A Work in Progress

Lost in the Stacks: The Past Tense of Love

On more than one occasion the spine of this book has caught my eye.  What a great title, The Past Tense of Love.  Doesn't it conjure up all sorts of interesting scenarios?  Perhaps something romantic, but a happy story?  I'd not heard of Elizabeth Cadell before, but a peek at the list of books she's written shows she was quite prolific.  Twenty titles alone listed in this book, which was published in 1970.

Cadell was born in 1903 in India where her father worked for the government.  Although she studied music in London during WWI she eventually returned to India where she met and married her husband.  She returned to England a widow where she passed the Second World War in York and by 1946 had published her first novel.  She would go on to publish more than fifty novels and had quite a following both in the UK and the US.  It sounds as though her books were light-hearted and often humorous romantic stories. 

My library only owns this one book, The Past Tense of Love, and by the sound of the NYT review it is one of those charming escapist sorts of reads that I so often enjoy.  As the review is brief, almost just a mention I'll share it here.

"Little did plucky Kerry know when she was asked by her employer, Lord Hazing, to carry a mysterious message from London to Brittany, that she would turn up her long lost mother, her long-absent father, some of her mother's ex-beaux, and their progeny, and Mr. Right.  I'm really not giving anything away with all this, because you can't begin to imagine how involved has been her genealogy.  You see, Kerry and her sister Dale were raised by their four aunts at Orchard House.  Madeleine, Kerry's mummy, suddenly left Orchard House at 18, surfacing a few years later to deposit two small children with her bachelor sisters.  Dissolve now into a villa in the coastal town of Gaston-le-Grand, where the long arm of coincidence spins a web as intricate as a Persian carpet.  You who believed in Tinker Bell will believe in Kerry, too.  You who didn't are just not worth bothering about."

It sounds like it could be fun, if perhaps a little contrived.  It has that mid-20th century romantic adventure story feel to it, though not knowing her style won't compare (though I was thinking Mary Stewart with her sometimes exotic locales--they may have nothing really in common however).  A little taste from the story:

"The packages lying on the floor of the narrow hall were difficult to sort.  Not only were they of unidentifiable shape and size, but they had been bought in the same department store and were uniform green-and-while wrapping paper."

Has anyone read her?  Considering how prolific she was and how popular she seems to have been, I have a feeling there might be a few devotees out there.  As a matter of fact I came across a fan website for her and there appears to be also a Yahoo Group devoted to her books.

Mortal Sickness by Andrew Taylor

It's been far too long since I read the first Inspector Thornhill mystery, An Air That Kills, and after reading The Mortal Sickness, I'm going to make sure as much time doesn't pass before I pick up the next book.  I wonder why these stories haven't been adapted to TV as they would make a great series.  The characters are interesting with an electric tension between them that I think will continue to build over the course of each book.  The setting, a post-WWII English village known as Lydmouth on the border of Wales, would provide stunning visuals no doubt.  I'm probably biased since this is one of the periods I most like reading about, as there was so much of interest going on at the time.  It seems as though Andrew Taylor has only written eight books in the Lydmouth series (the last one published in 2006) and unfortunately they don't seem to have been published, or are no longer in print, here in the US.  Used copies abound, however. 

The Mortal Sickness takes place not long after the events in the first book.  Inspector Thornhill, a transplant from the Fens, must investigate the death of a local woman whose body is found in the vestry of the parish church.  Jill Francis arrives just as the Vicar, Alec Sutton, has discovered the body and realizes that a priceless church heirloom has gone missing.  Jill had been sent on an errand to the church to ask the measurements of the Chalice for an article she had been helping with when she stumbles in on the scene and immediately gets whiff of a possible story.

Inspector Thornhill isn't the only one newly arrived to Lydmouth.  Jill, reeling after the breakup of a serious relationship and still recovering from an illness, accepted the invitation of her good friend Philip Wemyss-Brown and his wife Charlotte to come make a new start in Lydmouth.  Philip and Jill had worked as journalists in London during the war, and while she's close with the couple there are the beginnings of a strain on her relationship with Charlotte showing.   

Jill is intelligent and sophisticated but reserved and perhaps comes off as somewhat cold.  Thornhill isn't much friendlier and the two have clashed from the very beginning.  Each finds the other's methods of working disagreeable, yet there is an undeniable spark that neither is quite willing to accept.  Upon arriving at the crime scene when Thornhill spots Jill a look of annoyance comes over his face and Jill thinks how he might be attractive if he weren't so cross.  A natty dresser for a policeman he might pass for a solicitor in other circumstances.  Married with two children he and his wife enjoy a comfortable existence, but neither is particularly happy.  He works too much and too long and she often puts him off when he is around.

