A Work in Progress

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

What are the chances of reading only one book from the Orange Prize longlist and it turning out to be the winner?  I wish I could say I've simply got a knack for picking winners, but it was more a time and chance thing and the fact that The Song of Achilles appealed to me the most when the list came out.  In any case I was very pleased when it was announced that Miller won  (and my fingers had been crossed for her).  I had started writing this post last weekend, but I ran out of steam and didn't finish it thinking I'd save it for later.  Now I'm inspired to post it while the momentum is there. 

If I had to choose right now, today, what my favorite book of the year is, I would without hesitation pick Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles.  For me it was a pitch perfect story that had all the right elements in just the right measure--beautifully written, poignantly (and I mean that in a good way) told and perceptively presented.  I've put off writing about it as I feel like I can't really do the story justice but before the details (very sadly) begin fading from memory, as happens with all books eventually, I wanted to mention it here.  It even has inspired me on my next reading path, which is a nod of appreciation and praise in Miller's direction for her exquisite storytelling abilities. 

The Song of Achilles is a retelling of the Trojan War.  Achilles was the son of one of the lesser goddesses, Thetis, and the mortal Peleus.  Known for both his beauty and his skill as a warrior, it is through the eyes of his companion Patroclus that we see him.  So this is as much Patroclus's story as it is that of Achilles.  When given the choice of a long life lived in obscurity or a short one that would be memorialized Achilles chooses fame.  Of course we know his fame is achieved on the battlefield, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  

After he accidentally kills another youth Patroclus is sent to Phthia to be raised in the court of King Peleus.  A disappointment to his father, Patroclus couldn't be more different than Achilles.  Although he is himself the son of kings, he's small and awkward and not skilled in the abilities most prized.  Achilles, however, is a golden boy.  He's self assured and talented both in playing the lyre as well as on the training ground.  Already at a young age he knows of the prophecy that he will be the greatest warrior of his generation, and therefore it's forbidden for anyone to watch him as he refines his battle skills.

Perhaps at first he feels sorry for him, or is intrigued by him, but Achilles takes Patroclus under his wing and the two become friends and companions.  When Achilles is sent away to Mount Pelion to continue his education, Patroclus follows him.  Tutored by the centaur, Chiron, the boys grow to be young men but their idyll spoiled when Paris steals the beautiful Helen from her husband.  Patroclus is bound by honor to fight for her release and Achilles must follow his destiny, but the war will be a trial for both young men as they test their mettle and their friendship.  It's particularly so for Achilles who must live up to the name he is destined to make for himself.

Madeline Miller, a Latin and Ancient Greek language scholar, also studied at the Yale School of Drama where she specialized in adapting classics tales for modern audiences.  She obviously knows her material and how to present it in a way that both stays true to it's original form, but is still exciting and captivating to readers.  It's certainly not necessary to know the myths to appreciate this book.  I had only the vaguest recollection of the story and it has inspired me to learn more.  More than just a gripping story, it has much to say as well about love and loyalty, dedication and honor and lessons that could easily be applied to the contemporary world.  I guess that's what makes classic literature so important--the ease with which it can be adapted useful no matter how many years separate the creation from the retelling.  It's a story that Miller has breathed new life into and one that deserves to be read.

Thinking About Dutch Lit Month

I've been pretty hit or miss this month with reading plans, but that never stops me from making new ones.  Since June is just around the corner, I've been giving some thought to books I might read by Dutch authors for Iris's Dutch Literature Month.  Thanks to Catharina who offered reading suggestions as well as to Iris who has shared a list of possible reads.  I've assembled a few books I might try, though I am missing a couple--one I forgot to put in the pile and one I am trying to get via interlibrary loan.  I'm trying not to buy any new books, but if anyone has any other suggestions for books by contemporary Dutch authors who I can easily obtain, do please let me know.  From top to bottom:

No Sale by Patrick Conrad is a review copy which came by way of Bitter Lemon Press.  I'll definitely be reading this, but it isn't due out in the US until August so I was planning on reading it a bit closer to the publication date.  Still, I might be tempted to read it sooner.  "Stylishly written with its pointed references to cinema classics, and a blend of horror and humour, this is a powerful psychological thriller.  It won the Diamond Bullet Award, the most prestigious award for crime novels written in Dutch.

Close-Up by Esther Verhoef is another crime novel I've been wanting to read (and I always like good excuses to pick up books from my TBR pile).  It's about a plain, pudgy Dutch woman who travels to London for a weekend and falls in with a bohemian crowd.  This is a thriller with a surprise ending.

Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan Van Mersbergen is one of last year's Peirene Press releases.  I'm intrigued by Iris's comments about the story, but it's good to read outside my comfort zone, something I don't do often enough these days.

Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom.  Catharina suggested several of Nooteboom's books, but I haven't been able to find any in local libraries.  This had the most appeal to me amongst the titles I did find.  He seems such an important Dutch writer--at least I often see his books mentioned by and written about by bloggers.  "Lost Paradise is an affirmation of our underlying humanity in an increasingly fragmented age, a deeply resonant tale of angels, art, and thwarted love."

