A Work in Progress

A Teaser: Books to Die For

You know how it goes sometimes.  You only mean to read a page or two to get a taste for what a book is like and then find yourself turning pages without realizing it and decide not to stop.  I've only read a little bit, but I think Books to Die For, edited by John Connelly and Declan Burke is the book for me at the moment.  And yes, it is hard to choose (especially with such a tempting stack of books) and yes, I do want to read more than one of them right now (and may find myself starting another as a matter of fact, since this is nonfiction and I could easily start reading another novel, too...).  I love mysteries and crime novels, am very much in the mood for them at the moment (but then really, is there a time when I'm not in the mood for them?), so what better than a book of essays about mystery novels by mystery novelists?

The book is chock full of essays, mostly very short making it easy to dip into the book and read a couple at a time, which are arranged chronologically by the year each book was published. 

"This is not a pollster's assembly of novels, compiled with calculators and spreadsheets.  Neither is it a potentially exhausting litany of titles that winds back to the dawn of fiction, chiding the reader for his or her presumed ignorance in the manner of a compulsory reading list handed out in a bad school at the start of summer to cast a pall over students' vacation time.  What we sought from each of the contributors to this volume was passionate advocacy: we wanted them to pick one novel, just one, that they would place in the canon."

**********

"Because of the personal nature of the attachment that the contributors have to their chosen books, you will, in many cases learn something about the contributors as well as the subject, and not a little about the art and craft of writing along the way."

I fully expect to find many good books to add to my reading list.  As a matter of fact I am hoping to find lots of good, new to me books and authors, or be prompted to pick up a book or two that 'I've been meaning to read for ages'.  I'm looking forward to learning how authors work and were inspired.  And hopefully learn something new about the mystery genre in general as well.

Women writers have been particularly strong when it comes to writing mysteries, have you noticed?  The editors had some interesting things to say about the opportunities mystery novels give authors to explore the world, and especially women authors. 

"...at the end of the 1970s and the beginnings of the 1980s, a number of female novelists, among them Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky, but also Amanda Cross and, in her pair of Cordelia Gray novels, P.D. James, found in the hard-boiled mystery novel a means of addressing issues affecting women, including violence (particularly sexual violence), victimization, power imbalances, and gender conflicts.  They did so by questioning, altering, and subverting the established traditions in the genre, and in the process, they created a new type of female fiction.  The mystery genre embraced them without diminishing the seriousness of their aims, or hampering the result, and it did so with ease."

Thinking about mysteries and how they work--how a really good one works, gives me itchy fingers.  I feel another project coming on.  Wouldn't it be fun to read the books that were chosen for inclusion in this collection?  Since they are ordered by the year of publication it would be an interesting way of looking at the development of the genre.  Alas, there are many, many books included and it would take me a long time to read them all, so I'll just stick with reading the essays about the books.  For the moment.  I am sure I'll pick up one of the books in due course (the wheels in my mind are already spinning as I think of the books on my bookshelves).  And then there are the books that the essayists have written--so double that number of potential reads!

For a little taste--the second essay in the book is about Charles Dickens' Bleak House by Sara Paretsky.  She's obviously smitten with Dickens and his work has influenced hers.

"Dickens was prolix.  His novels often depend on ludicrous coincidences.  He also had a great narrative and storytelling gift.  Every time a reader zings off an angry letter, telling me they read to be entertained, not to hear about society's woes, I think, yeah, well, tell that to Dickens."

"If every crime novel in the world suddenly disappeared and only Bleak House remained, it would be a good place to rebuild the missing library.  It contains John Grisham, Ed McBain, Anne Rice, and Patricia Highsmith, with a whiff of Mr. and Mrs. North, within its sprawling narrative." 

I guess I need to pick up my own half read copy of Bleak House, don't I?  Paretsky goes on to explain just how Bleak House contains all these disparate elements.  She's not writing criticism but she does talk about the plot (my only complaint so far with the book is spoilers--she talks about the murder in the story and says who did it--maybe not such a big deal, but I'm going to have to beware as I read through the essays). 

There's lots of quotable passages, so expect to hear more about this book.  Already I am learning all sorts of interesting things about Dickens and how he worked (how he and Wilkie Collins traveled around England following the cases and careers of several detectives of the Metropolitan Police for instance--including the famed Jonathan Whicher).  I think ultimately this is going to be a keeper and will likely be buying a copy for my own shelves.

