A Work in Progress

Short Story 'Monday': The Music at Long Verney

So in the end I have settled on Sylvia Townsend Warner as my next short story writer to tackle.  And she wasn't even in the running, but isn't that how it goes so often.  I have yet to read any of her novels, though she is a Virago Modern Classics author and I have more than one of her novels on my shelves.  I have, however, dabbled in her short stories.  I saw a lovely, cloth copy of The Music at Long Verney just sitting very unobtrusively and with some dignity on a pile of short story collections and decided it was calling out in its own quiet way.  Besides the collection is twenty stories mostly published by the New Yorker during the William Maxwell years and decided she surely must rank up there with Elizabeth Taylor in terms of style and quality.  I love New Yorker stories in general and particularly those published during the William Maxwell years (to say nothing of his writing, too).  I will only try and do my reading of her justice.

The stories span the years from 1929 to 1977 and a little teaser from the book blurb of what I can expect:

"They are crowded with irrepressible, living characters and equally animated objects and incidents.  There are stories of romantic love and the mysteries of marriage; of artists who speak the truth even as they distort reality; of gardens and houses and very find things and of those who fancy themselves the owners.  The centerpiece of the collection is a series of five linked comic episodes concerning an eccentric London establishment, the Abbey Antique Galleries, and its singular proprietor, the urbane Mr. Edom--not to mention its uncontrollable inventory, staff and clientele."

The first and titular story, "The Music at Long Verney" is one of those houses and it is indeed peopled with those who fancy themselves the owners.  It is one of her later stories published in 1971 and according to William Maxwell she told him "I saw this couple standing outside their own house and had to know how they got there."  So this must be her imagining of it.

Long Verney is a great house on one of those great estates entailed to its roof.  The only son of the Furnival family has decided he won't go on there as "England's sinking under lovely old houses with lovely old paupers creeping about in them like maggots in nutshells too large for them."  No matter since two years later he is to die in Cyprus and the heir next in line decides to break the entail as he doesn't want it either.  So seventy and sixty-eight respectively Oliver and Sibyl find themselves unquestionably in possession of Long Verney.  Living frugally they might just manage ("their chief pleasure was reading and Oliver was a lifetime member of the London Library"), but when Sibyl cracks her knee in a automobile accident, all bets are off and to the gamekeeper's lodge it is.  A tenant being much more preferable to selling.  "Less abrupt."

It's the characterization of this story that makes it so memorable.  Townsend Warner turns a razor sharp eye towards Long Verney's residents.  None show to the best light really.  There is certainly a feel of age and class but it's not as though in the end one is better or more worthy than the other.  It's certainly most entertaining for the reader however.

"With their move, Oliver and Sibyl suddenly became a matter for public concern.  It was as if they had been brought out into the light of day and revealed as much older, thinner, dimmer, than was supposed; as if Long Verney were an attic in which they had been stored--inventoried, known to be there, hereditary objects on their way to becoming family portraits."

Their tenants, the Simpsons, one gets the feel that they are 'new' money perhaps.  Certainly a younger crowd and decidedly uncouth.  They aren't nature lovers and not walkers.  Worse, the husband is a director of one of those firms that makes weed killer (no wonder there are not as many nightingales as there used to be).

"Anthony Simpson was hand in glove with the Labour Party.  He was not a Jew but his wife was.  They bought nothing locally; they had sent away old Jules the onion man.  Their son drove through the village at a hundred miles an hour, wore bracelets, had been sent down from Cambridge for peddling cannabis.  They filled the house with ballet dancers, opera singers, photographers, and intellectuals.  They were never at home for two weeks running."

As for the music at Long Verney?  Well, it is a night of music, of finding just the right music for the space that brings them all together--a clash of orbits you might say. 

Next weekend: "The Inside-Out".  I think I am going to like this collection of stories very much.

Sunny Holiday Reading . . .

