A Work in Progress

Rain Makes Applesauce

I found the most delightful children's book last week at work.  Perhaps I should consider this a belated Lost in the Stacks book (and a juvenile addition to the list).  It's a whimsical story/poem with the most amazing illustrations.  If you look close enough at them you can get quite lost in the tiny detail.  Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer and Marvin Bileck was a Caldecott Honor book in 1965.  I'm sorry not to be able to share the cover with you, but the library copy has been rebound, but here is a peek inside.   

The text is a nonsense rhyme that begins:

Rain makes applesauce
The stars are made of lemon juice...and rain makes applesauce
I wear my shoes inside out...and rain makes applesauce
My house goes walking every day...and rain makes applesauce

And goes on page after page with equally silly pronouncements with pictures to match.

Oh, you're just talking silly, silly talk
I know I'm talking silly talk, but --

--
Rain makes applesauce

And look at the detail!  The rain pours down, the little people stir and stir and drink and drink.  And all the apples are scattered about.  It's all very charming.

Dolls go dancing on the moon...and rain makes applesauce

This is one of my favorite pictures in the book.  It's all so fantastical.  What child wouldn't be enamored?  I wonder if a child would be more likely to get caught up in the minutiae of it all?  At first glance I flipped through thinking 'how unusual', but when I slowed down and started really looking, I became very caught up in it all.

Books that make me slow down and pay attention are always welcome.  It's as easy to forget to stop and look as it is to stop and listen.  That is really look and really listen. 

I need to do that more often!

Oh, to regain that wonder of a child!

Short Story Sunday: The Thirteenth Tree

This week's story by R.H. (Richard Henry) Malden, "The Thirteenth Tree" follows a very traditional format.  It's heavy on atmosphere and story and light on actual chills and thrills.  I was not surprised to read the biographical description about him which notes that he is the author of a collection of ghost stories called Thirteen Ghosts, and are written in the same vein as M.R. James.  As a matter of fact the two were friends.  Malden was a curate as well as lecturer and surely his story is a nod in James's direction.

It involves a 17th century country house where bad things once happened and malevolent spirits have sought their revenge over the many years.  The narrator is an outsider who witnesses strange dream-like (rather closer to nightmarish) occurrences in the twilight.  So he and his host set out to try and discover the mystery of the house.  All in all it is quite tame as ghost stories go, but it makes for an entertaining way to pass a bit of time on a crisp fall afternoon.

Situated in the western counties, the house in question isn't entailed and has passed down to the narrator's friend by haphazard chance.  The property had never passed in the direct male line since the early 1600s when Sir Robert Newton, whose portrait hangs in the house's great hall, built it.  Newton was a Chief Justice whose son drowned in the garden's pool.  It was very curious since the pool was shallow and the boy was not a small child.  Ever after no son managed to inherit, all of them seeming to meet with tragic ends.

Perhaps mercifully the current owner has only daughters and no sons.  An old friend of the narrator the two had met in London after many years and an invitation to visit was issued and gratefully accepted.  Happy to renew their friendship, the narrator finds his journey to the countryside pleasurable though it's too dark to know much of the house at first glance as the light was quickly falling.  Very soon, though, the house makes its sinister intentions known to him.

" . . . while I was undressing I meditated on the queer fatality which seemed to have pursued the family for three hundred years.  Was it more than a series of odd and unfortunate coincidences?  Are there, or have their been, people who had some malign  power which they could direct against their enemies?  If it were so, how was this power operative after their lifetime?  Did it exhaust itself after a period of time or not?"

In the twilight the grounds surrounding the house seem to shift.  There are a dozen trees along the perimeter, no longer a pool, a wall very white in the moonlight with an ivy creeping up it and spreading sideways that suggests the "head and arms of a person in the act of climbing the wall".  But strange things happen in the dark.  A pool appears, the grounds take on a newness as if the house was just constructed.  And more terrifying for the narrator, as this shift happens when he is sleeping, it's as if he is not dreaming but a spectator in something awful.

When he wakes he feels as if he has just narrowly missed disaster.  An accident about to happen but then he awakes.  So he and his friend decide to try and uncover what evil lurks in the seemingly noble house.  I won't give away the ending, but will just give a tease.  It involves the accusation of witchcraft, murder and revenge.  And as the title implies . . . just where is and what happened to the thirteenth tree?  Spooky!

Next week's story sounds promising: "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

A to Z Survey

I like Kailana's idea so am going to snatch it as a nice way to end the work week. 