Library Book Highlights for Winter

 
I've not shared my library finds for a while.  It's not that I've not been checking them out (though I've shown considerable restraint of late when it comes to book borrowing), but I seem to run out of time and space here before I get a chance to show them off.  Since this has been a busy week and my energy is zapped (I think it's the season change and having to not only go to work in the dark but return home in the dark as well), let me show you what I brought home from the library last night.  A couple of these are books I had briefly and then had to get back in line for (do you re-check out library books multiple times, too?), so I'm hoping that I have better luck with them now. 

How many weeks until another week of holiday vacation?  (Three and a half...not that I'm counting or anything).  And then I have to keep in mind the Winter Reading Program at my public library that is just around the corner.  I've not participated for the last few years, but I think I just might this year (well, this winter to be specific).  Since I just finished a library book (and returned it late last night...oops), I get to choose a new book from the library pile to read.  

Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler: A True Love Story Rediscovered by Trudi Kanter -- "In prose that cuts straight to the bones, Some Girls tells the true story of Trudi's astonishing journey from Vienna to Prague to blitzed London seeking safety for her and Walter (a businessman she fell in love with in Vienna) amid the horror engulfing Europe."

The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann -- "The Stockholm Octavo brings together a collection of characters, both fictional and historical, whose lives tangle in political conspiracy, love, and magic in a breathtaking debut that will leave you spellbound."

Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann -- "Brilliantly told, with the tempestuous elegance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the suspenseful dark longing of Patricia Highsmith, Tigers in Red Weather is an almost unbearably compelling story of liars, lust, and secrets."

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian -- "This spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012--a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author's Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date."

Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels edited by John Connelly and Declan Burke -- Love the sound of this and can't wait to dip into it!  "In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world's leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written."  This is a book of essays by 119 authors from 20 countries.  I'll be reading the essays with a pencil and paper in hand ready to note potential reads!

After the Fire by Karen Campbell -- I read Campbell's first mystery featuring Anna Cameron set in contemporary Glasgow and as I am in a 'Scottish-setting' mode at the moment thought it was time to pick up her second book.  "Newly qualified as a firearms officer, Jamie Worth is called to a domestic disturbance.  Events get out of hand, and he shoots and kills a teenaged girl who appears to have been unarmed.  Already wracked with guilt, he is horrified when, with the media baying for blood, he is accused of murder."

Ah, the joys of picking a new book to read.  Now that I think I do have energy for.  Which will it be?

The Pharmacist by Ingrid Noll

Beware of crime novels narrated in the first person.  Actually I sort of like first person narration.  Being inside the head of a character and seeing the world from their perspective makes for interesting reading.  Then again, in a crime novel the head of a narrator who is also a criminal (or someone with potentially criminal intentions--however inadvertent) can be a treacherous place and on more than one occasion I've not enjoyed the view.  With two earlier novels by Ingrid Noll under my belt I've come to expect unusual stories and unusual women telling them.  Strangely you almost find yourself sympathetic towards the characters even while they shock you with their thoughts and actions.  The Pharmacist (Die Apothekerin translated by Ian Mitchell) is no different.

Once again this is a story where the point isn't to suss out the criminal.  The answers the reader is looking for isn't 'who' but 'why'.  The Pharmacist is sort of like a train wreck waiting to happen.  You can see it coming but you're just not sure how bad it's going to be.  And Noll takes a different angle this time around.  I was thinking as I was reading how much this was a cat and mouse story, but it took a while to decide who was the cat and who was the mouse.

Hella Moormann is a murderess.  Well, at the tender age of twelve she accidentally had a run in with a classmate that left him dead.  It truly was an accident and once she begins spinning her tale you forget all about that nasty business when she was a child.  Instead you become immersed in the story of her personal life.  Hella is one of those women who can't help choosing men who need help.  She falls for men who are having a harder time in life than she is.

"While my improper escapades never did come to the attention of my teachers or classmates, I was unable to hide them from my horrified family.  Without a doubt, I broke my father's heart at the time.  His innocent blonde child was hanging about with queer fish and lame ducks who would have been better kept out of his sight.  And, to make matters worse, I didn't grow out of this even during adolescence.  Just as, when I was small, I would unscrew my dolls' legs in order to patch them up again, so later on, I would trawl up men who had gone off the straight and narrow and try to restore them.  It helped me get over my own problems better if I had the strength to redeem strangers."