There are hints, and much gossip fueling the talk, that Catherine Kymin might have been having an affair with the vicar who is also fairly new to the village.  The Suttons are not forthcoming about their personal life and doubt is thrown upon his explanations of his behavior.  It doesn't help that poison pen letters making accusations about his personal activities keep turning up.  Quiet village life is never what it appears on the surface, and often the most insidious of deeds are done by those who are the least likely.

This isn't a story that will shock but one that slowly unravels to reveal dark secrets and misbehaviors.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Lydmouth and Taylor expands the cast just a bit to add a few more varying plotlines.  As with the first book I enjoyed the mystery, but I'm more intrigued by Jill and Thornhill whose feelings are so repressed I'm not even sure how much they realize they themselves have them for each other.  Taylor has created an interesting world, and no doubt an authentic one.  There's still much civility between the sexes and unsaid rules as to how they can and should behave with each other.  Yet the war changed so many things, sometimes turned a blind eye to who and how people related and interacted.  And I can't wait to see how things develop and change.

I've just started reading The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, prompted by Cornflower's bookgroup (although her discussion has already come and gone).  I've read Sayers before, but this is my first official Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, and I'm looking forward to finally meeting him properly.  I've also got the next Lydmouth mystery lined up, The Lover of the Grave.  I have a feeling this might be more of a cozy mystery year for me when it comes to mysteries and crime fiction, which is just fine if the rest are as good as this read has been.   

March 27: Book and Reading Notes

I had a very lazy but still (sort of) productive long weekend.  I may as well get used to the fact that are simply not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I want to, and try and be happy with what I can manage.  So many pages (of books and magazines and blogs) to read that go unread, and so many stitches left unstitched.  Sigh.  Maybe I'll win the lottery and become a lady of luxury, but as that is unlikely, and the fact that I like my job, I guess I will continue to juggle things as best I can.

So, I finished three books over the weekend and wrote about two of them.  I loved The Three Musketeers (could you tell?), and thoroughly enjoyed a mystery novel, which I'll be posting about tomorrow.  I also finished Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy for the upcoming Slaves read.  It's a novella and a very quick read.  I read it in two short sittings, and I am generally a slow reader, so do consider joining in if you've had an inkling to read Cather (or read  more of her).  We'll be discussing the book this weekend, so there is still time.  I love Willa Cather and this just confirms that I want to read yet more of her work.

I had hoped to finish To the Slaughterhouse by Jean Giono, but I did make good progress.  It's unlike most of the books I've read so far for Caroline's Literature and War readalong.  It's quite descriptive, and while the imagery is unpleasant, I feel like I am at arm's length somehow so it has been easier to read than I was expecting despite the sometimes graphic visuals.   

I read two more short stories from Colm Toíbín's collection The Empty Family.  I'm not sure what I think of this collection.  The nice thing about short stories is being able to dip into a collection and read the stories spread out or even at random, but I somehow still feel a little bit disjointed in the way that I am approaching the book.  His writing is marvelous and I have enjoyed the stories (well, more or less) that I've read, but I have to admit that my mind has been wandering a little to other collections I'd very much like to work on.  So th dilemma as always--continue on, or set aside in favor of something else I really want to read?  Of course I can come back to it at any time if I do pick up something else.  Or maybe I should try and read a story a day until I finish.  Or maybe I'll just read something else while I decide.

I've been reading Elizabeth Buchan's Light of the Moon and am very caught up in the story.  I have Liz to thank for recommending this book.  Although I have one of two of Buchan's more recent books I'm not sure I would have picked this one up otherwise.  It was published in 1991 and appears to be out of print now.  She apparently she writes stories with more contemporary settings now.  Light of the Moon is about a British woman with a French mother who parachutes into France during WWII to work with the French Resistance.  There is a love story wrapped up in the telling, though so far it has been more suspense than romance. 

I also came across a book that I only meant to 'dip into' and not actually start reading, but I am finding it fascinating going.  A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela is a history book about one day in the life of Romans in 115 CE.  Sounds like it could be pretty dry going, don't you think?  It's not, which is the problem as I really wasn't meaning to start reading it.  We'll see how it goes considering how slow I am normally with nonfiction books--particularly those with lots of detail and information.