In Lucia's Eyes by Arthur Japin is a book I've owned for a very long time and think I should read simply because I've so often looked at it and imagined how much I would (will) enjoy it.   "Set in the mid-18th century, Dutch author Japin's elegant second novel richly imagines the plight of Casanova's first youthful heartbreak."

Eline Vere by Louis Couperus was suggested by both Catharina and Iris, and I do like the sound of the story, so I've put in an ILL request and hope it won't take too long for a copy to arrive.  "[A] masterpiece … The Hague's greatest writer, turn-of-the-century Louis Couperus … captured the city in a famous novel, Eline Vere. … For its roomy, chatty descriptions of life among the moneyed classes, it is a Buddenbrooks avant la lettre; for its restless heroine, trapped by social obligations, it's a Dutch Madame Bovary.  Ben Moser, Harper's

My stack of books should keep me busy enough, but out of curiosity is anyone else reading along and which book(s) have you decided to read?

General Bookishness: Library Books (Public & Private)

Just a few library finds today.  It's nice having access to libraries (and I'm lucky as I have access to a public and academic library--so many wonderful books at my fingertips).  I've got a mix here to share. 

Peter Taylor's A Summons to Memphis was recently on my bookcart ready to be sent to the new books area, but I'm afraid I had to snag it before it ever left the acquisitions area.  This was won the Ritz-Paris Hemingway Award (to be honest I'd never heard of that one before seeing it listed on the book), but it also won the Pulitzer Prize.  The summons comes to Phillip Carver from his sisters when the discover their widowed father is about to remarry.  I've not read much Southern literature, but this seems a good place to start.

Drowned by Therese Bohman is a psychological thriller published by Other Press, whose frontlist releases I usually take note of.   "Set in the idyllic countryside during a fleeting Swedish summer and autumn, nothing is as it seems in this spellbinding novel of psychological suspense.  Combining hothouse sensuality with ice-cold fear on every page, Drowned heralds the emergence of a major new talent on the international scene."

Another new Other Press title is Finnish author Rikka Pulkkinen's True.  "True is a psychological drama that explores the nature of truth, lies, memory, and how stories have the ability to bend and change with time.  Rikka Pulkinnen, a young Finnish talent, depicts the bonds and traumatic schisms of three generations with virtuosic prose and storytelling skill."

I've heard many good things about Alice LaPlante's Turn of Mind.  I even had it checked out from the public library, but the line was long and I didn't get to it in time.  It's another I grabbed from my book cart at work.  I 've been a little apprehensive about reading it as it deals with dementia, but I think once I start reading I won't mind.  This is in part a crime novel and has been named to many 'best of' lists.

I'm not sure I'll get to Carson Morton's Stealing Mona Lisa, but it's not only gotten very good reviews but it is hugely appealing to me.  "What happens when you mix a Parisian street orphan, a hot-tempered Spanish forger, a beautiful American pickpocket, an unloved wife, and one priceless painting?"  It's based on the actual theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.

And a beach book, which I really do want to read, but the due date is quickly approaching.  The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri is set on an island off the coast of Maine where Nora Cunningham flees after she discovers her husband's infidelity.  She gives in to her grief, spilling tears into the ocean.  The next day a fisherman is shipwrecked on the rocks nearby.  Is he possibly a selkie, known from local legend, or just an ordinary man.  This sounds like a great vacation read.

The great thing about having a personal library is being able to browse anytime I like.  And even if I don't read a book as soon as I buy it, I will inevitably come back to it at a later time when I am in the mood.  That's the case with the two books on the bottom of my pile.  The top two I pulled out when I was looking for the first two (I'm very bad that way--it's a constant shift of books from my bedroom upstairs to my bookroom downstairs and back again).

Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider is actually three novellas in one.  The title story is about a girl "who falls in love with a young soldier in World War I only to realize their love will have no fulfillment, that they are to be cheated of what little time is left to them."  It also contains Old Mortality and Noon Wine--all three stories have themes of love and death.  I can't tell you how many times I have shifted this book back and forth.

Earth (Ox Tales) is an anthology of short stories by contemporary writers.  I have the whole set (Earth, Air, Fire and Water).

I've been steadily reading Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin and am intrigued by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and want to read more about her.  How handy that I have Nancy Milford's biography, Savage Beauty.

And I mentioned I wanted to find my copy of Bulfinch's Mythology, and for once it was right where I thought it would be.  It contains not only the Greek myths but also The Age of Chivalry (King Arthur legends) and Legends of Charlemagne.  Not sure I'll get to it anytime soon but it might be nice to compare the myths when I get to the actual stories.

I feel like such a book glutton.  I can never stop at one.

Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin

Touted as "the classic novel of the London Blitz", Nigel Balchin's Darkness Falls from the Air certainly is one of the most authentic novels I've read so far about London during WWII. I think the only contemporary author who has come close in matching the feel of the period is Sarah Waters. Balchin published the novel in 1942 just after the height of the Blitz when more then 40,000 civilians were killed and more than a million homes were flattened or damaged. At the time Balchin was working as a psychologist for the Personnel Section of the War Office.

This seems to be one of those forgotten classics (though I think he was a fairly popular novelist at the time he was writing) which I think I never would have come across on my own had not Caroline chosen it for her Literature and War readalong. It did manage to garner a place on the Guardian's list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (the War & Travel section). Balchin was writing from the immediacy of the time and notable is the fact that the end of the war was still years away so the outcome was still uncertain (though in the novel and perhaps amongst those living through it, there was a feeling Britain would be victorious).

"'I think it's important to win this war,' I said.

'I agree,' said Carter. 'But I think we shall, you know. I doubt if we shall deserve to, but still--'

'What makes you think so? I said.

Carter looked at his cigarette.

'Because I believe the mess we're in here is probably less than the mess in Germany. After all, imagine a country where the government runs everything--!'"

Told in first person Bill Sarratt recounts the events of his daily life with wit and detachment. Night and day London is bombed but life goes on. Bill is a civil servant with a mind numbing job trying to press through public policy to help win the war, but the amount of bureaucratic red tape he comes up against is almost ludicrous unless you've worked in a government job and understand just what a frighteningly realistic portrait Balchin paints. There are endless meetings where little is accomplished and needless reorganizations moving personnel from one position to another where they can apply their skills in the least effective way and train someone new with no skills as a replacement.

"'By the way,' I said, 'Establishment think it would be a nice idea to transfer Giles.'

'Giles?' said Lennox, 'Why?'

'Presumably because he knows his present job and is doing it well.'

'Can you spare him?' said Lennox.

'Of course not.'

'Have you told them so?'

I said, 'I've told them quite a lot.'

Lennox said hurriedly, 'Well, look here, don't you quarrel with them, Sarratt. It doesn't do any good. I'll speak to Lymes.'

'Thank you,' I said.

'Who have you spoken to?' he said, still anxious.

'Only Pearce.'

'That's all right, I'll speak to Lymes.'

'They are a bunch of incompetents.' I said.

'Yes,' said Lennox. 'It's a frightfully difficult job, of course. You don't want to quarrel with them, you know. They're very powerful.'

'They're a menace,' I said."

It's with the same wit and detachment that Sarratt deals with his personal life as well. His wife Marcia is having an affair with a sensitive but needy poet who hasn't been able to write during the bombardment being faced with so much ugliness. It's with Sarratt's knowledge that she is seeing Stephen, also a married man, but he sees it as a meaningless fling that Marcia will soon tire of. As a matter of fact she has promised to end it, but is being emotionally blackmailed and can't seem to extricate herself easily from the relationship. Eventually the constant bombing, against which the story takes place, the difficulties Sarratt faces at the Ministry and Marcia's inability to make a firm decision about what she wants begins wearing on him.

The pressures of work and love are palpable. Bill finally manages to organize a committee that is prepared to make some real decisions when the rug is pulled out from under by colleagues who promise one thing then don't deliver. Personal egos seem to get in the way of real progress with an eye to helping the war effort. And then Bill finally gives Marcia an ultimatum. She seems to be forever calling it quits with Stephen who threatens her with dire endings, and being tenderhearted she refuses to cut him off. It's obvious he loves her but he won't demand she leave Stephen, telling her only she must make up her own mind (which in a way felt like a different sort of emotional blackmail). It was the conversations and struggles between Bill and Marcia, the personal bits, that I enjoyed the most. Obviously it must all come to a head.

This is a really interesting novel, which I'm happy to have read, though I must admit I did struggle a little with it along the way. There are lots of bon mots and witty dialogue that I very much appreciated and felt were well done, but occasionally so much Ministry talk made my eyes glaze over just a little. Still, it was a wonderful and artfully presented satire, which I am guessing Balchin created from first hand experience, and therefore very believable. It's a short novel and excellent in its descriptions of what it might have been like living and working in London during the Blitz--the constant bombing day after day (so much so that Bill and Marcia would often forgo sitting in a bomb shelter and would often be out wining and dining instead), dealing with the black out, the general attitude of going on with life despite it all and perhaps with a looser sense of morality than in regular times (at least that it seems to often be portrayed in literature). And it's presented very subtly as well with just enough detail to be effective and realistic without there being any sensory overload (which I think often happens in historical fiction).

Darkness Falls from the Air is well worth searching out if you have an interest in reading about WWII. You can read Caroline's thoughts on the book here. Do also check out Skiourophile's review of Balchin's The Small Back Room here. It deals with similar themes.

By the way I've just started reading Vere Hodgson's Few Eggs & No Oranges, which is a diary Hodgson began writing in June 1940. I'm curious to see what it was like living during the Blitz by ordinary people. I'm sure I have more nonfiction books on the topic and will see what I can dig out.