Author(s) I’ve Read the Most Books From:  Lots.  Let’s see (in no particular order)—Elizabeth George (have read all the Lynley novels with the exception of her most recent in paper and she has one that has just been published), Jacqueline Winspear (love Maisie Dobbs), loads by Georgette Heyer (really need to get around to reading one or two by her this year still . . . ), Sarah Waters, Susanna Kearsley, Mary Stewart, Clare Chambers, Joanne Harris, Dorothy Whipple, Agatha Christie, S.J. Bolton . . . (notice how most are mystery writers or comfort reads?  Wish I could throw in some Classic writers as well but am not doing so well with them of late).  I am sure there are many more but these are the authors who come to mind off hand.

Best Sequel Ever: Have I read any/many sequels?  I don't count mysteries as they are series books.  I am not so good at reading sequels since so often follow up books just don't compare to the original.  Maybe the Horatio Hornblower books (which I really must get back to reading), though there is (again) a whole series of them out there.  I think that when I get to them they will be good--the sequels to Jane Gardam's Old Filth.

Currently Reading: Well, speaking of Susanna Kearsley.  I had an urge to pick up one of her books and decided on an earlier novel that is more of a mystery than a romance, Every Secret Thing, which I believe she published originally under a different name (Emma Cole).  So far, by the way, I am finding it quite engaging.

Drink of Choice While Reading: Water?  How exciting am I?  The thing is, I get in my best reading time when I am on my way somewhere or exercising.  Though, I do like to go for coffee now and then and usually will bring a book with me.  So splurges usually mean a cappuccino!

E-Reader or Physical Book?: I really do want to love (and use more) my Nook, but I nearly always pick up a paper book in favor of the Nook. 

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Dated in High School: I actually have a few.  It's probably in some way 'telling' that I get fictional crushes.  Best not to go there perhaps.  Horatio Hornblower would have (for me) been an 18th century hottie in my book.  Sir Richard Wyndham from The Corinthian (my favorite Georgette Heyer novel).  I'm not exactly sure which was the real draw--Elizabeth Gaskell's John Thornton from North and South, or the fact that (the divine) Richard Armitage played him in the movie.

Glad You Gave This Book a Chance: I have lots of those thanks to my NYRB and Melville House subscriptions as well as from reading along with others.  My most recent 'find' is Russell Hoban's Turtle Diary.

Hidden Gem Book: Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  I had this book on my shelves for many, many years ignored and unread, and it is truly a gem of a book!  So glad I finally got around to reading it, and it is one I will revisit again someday.

Important Moment in Your Reading Life: Maybe when I finally got connected to the internet and a huge new world opened up to me--my reading changed irrevocably thanks to the internet.

Just Finished: Jane Gardam's Crusoe's Daughter for Cornflower's Book Club, which I still need to write about, but I can say it is a book I enjoyed very much.  

Kind of Books I Won't Read: I like to think I will try most books and genres, but I have to say I will take a pass on books like Fifty Shades of Grey.  Just not my sort of thing and truly I am not a prude, but . . . 

Longest Book I've Read: Which is longer, War and Peace or The Count of Monte Cristo?  One of those two I suspect.  Loved both but the Dumas holds a special place in my heart.

Major Book Hangover Because: I think of late it has to be my daily encounters with Charles Palliser's The Quincunx.  It's quite a story (all 850+ pages of it) and the main character goes on quite a journey (of sorts).  I only hope that after all is said and done he gets some kind of satisfaction and a little retribution for the bad guys at the end, or I am going to be sorely disappointed. 

Number of Bookcases I own:  A mere six.  I say mere as three of them are small half-size bookcases.  I only have two big ones, and one tall bookcase that is narrow.  I am in dire need of more shelf space (or need to weed and who likes to weed books?).  Otherwise it is stacks and stacks of books all over the place.

One Book I have Read Multiple Times:  Just one?  Chocolat by Joanne Harris, and most recently In a Good Light by Clare Chambers.  I have a number of books I return to on an almost yearly basis.

Preferred Place to Read:  Is this a real place or a 'wishful thinking' place?  Strangely my best reading is often done while walking on the treadmill.  I wish, however, I had a nice cozy, comfy sofa or plush chair sitting next to a sunny window with a footrest in front to wile away the hours.

Quote that Inspires You/Gives You All the Feels from a Book You've Read:  Not sure how inspirational this is, and it is a serious cliché but it's true--"A book is a present you can open again and again".

