A Work in Progress

Short Story Sunday: Travelling Light

No matter how much we long to escape others, we can't.  That is one of the observations I read about this collection in the introduction and it is a sentiment that comes out very clearly in this weekend's story, "Travelling Light", the titular story of Tove Jansson that I am reading now.

"Everything was in the past now, gone, of no significance; nothing mattered anymore, no one was important.  No telephone, no letters, no doorbell.  Of course you have no idea what I'm referring to, but it doesn't matter anyway; in fact I shall merely assert that everything has been sorted out to the best of my ability, thoroughly  taken care of down to the smallest detail."

The narrator of the story has left  no information, no forwarding address, or note as to when he would return.  He says, "I've always dreamed of travelling light", and while he has packed the barest minimum and asked for a room alone, a better cabin at a higher cost all those careful plans are forfeited thanks to a full ship and a misunderstanding.  How can he complain and know that someone must end up sleepless on a deck chair thanks to him.  So, to avoid all interaction he decides to go to the bar for a solitary drink instead.

"I sat and pondered the Idea of Travel; that is to say, the act of travelling unfettered and with no responsibility for what one has left behind and without any opportunity to foresee what may lie ahead and prepare for it.  Nothing but an enormous sense of peace."

Or, wishful thinking.  Since the man who sits next to him in the bar, happens to be his cabin mate.  At first the personable young man seems an enlightened and experienced traveller and the two men have an earnest and happy conversation. 

" . . . nothing has become so completely foreign, almost hateful to me, to be avoided at all costs, as curiosity and sympathy, any disposition to encourage in the slightest degree the surrounding world's irresistible need to start talking about its troubles."

He broke his own rules, but then he thought he was on his way to a new freedom.  He was being reckless thinking he would get off scot-free.  So when the man set his room key down on the bar and it dawns on the narrator that this is his unseen but very 'present' roommate, he is stuck.  Instead of complaining to the purser about the mixup and sending his cabin-mate to a deckchair, it is the narrator himself who ends up there!  And even then, he can't get away from human interaction.

This is the sort of story that when I first read it I wasn't overly impressed, but on further reflection and skimming over the sections I marked and reading that last wonderful paragraph, I like it much more than I previously thought.  Here is this man who thinks he can get away from the world except on his own terms, spends to much time reflecting in his mind, which the reader is-of course-privy to, of how wonderfully he has arranged to finally be On His Own, and then-hah, a wonderfully ironic ending.  Tove Jansson's stories can be wonderfully light and playful even while they have a nice weightiness to them, too.  They are sort of paradoxical, being two things at once--simultaneously one thing and another.  I do love her writing. 

Next week a very long short story: "The Garden of Eden".

Writing Letters & Reading Letters

If a month of letter writing is inspiring me to send off a daily card or letter, why not read some letters, too? 

Seeing as Chekhov was on my list of reading ideas to begin the new year, and I have not one but two books of his letters, this seems a perfect place to start.  And as it is for February and a month of letter writing, why not love letters, too.  So I have pulled Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper from my shelves.  Seeing as Chekhov is known not only for his short stories as for his plays, it is no wonder that the love of his life would be an actress.  

"He was Russia's greatest playwright. She was the leading actress in the Moscow Art Theater. But they were more than artistic collaborators. From 1899 until his death in 1904, Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper were friends, lovers and, finally, husband and wife. But her work and his health caused them long separations. Revealed through their letters, this was one of the most extraordinary love stories in the history of theater."

And always one to pair off my reading if I can, and as I have been 'collecting' Chekhov's works, I have tentatively pulled his one novel (at least I think it is his long full-length novel), The Shooting Party, off the reading pile as well.

"When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationships with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhov's earliest experiments in fiction."

Drama, love, murder, mystery, aristocrats, Russia . . . what's not to love?

And one slightly related side note that I forgot to mention last time.  Did you know the Letter Writers Alliance has a book club (because you can never have enough opportunities to read along . . .)?  It looks like they have been active for a while and the group is managed via Goodreads.  I think I will have to join the group!  Past selections look letter-writing- or just author/writing-related, and next up is Joanna Rakoff's My Salinger Year.  It was on my list of books to explore, so explore I just may!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Month of Letters, Anyone?