Next up for June is Len Deighton's Bomber.

Greek Mythology: A Cast of Characters

I'm not sure how the actual myths are going to read when I get to them, but I must say Edith Hamilton's Mythology is so far a very easy read despite the book being a slightly hefty 400+ pages.  Before embarking on the tales themselves it's good to know who is who, which is what Hamilton undertakes in the first chapter of the first section of the book. 

If you've not read Greek Myths, or like me it's been ages since you've done so, you might still be surprised by how much you already know.  I mean there are these Titans.  Do you remember this Poseidon?  This Apollo is quite famous.  I've actually seen this Venus (Aphrodite) and you've probably heard the song she inspired.  Which novel did I just read where the characters talked about cooking on the Vulcan (maybe it was in Michelle Cooper's YA novel?).  Although not a god, so I've not yet read about him, we all have this tendon.  And I am a great fan of these books.  References to gods and goddesses abound and we probably hear, see and talk about them without realizing sometimes just where the inspiration comes from.

There are lots of gods and goddesses but there are twelve important ones.  Hamilton begins by noting that the gods did not create the universe, rather the universe created the gods.  It all started with Heaven and Earth, the Titans were their children and the gods their grandchildren.  There is one confusing thing I am finding about the gods.  They often have more than one name--not just their Greek name, but they often have different names in Latin as the Romans appropriated them for them own as well.

So, beginning at the beginning we have the Titans who were incredible in size and strength.  They don't feature in many of the myths though there were quite a few of them.  Cronus (or Saturn in Latin, which is more familiar to me) was the most important being the main ruler and Zeus's father, who would eventually take the throne for himself.  To put it in contemporary terms Zeus was a player.  He likes the ladies and did whatever he could to hide his many infidelities from his wife, Hera (which I might note also happened to be his sister).  They're gods, I guess they get away with this sort of behavior.

Just a quick run down of the other ten (and this is more for me to remember them all, so please bear with me if this sounds a little boring):

Poseidon is Zeus's brother, a sort of second in command and ruler of the sea.  I like the image Hamilton paints of him--he either would shake and rattle his trident (no doubt creating a tempest), or ride his "golden car" over the waters and all would be still and peaceful.

Hades is the other brother and as you may guess not someone you want to invite to your parties, since he rules over the underworld.  I wonder if J.K. Rowling had him in mind when she was writing her Harry Potter books.  Hamilton mentions that Hades had a "far-famed cap or helmet which made whoever wore it invisible".  Hmm.  A precursor to the cloak of invisibility perhaps?

Athena is one of the virgin goddesses.  She is Zeus's daughter and sprang from him fully formed so she bypassed having a mother.  She's represented both as a battle-goddess, but also as a defender.  This is her temple.

Artemis is the second virgin goddess.  I'm skipping ahead a little, but she is Apollo's twin sister, one of Zeus's many children.  Also known as Diana she is a fierce huntress.  Although she was the "protectress" of dewy youth" she also had a penchant for revenge.   In The Song of Achilles (and in The Iliad) she kept the Greeks from sailing to Troy until they offered a human sacrifice. 

Hestia, Zeus's sister, is the third virgin goddess.  She is new to me and no wonder since she plays no part in the myths. She's the goddess of the hearth.

Now back to Apollo, who is "the most Greek of all the gods".  He's an all around appealing god as his beauty is noted, and he was not only a musician but a healer. He's all light and no shadow.  I'm expecting to hear great things from him.

Aphrodite (Venus) is the Goddess of Love and Beauty.  If Athena sprung fully formed, so too did Aphrodite, but she came from the foam of the sea.  Like Apollo she is all beauty and loveliness, though in later myths she is portrayed as treacherous and malicious.

Hermes (Mercury) is another of Zeus's children, who was of fleet foot and was Zeus's messenger.  I like the idea of sandals with wings, which is what he had.

Ares (Mars), the god of war, was detested by his parents Zeus and Hera.  He is a "murderous, bloodstained" curse of mortals.  This is his family tree: a sister named Eris (which means Discord), and a nephew (Eris's son) names Strife.  In their wake follows "streams of blood".  I don't imagine their family gatherings were much fun.  Interestingly Mars had a better reputation with the Romans who is seen as "magnificent" in his armor.   

And last but not least is Hephaestus, also known as Vulcan and Mulcibeer, who is the god of fire.  He is presented as both the son of Zeus and Hera, but also sometimes as Hera's son alone.  The story being that Hera bore him in retaliation for Zeus's daughter Athena.  Something of a black sheep amongst the other gods, he was the only one who was ugly.

There are lots of lesser gods of Olympus, the waters, the underworld and the earth, but I won't make you suffer through hearing about them now.  I will say that satyrs have always given me the creeps.  Centaurs are just barely a step above them in my mind, but I must say Chiron was very likable in The Song of Achilles (which I do still plan on writing about).  I'd never heard of the Graiae.  They are three gray women who share one eye!