Reading Regret:  I don't really have any regrets, though I often wish I could read faster, or was better at sticking out each book I begin and not having quite so many books in progress.  I am such a 'book grazer'--am very good at starting books and not so good at finishing all of them.

Series You Started and Need to Finish (all the books are out in the series):  Too many to list here, I'm afraid.  The Lynley mysteries and Horatio Hornblower I have mentioned already.  Lately the Lewis Trilogy by Peter May.

Three of Your All-Time Favorite Books:  The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and E.M. Forster's A Room with a View.  (Special mention for Fingersmith by Sarah Waters--when people say a 'delicious read'--well that is mine!).

Unapologetic Fangirl For:  Sarah Waters!  I think she is marvelous and can't wait for her newest book to come out.

Very Excited for This Release More Than All the Others:  Sarah Waters's next book, but since that is a full year away . . . As for something a little closer in time, maybe Amy Tan's new book The Valley of Amazement.

Worst Bookish Habit: Starting new books before finishing books that are already 'in progress'.

X Marks the Spot (Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book):  I'm not near a bookshelf right now, but there are piles of books sitting on a table next to my computer.  The 27th book in the pile--counting from the left is The History of Emily Montague by Frances Brooke, which I would like to read this year by the way.

Your Latest Book Purchase: I already mentioned Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman. 

ZZZZ-snatcher Book (book that kept you up WAY too late): Yes, there was a time I could stay up half the night reading, but unfortunately those days are over.  Now if I can manage one page before bedtime I am doing well.  Back in the day, however, Diana Gabaldon's books often kept me up late as did Paullina Simons's The Bronze Horseman (another book I like to reread on occasion).

This was fun.  Feel free to play along or leave your answers in the comments area.

Vacation Reading, version 1.0

Two weeks from now I will be away on a much needed vacation.  Since it is too soon to start packing (though daydreaming moments have been filled with list making including what to take with me . . . ), I'm daydreaming of reading possibilities instead.  I feel like my life has been filled with the same refrain over and over this year--the feeling of being continually overwhelmed, behind and out of sorts in general.  I don't expect my vacation to solve many problems, but gosh it's going to be good to get away and see a different view.  I already know it is going to be disorienting, but in a good way.  I'll have eyefuls of an entirely different place and geography and coming home to the same old house will make me 'see' how shabby and samey it all is.  Does that happen to you, too?

I keep going through mental lists of books that would be nice to read on vacation.  My only desire is to choose books that will be absorbing and entertaining.  Don't be shocked by my pile.  Truly, they aren't all going with me.  This is only the first iteration, there will be more as I see how my mood changes between now and then.  I will 'only' be taking three books with me--one for the plane ride there, one for the plane ride back and one for the days I am there.  I realize that is still extremely optimistic.  But, hey, this is vacation we're talking about.  Indulging is perfectly acceptable. 

I know I will take a Mary Stewart novel (still not entirely sure which) and I think I want a good spy story.  That leaves one more, the type as yet undecided.  A novel?  A mystery?  Maybe some nonfiction?  Hmm.  Whatever frustrations that might arise these days are being alleviated by thinking about good stories and (that new view . . . which will most certainly include ocean views.  Sigh.).

So, let's see.  Mary Stewart is a shoe in.  Right now am leaning towards Madam Will You Talk? which has been recommended by a few of you.  It has a French setting, and I think takes place in part in Marseille.

Gregory Hall's The Dark Backward is a book I started a while back but has been relegated to the bedside pile of--I really want to read this but have too  many books started so am setting it aside temporarily.  It's a story of suspense about a woman who's husband goes missing.

I have owned a stack of books by Belva Plain for many, many, many years.  She writes (wrote?) sweeping family sagas.  One begins with Evergreen and is the first of three or four books.  This begins at the turn-of-the-century in America.  It's probably not the most practical book to take along since it is chunky with small print so I am unlikely to finish it while on vacation, but it does look pretty absorbing.

One of those Cornell Woolrich books I found over the weekend would be good.  I've pulled Deadline at Dawn from the pile, but any would do very likely.

I've heard many good things about Jane Rusbridge's, Rook, plus is sounds quite descriptive of the Sussex landscape which is very appealing at the moment.

Last year I bought Simone St. James's first book while on vacation.  It would be fun to read her second, An Inquiry into Love and Death while on vacation.  Plus there is the added benefit of it being a RIP read.