Her latest cause is Levin Graber, a handsome dental student.  Hella falls for him hard, but it becomes quickly apparent that Hella, a successful professional woman, has chosen a charming but needy (and ultimately lazy, selfish and deceitful) prospective partner.  Hella works as a pharmacist.  While her university friends have all married and started families Hella is still looking.  She wants marriage, a home and a family and looks to Levin to provide it.  Levin is a poor student with a rich grandfather, who wants Levin to finish his studies before giving him any money.  And when one day Levin discovers a set of glass bottles in Hella's apartment, antique bottles containing poison, he begins forming a plan in his mind where he and Hella can get rich quick and have all the nice things in life with little effort from either of them.  There's a twist, however.  Conveniently provided by Levin's grandfather who puts a clause in his will naming Hella the sole beneficiary...if she marries Levin.  If not, the money goes to charity.

Matters are complicated when an old friend, just out of jail, returns.  Levin owes him money and Dieter is determined to get it back.  His wife Margot had been working for Levin's grandfather, but Margot's slatternly ways get on Hella's nerves.  And then there's the question of what Dieter ever saw in Margot and why he married her--and worse why she's trying to lure Levin away.  I don't want to give away any other details of the story, but Noll creates a rather claustrophobic love triangle where love turns to scorn.  And then things begin to get messy.  

Hella tells her story from a hospital bed.  Her roommate, Rosemarie Hirte (who was the narrator in Noll's Hell Hath No Fury), is an eager listener.  Each night Hella shares a new installment as she slowly reveals to Rosemarie and the reader just what happened to Levin, Dieter and Margot and why she has ended up in the hospital.  It's a clever way of telling a story since the reader can glean from Hella's visitors as well as her building of the tale just what happened.  Although macabre in tone, Noll never fails to interject her signature acerbic wit. 

It's a pity more books aren't available in English from this author, who is referred to in Germany as the "Queen of Crime".  I think my favorite of her books remains the first I read, Head Count.  It's thanks to Caroline that I was first introduced to Noll, when she wrote about The Pharmacist just last year.  Now that I've finished her novels I'll have to look for a readalike--maybe more Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters?  Noll is quite similar but she has a style quite unique and all her own.   

Beginning Frances Burney's Camilla

I've only just started reading Frances Burney's Camilla this past weekend (so a little on that below), but as I know very little about the woman herself I thought it would be interesting to read something more along with the novel.  I'm still waiting for my copy of her Journals and Letters to arrive in the mail, which is going to be my companion read, but in the interim I found The World of Fanny Burney by Evelyn Farr at my library.  Farr writes solely about the social and cultural milieu in which Burney lived, but she doesn't address her works critically.  I'm actually glad as I'd like to get a feel for what life was like for Burney without worrying about getting caught up in (or bogged down by) critical details.  There'll be plenty of time for that later if need be. 

Frances Burney seems a really fascinating woman and lived a long life, 1752-1840.  A dedicated diarist, she chronicled her years as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, but it was only five years at Court she lived, however.  She knew many celebrated people of the period including Samuel Johnson.  She was married to a French aristocrat and lived in Paris for ten years under Napoleon's First Empire and mingled with royalty, literary and theater people in both English and French society.  Her father was a musicologist and her mother beautiful and accomplished, sharing her husband's interests in music and literature.

"Quiet and shy, she (Fanny) could not read until she was eight, and was nicknamed alternately 'the little dunce' or 'the old lady' because of her grave, solemn demeanor.  Within her own family, however, she was noted for her gaiety, humor and gift for mimicry, talents which show through clearly in her diary and novels."

From all accounts Fanny seems to have come from a close knit and happy family circle, which included six children from her father's previous marriage.  Her mother died when she was only ten however, and for some time she was left in the care of her grandmother.  Fanny had little formal education and was largely self-taught.  She not only read through the major literary works of the time but she learned French and Italian with some help from her younger sister who went to school in Paris (apparently Fanny was kept back because there was a fear she would convert to Roman Catholicism?).