I'll be back tomorrow for a proper bookish post, but just a little update.  Alas, not as much reading has been done as I had hoped, but the weather has mostly been very cooperative and much nicer out than I expected.  I have gotten in lots of walking and will soon be off for another before it gets too warm and sticky (because it is never just nice out--it is either too cold or too warm . . .).  I have been offline almost all weekend so I have lots of catching up to do later (but I must admit it has been nice to leave the computer off for a few days).

But I do have a reading question.  Has anyone read Chris Cleave's Everyone Brave is Forgiven?  I am not sure why I keep hemming and hawing about this.  I think only because I have several other 'war' books on the go and am a little reluctant to start yet another, though I have heard mostly good things about it.  It is that age old library book problem.  If I want to read it, I need to do it right now as the line is so long it will take ages before I have another go at it.  So, do I let it jump the queue and read it (even has the others in my towering pile beckon?), or do I let the next person in line get it sooner rather than later?  Maybe I will spend the afternoon reading the first few chapters and see how it grabs me.

I hope everyone who is celebrating has a relaxing and sunny Memorial Day.

What did I say about sunny?  Hot and humid?  Earlier it was indeed all of the above, but oh my how changeable the weather.  The clouds rolled in and it was sprinkling on my afternoon walk home.  I lucked out and made it back without getting drenched and then this evening it began hailing--pea size and just a bit larger.  And brr, the cold air has swept in.  A look to the east and what do I find but a rainbow!  I wonder where the pot of gold is?  I will happily settle for a bit of extra luck this coming week--in whatever shape it may arrive. 

Ready for the Long Holiday Weekend Notes

It was a dark and stormy night . . .  And the next day and the next day and the next day.  We've had lots of rain of late, but as the much-looked-forward to long holiday weekend is finally here I thought it called for the lovely header with the girl reading on the beach . . . boy do I wish that was me).  I am now officially on a mini break from work until Tuesday morning.  And while I have no grand plans to celebrate outside, I do plan on going to see a few movies, have an appointment to give blood and had high hopes for a long walk or two.  Plans which might now be marred by a very sodden weekend.  Days and days of it.  

Oh well, I will just try and go about my business as best I can and hope I can get about between bouts of rain.  As it has been on the quiet side here all week, and isn't likely to improve for the coming weekend at least, I might take a little posting break until Tuesday and, fingers crossed, that I might get in a little extra quiet reading and stitching time.  

My bookish agenda includes finishing Anne Enright's The Green Road, which I have very mixed feelings about.  While I think she is an excellent writer, my reading experience has been very up and and down.  Though I am not especially bothered by characters I don't like, for some reason the fact that I find all the characters in this book prickly and unlikable (well, some more than others) has really slowed me down in finishing the book.  Still, I have fifty or so odd pages to go and then I will let it settle and see what I think at the end.  This is one of the Baileys Women's Prize shortlist books.  I will then turn my attention to deciding whether to read The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild or A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara next.     

I need to choose a new short story collection.  I have been thinking of trying Ali Smith or Mavis Gallant or perhaps picking up something by Alice Munro who I have read before and loved.  I likely will dip into a few books and see which one most catches my attention.

And I will finish the third and final volume of Jonathan Luna's Alex + Ada.  I still need to write about my comic book adventures.  I think I have mentioned how I am finding them a little bit addictive.  So, here's something new.  I often think about reading science fiction.  I have wanted to find something to try for ages and have even asked for suggestions from friends but never quite gotten so far as to dive into any books.  I think the Luna comics have provided that 'hook'.  The story is about and android who is 'awakened' and becomes sentient.  So, hey, yeah, now I want a full length novel with a similar feel.  I have been digging around and looking and finally settled on William Gibson's Neuromancer, which from the sound of things, is a classic.  My copy just came in the mail so I am sure I will want to start reading sooner rather than later.  Any other reading ideas for similar sorts of stories are, as always, most welcome.

Otherwise, whatever you see on my right sidebar is fair game for my reading pleasure this weekend.  I hope to fit in as much reading into those little nooks and crannies as I can.  I'll be back on Tuesday or so to share my bookish weekend adventures.  Happy reading everyone!