Possible spy stories include William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise and Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth, which I suppose are not exactly traditional spy stories but both books have been picked up and perused and put down by me numerous times (of late especially the Boyd).

If I take a hardcover I will only take one and then any other books will have to be on the small size (mass market editions).  I'm very tempted by Alice McDermott's newest book, Someone.  I loved the book by her I read earlier this year and have wanted to revisit her work ever since.

Anticipation and planning and thinking about vacations is half the fun, right?  I'll need to do a little dipping into my pile (it's quite a hodgepodge, isn't it?) of books to see which "fits" my mood.  (And that will be part of the fun, too).

Teaser Tuesday: There's No Home

Since I have decided, after only fifty pages into There's No Home, to look for more of Alexander Baron's books, I thought a teaser or two was called for.  I wasn't sure what to expect from this war story set in WWII Sicily, but I have fallen so comfortably into the pages of this book, I find myself wanting to pick it up when I know I should really be doing something else.

I like how it begins.  It sets the tone and put me immediately at ease.  So often war stories are incredibly anguishing, they can make for hard going.  I'm not entirely sure there won't be difficult moments here as well (and I've actually just finished a scene that is quite sad, but somehow didn't feel so heavy that it was off-putting), but he seems to be coming at the story with a very light touch.

"This is not a story of war but of one of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again: and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings--painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly--that they are, after all, human."

The story is written from varying points of view, soldiers, townspeople, men and women, British and Italians.  The British army has taken a town on the Sicilian coast where many of the residents are just now beginning to return after taking to the surrounding hills to stay away from the fighting.  They are being temporarily billeted there and begin to intermingle with the residents.  The reader gets glimpses into the lives of both sides, of the hardships and hopes, of the difficulties of war.  Most of the men of the town are off fighting in Africa, or are dead or POWs.  There is a deep sense of sadness, but too of strong women enduring and carrying on. 

"[Private Fooks] leaned back against the warm wall, his head lolling on one side, and stared at two women who were talking in a doorway across the road.  He looked at them with delight but without hunger.  He had always imagained that Italian women were plump and beautiful.  Not these, they were lean and strong-looking, in their long, thick dresses and their faces were pale and without expression"

For the British soldiers there is, too, a sense of relief and a chance at some semblance of normalcy.  As the town begins to open up again, they are allowed to go about and spend their money and are only too happy to do so.

"The shutters were coming down from shop windows.  There were queues in the markets for fish and fruit, and for the first time, exorbitantly-priced supplies of bitter black bread and flyblown meat.  Some of the rubble had been cleared from the streets.  A corporal had discovered a palatial barber's saloon and had treated himself to a haircut, shave, manicure and shampoo.  He spoke of the place as if it were a palace out of the Arabian Nights.  One of the medical orderlies described ecstatically an enormous and many-coloured dish of ice cream that he had bought.  Others spoke of bars, cafés and pastry-cooks.  A few miles away the armies were still engaged, but throughout this sprawling city thousands of people were bustling about, wiping away from their streets, their habitations and their own minds the traces of war as they might clean up the mess after a drunken party."

There's No Home is this month's Literature and War Readalong choice and I think it's going to be a good one.  Certainly is will show a different side of war, putting a more human spin on the proceedings, I think.  There is still time to read along as  discussion begins next Monday. 

A Monday Mishmash, or Reading Notes

Just a miscellanea of items today.

I'm moving right along in Charles Palliser's The Quincunx.  After not opening the book at all last week I spent some quality (though limited quality) time with it over the weekend.  I am actually thinking that maybe I should do a bit push this week and spend the bulk of my reading time with it.  It's showing serious wear and tear as you can see, and I feel like I am, too.  I want to try and finish it before I go on vacation in October, so that gives me just about three weeks to read the remaining 302 pages.  Yes, only 302 pages left to go!  That's about the length of an average book which under normal circumstances I could read in a week, right?  The thing with The Quincunx, though, the print fills the pages and is teeny tiny, so it tends to feel like it takes twice the average time to read even one page. 

Boy, talk about Victorian melodrama.  Every awful thing that can happen to the main character continues to happen.  Nothing surprises me anymore.

Along with The Quincunx, though, I will also be spending time with my current RIP read, Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel (another excellent Wilkie Collins story) and I've just started reading Alexander Baron's There's No Home, which I think I am going to like very much.  It is set in Sicily during WWII.  But this is it, I think.  I tend to drag a stack of books around with me (a bad habit I have gotten into), and this week--these three get my attention!