She loved to write and by the time she was fifteen she had quite a collection of her own literary undertakings, which she sadly sent to the bonfire on the advice of her stepmother (with whom neither she nor her step-siblings got on with very well), including a work called "The History of Caroline Evelyn" from which Evelina grew.  It sounds as though Fanny was a reserved young woman and would "keep her own counsel" in fear of making any faux pas.  But she was a good listener, charming with friends and kept her correspondents informed of social doings in her long letters.

I think I'll save the beginnings of her literary career for next week.  No need to rush through such a long life when this is going to be a reading project to take me through the rest of the year (and perhaps into January as well).

And on to Camilla.  The question is--do I stop and look up the end notes as I read or just plow through the story?  Sometimes those notes are really helpful, but it's always a scramble to flip to the back and find the right reference.  My very first impression was--is the language and writing style going to be the sort that requires extreme concentration?  It's quite formal and not what I'm used to.  Am I going to be lost from the first?  I've not read many books written in the eighteenth (or earlier) century.  But once I fell into the rhythm of the story, it flows quite nicely.  So just a few reading notes to get started in order to orient things, and then next week we'll see where the story is leading.

"In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla.  Nature, with a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her attractions; Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury and indigence.  Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington, beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest."

Camilla is the second daughter of Mr. Tyrold, a Reverend who is "gentle with wisdom and benign in virtue."  The Tyrolds have a "felicitous" marriage with two other daughters and a son.  Eugenia and Lavinia are each as pretty as the other, but there's something about Camilla--the set of her mouth?--which sets her apart.  Into their lives they welcome Mr. Hugh Tyrold, a baronet, who after suffering ill health is moving into the neighborhood with his niece Indiana.  The two brothers had been for some years estranged but now will reside just a few miles from each other.  It's the futures of the four young women which the story will concern itself with.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read more.

The Tale of the Honest Casper & Fair Annie

Clemens Brentano's "The Tale of the Honest Casper and Fair Annie" is a dark broody tale (the Wikipedia calls it charming, but my definition and theirs must not be the same), almost closer to a regular short story than a fairy tale.  Actually it has more elements of a folk tale than anything else I've read so far in this collection.  The four stories in Romantic Fairy Tales are meant to follow the development of the genre from "Weimar Classicism to the final years of the later Romantic school".  They cover the years 1795 to 1817 and of the four this last feels the least like a traditional (am using the term loosely here) fairy tale.  Coming towards the end of the period it foreshadows the coming realist tone according to the editor's introduction.

(Possible spoilers to follow).

Published in 1817 the story has a contemporary setting.  Casper is a soldier who prides himself in his honor.  As a matter of fact honor is rife in this story and each character adheres to it in the extreme--choosing an honorable death over disgrace.  Despite the tragic ending, however, I suppose this is a story that could be read as one with ultimately a 'happy' ending since the last wishes of Casper and Annie are granted.  Once again the story is full of symbolism and has a religious edge to it, which mirrors the concerns of the author who by this time had returned to the Catholic faith after an unsettled youth.

The story has an unnamed narrator.  He's both an observer as well as a participant in the action.  One day he comes across an old woman sitting on the steps of the Duke's residence where she worked as a maid when she was a young woman.  She wishes to petition the Duke to have her grandson, Casper, and her godchild, Annie, buried next to each other.  One has chosen to commit suicide rather than live dishonorably and the other has committed a crime so heinous that the only option is to submit to the executioner's sword.  No, not a happy story this one. 

Returning home from France Casper cuts his journey short to give his horse a rest and puts up at an inn for the night.  He's awakened by two men who have come to rob him, or rather rob the inn--as there was a secret cache of money in the room.  They only manage to steal his horse and saddlebags, but Casper catches them in the stable only to discover the men are his father and stepbrother.  He does his duty by turning them in for their thievery, but his honor is lost--not only has he betrayed his family but he's related to common thieves.  Casper was set to marry Annie, but he cannot allow her to marry the son of a thief.  As for Annie, she had been seduced and dishonored by a wealthy man who had promised to marry her but then left her while Casper was away in France.  In her despair she murdered her own child.  Is it an act of honor that she refuses to name her seducer?  But she accepts her punishment.  And now the grandmother tells their story in hopes that the narrator can help her have them buried together.

There's lots of references to honorable actions and what follows dishonor.  Lots about faith and God.  And a few odd bits as well. 