The Woman in the Picture, Katharine McMahon

It's books like Katharine McMahon's The Woman in the Picture that spoils things for all the other books that come after.  I think I can fairly confidently say that this will easily be one of my (if not the) favorite books of the year.   Much like The Crimson Rooms that I reread earlier this year, it has all the right elements combined in just the right way for this to be a pitch perfect read.  I was so happy to revisit Evelyn Gifford, and if her 'ending' last time around was not exactly a 'happily ever after' it was entirely satisfying for me.  Actually anything different would have felt forced and not true to the nature of Evie's character.  While the previous story was mostly resolved, there was still much more to say Evelyn and Meredith's world and about their lives.  The Woman in the Picture, however, is mostly Evelyn's story.

If you are curious about where it really begins, you can read my post here first.  Now, it is 1926, just a few years after the events that took place in The Crimson Rooms.  While Evelyn is more of a seasoned lawyer, she still struggles against prejudices and false perceptions that British society and her male counterparts (the whole male establishment really) have against females practicing the law.  A little challenge never defeats Evelyn, but her personal life is another matter.  It's more of an upheaval and mixed in with her courtroom adventures, this story makes for a rather thrilling read.

This is the year of the General Strike, so imagine that as the backdrop.  Evelyn is left reeling after a romantic misadventure with a fellow lawyer.  I have to say I sort of admire a woman, ca. 1924, who knowingly goes into a relationship with a man she is on the cusp of being in love with, takes what she knows she wants before having to let it go and fall to pieces, yet be all the stronger despite (or maybe for) it. 

This refers to her affair with Nicholas Thorne, a golden boy of the law, equally charming in looks as in personality.  A man who knows perfectly how to balance what he wants in court and what he needs to do to get it, and still come out smelling like a rose.  Is it a mistake he seems to take such an interest in Evelyn?  Maybe at first the interest was with an end in mind, but his admiration for her was real.  It's only a pity that Evelyn catches him out on his initial intentions and that is that.  She has just enough scruples to draw the line.  So when they part in anger, and he sends her a letter, she burns it without opening it.  Cast to the flames she too late has second thoughts, but now consigns it all to the fire and moves on.  Nicholas has just enough shame to leave London, and so now we are ready for the next act in Evelyn's life. 

If it is a time of massive upheaval and change in British history, then Evelyn's personal life reflects it, too.  During the war years the Gifford household was made up entirely of women and after the war, her deceased brother's lover and their son show up on the doorstep.  The Gifford household is a stifling one, with a mother far too often in a fit of vapors and an aunt who is a little too proper.  Meredith's bohemian ways throws them all for a loop, but really it's the best thing for them.  Just when Evelyn's life seems to be calm and her work moving forward, Meredith decides it's time to pursue her painting in France taking her son with her.  One change in the Gifford household seems to portend a general disbanding of what family is left, and Evelyn's mother assumes she'll return home and be a 'proper daughter' and do her duty. 

It's all these questions--these duties and expectations but also hopes and desires that make this such a rich and nicely complex read.  Evelyn takes on two difficult court cases, one with repercussions on and fallout from the General Strike and the other a sticky domestic case where there can really be no winners.  She was lucky enough that her boss, Daniel Breen, was renegade enough to take on a female lawyer, but then he is drawn to cases where he favors the underdog.  And now he finds himself attracted to his protegé, and Evelyn admires and respects him in turn-more than enough to seriously consider his offer of marriage.  What better team could there be, one based on mutual respect and attraction.  But always at the back of Evie's mind niggles that unopened and destroyed letter.  She would happily have it back now to know what it said and regrets her hasty action.  So when Nicholas steps back into their lives, is it a second chance or an awful distraction?

This is such a great read and I've had to go back and edit this post so as not to get too bogged down in detail, but there is really so much to say about Katharine McMahon's characters and if that's not enough on its own, there is her superlative storytelling abilities, which has made me collect all her books and eagerly plan to read my way through them all.  I won't tell you how this ends, but the promise of the last novel is more than fulfilled in this one.  I could happily pick up the book, turn to the first page and start reading it all over again, and who knows, maybe I just will later this year.  While I have changed gears temporarily with Deborah Moggach it won't be long (and maybe that sooner rather than later moment has actually already arrived) before I settle into another of her marvelous stories.