Friday after work I had to do an errand which was close by the bookstore, and as I hadn't been to a proper books and mortar bookstore for ages, I had (of course) to stop by.  I must say I was very restrained in my purchases.  I bought a few magazines (the top two are stitchery magazines and I have found a number of projects I would love to work on . . . ).

And I found this!  I couldn't possibly pass it up.  Doesn't it look great?  Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense edited by Sarah Weinman.  This is a collection of fourteen short stories from the 1940s to mid-1970s written by Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Millar to name just a few.  I can't wait to start reading and have added it as a possible vacation book to my already too long list!

Now hold on a moment.  Restraint.  Really?  Is that what I said just a minute ago?  Must reassess things.  This is the damage I did yesterday when I stopped by my favorite used bookstore.  Can you see why it is my favorite?  I went in search of a couple of books (which I didn't find), but in a matter of about ten minutes these are the books I found.  I could have bought more, so maybe I did show restraint?  They have two tables in the front of the store with newest arrivals and there was an especially good selection.  I was tempted by a huge stack of NYRBs, I had to make myself put them back.  And what I couldn't make myself put back:

Five novels by Cornell Woolrich, which I think are wonderful finds as they are out of print and in nearly pristine condition--excellent finds!  My haul includes Night has a Thousand Eyes, Deadline at Dawn, The Black Path of Fear, The Black Angel and The Black Curtain.  Noir joy!

Ever since I saw an exihibit last summer when I was in San Francisco of Lee Miller's work, I have wanted to read about her.  How serendipitous then to find a biography by Carolyn Burke just before I am ready to go back to SF.  Another one I can't wait to read.

Words of Mercury: Patrick Leigh Fermor edited by Artemis Cooper is a collection of excerpts of PLF's writing.  A splurge but I had to have it.

One NYRB.  That's all I walked away with, can you believe it?  Maybe I will have to go back this weekend and do another sweep?  Until then I have Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food, which is a collection of British postwar writings that looks excellent. 

And a book I have long wanted to read and now I have my own copy bought for a mere pittance, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. 

If I wasn't going to devote my reading to just a few books this week I would most certainly dip into one or more of these (and who knows, I may cave in anyway).  It's okay to dip into books, right?  And then begin reading properly later?

**********

This week my posts may be intermittent as I need to finish a project that has been too long neglected.  I will be back by the end of the week, but don't be surprised if it goes a little quiet here for the next few days. 

If I could grow free time I think I would start a really big garden!  Ah, well.  Never a boring moment. 

Happy reading in the interim everyone!

Ghost Story Sunday: A Visitor from Down Under

Hmm.  Is it me, L.P. Hartley, or you?  Now given our past history together, that being that your novel The Go-Between is one of my all-time favorites, I'd say it's probably me.  I read your ghost story "A Visitor from Down Under" over the course of the weekend and I admit my mind was elsewhere for parts of it.  I did go back and skim to make sure I had the general jist of things. But, well, I find it slightly perplexing still.  I think I missed something along the way.  Of course maybe my problem is that I am trying to read more into it than there is there?  

So, maybe with a little help from kind readers here, we can work out just what is going on?  Let me give you the outline of the story--the various creepy elements that seem as though they must add up to something more than meets the eye (I have this feeling that there is some symbolic meaning to things, but maybe I'm just in an especially thoughtful mood right now).  And I won't spoil the ending, just in case you become so curious you must read it for yourself.

The story begins with this quote, which is in italics and set off by itself at the beginning.

"And who will you need to fetch him away!"

It's a wet March evening and a very loquacious bus conductor is chatting with the passengers getting on and off his double decker bus.  It's the last bus traveling through the heart of London for the evening and there is but one passenger left up top. He's an odd duck--very quiet and makes no reply to the conductor's chatty overtures.  He must ask him more than once "where he's for" when the man finally replies in a taciturn voice that his stop is Carrick Street.  The man holds the penny fare between two fingers and the conductor must replace the ticket back, which makes for an unwieldy transaction.  The conductor assumes it's all due to an infirmity.  Carrick Street comes and goes, yet no one seems to disembark, but by now the conductor has put it from his mind.