"An order has gone out to all the courts that only those who commit suicide through melancholy should have an honorable burial.  Those who kill themselves out of desperation are to be sent instead to the anatomical institute, and the sheriff told me that he must send Casper there because he admitted himself to being desperate."

And poor Annie is witnesses the executioner's sword moving on its own, and then later the severed head of a hunter bites her dress.  To be honest the story is a little unnerving and slightly bizarre at times.  I'm sure I missed the symbolism, and the story is complex in the way it's presented, so I went back over it several times but I'am sure I've missed the point of the story. 

As a matter of fact this was a challenging collection of fairy tales to work through--not really what I was expecting when I set out to read the book, but I'm glad I stuck it out.  It was interesting to read the different stories and be exposed to German Romanticism.  Hopefully the next book I choose from the period will be easier going now that I've had a taste of the literature if even on a small scale.  I'm definitely in need of something a little brighter and happier now (and perhaps more straightforward).  I had planned on reading Peter Handke next, but Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal which came recommended by Tom very conveniently arrived in the mail yesterday.  Stifter, and Austrian author, lived from 1805-1868, so he came after the Romantics (maybe a good thing...).  It also sounds like a perfect holiday read. 

"Seemingly the simplest of stories--a passing anecdote of village life--Rock Crystal opens up into a tale of almost unendurable suspense.  This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised as 'one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature' is among the most unusual, moving, and memorable of Christmas stories."

Has anyone read it?  I'm trying to wrap up the last of my reads for Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature month, though I suspect I'll still be writing about them into December.  I've finished three books so far and hope to get through a further two more, but of course will keep reading as much literature in translation as I can.

The Progress of Love: Eskimo

The nice thing about reading a book (or short story in this case) along with another reader is being able to bump ideas around and get different perspectives on what's really going on below the surface.  I've come to realize very quickly that with Alice Munro that there is always something more going on below the surface.  Sure you can just read for enjoyment, but I somehow feel I'm getting just a little more insight into the human predicament by trying to figure out the motivations or inner world of a character.

In "Eskimo" from the collection The Progress of Love the simple act of people watching on a holiday flight to Tahiti shows the inner workings of one woman's mind.  I'm not sure I have any answers really, but I feel like I am at least getting better at formulating the questions when it comes to Munro's intentions.

Alice Munro is very good at telling a story within a story within a story, or another way of putting it--presenting a story in a complex manner that doesn't really feel all that complex at first.  It's only when you step back and really look at what's actually happened do you see the set up.  And she often tells her stories in a way that you're thinking they are about one thing when really it's the way the story is refracted back on the narrator that's the focus of it all. 

Mary Jo is a nurse who grew up in a small town in Huron County.  After she had her nursing degree for a few years she began working in a Toronto office for Dr. Streeter, and man she admires enormously, and with whom she's been carrying on an affair with.  She lives above the surgery and has been slowly making efforts to improve her looks--lightening her hair, fixing her teeth, which she had always been self-conscious about, and buying new clothes.  Dr. Streeter doesn't seem to mind--he jokes with her that she had better not get "too glamorous".  The trip to Tahiti is his gift to her, but it's not a secret rendezvous as the doctor's daughter knows all about the trip.  Maybe not the affair.   

The story is told from Mary Jo's perspective.  She thinks about her relationship with the doctor, and her conversations with his daughter.  About the doctor's wife who is always "working on" some new project or person.  But mostly she watches and thinks about the people on the plane around her.  The harmless families with their fuss and accumulation of things ("what accumulation and display and satisfaction, just because they have managed to reproduce").

It's one couple in particular, however, that catches Mary Jo's interest and attention.  An older well dressed man with a younger woman who wears a childish ponytail and eyes with a definite slant.  She imagines them to be foreign, maybe even from Afghanistan, and has in her mind created a whole story around them.  But it turns out they are Canadian just like she is.  The young woman tells Mary Jo she's 'Eskimo' and the man is métis.  Mary Jo can't help but think that surely that's not the proper word anymore, rather it's 'Inuit'.  The pair seem to be quarreling and the girl admits to being only sixteen.  When she shows concern for the girl and offers help, she's subtly rebuffed.  And she imagines Dr. Streeter would think it is just self-indulgent good intentions that do more harm than good.