One more mention.  I've started reading The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Why didn't you tell me the Lord Peter Wimsey books were so good?  Okay, okay, I know you did tell me.  Why did I wait so long to start reading one of her books.  I've actually read and loved Gaudy Night but when I tried the first Lord Wimsey mystery I had a hard time sticking with it.  A case of it's better to start with one of her better stories than starting at the beginning I suspect.

Will anyone else be watching the second season of The Killing?  I was wondering if the show had been dropped, and after they left everyone hanging.  I'm looking forward to watching it next weekend.

And the image above?  I was in the mood for something a little different.  This is one of the postcards I've received via Postcrossing.  Although people can send whatever they like, each person lists in their profile their interests in order to give the person sending a card some ideas.  You'll never guess what theme I list?  Yes, books.  I love this card.  It is a shot of the Paris booksellers--Bouquinistes.  I'm envious.  Imagine walking down the street and being able to look at books and magazines. 

The Three Musketeers

I love a good adventure story, and Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers (Trois mousquetaires, translated by Richard Pevear) is a great adventure story.  As a matter of fact I think it easily qualifies as a "thumping good read".  Now, I know Dumas has a talent for digression, though it was far worse in The Count of Monte Cristo, and he can get a little wordy, but this is the first time in I'm not sure how  many books that I didn't even feel those nearly 700 pages that make up the story.  I've not had much luck in the last year or so with longer reads, but maybe this is just what I needed to turn the corner on my chunky book dry spell.  As a matter of fact I'm feeling quite refreshed and eager for my next classic and may see which of those extra long books I set aside in the recent past might be one I can give another go to.  But can anything be as fun as Dumas?

The Three Musketeers has it all--suspense, romance, loyalty, deception, revenge, great villains, even greater heroes, a superb villainess, sword fights, breathtaking escapes, chases across the Channel, war, intrigue and more than a few bottles of fine Spanish port.  It's been years since I've seen the movie adaptation of the book (the one with Michael York as D'Artagnan), so I had a very vague idea of the story and a recollection that there was some humor to it, but what would the book be like?  Dumas is actually very funny.  There was some very subtle humor to the story, even a few laugh out loud moments though there was also some underlying sadness to it as well.  It could even be considered historical fiction as it was written in 1844 but the setting is France in 1625.

Just as I thought, D'Artagnan, steals the show.  This is really his story, but it's told with the help of his three very close friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, three musketeers who are the king's bodyguards.  D'Artagnan, brash and headstrong, leaves his native Gascony to seek his fortune in the capital where he wishes to become one of the king's men.  Letter of introduction in hand to give to M. de Tréville, the captain of the musketeers, he sets out with 15 écus in his pocket and an old nag of a mare (reminiscent of Don Quixote's Rosinante), but along the way he meets with misfortune in guise of the man in black.  In an inn in Meung, the man in black is conversing with a beautiful woman in a carriage and through a misunderstanding D'Artagnan (so ready to make his mark is also too easily offended) sets in motion everything that is to come after. 

The man in Meung is one of Cardinal Richelieu's men, enemy to the king.  Sometimes it's best to keep enemies even closer than friends, so the King and M. le Cardinal are close indeed.  Actually Louis XIII seems easily manipulated, but it is his wife, Anne D'Autriche who the Cardinal plots against.  And it is a plot hatched by the Cardinal, and carried out by the beautiful Milady with the aid of the Man in Black that will concern the four heroes of the story.  D'Artagnan is not one to quickly forget a favor and even less so an offense, so when he arrives in Paris intent on serving the King, but brash as ever he manages to not only cross paths once again with the Man in Black, but in so doing rather comically provokes duels with not only Porthos, but Athos and Aramis as well. 

D'Artagnan is nothing if not tenacious.  Aggravations turn into friendship between D'Artagnan and the three men who are only too ready to support him, a natural leader despite his age and inexperience.  The story is a series of misadventures, chance meetings and crossed paths, and when the woman D'Artagnan falls for is kidnapped he becomes enmeshed in a plot that will take all four men and their servants to unravel.  And unravel they do, in one of the best adventure stories I have ever come across.

Such a larger than life character as D'Artagnan and such a larger than life story deserves a better post than I've given it, but maybe you'll still get small a taste of the flavor of the story, one that is impossible really to summarize and give it justice.  I only hope that someday I can incorporate into a conversation one of Dumas's wonderful oaths.  Parbleu!  Sacrebleu!