Five hours earlier in the day a Mr. Rumbold has arrived at a hotel in Carrick Street, a return visitor from Australia.  He's friendly with the staff and recollects some from prior stays at the hotel.  He decides to relax with a drink in the lounge and listens in on what he assumes is a children's party in another room.  He hears them talking about the treats they have to eat and the games they play.  Listening in, however, Mr. Rumbold hears some disturbing things--namely a tiny click, but then they switch to playing games so he thinks no more about it.  The rhymes that the children chant during their play are a little macabre.

"Here is a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a choppers to chop off your head!  Chop-chop-chop."

Mr. Rumbold finds it upsetting and it's probably thanks to what he overhears that gives him nightmares later in the evening when he sleeps. Or maybe it's due to the conversation he has with one of the staff about fishing, and the occurrence of poaching back in Australia.  The conversation takes on a different spin when the staff asks him about what happens to a murderer in Australia.  When you go against the law the waiter says (and by you, he tells Mr. Rumbold, he means only as an illustration to his point during the conversation) you're punished. But maybe the murderer gets off, under some special circumstance, then what?  The waiter goes on and says then it's up to the lot of any other man to take care of the murderer.  And if there is no one, no family, then it might just be up to the dead man himself to bring the murderer to justice.

And oh, here we go.  An epiphany.  The light just blinked on for me.

It's a filthy night as I mentioned.  It's raining and not fit for anyone outside.  It would be a pity for someone to go without a bed on a night like this, and as the hotel is all full up, there is no more room to spare for any other latecomers.  Mr. Rumbold, however, remarks that there is an extra bed in his room and if needs be, his room could be shared.

I won't, as I said, give the ending away, but having thought it out like this, it is making much more sense.  Let  me just say that a visitor arrives at the hotel looking for a room for the night.  The stranger is the strange man from the bus.  And now the blood stains on the pillow, the melting icicle on the windowsill and the empty bed make much more sense!

I'm not sure you, kind reader, are going to get much out today's post, but I must say it has helped me immensely!  Sort of gives new meaning to a 'chilling' story.

Next week: R.H. Malden's "The Thirteenth Tree" and I hope to get my hands on Elizabeth Taylor's "Poor Girl" that Anbolyn recommended.

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart

I'm racking up the Mary Stewart books it seems, my latest being her 1965 novel Airs Above the Ground.  It all began back in 2008 with The Ivy Tree (at the time it happened to be a RIP read as it concerned doppelgangers--a concept I am fascinated by), and followed through with My Brother Michael, This Rough Magic (last year's vacation read) and finally Touch Not the Cat.  It seems with each successive book I like each one better, though now with a handful under my belt I'm not sure which one I call my most favorite. 

Although quite similar in tone and format each has a very different story to tell.  She has become (along with Georgette Heyer and Clare Chambers to name just two) one of my favorite go-to comfort read authors (and there is much to say for a good comfort read).  With a couple dozen books on offer by Mary Stewart, and a good lot of them in this same vein of romantic suspense, I will have plenty to choose from and will work my way through as the need arises (and lately it seems to arise more often than not).

So what is it about Mary Stewart and her very entertaining novels?  I know she has a very devoted following.  For me it's the exoticism of the settings, the charm of the love stories, the thrill of the suspense and mystery that usually is at the core, but mostly it is the pure escapism that each book offers.  Each story is nicely constructed moving along at a good page-turning pace.  You generally know what you are going to get when you pick up a book by Mary Stewart.  At least you know what the 'destination' will be, it's the journey that takes on a varying hue each time out. 

In the case of Airs Above the Ground, the journey takes the reader from England to Vienna and then on to the Austrian countryside and concerns a traveling circus.  I have been fortunate enough to travel to Austria, so I had been keeping the book in reserve and had a hankering this month to return there--if only through the pages of a book.  I wouldn't have minded more scenic/descriptive details, but the book still gave the flavor of the country, and a particular look at the famous Lipizzan stallions for which the Viennese Spanish Riding School is so well known (by the way, I never did make it there to see them when I was in Vienna--a pity).

A little bit unusual, this time out Vanessa March who is the heroine and "storyteller" is a young and happily married woman.  Or so she thought.  (As opposed to a single girl who finds love and adventure over the course of the story).  She and her husband Lewis have to cancel their holiday plans for Italy when he is called away to Stockholm on business.  She's left in London alone with her gossipy friend Carmel who is only too happy to inform Vanessa that she's certain she saw Lewis in a newsreel showing a devastating fire in the Austrian countryside.  Worse Lewis was standing next to an attractive young blonde woman who turned to him to whisper into his ear just as the camera was panning across the scene.