I can't help but think there is something about the juxtaposition of the two couples--Mary Jo and Dr. Streeter and the man and young woman that Munro is getting at.  But this is a story that leaves me with more questions than answers.  Even enigmatically, Munro tells a good story, though like Mary Jo I think I'd prefer to go to Greece or Scandinavia or Ireland over Tahiti, too.

Next up is "A Queer Streak".  Only three stories left in my first collection of stories by Alice Munro.  And still many more stories to explore.   

Literary Postcard, Part 4

I feel like I've mostly been absent online for the last week or so, and now it's the Thanksgiving holiday, so I'll be spending time with my family.  I do plan on getting caught up with blog reading and emails in the next few days since I've got a long weekend ahead of me, but it's probably going to be quiet here this weekend.  So I'll leave you something pretty to look at while I'm away. 

It's been a while since I've shared any of my bookish postcards.  This first one isn't book-related, but it is nicely autumnal.  It came from a Postcrosser in the Netherlands.  Although our weather here has been very fine for the last few days (unseasonably so, and I'm not complaining!), I don't expect it to last.  I think by next week I'll be reaching for a blanket and something warm to drink as well (or eat--the cup seems to contain some sort of fish soup?--I'll settle for hot chocolate or tea, I think).

I love Edward Hopper's work in general, but I especially love this painting, "Compartment C, Car 193" from 1938.  It's cool traveling by train and wish it was something we did more of in the U.S.  There's something very romantic and leisurely about it.

This is "Repose" by John White Alexander from 1895.  Alexander was an American painter.  When I first saw this image I was sure I was unfamiliar with his work, but as it turns out there are several of his paintings that I'd come across before.  It looks like he has other reading women as subjects for his paintings.  Quite an elegant image, which I like very much.

I bet this might be familiar to a few of you.  A friend traveled to England and sent me several bookish postcards including this one of Duke Humfrey's Library, which is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library in Oxford University.

I'm afraid I can't find any information about this painting.  The card lists it as "Lezend meisje (Sàrika)" by Ada Góth ca. 1912/14.  It looks like a nice spring day--perfect reading weather for sitting out on the balcony. 

Someday I'd love to see Jane Austen's Bath.  These are views of the city, but unfortunately the card doesn't give specifics.  I wonder if any of these contain the famed pump room?  Persuasion, which is set in part in Bath, is my favorite Austen novel.  I can easily imagine Anne Elliot walking down those streets. 

How fitting that I should have a postcard of a painting called "A Russian Folk Tale" by Leonid and Olga Tikhomirov since I've been reading fairy tales.  The painting is dated 1967-72.  Another sunny place to curl up with a book.  I hope I can find a sunny spot to sit and read this weekend.

This is "Madame de Pompadour (Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, 1721-1764)" by Francois Boucher.  I wonder what she would have been reading?  She seems awfully distracted.  Imagine having to sit about in all those frills!  (Maybe that's why she can't concentrate--her dress is scratchy?).

If you're celebrating Thanksgiving--many good wishes however you're spending your day.  And I hope everyone finds at least a few hours of leisurely reading (in some sunny corner) to fill their weekend.  Happy reading everyone.

Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

I had no idea when I started reading Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué that it's one of the more famous German fairy tales and was quite popular in the nineteenth century.  It was published in 1811.  Apparently it was one often found on children's bookshelves and you can even read a child's illustrated version of it on Project Gutenberg.  Keep in mind, however, it is a retelling.  The version found in Romantic Fairy Tales, which I read, can also be found on Project Gutenberg though the translations vary slightly. 

The story is quite ethereal and very much in the vein of what I expect when thinking of a traditional fairy tale.  It's the story of a water spirit or nymph who wishes for a soul, which can only be granted when she falls in love and that love is reciprocated.  There are strings attached of course, and any missteps will have repercussions, so yes, this is a sad story, too.  I have never read Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (though I generally know what the story is about), but I read that the stories are similar.  As a gage for its popularity, references to Undine appeared in works by Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Yonge.  It was adapted to the opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann and later Tchaikovsky.  And it has inspired art works, ballets, and even films.  I had no idea.

"This powerful tale owes its inspiration to a number of sources including Fouqué's own private love life.  Literary influences are clearly the medieval ballad and the world of medieval legend.  Huldbrand is the archetypal benevolent knight and the world he inhabits typifies the idealized Germanic Middle Ages so central to the Romantic understanding of Germanic culture."