The Three Musketeers is only the first in a cycle of books that Dumas wrote about the musketeers.  It is followed by Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne.  Could either book be anywhere near as entertaining as the first?  In case you're curious to know a little bit more about Alexandre Dumas, I wrote briefly about him here. 

New Book Confessions

Why do I always feel a little bit like I really am confessing when I share new books?  I can't help myself.  I know I should not acquire as quickly as I sometimes do, but as books are my one weakness (good thing I don't have an affinity for very fine Italian shoes or something equally as expensive) I more often than not give in to buying whims.  Besides books are good investments.  They don't go out of style, they keep well on a shelf and can be used over and over again, loaned out, given away and generally have long and happy lives.  So, this is about a month's worth or maybe more of the new books I've been acquiring. 

I give a nod in the direction of Cornflower for the first three on the pile.  I always make a note of the books she has on her sidebars--new arrivals, current reads and books read.  Inevitably I find something that catches my attention.  I try and resist as long as I can, but in the end it is usually futile.  So I think a couple of these are books she read a while ago, but they stuck in my mind long enough that I had to have them in the end.  This Time of Dying by Reina James was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize.  It's set during WWI is about the influenza pandemic that occurred towards the end of the war.  Kissing Alice by Jacqueline Yallop is another book set post-WWI and is a story about sibling rivalry when a father returns home from the trenches.  It was shortlisted for The McKitterick Prize.  I'd read Rosie Thomas in my pre-blogging days, but it has been quite a while since I've looked for her books.  The Kashmir Shawl is set in India during WWII and contemporary times. 

I read Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave a few years ago, and while in some ways a difficult read, liked it very much.  I still have The Spy Game at the ready, but when her newest, Painter of Silence, made the Orange Prize longlist I had to have it.  I'm very curious about this one since it is set in Romania in the 1950s, a place I know very little about and have never come across (setting-wise) in any of my recent reading.

I very much enjoyed Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, a perfect read for autumn, and another pre-blogging book Place in the Hills, which is a historical romance set in Italy.  Some time ago I picked up the third book in a trilogy she wrote, The Serpent's Tooth, which has a WWI (again!) setting.  In the end I decided I might actually enjoy starting at the beginning, so I bought used copies of The Shadow Catcher and Fever Hill.  The story follows several generations of one family beginning in Victorian London, but moving to a "decaying" Jamaican plantation and then back again to England.

I really love the titles that Peirene Press has published and thus far have borrowed them from the library, but so far I've not come across the newer releases.  I do have The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg to read, "a Shakespearean drama from icy Finland."  I'd love to be on their automatic release program and get each title as it comes out.  Something to think about for later.

Although at the moment I don't have any books on the go with Middle Eastern settings or by authors from Middle Eastern countries, it is still in the back of my mind that I want to read more about the region.  I liked the sound of Hilary Mantel's Eight Months on Ghazzah Street about an Englishwoman living in Saudi Arabia.

Not sure where I came across Margaret Wurtele's The Golden Hour, browsing no doubt.  I'm so predictable in my book selections.  This is set in Italy during WWII about a woman who joins the partisans in order to smuggle food initially, but later gets in deeper when she begins hiding a Jew.  Sounds like it could be heart-wrenching.

I've heard many good things about The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino.  So far this year I've had a so-so time choosing crime novels.  Cozies seem to be more my thing at the moment, but maybe this will help me out of my rut.  It won Japan's Naoki Prize for Best Novel.

And yay--I finally have a copy of Jenn Ashworth's recent Cold Light, which I bought second hand.  I loved her first book, A Kind of Intimacy, and have been itching ever since to read her newest.  It's not due out in the US until October and then the edition is listed as a large print edition, so there was no use in trying to wait and be patient about it. 

The joys of a new stack of books!  I want to pick out one and start reading this very minute.  Temptations, temptations.  I'm obviously one to give in to my whims . . .

Lost in the Stacks: Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn

Spencer.  Swados.  They're not far from each other on the shelves.  Ladies first, and now for the gentlemen, or gentleman in this case.  I'd not heard of Harvey Swados before, but the catchy title made me look, and then made me pull it from the shelf.  With no dust jackets I have to rely on pretty spines and catchy titles.  Woe to the poor book that has been mended and has that awful binding tape covering the spine making the book blend in with all the rest. 