Edith Hamilton gives a nod in the direction of the Roman gods, but it's obvious where her love and admiration lies.  Apparently Italy had little use for beautiful and poetic gods (unlike the Greeks).  They were more practical and wanted useful gods.  It will be interesting to compare. 

Next up is Demeter and Dionysus, two gods of the earth.  Someone suggested I take a look at Bulfinch's Mythology, and I know I have a Modern Library edition of it somewhere, so will be searching my shelves for it.  Now I'm looking forward to hearing some stories about the gods.

From Newbury With Love

I love bookish serendipity.  I don't often get to bookstores these days, so I do a lot of online browsing.  Many of the books I read are recommendations from other readers/bloggers, but I do spend a fair amount of time perusing publisher's online catalogs, which is how I came across From Newbury With Love: Letters of Friendship Across the Iron Curtain, edited by Anna Horsbrugh-Porter and Marina Aidova.  So it's thanks to Melville House that I found this excellent book.  Actually I've found a number of promising reads through them, so I think I'll count them as one of my dependable good book sources.

If you have any interest in reading books of correspondence or in the former Soviet Union or in books about books/literature, or just interesting memoirs (for me, tick all those boxes), then this is a book you'll want to look for.  From Newbury With Love has all the right elements, but it's the letters themselves between two families sharing common interests but separated by an invisible wall created by disparate political ideologies that makes this a very moving reading experience.  None of my local libraries have it in their collections so I requested it from interlibrary loan, but I am tempted to buy a copy for my own bookshelves as this is one I might well want to read again.

In 1971 Harold Edwards a retired antiquarian bookseller sent a postcard to seven-year-old Marina Aidova when he spotted her name on an Amnesty International list of children of political prisoners.  He chose Marina to write to as her birthday was one day was one day before his, and he had always had a great love of Russian literature and had traveled to Russia twice before.  The postcard he received back from Marina said: "I am a first class schoolgirl.  I learn ballet and study English.  And what are you?".  And so began not just a correspondence but a close friendship between the Aidovas and the Edwardses that would last for the next fifteen years, a friendship which impacted the lives of both families.

Marina's father, Slava, was arrested in 1966 for setting up a clandestine group whose aims were to print and distribute leaflets questioning Soviet propaganda and the total lack of freedom by which everyone lived their daily lives.  With the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's more open policy of leading, there was much more discussion and a taste of possible freedoms.  When Brezhnev came along, however, those freedoms were once again clamped down.  Slava was caught before he had even obtained a printing press and was sent to one of the harshest Soviet prison camps where he was incarcerated for six years.  The Aidova's were not the first family Harold corresponded with.  A prodigious letter writer, he had always had been "passionately interested in political freedom".  Both he and his wife Olive were gentle people with a love for helping others and whose generosity made life for the Aidovas much easier.   

The letters between the two families are fascinating for a variety of reasons.  Although Marina was too small initially to be a serious letter writer, her mother Lera wrote the letters with the help of a dictionary.  Despite this handicap, her letters are amazingly articulate and over time when Marina grows older and becomes more fluent in the language she writes as well.  The letters back and forth are filled with literary references and it's quickly apparent that Harold is extremely well read in Russian literature--not just the obvious authors like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, but contemporary Russian writers as well.  Although politics weren't discussed, many other topics were like philosophy and religion, and through writing about the minutiae of their daily lives you get a glimpse of what the world was like for the families and how it changed over time.  Of course they were living in interesting times and places, but they were also just really interesting people, too (and good letter writers).

Harold and Olive often sent clothing, books, magazines and sewing patterns to the Aidovas, and in return the Aidovas sent back books translated into English, art books and sweets.  The letters are interspersed with photographs of both families, and while the letters speak for themselves the editors do occasionally 'interrupt' the correspondence with explanatory notes to give a fuller picture.  It's a fascinating read and you get a sense of what life was like for the Aidovas, a peek into a then-closed world.  Even later with Perestroika there was still a sense of fear and covert surveillance of the personal lives of the Aidova's and any whiff of something going on with Westerners.  

Of course the parts about books are especially interesting.  Both Lera and Harold preferred 19th century writers over more modern books.  Harold writes:

"I have just ordered a book by Bulgakov on the last year of Tolstoy.  This is not the Bulgakov who wrote The White Guard, but someone who was Tolstoy's secretary during that time.  I regard Tolstoy as the world's greatest novelist, although as a man he left much to be desired." 

Lera and Harold both lament the lack of quiet and solitude there was  at times even back in the 1970s.  Lera writes:

"You say: 'people are in a hurry use the telephone all the time'.  At our flat we also have a telephone which I detest and considered to be my bitter enemy.  Man comes home tired very much and does not know what it is to be done first and what after, and telephone rings hourly and involuntarily he begins to envy the ancients--they did not hurry and had time enough to do everything.  Sometimes I think that people of the 20th century have no time to realize the problems they meet with deeply.  They always have to do something.  The best heart dream of mine is to crop all business activities and only read and read.  But, alas, it is far from being fulfilled."