Did you know that February is the official Month of Letters?  I've participated in the past and plan on doing so again.  While I won't officially sign up, I am looking forward to sending out a card or letter each and every day of the month of February (had better go soon to stock up on stamps!).  If you do want to be an active participant, there is a page full of goodies you can take advantage of. 

I am a great fan of snail mail as some of you know!  Some time back I signed up with the Letter Writer's Alliance (I wonder if my membership is still valid . . . ), but I didn't have much luck with penpal exchanges via them sadly.  I do, however, correspond with a few fellow readers/bloggers and a few of you might find an occasional postcard in your mailbox (mail surprises are almost as much fun as bookish surprises, don't you think?). 

I even indulged in a pigeon, which I have never gotten around to sending on a journey out into the world (it sounds, alas, he would have to stay within the US).  Maybe now is the time he made his inaugural flight. 

The idea is to send a card or letter and get one in return.  And while I am never too concerned about getting mail back, it is always a happy surprise to find something other than bills in my mailbox.  So, here is my proposition. If you email me with your address, I will happily send you a card sometime in February.  If you are in the US and are willing to send him back to his home roost, I will surprise someone with a note via Pigeon Post (return mail is $3.09 first class--instructions on mailing here).  If you just want a bookish or artsy, or otherwise very colorful postcard I will happily send one out to you (anywhere in the world for a card) and you don't even need to send one back (though cards are happily received by me, too).  Just drop me an email with Month of Letters noted so I don't inadvertently delete it: [email protected].

I'll share what I am sending and what I am (if I am so very lucky) receiving.  And I will even document my pigeon's first flight!  Ah, the excitement . . .

Bring on February!

Behind the Scenes at the Opera

Did I ever mention that I have season tickets to the opera?  To be honest I don't know much about opera except I love going to performances and getting caught up in the costumes and singing and general festivity of the event.  There is always so much energy and passion.  So I always try and educate myself a little before each performance.  Last fall it was Rossini's The Barber of Seville based on the play by Pierre de Beaumarchais.  The production was quite modern and great fun!

Next up is Puccini's La fanciulla del West based on the play by David Belasco, otherwise known as The Girl of the Golden West (it is one of the events tied in with a current art exhibit at our local museum).  Fanciulla is Italian for "girl" (pronounced I have read: "fan-CHOO-lah").  Some interesting things about the opera I've just read:

"La fanciulla is a tale of redemption and unlikely love in Gold Rush California.  Like [Madama] Butterfly, it is based on a play by David Belasco, who worked closely with Puccini on the original production.  It is a curious opera with many unusual qualities that keep it on the fringes of the repertory: there is only one female lead role and only two females altogether in the cast.  There is a large ensemble  of male solo parts, sometimes individual and sometimes functioning as a chorus.  And there is the orchestral texture, which is big, lush, and quite daring.  It is a far cry from the world of Bohème.  One critic after the premiere thought the score more appropriate for the San Francisco earthquake than fr a tale of inconsequential little people living outside of civilization."

I have a copy of William Berger's Puccini Without Excuses: A Refreshing Reassessment of the World's Most Popular Composer to help me along to learn more (above quote taken from the section on fanciulla).  The opera premiered in New York in 1910 so it is relatively modern, and according to Berger--without Puccini "there is no opera".  I'm looking forward to dipping into the book and finding out why.  You may well hear more from me on the subject.

As if being able to just go to the opera isn't enough of a treat, since I am a season subscriber, Opera Omaha offers special little perks and one is coming up in just a couple of weeks.  I am able to attend a backstage, behind-the-scenes event.  I'll be going on a backstage tour of the theater, and will get to hear the director and designers talk about their processes of pulling off the production.  One of the cast members will be transformed into their role in the opera through costume and makeup and to top it all off I can stay and listen to the first rehearsal with the orchestra though they won't be in costume.  Needless to say I am ready for February to arrive for a variety of reasons, and this is one of the big ones. 