Harvey Swados, born in 1920 in Buffalo, New York, was a literary critic, author of novels, short stories, essays and journalism.  He probably doesn't need any help from me when he has the New York Review of Books reissuing Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn (originally published in 1951).  It was pure chance I pulled him from the shelf, but I expect it was more than chance that led to NYRB from adding him to their backlist.  This is what they have to say about this collection of short stories:

"Harvey Swados’s many splendid stories speak of work, friendship, and family. They are about the common world, as well as the final loneliness from which the common world cannot protect us. And yet Swados, as Richard Gilman has written, was above all concerned with 'the breakthrough into true feeling, the attainment of moral dignity, and the linking up with others through compassion'."

Swados served in World War II as a merchant marine and began publishing his books in the decade or so following the end of the war.  The title story of the book is "without doubt one of the most enduring achievements of postwar American fiction" according to NYRB.  High praise indeed. 

I think I am going to follow up Colm Toíbín's book of short stories with this one.  I like much of the writing of the postwar period in the US and admit that seeing the NYRB edition of it makes me even more eager to read it.

An interesting side note.  I read that Swados's article "Why Resign from the Human Race", which was published in Esquire might have been the inspiration for the founding of the Peace Corps.  And a little teaser of his writing:

"There was a time when New York was everything to me: my mother, my mistress, my Mecca, when I could no more have wanted to live any place else than I could have conceived of myself as a daddy, disciplining my boy and dandling my daughter.  I was young, the war (the one that ended in 1945, the only one that will ever be 'the war' for people my age) was just over, and I was free."

Who has read Harvey Swados?

Revelations and Other Diaries

What surprised me most as I was reading Revelations: Diaries of Women, edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter, was how polished many, maybe even most of the diaries, were that were represented in the anthology.  When I first mentioned finding this book, several people noted that they might feel a little uncomfortable reading such private reflections that these women kept in their journals and diaries, but if you have any hesitation about picking this up, and maybe any published diary, you needn't have.  Even Anne Frank, a young woman of fourteen, rewrote much of her diary, which surprised me.  I assumed it was all just as she put it down originally.  A number of diarists in this collection reworked their writing.  Some naturally so as they were authors with an eye to being published or were working out ideas in their mind and on paper.

Many of the excerpts were from diarists I was already familiar with like Sophie Tolstoy, Anais Nin and Virginia Woolf (to name but a few) but even more were by women I hadn't come across in my readings previously, like Evelyn Scott.  And reading this book, which I think I want to own now, has sent me in ever new directions, like wanting to explore the art of Käthe Kollwitz, or read diaries I only got a tiny sampling of (or that others suggested to me as good examples of the genre)--like Sei Shonagon, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Boykin Chestnut.

Since the book was compiled in the mid-1970s there is a strong feminist leaning in the choices I think.  Although they cover the spectrum of different roles women have played over time (daughter, helpful sister, mother, artist), there is much about the psychology of women.  Unsurprisingly considering these are diaries, there is a lot of self-reflection and self-analysis and there is a lot of depth in these pages, too.  In some cases I think I was expecting something a little different, though I was never disappointed.  Some of the excerpts really were small works of art, and on occasion I admit what the diarist was writing about and the style with which she wrote went a little over my head. 

There is so much variety in these pages, it's hard to give more than a very broad overview, and as much as I would like to write about each and every diarist it would be too hard in one short post.  I will just mention a few favorites, however.  I've never been especially interested in the Civil War era of American history (I should probably not admit that), but after reading both Frances Anne Kemble and Mary Boykin Chestnut's diaries, I'm inspired to follow up.  I've already got Mary Boykin Chestnut's Diary to read and am even contemplating reading Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, which I somehow missed reading when in school, as my next classic.  I'm still intrigued by Anais Nin, even though I wonder how much is fictionalized in her diaries, and I was surprised by how uncertain Virginia Woolf could at times be.  I was very touched by much of what I read and found so many of these women truly amazing.  This is a real gem of a book, and as I have barely touched on what it has to offer, I recommend it if you are interested in the genre.  

I'm now reading the first of seven diaries by Frances Partridge, A Pacifist's War: Diaries 1939-1945.  I could never be a diarist, at least not like the women who were excerpted in Revelations.  Partridge's Diary, however, is (and perhaps in part due to how it was edited) more along the lines of what I expecting when I thought of reading diaries.  Her entries are far more standard in what you might imagine as a daily journal.  She chronicles the things she does, the people who come to stay, bits about the war as well as how she feels about world events and her views on pacifism and politics.  There seems to be less introspection, at least to the extent that I found in Revelations, though that isn't a criticism only an observation.  As a witness to history, I think Partridge will be wonderful to read.  I'm quite curious about her now and would like to read something more to get a sense of her life and background.