The letters are really very remarkable and many friendly and caring sentiments shine through.  I'm afraid there were a couple of times I was brought near to tears and I feel sort of honored to have met these people (and doesn't that sound sort of soppy) through their letters.

"It is difficult to explain how greatly our life changed after that first post card.  I never felt lonely any more . . . Harold and Olive's letters changed my life--they gave me hope." (Lera).

From Newbury With Love was published in conjunction with Amnesty International.

May 23: Reading Notes

A few very brief reading notes today as I am thisclose to finishing a book and I want to turn off the computer in order to read.  Here in the US we have a long weekend to look forward to and I am counting down the hours (not really, but just about) until it comes.  If I can organize myself and get all my 'chores' out of the way I hope to spend Monday very lazily with a book in hand and my feet up relaxing!

Although summer is technically a month away, Memorial Day is sort of the unofficial kick off, so it's time to pull out my Italian crime novels that I so excitedly wrote about last month and start reading.  I got a little ahead of myself in April (but anticipation is sometimes half the pleasure, right?).  I've had a weird reading year when it comes to crime novels, though last year I had a good run of them.  This year seems to be more of a cozy mystery read sort of year, but I think I'm in the right mood to pick up something nice and gritty.  I've decided to start with Andrea Camilleri's The Terra-Cotta Dog (looks short and easy), and a book of short stories from an anthology edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Venice Noir (for the gritty part of the equation).  I've seen the series of Akashic Noir books, but I had no idea there were so many (Venice Noir was one of my latest library finds).  If I like the stories in this anthology I might just start collecting the books.

I've done a bit of shuffling of books on my sidebar in order to add a couple of categories to reflect more or less the books I'm dipping into.  I did remove a few in order to make a little room, but they are actually still on my night table, as I do want to finish reading them.  I wanted to finish a whole slew of books this month, but I've not been as successful at doing so as I would have liked.  And I'm afraid I pretty much threw out the 'not going to start any new books' plan about halfway through the month.  Oh well, it's a work in progress.

I've been using my Nook at the gym this past week when I use the elliptical machine.  I have this fear of falling off if I can't hold on to the bars, so my Nook has been the perfect solution since it sits easily on the little shelf.  I can read and hold on at the same time, and just a quick press flips the pages.  I have lots of books on my Nook so it was hard deciding which to read, but in the end Anne Bridge's The Portuguese Escape won out.  I enjoyed the first Julia Probyn novel, A Lighthearted Quest, last year and would like to read through the whole series. 

She began writing them in the mid-1950s and the last one was published in the early 1970s.  The books are political/spy thrillers with a dash of romance thrown in.  I really like suspense novels from this period, and as Bridge traveled quite a lot and wrote about the places she lived, the stories have a nice authenticity to them.  She was one of my Lost in the Stacks authors, if you want to read more about her.  Her settings are always exotic and this time out the story is set in Portugal (of course), and it concerns a young woman who was stuck in Hungary behind the iron curtain while her family was able to escape to the West.  She lived in a convent and about a decade later was able to rejoin her mother.  This book was published in 1958 so we're still in the thick of the Cold War.  My only disappointment is that Julia seems to have such a small role so far in the story, but I'm only a third of the way in, so we'll see how things develop.

One more quick note--I decided on an audio book finally and am now listening to Christopher Priest's The Prestige.  Too soon to tell what I think as I have only started listening this week.  It is slightly shorter than my last couple of books (about twelve hours), but I wanted something absorbing and with a good reader (in this case it is Simon Vance).  It seemed to get high marks from other listeners so I took a chance.  I did see the movie, but that was ages ago, so I only have a hazy recollection of it. 

Now I'm off to finish my book!

Teaser Tuesday: Bobbed Hair & Bathtub Gin

I've been shying away from doing Tuesday Teasers (which is really just another excuse to be able to chat about a book I'm reading) as I tend to give a teaser and then let the book fall by the wayside.  Hopefully I'm not going to jinx myself.  My track record is not so good, but I wanted to share something from my latest nonfiction read anyway, Marion Meade's Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties (besides I am optimistic that I'll see this one through).  I have an endless fascination for this period, and every time I think I'm ready to move on to something completely different I find myself returning to it in the end.  So, as I finished a book of correspondence last weekend it was time to choose a new nonfiction read and this simply called out my name and I couldn't refuse it.

I hate throwing out such an awful cliché as this (as I can say this about every book, right?), but Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a hugely readable book, almost an unputdownable one (praise I usually heap on suspense novels or rollicking good stories with lots of plot).  I'm often slowed down when reading nonfiction due to the sheer amount of information an author is conveying as I want to process it and remember as much as I can, but Meade has a very engaging writing style. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna Ferber are Meade's main subjects.  Looking through the notes at the end of the book it's obvious Meade did a lot of research, but she presents her material as a series of anecdotes.  Each chapter covers one year from 1920-1930.  The women she writes about were struggling writers, published writers or in the case of Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, part of the literary scene.  They certainly interacted or were aware of each other and in some cases clashed.