I have read loads of novels set in the theater world (or, if not read them, own them or am familiar with them), but surely there must be some set in the opera world?  It could be fun to follow that reading path . . .

Piles of Snow and Piles of Books!

I'll have less of the former and more of the latter please.  I don't know about you, but I am getting tired of winter.  Maybe if we had more sunshine and less of the dreary grey skies and less cold and maybe more days above freezing.  But I guess that sort of weather is called Spring, perhaps?  And that's still a ways off.  So, there is still plenty of wintertime left to finish my sampler, which as you can see is moving along nicely. 

Here was last week's progress, so we are joined by the moon, which I was hoping to get a more detailed photograph of, but my camera is old and doesn't do close-ups very well.  For next weekend I'd like to finish the house and the smoke coming out of the chimney.  Must make sure it is toasty warm for the folks inside!  Snow is my least favorite thing to stitch, so I probably will save that for last!  Technically there are no real piles of snow (although if I look outside my window now, there are . . .) in this design, but you can easily imagine them there.

And here is this week's book pile!  You know how one book so very often leads to another one?  In this case it is a reverse reading path. Remember all those new books I was just lusting after?  The normal course of events means I would read a book and then look forward to the author's next new book.  However, I seem to find new books and then look for the author's previous book, backtrack and then finally pull it from the shelf to read.  Which should I start with?  The bottom book by Sara Blaedel is a special case since she will be in town in the next couple of weeks.  Otherwise I am leaning towards Pat Barker since it is the first book in a loose trilogy (at least I have read the other book already), and the third book is coming out next month. 

Less than a week left in January.  I know February can be just as cold and snowy, but at least once February has arrived, Spring will just be 'next month'!

Short Story Sunday: The Woman Who Borrowed Memories

Well, I had such high hopes of doing lots of short story reading this weekend but in the end I managed to only read my Tove Jansson story.  It is another good one, so no disappointment there at least. I am a third of the way through the collection and I think there won't be one bad apple among them all!  If I have a towering pile of 'on the go books' at the moment, my short stories are quickly approaching the same mammoth proportions.  But more about those after this week's story.

Isn't "The Woman Who Borrowed Memories" a wonderful title?  Her stories are so memorable, each on, thanks to their uniqueness and unusualness. I can still vividly recall each story that I have read and scarily I am finding I tend to forget things far too quickly these days.  I mentioned when I started reading the collection that the introduction by Ali Smith is very good and one of her observations she makes keeps resonating with me with each new story I read.  "The collection revels in this paradox, the human longing for solitude versus the human need for contact."  I feel this paradox in the stories I am reading.  Sometimes the stories are a little disconcerting or disorienting, but in an ordinary--'life is disconcerting'--sort of way.

Last week's story verged on the surreal and this week's does as well.  What happens when you return to your former life, one filled with happy memories and good former friends, only to discover the friend seems to have usurped your life (or your version of it anyway)?  Your memories of your younger self all of a sudden are questioned and denied.  I don't know about Stella, but I began questioning whether I could rely on the character's narration.  What is true and what is not?

It's been over a dozen years since she's been home, but when Stella returns to her old flat after living abroad, it almost seems as though nothing at all has changed.  At least superficially.  The landlady is her old self and the building is as if she had just left yesterday.  But Mrs. Lundblad, seeing Stella come in and dash up the stairs, seems wary of Stella's effusiveness on returning home.  "It's like that old saying: when the swallows go, it's because the home's no longer a happy one.  And one swallow doesn't make a summer".

So many years ago Stella let her friend Wanda stay without paying any rent.  Then Stella won a scholarship and went away, and Wanda stayed.  And Wanda filled in the space, still filled with the essence and belongings of Stella.  The two women begin to reminiscence over old, happy days, yet Wanda seems to have "borrowed" Stella's past life, her memories.  Stella tries to gently remind her: 

" . . . 'surely you haven't forgotten that I was the one who lived here.  This was my home.  Be honest, it was my place, wasn't it?  Of course it was'.  Wanda laid her hand over Stella's and went on in a friendly voice.  'Memory plays funny tricks.  But don't worry about it; it's totally natural.  You're every bit as welcome now as you were then'."