Carmel is the most provoking woman.  Not only does she drop this small bomb on Vanessa, she asks her if she'll accompany her son Timothy to Vienna where his father and soon-to-be stepmother live.  Carmel assumes Vanessa will be traveling to Vienna on her way to a later rendezvous with Lewis in Italy.  Vanessa, however, hadn't any inkling that Lewis was even in Austria, and now she wonders just what sort of 'business' he could possibly have there.  It's less jealousy than simple confusion and curiosity.

Provoking woman she may be, Vanessa decides to take up Carmel's offer and act as chaperone to her son and deliver him safely to his father in Vienna before she heads off to find Lewis.  Perhaps his presence in the newsreel and the woman he had been talking to was completely harmless.  The newsreel captured scenes from the fire which killed two men who had been part of the traveling circus performing outside of Vienna and mostly likely Lewis had been attempting to help at the scene.  Why was he in Austria to begin with, however, and not Stockholm.

So, a mystery is afoot.  Vanessa, and her seventeen-year-old ward, Timothy, set off for Vienna.  Nothing turns out exactly as planned as you might expect.  The story is a lively mixture of circus folk, taciturn Hungarian tightrope walkers, a piebald horse, many delicious Viennese pastries, a castle in the remote countryside, several breathless chases and narrow escapes, and an exciting climax involving a train going up a mountainside.  It's all great fun.

I've all but decided that another Mary Stewart novel will go with me on vacation again this year (maybe it will be an annual event--not just reading Mary Stewart but going on a proper go-somewhere-exciting vacation, too), but I have not yet decided which one.  Although I never need much prompting to pick up a book like Airs Above Ground, I was inspired to join in on Anbolyn's Mary Stewart Reading Week.  Check out more thoughts on Mary Stewart's books by other readers here.

Favorite Spooky Stories to Chill and Thrill (A Thursday Thirteen)

A While back someone asked me what some of my favorite ghost stories were, so I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of favorites and share them here.  Although it is hard to write a truly scary story, they are often chilling in their own way and if a reader is willing to suspend belief a bit or just give over to the storytelling the atmosphere will often do the trick and at least make the reader wonder, "just what if this was real . . . ".  These are mostly short stories with a few novellas and a novel or two thrown in for variety. 

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites (links are to my own posts where I have written about them).  A number of these I have revisited, too, and have found them just as satisfying a second or third time around as the first.

Short Stories:

1. Don't Look Now, The Blue Lenses, The Birds, and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier -- Daphne du Maurier is always good for a thrilling, suspenseful story.  "Don't Look Now" is one of my all-time favorite scary stories and one I like to revisit from time to time.  It has a wonderful Venetian setting that is quite dark and broody.  "The Blue Lenses" could have been a Twilight Zone episode.  When a woman is recuperating from an operation to restore her eyesight, the lenses in place temporarily make her "see" with a frightening clarity!  "The Birds" is nothing like the Hitchcock film.  The short story is much darker and bleaker, and in my opinion much more frightening.  And Rebecca is another of my favorite novels--Du Maurier herself described the novel to her publisher as "a sinister tale about a woman who marries a a widower...psychological rather than macabre."
2. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James -- This is a story I found quite perplexing when I first read it.  It's one that is open to interpretation and you can go round and round thinking about it.  Of course that makes it even better, I think.  Just what did the governess see?  Another story I really need to reread.
3. Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad by M.R. James -- I think it's my favorite by him of the small handful I have read.  The thing with James's stories--they are much more about atmosphere than actual chills, since by contemporary standards they are very tame stories.  Still, they're perfect fall, and especially October/Halloween reading.
4. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates -- Boy, does Oates do creepy well.  It's an unsettling story to read.  Most of the story concerns a young woman alone in the house, her family not expected back for hours and the run in she has with a young man.  The story plays out in Connie's head, and it is all very claustrophobic.
5. There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury -- I love Ray Bradbury and really need to read more of his work.  This story takes place in a post-apocalyptic America in 2057.  The thing that makes Bradbury's stories work so well, is their plausibility.  He really was ahead of his time I think.
6. Miriam by Truman Capote -- Another one for the really creepy category.  Stories involving young children, especially when they take on malevolent roles are always slightly disturbing to me.  In this case it is a matter of imagination vs. reality.  Uncertainty tends to throw me for a loop and makes me question whether a story might be real or not--and just in questioning these things makes me wonder what if it could be true...
7. The Tower by Marghanita Laski --This is one I have read and reread and have recommended to others.  It's a frightening story, disorienting, and I could see it as another Twilight Zone episode. 
8. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill -- This is a classic ghost story and another of my favorites.  I have read it several times.  I know a story has spooked me if I think about it later when I'm home alone and all of a sudden an image will come to mind and give me goosebumps or make the hairs on the back of my neck rise.  Of course there's the mind at work again.  That is The Woman in Black all over for me.
9. Ghost Story by Peter Straub -- This was last year's RIP read.  It was an unnerving read, very much a slow burn sort of story that took me a while to get through but well worth the effort in the end. 
10. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver -- I don't often get scared reading ghost stories, but in the right frame of mind, in the right setting--with the lights dimmed and the shades drawn on a dark and stormy (and maybe even cold!) night--this one might make me look over my shoulder once or twice.  It's full of wonderfully scary atmosphere.
11. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson -- Shirley Jackson's story is quite subtle.  There are all sorts of repressed emotions swimming below the surface in this story and evil lurks behind closed doors just waiting for the right visitor to come along and stir things up.
12. The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski -- This novella is quite similar really in intentions to her short story "The Tower".  Both deal with locked doors/spaces--both literally and figuratively.  
13. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters -- Once again Sarah Waters has written a ripping good tale that kept me glued to its pages late into the night until I could no longer keep my eyes open, and got me up early the following morning to finish.  It's clever and complex and relies as much on the reader's perceptions and beliefs as on the storyteller's ability to convincingly describe events that take place in this chilling tale.