Going back further, there are elements of the folk tale Melusine and a text by Paracelsus in Fouqué's story.  The editor, in his introduction, calls Undine the ultimate Kunstmärchen.  At this point I had to go back to the general introduction and reread.  It's an excellent and detailed introduction which covers a lot of ground (too much for me to try and sum up I'm afraid), but there are a few interesting tidbits to pass on here.  I'm even more interested as the German Romantic period in Germany was from 1795 to 1820, and Fanny Burney's Camilla was written in 1796.  Perhaps Camilla was a little too early, but I wonder if it was a transitional work into English Romanticism?  Something to think about when I start reading Burney perhaps, but I like learning how books fit together.

As for German Romanticism, it grew out of the Enlightenment (or rather was a response to it).  These works focus on the darker side (Nachtseite) of human existence.  If the Enlightenment felt "sterile" since it was all about reason and order, Romantic works depended on Nature and the Organic.  I suppose everything must have went all wobbly or blurred.  Writers threw in elements of the supernatural and there was an interest in folk culture and all things Medieval.

The other interesting bit is that what I've been reading are considered literary fairy tales, or Kunstmärchen, as opposed to simple Volksmärchen, folk tales told by ordinary people orally--though the two are closely related.  The literary fairy tale is more ambiguous and complex (which I've noticed in my reading) with psychological depth, and there might not be a nice clean solution or happy ending to the stories.  The four fairy tales in this collection are meant to follow the development from beginning to end.  Next week is Clemens Brentano's The Tale of Honest Casper and Fair Annie.   

Reading Notes & Reading Along

In my hot little hands I hold at this moment my copy of Frances Burney's Camilla.  For as many pages as it has, it is a reasonably compact book (trade size).  I'm going to read the Oxford World's Classics edition, but as was mentioned in yesterday's comments this book is also available free online and can be downloaded to an eReader from either Girlebooks or Project Gutenberg.  I'm so glad a few of you have decided to read along and look forward to having some conversations about the book in the weeks to come.  I'm all for keeping things easy and laid back, so I'll plan on posting my progress here on Mondays and everyone can feel free to drop by and share how you're progressing with the story as well, or (if you're not reading) seeing how things fare with Camilla and her sisters.  It's always fun tackling a long or challenging book in a small group as it keeps me motivated.  I'm hoping to try and read between 50-100 pages a week--depending on how the story is going and what other demands life makes.  I'm all set to start reading over the long weekend.  Long sprawling stories seem to appeal during the winter months for some reason.  And if this goes well, maybe Clarissa can be next in line.

I'm not going to be spending all my extra reading time (and I do hope this long weekend does mean lots of extra reading time) in the 18th century, however.  Once again the month has flown by and a look at my reading pile makes me a little anxious as I try and finish a few books that need either to go back to the library, be dropped in the mail (my most recent postal reading group book) or that I'm just so close to finishing that I don't want to put the book down.

I'm hoping to read the last few pages of Laurie King's A Letter of Mary tonight.  I've really enjoyed it and think Mary Russell is going on my list of favorite characters.  There's so much to like about these books but especially the fact that they're smart, intellectual stories.  I'll share more about it later.  And I think I need to pick up the next book in the series sooner than later.

If you like good crime stories, have you heard of (or maybe you've already read) Peter May's The Blackhouse?  It's been a while since I've picked up a book where right from the first page I've been so completely sucked into the story.  That's the case so far with the book.  Just as well since it needs to go back to the library on Saturday.  The setting is the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where Fin McCleod has returned home to help solve the murder of a local man.  It's filled with excellent description of life on this bleak island.  I believe it's the first in a trilogy.  Interestingly May was a scriptwriter and has worked in TV, which perhaps explains why the dialogue and pacing is so good.

I've got three books going still for the German Literature month that I'm hoping to wrap up by the end of  November.  One is yet another crime novel, Ingrid Noll's The Pharmacist, which is moving along nicely.  I need to concentrate on Gert Ledig's The Stalin Front, which I've been neglecting in favor of lighter/easier reads.  And I've only one more story left to read in my Romantic Fairy Tales.  I should probably focus on the latter two books, but I did pull Peter Handke's A Sorrow Beyond Dreams from my shelves in a moment of optimism.  It's a very slight book about the author's mother who committed suicide.