I've accumulated so many great diaries now that I am tempted to pick up another to read alongside.  Perhaps something that is more of a narrative almost since Partridge's diary is presented in often brief daily entries.  I'm going to try and resist, but I tend to cave in easily to reading whims.  I am thinking of buying The Assassin's Cloak by Irene Taylor, which has been recommended several times over now, and reading it every day.  If I understand the set up--each day has different diary extracts, so I could reach each date and work my way through the course of the year. 

So I'm moving along slowly with this project (that didn't really start out being a project), and that's okay.  There is so much interesting material out there, I think I'll be kept busy by it for months and still not lack variety in terms of reading choices.

A Few Miscellaneous Bookish Things

If you're planning on joining in on Simon and Harriet's Muriel Spark Reading Week next month (April 23-29 to be exact), and you like reading ebooks, you'll be pleased to note that Open Road Integrated Media has just released eight of Spark's works in ebook format.  Spark has a fairly extensive list of published works, though I'm not sure whether they're all still in print now or not.  I've read several of her books, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (twice), but there are a few titles on their list that I am not familiar with which they are probably making available to readers once again. 

I'm especially intrigued by The Hothouse by the East River, which is "is a delirious satire of superficial urban life in the shadow of one of modern history’s great horrors."  I'm also leaning towards Territorial Rights, which sounds like something of a romp, "a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera."  I'm really looking forward to getting back to Spark's work and suspect I'll be loading a few of these onto my Nook (happily they offer ebooks from a variety of vendors in different formats) in anticipation of the readalong.  I've yet to decide which novel, or novels as the case may be, that I'll read, but now it seem as though there will be more choice than ever.

I'm marking my calendar for a couple of other group reads that are happening in the next couple of months as they fit in so well with my reading plans and current reading mood.  There was a time when I read every book by Tracy Chavalier as soon as it came out.  I've missed the last few novels by her, though they are of course on my reading pile.  Her most recent, Remarkable Creatures, will be one I hope to read along with Caroline and Emma in April--discussion on the 26th (you can find more information about it here).  It's one I just needed a good excuse to pick up, and here comes my excuse.  In May Liburauk is hosting a readalong of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, a novel I read many, many years ago when I was in college.  I was recently reminded that it is written in diary format, so it would be a perfect companion read for my diary project (it didn't start out as a project, but it seems it has become one, and I like the idea of it).

And yes, one more.  Buried in Print and I are going to read Girl Reading by Katie Ward in tandem . . . very soon now.  I've got my copy on my night table and am itching to crack open the book.  "Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading."  I love books that combine literature and art in the stories, and this seems the perfect sort of story for me. 

Can you tell I really enjoy readalongs?  I often end up with more on my reading plate than I can manage, but I can't help myself and try to manage as well as I can.  It's a great way to expand my reading horizons and I always learn more about the book (and sometimes myself) by hearing what another reader thinks of a book.  Also the camaraderie of reading together and usually the variety of readers makes for an enjoyable experience.  It also usually gives me a good excuse to pick up a book (see Remarkable Creatures).

I am happily veryvery close to finishing about three books at the moment and making good progress on a couple of others, which I will share more about soon, of course.  More happily I am taking a couple of vacation days to make a nice long weekend, in which I hope to catch up on blog reading (very sorry I have been mostly absent online of late--I hope to remedy the situation soon.  I can always tell when I've fallen totally behind as I get fewer visitors here as well, as though I've fallen through a crack or something, which I guess I sort of have) and finish those books!

Teaser Tuesday: No Hurry to Get Home

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get around to Emily Hahn's No Hurry to Get Home, which I have just started reading in earnest.  I know why I picked it up right now, however.  I think I've mentioned that I'm in the mood for travel literature (or if I've not mentioned it, it has certainly been on my mind), brought on by my diary reading.  Are you surprised?  I had a whole array of books set out in front of me but I decided on Emily Hahn for two reasons.  One was the subtitle, "The Memoir of the New Yorker Writer Whose Unconventional Life and Adventures Spanned the Twentieth Century".  I'm all for unconventional women travelers.  The other was a comparison of Hahn to another recent favorite,  M.F.K. Fisher, by essayist Adam Gopnik who is himself a writer for The New Yorker.  By the way, and something of an aside, I have had some of the best luck with reading past New Yorker writers.  There is something about their prose style that attracts me.