One Season Down, Onwards to Spring

Here's my Prairie Schooler Winter Sampler all finished, washed and pressed.  Not too shabby despite all that dreaded stitching with white floss (my least favorite thing--next to making French knots--when it comes to stitching!). 

Soon enough, with summer just around the corner I will be dreaming of this snow!  But for now, it is off to the storage bin for Mr. Snowman and his bird friends.  I have lots of time to think how I will 'finish' the quartet of seasonal samplers.  Very likely they will end up as cushions of some sort, so I will be on the look out for some fun fabric to use as borders and backing.

Here is my 'official' start of the Spring Sampler (yes, a little late, so best get moving on this one!).  I'm using the same exact linen and it shares the same color palette more or less.

And my first official progress photo.  Unfortunately, also, my first mistake!  That brownish blob was a wheelbarrow until I looked at the chart more closely and realized that it was really meant to be the same color as that green border.  I've already started picking it out and will fix the color.  The tan-ish bit towards the bottom is the start of the garden.  The bird needs her beak and she will be joined by a mate on the other side.  Isn't it strange how much the colors vary between chart and reality?  It is  nice to be working on something new, so hopefully it will be incentive to keep picking it up and working on it at a steady pace.  And hopefully steady work will also mean regular stitching updates once again.

As this coming weekend is a long weekend--and I am taking Friday off to do some things so can extend my three day weekend into a four day weekend, I hope to stitch, read, see a few movies and most importantly relax!  (Though all three activities are for me relaxing).

I found out what the June NYRB subscription book is--I can never not look at the ad in the New York Review of Books.  I am excited as it is a novel I have long wanted to read, but I have been too lazy to check out from the library.  If you are curious, you can see it here.  It's good to have something bookish to look forward to, but that means it is time to get serious about Teffi!

By the way, one more bookish note--I finished my short story collection and will tell you about it this weekend.  I have an idea of what I want to read next, though I did pick up two new story collections from the library yesterday, so I might have to begin the agonizing process of choosing sooner than later!

Reading Through History: A Few Novels

Forwards or backwards?  Which way through history should I move?  I have fallen behind in writing about the books I have been reading, so a few (in this case combined) catch up posts are needed.  I love historical fiction, though I tend to read more from the interwar era than any other.  I've got a mix of books here, however.  Two historical fiction novels set hundreds of years apart and one 'contemporary' novel which must have caused quite a stir when it first came out.  Even more than half a century later and it still made me raise my eyebrows, but I'll work my way up to that one. 

I like reading books set in the Medieval period, but I don't often pick them up.  I think I went through a big Tudor phase (technically Henry VIII and his many wives came just a bit later) some years ago and have just moved on into new interests since then.   I think my last foray into the Medieval world was with Lady Agnes, that wonderful French Medieval mystery by Andrea Japp from last Fall (and I still have the sequel to look forward to).  When the mood arose once again earlier this year I decided to revisit a novel I read in my pre-blogging days that I knew I had enjoyed, Judith Koll Healey's The Canterbury Papers.  It's subtitle is "a novel of suspense", which describes it well since it isn't exactly a mystery, and not exactly a romance, but it has elements of both.

Set during the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Koll Healey took her inspiration from real historical figures and from the actual places that are the historical backdrop of this novel that she had visited and read about.  While she did take a few liberties with the historical timeline, much of what she writes about is based on real people, places and events.   The royal princess Alaïs Capet is asked (though I am sure you don't turn down a request from a former Queen) to travel to England and retrieve a packet of letters belonging to Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Whatever is in the letters is enough--incendiary or otherwise, to cause embarrassment to King John and cause a murder or two along the way which, of course, will cause no end of troubles for Alaïs.

