posts here over the summer (unless I go crazy again).  So I have only nine books at home (which still sort of sounds like a lot though I am in the midst of reading three of them at the moment) including these four new titles.

I'm wondering if the Middle Ages is the place for me to be at the moment.  Vanitha Sankaran's Watermark (subtitle: A Novel of the Middle Ages) has a heroine who is mute, which means she's regarded with distrust and even fear.  She's the daughter of a papermaker in a small French village which appeals to me very strongly (am hoping for lots of papermaking description), so I'll give it a try.

I've already started Diane Janes's The Pull of the Moon.  I read a description somewhere and it was compared to Donna Tartt's The Secret History (a novel I have somehow avoided reading, but I bet I would enjoy it), but to me it sounded much more like Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion, a novel which I rank very high when it comes to psychological mysteries (few writers in my estimation compare to Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell at her best--even her so-so is generally a cut above the rest).  The Pull of the Moon is set in both the present day but the story that's told reaches back to the 1970s when three friends spend a reckless summer in an isolated farmhouse.  Along the way they meet hippie-ish, Trudie, who will end up buried in a grave before the end of the summer.  Sounds familiar.  I'm wary of reading this, which might pale in comparison (too soon to tell), but I can't help myself.

I have Kay to thank for introducing me to Chris Grabenstein's Tilt-a-Whirl, which Booklist called a debut that "stands out as refreshingly different."  The setting is Sea Haven on the Jersey Shore!  Do you see why I am drawn to it (aside from the fact, of course the story appeals, too).  I've been adding more titles to my Beach/Seaside reads, so another list may be in the works, we'll see.  

I have never read anything by Jane Smiley.  She is one of my gaps (I have a whole long list of them, I'm afraid) in my reading.  I checked out her new one, Private Life, though I wonder if I should start with one of her older novels.  I may have no choice as a line of readers is waiting for this one behind me.  

Other than these I think I only have season two of MI-5 waiting for me.  I've moved from mysteries to thrillers and am now ready to expand to spy novels (or shows).  The thing is I've not substituted one for the other as I go, I just add more to my repertoire--dangerous.      

At the moment I have a growing stack of books (from my own piles) that I am contemplating starting.  I'm not sure what my problem is.  I am thoroughly enjoying some excellent books.  In some cases I am 3/4 of the way to the end, but I just want more.  No wonder I can't finish anything.  I think when I read something that takes me a while to work my way through (yesterday's book) I just want something new and different.  I may not start any of them, but it's sort of fun to pull them out and look them over.  Likely I will start one at least since I am nearing the end of several others (rationalization in process, please go about your normal business).

One last thing.  My posting may become a bit irregular in the upcoming weeks.  I'm afraid I am having some unplanned renovations done to my house that will require my attention.  I've already been taking Saturdays off, so I may add a few more days as well.  From the beginning I have posted almost daily and I am getting a little worn out, so maybe this is a good thing.  I'm not entirely sure what my schedule will look like, but don't be surprised if things go a little quiet here.  I've also fallen drastically behind in answering emails and leaving comments on blogs, which I feel really terrible about (especially when so many people kindly drop by here often).  I have been reading posts via Google Reader, but it's not the same--just reading and not chatting.  Hopefully I can rectify that soon.  I hate to think how many posts I have flagged right now in order to leave comments on.  As always I need just a few more hours in the day.