And so it goes on.  Wanda seems to reimagine each memory of Stella's putting herself in the starring role.  Until it all becomes too stifling.  Leaving the flat Stella only feels a heavy weight lifted, not a sadness, not a rosy nostalgia, just relief.  What does all this say about looking back?  Maybe it is really true that you really can't ever go back home again, and it is probably a wise idea not to want to.

Another thoughtful story, told in such a vivid and 'memorable' manner!  Next week, the titular story, "Travelling Light".

***

Along with the books of stories mentioned last weekend, I now have a few more to add to the pile.  I've discovered these wonderful little Everyman's Pocket Classics, which is a series of books of short stories gathered by theme.  Most seem to be anthologies, so stories by various authors, but there are a couple of collections of stories by John Updike and I have The Maples Stories, which I think will be my next story collection I'll be reading from weekly.  Updike published a story in 1956 about a married couple, Joan and Richard Maple, and then over the course of his career he returned to them time and again and now they are collected together in one volume.  I'm very eager to get started, but of course I am still excited to continue on with the Tove Jansson collection, too.

Along with the Updike stories, I have Stories of Art and Artists, and New York Stories.  They are gorgeous little books and I think I have only previously read one of the stories.  Books to look forward to and I might just continue to collect the other books in the series.  Quite a treat for a dedicated story reader!

New Books Hovering in the Background!

One eye is on my reading stack and another is on all those shiny new books that are forthcoming.  I do try and ignore them, but the moment I start looking they seem to be all over the place.  One book leads to another and another and another.  My wishlist seems to have grown exponentially this past week.  Drat all those mailing lists I am on.  Talk about being led into temptation.  Of course looking and writing down titles is not a problem.  And I really do try and avoid buying new books in hardcover.  And I have been far more discerning when it comes to what I borrow from the library.  So maybe if I just share a handful of new books that look quite good to me here it will be enough to stave off actually trying to obtain copies?  Besides some of them aren't actually going to be published for months yet.  But it is hard not to be excited by some of those new books with intriguing stories that I want to read.  You never know where you might find a favorite, too.  So, to end the work week (or start the weekend off with) a handful of new books I can't wait to see up close (and maybe read!):

Woolf: A Guide for the Perplexed, Kathryn Simpson -- Okay, this is more a helpful sort of book than a escapist read, but as I really do plan on reading something by Virginia Woolf this year, this might well come in helpful.

Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature, Meredith Maran -- Since this might well be a year of biographies and memoirs for me, this sounds like a perfect accompanying read. 

The English Girl, Katherine Webb -- "Joan Seabrook, a fledgling archaeologist, has fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Arabia by travelling from England to the ancient city of Muscat with her fiance, Rory. Desperate to escape the pain of a personal tragedy, she longs to explore the desert fort of Jabrin, and unearth the treasures it is said to conceal. But Oman is a land lost in time - hard, secretive, and in the midst of a violent upheaval - and gaining permission to explore Jabrin could prove impossible. Joan's disappointment is only alleviated by the thrill of meeting her childhood heroine, pioneering explorer Maude Vickery, and hearing first-hand the stories that captured her imagination and fuelled her ambition as a child.

Jezebel's Daughter, Wilkie Collins -- How exciting--a 'new' novel by Wilkie Collins, one of my favorite authors!  "Reminiscent of Collins's blockbusters The Woman in White and Armadale, this suspenseful case study in villainy is set against the financial world of 1820s Frankfurt and tells the story of two widows, one of them devoted to realizing her husband's social reforms, the other equally devoted to the pursuit of her daughter's happiness." 

Noonday, Pat Barker -- "Completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville begun with Life Class and continued with Toby's Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy."  I've read Toby's Room and now must pick up Life Class, soon!

The After Party, Anton Disclafani -- "From the nationally bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls comes a story of 1950s Texas socialites and the one irresistible, controversial woman at the bright, hot center of it all."

The Ballroom, Anna Hope -- "Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, The Ballroom is a tale of unlikely love and dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which."

The Muse, Jessie Burton -- "From the bestselling author of The Miniaturist comes a captivating and brilliantly realized story of two young women—a Caribbean immigrant in 1960s London and a bohemian woman in 1930s Spain—and the powerful mystery that links them together."