I'm hoping to come across more good ghost stories (too add to my "collection") this RIP season. 

Do you have an favorites when it comes to ghost stories/stories of suspense or the macabre?  Strangely I have a soft spot for the genre.

Teaser Tuesday: The Wise Virgins

My Virginia Woolf reading experiences have been piecemeal.  Do you know the very first Woolf novel I read was thanks to a crush on a guy when I was in college?  (His mother was an English professor and he was a self-confessed fan of all things Virginia Woolf).  The guy was promptly discarded, but I kept Virginia Woolf (definitely the best deal).  I've read (though in most cases not written about properly) a number of her books: The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse (the "crush" book), Mrs. Dalloway (twice), Night and Day, some of her essays and short stories and most recently Jacob's Room. 

I think she will forever intimidate me (just a little bit anyway), though Flush ended up being a very easy read and quite delightful (though certainly had more to it than first meets the eye).  I add to my knowledge various facets of her life and personality from a variety of sources, so it seems only fitting that now I am getting an entirely different view of her through a novel written by her husband Leonard Woolf, The Wise Virgins.

I'm just preparing to begin reading but have decided it might not be amiss to read the preface before diving in.  It often enriches the reading experience knowing just a little bit more (at least with classics--sometimes I prefer not knowing anything at all about a story before starting).  In this case the book is somewhat biographical as Camilla, the protagonist, is meant to be a portrait of Virginia whom Leonard had recently married.  He began writing the novel while on their honeymoon in Spain in 1912. 

"Harry, studying art meets Camilla in a London studio, and Camilla consents to sit for a portrait.  Harry's pursuit of her elusive character awakens him to a kind of love he has never known.  How should he reconcile this romantic love with a man's sexual nature?"

**********

"Would sexual union and other demands of marriage damage the possibilities of a gifted woman's singleness and freedom?"

What I know about the Woolfs's marriage is sketchy, but it seems that I read they had a very close and nurturing relationship (as I read through the preface perhaps more light will be shed on it).  The questions and observations that Lyndall Gordon raises in her introduction (both quotes above are from the preface) certainly help put things in perspective--setting the scene and putting the novel into just the right historical and social framework. 

As I've not started reading the story yet, I am going to use one of the excerpts Gordon provides in her introduction for a taste of things to come:

"There's so much marriage from which I recoil [Camilla tells Harry].  It seems to shut women up and out.  I won't be tied to the pettiness and the conventionalities of life.  There must be some way out.  One must live one's own life . . . "

I'm looking forward to reading this and have been thinking that it might be fun to choose yet another companion read (to keep the momentum going).  So I wonder which book by Woolf I should pick up next that would make a good pairing with Leonard's book?  A first read or reread (as she is someone I could easily reread and surely get more out of with each go).  I would love to begin reading her diaries, too, but I have toyed with that idea for ages.  Any suggestions?  And would anyone like to read along with me (to help keep on task?).