I've read a little about Dorothy Parker and Zelda Fitzgerald, but know next to nothing about Edna St. Vincent Millay (who had rather open ideas about intimate relationships) or Edna Ferber (one of the writers, along with Dorothy Parker, associated with the Algonquin Round Table).  There is obviously a decided literary slant to this book, but I like reading about the attitudes and mores of the period as well.  Despite her famous subjects I can consider Meade's book a piece of social history, which I always enjoy reading. 

But the point of my post is to give a little teaser.  Only a chapter into the book and Meade has already shared so many good stories, but as Edna Ferber's life story is so new to me, here is a bit about her in 1920.

"For months Edna had been struggling with a novel about three generations of Chicago women.  Each morning she would station herself religiously at the Underwood and shove fresh sheets of paper into the machine, but the writing only inched along until she was frantic.  She was a successful writer of short fiction for magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Woman's Home Companion.  She had also published a half-dozen collections of stories and two novels.  Several movies and a Broadway play, Our Mrs. McChesney, starring Ethel Barrymore, were based on her work.  After ten years, shouldn't she be in her prime?  She expected fiction to be easy by now."

"It wasn't.  Interminable hours at the Underwood sometimes produced a mishmash of awkward sentences and dumb metaphors.  She found herself taking wrong turns and wandering down blind alleys, until finally The Girls just squatted there like a stubborn child.  Edna was sensitive to criticism, and she was painfully aware of belittling remarks made by certain other writers.  In an offensive recent novel a Princeton boy named Fitzgerald had laughingly lumped her with Zane Grey, the popular writer of Westerns.  Edna did not like being laughed at."

Ouch.  Though she will go on to win a Pulitzer, so her time will come.  Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is by no means literary criticism, and it probably won't offer an in-depth look at the work and lives of these four women, but I fully expect to learn a few things along the way, be entertained as well.

Reading Greek Mythology

There's a big gaping hole in my reading experience when it comes to the Greek classics.  I read The Iliad and The Odyssey in high school, and I have to reach even further back when it comes to Greek Mythology.  If I remember correctly that would have been back in eighth grade.  And you know how it goes--so often one book leads to another creating yet another diverging reading path.  In this case I've just finished Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (more about it soon), and not wanting to leave the ancient world quite yet I've pulled out my copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology for more stories about the gods.

After reading the introduction I feel like I am starting from scratch.  It's amazing how the space of years can make books go all fuzzy.  So I'm setting myself the task of reading through Hamilton's book.  I'm in no rush and want to just read a chapter or so a week.  They seem to build on each other, and the myths pop up all over literature, so it's good to have a refresher.  I also plan on listening to The Iliad on audio (am still looking for just the right version, as the one suggested to me isn't available from Audible), and then will follow up with a reread of it later.  I'm sort of excited about it all, as I've had the boxed set of Fagles's translation of The Iliad and The Odyssey for many years now.  All of a sudden reading them doesn't seem so much of a chore to get through but something I am anticipating will be a pleasurable experience, which says a lot about Miller's novel since she started me on this path. 

So a few things I've learned so far (and please forgive me if this is all 'old hat' to you, but remember the gaping hole I'm trying to fill in).

"Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.  But there are many so-called myths which explain nothing at all.  These tales are pure entertainment, the sort of thing people would tell each other on a long winter's evening."

Hamilton draws from many different sources (though she notes the best are Greek writers as they believed in them) to compile her myths.  Some twelve hundred years separate the first writers from the later ones and the stories vary widely.  She likens the task to drawing from such different English authors as Chaucer, Tennyson, Kipling and even Galsworthy.

Choosing to begin first with the myths and then with The Iliad seems a good idea as Hamilton notes that Greek mythology begins with Homer's Iliad.  It's uncertain when the stories were first told as they appear now, but they were shaped by the great poets.  The Iliad is the oldest of Greek literature, Homer being believed to have been alive about a thousand years before Christ. 

"The tales of Greek mythology do not throw any clear light upon what early mankind was like.  They do throw an abundance of light upon what early Greeks were like--a matter, it would seem, of more importance to us, who are their descendants intellectually, artistically, and politically, too.  Nothing we learn about them is alien to ourselves."

The Greeks apparently shook things up as mankind became the center of the universe, this being a revolutionary thought at the time.  Humans were not of much importance before, but to the Greeks the gods were made in man's image.  In earlier times, in places like Egypt or Mesopotamia the gods had little resemblance to man.  They were something to be awed and feared.  Their images of gods were something out of the imagination and unreal.  The Greeks didn't deal in fantasy but modeled their stories and art on what they saw around them.  The gods were created in man's image, from what Hamilton calls "a humanized world" freeing the Greeks from a "fear of the omnipotent Unknown".  She makes it clear, however, that these stories were not meant to be an account of Greek religion, but only an explanation of nature. 