Emily Hahn, nicknamed Mickey by her family growing up, was born in St. Louis in 1905.  From the sound of it, she led an unorthodox lifestyle living abroad much of the time and traveling according to whim to faraway and exotic places.  She is quoted as saying "Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can't claim that as the reason I went to China."   Apparently she did have an addiction to opium while living there as well as had an affair with Britain's chief spy in Hong Kong, who she later married.  I don't think I can imagine myself doing some of the things she did, though the world was a different place then, but her adventures do make for interesting reading.

As a child she was a "rapacious" reader and would later spend forty-seven years as a staff writer for The New Yorker.  She wrote many varied books, her tastes being quite eclectic.  She had a fascination with words and could pull from memory quotations or passages from literature she read many years previously.  I like what was said about her in the foreword.

"Her work stands up to time and has a strong, steady undercurrent  of truth and reality like a secret subterranean stream.  She maintained that she was not a feminist, but I believe that was because she disliked being labeled or pigeonholed.  She steadfastly refused throughout her life to conform to anyone else's idea of how women, not just this particular woman, should be, or do, or become.  There was an inborn and unyielding Independence in her that must often have been difficult to maintain.  She lived her life as she chose to and found certain conventions mere unreasonable nuisances and nothing to do with her.  Yet there was no sign of flamboyance in her looks, nor in her demeanor, nor in her character.  What she did, she did for herself, never for the impression it might make on the rest of the world.  She made the unconventional seem ordinary by her very attitude toward it, and therefore made it more acceptable to those of less brave or less honest."

Doesn't she sound interesting?  No Hurry to Get Home was originally published in 1970 under the title Times and Places.  She was meant to be writing her autobiography, but wasn't enthusiastic about the project.  As she had written autobiographical pieces for The New Yorker, she compiled some of them (written between 1937-1970) in this loosely connected collection of writings.  It sounds very much like the essays I just read by M.F.K. Fisher, a style I very much enjoyed. 

I've been reading the first essay, which is about when she ran away from home at the age of 15.  I came across this wonderful passage where she explains why, which I think will be appreciated, so I thought today was a good day to share a teaser.

"Very likely it happened not so much because we moved to Chicago as because I had a hangover from books.  I was a deep reader, plunging into a story and remaining immersed even after I'd finished it.  Some of it was apt to cling for a long time, like water to a bathing suit.  The 'Jungle Books' clung, for example.  Mowgli was a natural wanderer.  I was surprised when he went back to this home cave once, after he'd grown up, to confer with Mother and Father Wolf.  I assumed that he had forgotten them.  I had.  I was also a natural wanderer, or wanted to be.  Mowgli was the real thing--the best example-but there were others.  David Copperfield for instance; he ran away, and a lot of Dickens' other children were admirably mobile, too.  I was certain that Little Nell, though she thought she was sorry to slop away from home with her grandfather, must have felt some hidden enthusiasm for the road.  Nor did I have to depend on Dickens for vicarious running away.  I drifted downriver with Huck Finn, and got lost with Tom Sawyer, and sailed here and there, all over the world, with any number of other people scorning the stale air of indoors."

Although I didn't need anymore convincing, I like the idea that she has been called "one of America's lost literary treasures".

Reading Ireland: Two Short Stories

I'm easily swayed by others into picking up a new book, or in this case a short story or two, that I've been meaning to read.  I really love reading short stories, and I'm not sure why I don't read them more often.  Usually it's just a case of being spoilt for choice and with so many good books on the go at once, it's hard to get in all the reading I want to each day or even each week.  So I've slowly been working my way through Colm Toíbín's The Empty Family and really do need to wrap things up and finish the last few short stories in this recent collection, which I've let languish now for far too long.

Last week Caroline wrote about several short stories she read by Irish authors for the Irish Short Story Week hosted by The Reading Life which is going on through March 22.  I was afraid I had missed it entirely, but I have managed to squeeze in a couple of short stories this past weekend.  It was a nice reminder of just how much I enjoy the short story format and I am now going to try and read at least one a week (famous last words, I'll try anyway).  Although I should have picked up the Toíbín, I was so intrigued by what Caroline had to say about the story she read by Elizabeth Bowen, I decided to see whether I could get my hands on it instead. 