Everyone Brave is Forgiven, Chris Cleave -- " . . . a spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London."

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer, Kate Summerscale -- "At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past."

Smoke, Dan Vyleta -- "An elite boarding school where the sons of the wealthy are groomed to take power as their birthright. Teachers with mysterious ties to warring political factions at the highest levels of government.  Three young people who learn everything they’ve been taught is a lie—knowledge that could cost them their lives. A grand estate where secrets lurk in attic rooms and hidden laboratories. A love triangle. A desperate chase. Revolutionaries and secret police. Religious fanatics and coldhearted scientists. Murder. A London filled with danger and wonder. A tortured relationship between a mother and a daughter, and a mother and a son. Unexpected villains and unexpected heroes. Cool reason versus passion. Rich versus poor. Right versus wrong, though which is which isn’t clear."

Improbability of Love, Hannah Rothschild -- "Wickedly funny, this totally engaging, richly observed first novel by Hannah Rothschild is a tour de force. Its sweeping narrative and cast of wildly colorful characters takes you behind the scenes of a London auction house, into the secret operations of a powerful art dealer, to a flamboyant eighteenth-century-style dinner party, and into a modest living room in Berlin, among many other unexpected settings."

What We Become, Arturo Perez-Reverte, " . . . an epic historical tale following the dangerous and passionate love affair between a beautiful high society woman and an elegant thief. A story of romance, adventure, and espionage, this novel solidifies Pérez-Reverte as an international literary giant."

Oh my!  Here's me falling over backwards in a state of Happy Anticipation!  Several authors on the list have books already published and in my reading stacks so maybe I can satisfy my desires by picking up those 'other books'?  And this just skims the surface of my wishlist . . .

January 21: (soon to be) Reading Notes

So, the good new is I confirmed that my NYRB subscription for 2016 is all set and in their system. The bad news is, they say I let my subscription lapse (really?  I kept waiting for a renewal notice which never came and I emailed about, and then emailed again and finally called and renewed by phone), and by the time I had renewed just before Christmas, I was sort of late.  It will now take six to eight weeks for the 2016 subscription to kick in, and thanks very much for my patience and understanding.  Shh.  Best not to tell them that I actually am a very impatient person when it comes to books, so I will try and be good and stop looking in my mailbox for the January book.  When it finally comes sometime in February I will be pleasantly surprised,right?

The secret is out of the bag (I kind of like having the book arrive without knowing what it is, but since I was looking around the NYRB website I now know not only the January book, but also what the February book will be, too).  I really did want to read (try to anyway) each book right as it came out.  Now will the first couple of books bunch up and throw me off before I even begin the new year?  I could buy the Kindle book to begin reading (I see there is a 99-cent version, but that is sort of defeating the purpose and I hate buying the same book twice even if they are in different formats).  A reading dilemma!  One solution is just to not worry about it and return to the stack of 2015 subscription books and pick one from there (seeing as almost the entire year went unread). 

If I can't read the 2016 January selection, how about I read the January 2015 selection?  And serendipity as it happens to be Magda Szabó's The Door, which is not only one of the "ten best books of 2015 according to the NYTBR" but Janakay also assures me it is a wonderful read and one she found hard to put down.  So that was easy.  Into my bookbag it goes.  And Murphy's Law . . . you know the minute I begin to get lost in this story, the NYRB January book will show up on my doorstep!

The Mystery Writer's of America have announced the nominees for this year's Edgar Awards (and so a new year of award giving begins!).  There are a number of books on the list I would love to read, and I have one close at hand that has migrated to my bedside pile.  The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter is up for Best Novel.  It also made the longlist for the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize, which makes me even more eager to pick it up (being a shelf sitter as well).  Much like all those NYRBs from last year there are all those 'must have now' prize longlist books (quite a few from the Baileys Prize) sitting on my shelves patiently (maybe like me they are actually quite impatient to be read). 