Homer is at the top of the list in terms of the writers from whom the myths come from.  Then comes Hesiod, a poor farmer, which if true is notable because he would have been the first man (and living away from the cities) to wonder why things were the way they were (and writing about it).  The Homeric poems, which were written to honor various gods, would have come next.  At the end of the sixth century Pindar, a lyric poet, wrote the Odes in honor of victors in the games at national festivals.  Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were tragic poets and mostly wrote plays of mythological subjects.  Aristophanes was a writer of comedy.  Herodotus was a historian, and Euripides and Plato were philosophers.  Around 250 BC the center of Greek literature had moved to Alexandria in Egypt from Greece where Apollonius was working along with pastoral poets Theocritus, Bion and Moschus.  Apuleius and Lucian were late writers.  This late in the game writers were satirizing the gods rather than holding them in awe. 

I've not mentioned Ovid and Virgil who are important as well, but they seem set apart as they didn't believe in the myths as the Greeks did but used them as vehicles for exploring human nature. 

But I'm starting at the very beginning.  The first part of the Hamilton's Myths is on "The Gods, the Creation, and the Earliest Heroes", which I'll be reading this week.  If I am looking for inspiration on what to write about next weekend I might just share what I learn.  I decided to read Edith Hamilton's book on the Myths as she is who I initially studied and her name is so well known (at least here in the US) when thinking about Greek mythology.  I'm not sure how the scholarship varies amongst classicists, and maybe I should look for other interpretations, so I'll be checking out my library's offerings as well.  In any case she seems like a good person to start with as her writing is very accessible. 

A Brief History of Montmaray

I'm sorry I've forgotten who it was that recommended Michelle Cooper's A Brief History of Montmaray to me, but if you happen to read this--thank you.  It was one of those books on my reading pile that got shuffled around a bit recently.  I started reading and then got distracted.  But when I picked it up once again with enough time to devote to it properly I found I couldn't set it down until I finished.  The first of a trilogy, it's a YA novel with a quirky but appealing cast of characters and once it gets going a charming story, which I suspect will only improve in the next book.  I think initially the draw for me was the comparison of this story to one of my favorites, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle.  It's also written in diary format, so it fits in nicely with my ongoing diary project. 

While I don't think any book can surpass the fondness and appreciation I have for Dodie Smith's novel, A Brief History of Montmaray is an entertaining and absorbing story in its own right.  There are certainly many superficial similarities between the stories--a crumbling castle, a bohemian family, a coming of age story and a dash of romance (at least the anticipation of romance), but I think Cooper gives her story a slightly different twist and I'm looking forward to following the adventures of the FitzOsborne family.

Montmaray is a tiny fictional island kingdom with a long and distinguished history located in the Bay of Biscay between France and Spain.  A once thriving community it has fallen onto hard times.  After so many of the Montmaray men were killed on the battlefields of WWI, not only is a generation wiped out but many of those left behind have abandoned the island for England.  After such ignominious losses during the war, King John, who led the men there, has gone quietly mad and keeps to his rooms most the time.  His descent into madness no doubt was helped along when his wife left him and the island never to be heard from again.  

It might be optimistic to say that the royal family lives in genteel poverty.  The castle, really more of a grand manor house, is literally crumbling and most of the nicer furnishings have been sold off.  The royal family doesn't feel all that royal really, since it is the youthful princesses Veronica and her orphaned cousins Sophie and Henry who care for the estate.  Toby, heir to the crown, is off in England being educated leaving behind only a housekeeper to look after the family.

Veronica, King John's only child, is intelligent and driven and dedicated to the family and island.  She's writing a history of Montmaray and can't imagine living anywhere else.  Being female she can't inherit the crown, so it will pass along to her cousin Toby even though she has the intellect and moxie to lead the country.  Sixteen-year-old Sophie dreams of going to London for for her coming out Season, but can't convince Veronica of the need to socialize.  Even the promise of good libraries where she can do proper research isn't enough to tempt her to go with Sophie.  So she spends her time writing her thoughts and hopes in her diary while tomboy Henry runs wild.

It's 1936 and while the girls hear the rumblings from Europe they still feel far from it all until one afternoon when a boat with two German officers arrives and brings the worries and tumult to their shores.  The first third of the story is filled with bits of Montmaray history and politics, which Sophie, the narrator and observer, shares in her diary as she tries to sort through it all.  But once things start to really move it's hard not to want to race to the end.  As a matter of fact the story becomes quite exciting, and I don't think I am giving anything away by saying that how the girls must flee the island is all very edge-of-your seat action.  Sophie will get her Season in London, though perhaps not in the way she had planned or expected.  

The second book, The FitzOsbornes in Exile is now sitting on my bedside pile near the top and I'm itching to start reading.  It promises to be an even better read as the young women navigate their way through London Society on the brink of war.