As luck would have it, I have a number of books by Bowen, who I've read in the past and admire immensely.  I already had plans to pick up one of her novels, and after reading another of her short stories I am even more determined to do so (I have read a few of her short stories in the past by the way).  She is yet another of those authors whose work I began collecting after I read a couple of her books.  I'm happy I did so, as I now have a wonderful collection of her stories to dig into, Collected Stories published by Vintage Classics.  It's big, chunky book of over 700 pages and contains more than seventy-five of her stories grouped roughly chronologically. 

I had planned to read the same story as Caroline, but when I started looking through all the choices, I decided to read one of her stories written during the war years called "The Happy Autumn Fields".  It's a brilliant story.  It literally gave me goosebumps when I finished it.  It's a ghost story, but the goosebumps were more a result of the excellence of her writing rather than a fear of what she wrote about.  However, there is a feeling of the uncanny in the story--something happening which you don't expect.  As the story unravels you don't first see the connection as there are two parallel stories that will come together in an unusual way. 

It's almost too hard to describe without ruining it for anyone who wants to read it and be surprised.  In one thread, the story begins with a family is crossing a field one autumn day--the last day they will be able to spend together before the younger sons return to school. The oldest son and heir is in the army and is visiting home and has brought a friend.  This is a landowning family and there's the suggestion that the boys had been out hunting, perhaps an annual even to mark the day before school begins and everyone scatters.  But the focus is more on the younger two sisters, who are quite close and almost never out of each other's company.  One shows an obvious attraction towards the oldest brother's friend and the feeling seems to be reciprocated. 

In the second thread, which is shorter, a woman awakes in her flat which has been bombed during the Blitz and a friend, perhaps a lover, arrives to encourage her to leave before the building falls down into a heap.  She's awakened from a fitful sleep of strange dreams and digs through the rubble to find the things she must take with her when she leaves including a box of letters and memorabilia from long ago dead relatives.  So, I'm going to leave you hanging and not tell you the connection between the two threads.  Do look for Elizabeth Bowen's stories if you've read and enjoyed any of her other work.  She was a remarkable short story writer.  Like Elizabeth Taylor she is another author who can convey so much, and in such a sophisticated manner very, very subtly.

Since I was on a roll and had pulled another collection of Irish writing from my shelves when I went looking for Elizabeth Bowen's books, I read a short story by another writer whose work I've read and think highly of, William Trevor.  Trevor is also a very talented short story writer.  I read his story, "The Ballroom of Romance" from The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.  This collection has both excerpts from novels as well as short stories by more than fifty different Irish authors writing today.  It's a book I bought ages ago and never got around to reading.  Every book has its day, though.  When the  moment is right, I'll pluck it from the shelf and give it some well-deserved attention.   Now I want to read all the stories in this book, too.  It can be very dangerous to have a nice personal library to draw from.

Trevor is a wonderful author, too, but his style is very different than Bowen's--equally well written but in a simpler more straightforward style.  Bowen's story had a slightly complicated structure that took a little time to get used to.  Right from the start you fall into Trevor's story about rural Ireland sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Bridie, an only daughter, and a good daughter, has been left to tend to her father after the death of her mother.  Her father is disabled after having lost a leg to gangrene and must care not only for him but must help attend to the chores necessary to keep their farm running.  Since they live miles from the local town and Bridie has only an ancient bicycle to use for transportation it means her interaction with anyone other than her father and the local priest is limited.  And life seems to have passed Bridie by, as at 39, she is alone when all her school friends have moved or married.

Her only respite is her weekly trips into town for shopping and mass.  But on Saturday nights she cycles to a local dance-hall called The Ballroom of Romance.   She's not the only unmarried woman of a certain age to go to the local dances where she watches the rest of the locals and ruminates on her own life and those of the others.  She remembers the one boy she loved so long ago who married someone else, a lost opportunity that will never come again.  Now there is only the chance of brief couplings--chances to kiss in the fields on her way home with the middle aged bachelors.  The few men who are unattached are a rarity and in high demand by the other few women who never had a chance to marry either.  This is a melancholic story of a life given to responsibility and missed chances and the possibility to find if not true happiness at least some form of comfort.

Both stories were wonderful and I am so glad I was prompted to go in search of them.  I've already pulled books from my shelves by both Bowen and Trevor, and I might have to keep both of these anthologies close at hand as well.  I do think I'll return to my Toíbín book first, however.  And just as an aside, aren't the covers of both books wonderful?