Last month I had a very strong finish at the end in wrapping things up, so I hope that'll be the case this month as well.  I've already decided that Peter Straub's Ghost Story will have to carry over into December as will happen with a few other books (ahem).  And I've already started making a few mental plans for next month's reading, which I now think is going to consist of lots of cleaning up of reading piles and finishing a few books that have lingered far too long on my nightstand.  I do plan on starting a couple of new books, one of which I just brought home from the library.  I requested a biography of Rose Macaulay, Rose Macaulay: A Writer's Life by Jane Emery, which I am really looking forward to reading.  Let me leave you with a little teaser.

"With admirable consideration and dignity, Rose Macaulay, at the age of 77, died quickly of a heart attack in her own bed in the early hours of 30 October 1958.  Struck by pain, characteristically stoic, not wishing to trouble her doctor, she had telephoned, asking him to order her an analgesic from the chemist's.  Instead, he came at once.  But shortly after she died."

"On Thursday morning, when the news spread, her many friends could not believe or accept the reality of a still and silent Rose."

"Two months earlier would have found her voyaging back from Trebizond as an acclaimed but unofficial jester for an aristocratic party on an educational cruise, tracing the route of the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece.  Two nights earlier would have found her in London at this Hellenic cruise's reunion, still amusing her shipboard comrades.  Victor Gollancz called Rose Macaulay 'one of the best party-goers in London'.  She even appears unexpectedly in the middle of Christopher Isherwood's novel, The World in the Evening, at a lunch party in Carcassone.  Nothing slowed her brisk pace.  At 48, warned of her 'low-grade heart' by a cardiologist, she had written to her sister Jean, 'I shall take this as a pretext for not doing things that tire me, except when I want to.  Doctors have their uses'."

As you can see I'm going to have plenty of reading materials at my fingertips over this long weekend and will be prioritizing but allowing myself to read at whim, too.

Reading: Frances Burney's Camilla

After much consideration I think I've finally settled on my next 'big' (otherwise known as 'long') read.  Camilla by Frances Burney.  I've been agonizing over this choice for a while now.  I was all set to pick up Samuel Richardson's Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady, but in the end I changed my mind.  As hefty books go, that is surely one of the heftiest coming in at over 1,500 pages (though I've read both Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and both have about the same number of pages).  Camilla has a mere 913.  I like the idea of an epistolary novel, but I don't like the the idea of toting around such a mammoth book.  

The idea is that like Edith Hamilton's Mythology, I'll read a section each week and then post on it--to keep me honest and on task as I work my way through the novel.  I thought of starting this in January as a long-term project for winter and spring, but I'm excited now that I've made my choice and don't want to wait.  So Mondays will likely be my "Camilla" day.  The novel is made up of ten volumes and each volume has two books (various chapters within each book).  I'm shooting for reading one book a week (the first book in volume one has 49 pages but most are double that length), or one book every two weeks. 

And then there will be supplementary reading of course.  I've not read anything written earlier than 19th century in a very long time, and I've not read anything by Frances Burney.  I wanted something that would be a little more challenging than my normal reading choices, but not so hard that I will feel overwhelmed and get discouraged by the novel.  But I've long been intrigued by Frances Burney.  She seems like she had a really interesting and remarkable life and Camilla, as a story holds great appeal for me.  The story deals with the "matrimonial concerns" of four young people, which of course is never easy, and in this case, "the path of true love is strewn with intrigue, contretemps, and misunderstanding."

"An enormously popular eighteenth-century novel, Camilla is touched at many points by the advancing spirit of romanticism.  As in Evelina, Burney weaves into her novel strands of light and dark, comic episodes and gothic shudders, and creates a pattern of social and moral dilemmas which emphasize and illuminate the gap between generations."

Sounds good, don't you think?  I should perhaps start with Evelina, but now I have my heart set on Camilla, so I'm just going to take the plunge and start reading over my long weekend.  I've brought home from the library The World of Fanny Burney by Evelyn Farr and have ordered Frances Burney's Journals and Letters.  If I've not made the progress I'd like in the novel, I will still have something new about Burney to share (I hope) each week.  Maybe this will start me out on an entirely new reading path!