Since I'm on the subject of prize winners, I heard that Joan London (I read and loved her novel Gilgamesh some years ago) won the 2015 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction in Australia for her novel The Golden Age.  Just a few paragraphs above I mentioned I was an impatient reader?  Yes, and here is some more evidence.  The book is not set to be published in the US until later at the end of summer, so just before the holidays I ordered a copy from Australia!  I got free shipping, otherwise I would never have been able to afford it.  Now I have to read it before August. 

I have a new nonfiction just waiting for me to pick up.  I've decided to stick with memoirs/biographies and wanted something historical so have picked up (but not yet started) Kathryn Harrison's Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured.  When it was first released I knew I wanted to read it, but I waited until it came out in paper and now I can't wait to start.  And I have yet to start reading a classic.  Too many other distractions, I guess.

Danish crime writer Sara Blaedel is coming to the library where I work to speak early in February!  It is a joint venture between my library and the Danish American Archive, which we have a relationship with.  Quite a coup, I think.  I have yet to read her, but I do have a copy of Call Me Princess.  I wonder if I could possibly squeeze it in before she speaks.  I am hoping to be able to attend.

Spoiled for choice.  I already have a happy mix of 'already on the go' books and now these are lining up and watching me expectantly.  And no three day weekend in sight.  And then there is the ever-growing list of forthcoming books, which I might just share with you this weekend, that are hovering around in the background!

Victoria Line: Mind the Child

Did I already tell you that I have chosen a new "series" of books to tackle this year?  Last year I finished up the Little House books, which I started to read the year before, which was satisfying in a variety of ways.  Good books and compelling, comforting reading and the satisfaction of finishing nine books (even if it took me longer to read them all than anticipated).  But I was ready for something a little different.  I bought the Penguin series of books--Penguin Lines that were published in 2013 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, or the Tube.  The books are small and compact and novella-length and quite fun.  The series is made up a dozen books--one each for the twelve Underground Lines.  So:

Victoria Line: Mind the Child
Central Line: The 32 Stops
East London Line: Buttoned-Up
District Line: What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube
Northern Line: A Northern Line Minute
Metropolitan Line: A Good Parcel of English Soil
Bakerloo Line: Earthbound
Jubilee Line: A History of Capitalism
Hammersmith & City Line: Drift
Waterloo & City Line: Water-City, City-Waterloo
Circle Line: Heads and Straights
Piccadilly Line: The Blue Riband

The series is interesting in that the books are not exactly about each Underground line.  Each author writes about something particular to that area of London.  It's sort of hard to tell even what each book is about as there is no real description on the back cover, more a Q&A with the author with interesting/quirky vital statistics.  So it is an adventure starting each book, as you are  not sure what you are in for.  Once again I had started reading these books ages ago (two years ago to be specific).  I had a different idea on how I was going to approach these books and was going to read them in tandem with something else.  But I read one book and a chapter of the other and then they just sort of sat there and languished.  But now I am eager to get back to them and plan on just reading them in no particular order and on their own and not as any sort of larger project.

I read Mind the Child: The Victoria Line back in 2014 and have just this past weekend finished a second book Heads and Straights: The Circle Line.  I will write about the latter book in the next few days, but to keep it all neat and tidy and together as a complete set, I thought I would share the original post that started it all.  So, what follows appeared here a couple of years ago.

* * * * *

It's the social aspect of London, social as in societal ills, that the author takes as her topic for Mind the Child: The Victoria Line by Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company.  It's tourist London that I remember so clearly, but what about the real London?  Mind the Child was an eye-opening and sometimes harrowing read about a portion of society that should be cherished and cared for, but is all too often abused and neglected--children.

Batmanghelidjh begins her narrative with the story of her own sister who jumped in front of a train but fell between the rails and only injured her leg (she later subsequently had better luck in committing suicide).

"Since then, each time someone jumps on the tracks, bringing the station to a halt, I find myseld preoccupied with the discprepant journeys we all take in life: the parallel existences of the destination-driven crowd, who move rapidly to complete a task, and the destination-despondent, who decide life is no longer worth pursuing."

It wasn't the loss of her sister that prompted Batmanghelidjh to work with children.  It was a love of helping others.  And it was a family trait handed down from earlier generations--this desire to serve others.  ". . . some of the richest cultures put care-giving at the forefront of their agenda, and see it as an expression of refinement rather than failure or weakness."

"We tend to look at the Tube map only when we have a destination in mind.  Take the Victoria Line: its sky-blue snakes clearly through the tangle of other lines, from Brixton in south London all the way to Walthamstow in the northeast.  In this book, I want us to take a less direct route.  I want to introduce you to some of the extraordinary kids struggling daily with the dichotomy of living and dying, who I have met through my work at Kids Company and, prior to that, through a range of other settings."

Mind the children--much like mind the gap--these are the children we don't see or demonize if we do, the ones who fall between the cracks.  Mind the Child is a combination of personal narrative by the children themselves, Batmanghelidjh's experiences working with them, and many statistics about crime and violence.  The numbers however aren't empty and meaningless as numbers usually are.  Hearing the voices of these children, who don't seem to ever be quite visible to politicians puts faces on the numbers.  Each child speaks in their own voice, some pulling themselves out of poverty and bad situations and others mired in it no matter how hard they try and lift themselves out.  The author also explains the neuroscience of battered children--how living in abusive households affects them and stunts them.  I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book.  Victoria Line?  It was her inspiration and it is certainly a journey.  It's reading books like this that put life and the world into sharp perspective.  It was not an easy read at times, but it was such a good read and I am happy that I was finally prompted to pick it up.

Next up is A Good Parcel of English Soil: The Metropolitan Line by Richard Mabey.

Teaser Tuesday: The Stranger's Child

So, if you are like me, you can probably answer this question quickly--almost without even thinking about it too hard.  Which book or author do you constantly 'mean to read', she or he is in the back of your mind and probably the book is sitting there right in reach, but you never do?  Well, for me, and for a long time (I actually  have quite a long list of books and authors--many of them sit on one particular shelf in my bookroom) the book in question has been Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child. 

I have wanted to read the book since it first came out.  I put it off until it came out in paperback, being a healthy sized tome of over 500 pages.  The paperback came out in 2012!  And here it is 2016.  A mere Four Years have passed.  Granted the desire to read it seems to have gained momentum in the last year or so.  I cannot tell you how many times I have put it on mental lists of 'must read this this year' books or felt the urge to just go and pick it up and start reading.  You know how it goes--the time just needs to be right.  Forget that you might check out something from the library and the interloper just gets to cut right in line no questions asked and no excuses made. 

So, yesterday I decided it was time.  Alan Hollinghurst is getting his day finally.  It was just sitting there in a pile next to my bed and I reached for it and started reading.  And I discovered that it is indeed as good as I was hoping, so I just kept on reading.  I do this all the time--pick up a book on a whim and start reading and all of a sudden it gets a prime spot in my bookbag.  I need to do this more often.  If I am really lusting after a particular book--just read it.  Okay, maybe not if the night stand is beginning to groan under the weight of too many books, but as you can see my nightstand has a healthy pile, but I think it will be manageable.

I'm not too far into the story yet, but I think I will make steady progress on it.  It begins in 1913 when Cecil Valance, a poet, is brought home to meet the family of his good friend George Sawle.  Things are going to happen on this fateful weekend, which will be looked back upon and reinterpreted and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.  My teaser is an exchange between Cecil and Jonah, who is one of the Sawle's servants.  I get the feeling the family is middle class, but higher end middle class.  They don't have valets, but Jonah steps in as Cecil obviously is used to a certain lifestyle.

"Cecil smiled vaguely, as if he'd forgotten the question by the time it was answered, and said, 'Funny little room, isn't it.'  Since Jonah didn't answer, he added, 'Rather charming, though, rather charming,' with his yap of a laugh.  Jonah had the strange of being intimate with someone who was simultaneously unaware of him.  In a way it was what you looked for, as a servant."

I thought that was such a good observation and wonderful description.  In those few sentences you get a feel for the characters and place.  1913.  We all know what's coming.  The story covers many years, maybe even more than one lifetime for these characters.  It's such a happy feeling picking up a book that you've long looked forward to!  I need this since January is such a long, bleak month.