Alaïs travels under the guise of making a pilgrimage to Becket's tomb, where the letters are supposed to be hidden.  It gets a bit tricky as Alaïs was formerly King Henry II's mistress (Eleanor's husband--though coerced she was, mind you) and bore a son, who she has long believed died shortly after his birth.  That part of the story gets a little complicated (since I am not as well versed in the period as I could be), but it's not necessary to get too bogged down in the historical detail of the royal genealogy.  The fun of the story is the intrigue and the messy royal politics, the rumors and innuendo as well as the interplay between Alaïs and her childhood friend and former member of the royal court, William, who purports to be the prior at Canterbury, but is more likely to be one of the Knights Templar.  Ah, the plot thickens.  This was just as enjoyable the second time around as the first being steeped in atmosphere and royal intrigue.  The various mysteries are brought to satisfying conclusion and there is even a way paved for a sequel, The Rebel Princess, which happens to be on my TBR pile.  So convenient!  

***

Another reread, Helen Humphreys's The Lost Garden, is another gorgeous novel much like her The Evening Chorus, which I so enjoyed last year.  She is one of my 'must read all her books' authors.  I meant to get to one of her other novels sooner than this, but no matter.  So often books come along at just the right moment, when you need a particular sort of story most.  So moving forward in time a good seven hundred years or so, The Lost Garden is set in the Devon countryside during the Blitz.  It is a bittersweet novel filled with desire and passion, of loss and love and truths discovered. 

Gwen Davis is something of a misfit.  She feels more comfortable around her plants than she does leading the group of land girls she is put in charge of.  She had been studying 'parsnip canker' at the Royal Horticultural Society in London when she decided to take on a job organizing wartime agricultural production.  Honestly her work with parsnip canker had been going nowhere so better off to go back to her beloved Devon.  She may know gardens and plants, but she does not know young women.  Or young men for that matter.  Gwen isn't quite of a 'certain age' yet, but an ocean seems to separate her from the other young women.  They are billeted in the servants quarters on the estate of a great country house where they'll be working.  The manor happens to be housing a group of Canadian soldiers getting ready to, sooner or later, deploy to Europe.

There is one young woman, not quite as young as the other land girls, but not so stuffy as Gwen who acts as a bridge between the women smoothing things out.  She is a free spirit but obviously burdened by painful memories and loss.  Her fiancé has been reported missing in action yet she remains hopeful he will be found safely.  Gwen has her own burdens.  It's perhaps symbolic she likes to lie under the weight of her massive encyclopedia of roses she has lugged down from London.  She feels the weight of so much, of all that is lacking in her life, particularly the lack of human touch and warmth the feeling of love having been raised by a cold and distant mother.  She feels her inadequacies and they seem to define her.  She's haunted by the news that her most loved author, Virginia Woolf has gone missing, not yet declared dead.

Gwen finds a secret garden on the estate that she sets out to bring back to life.  The combination of plants and flowers filled with, she is sure, some secret mystery, some meaning or message between lovers.  So it is not surprising that she misinterprets the feelings of others.  Is she seeing in them only what she wishes were true?  She harbors secret feelings for the Canadian officer in charge of the men in the manor house thinking he might perhaps reciprocate them.  Helen Humphreys is always eloquent.  Her books are beautiful and lush, much like the gardens Gwen tries to revive.  This is a sad story, but hopeful in its way, too.  Filled with the meanings of loss and longing and a lesson in what it means to love and be loved.   Her books are always wonderful reads and worthy, as was the case here, of revisiting!

***

Oh my, just over a decade later, and how far we have come.  All the way over to America and the small New England town of Peyton Place.  What a hotbed of sordidness lurking in such a proper little town.  What scandal Grace Metalious must have created when she wrote Peyton Place.  It must have been both shocking and liberating in its way.  It was a blockbuster bestseller that prompted TV adaptations and must have remade the publishing world.  Not even halfway through the book and I was sure every possible taboo I could think of and maybe even a few I had not had to have been broken.  Just when I thought she had surely reached the outer limits, something else awful was happening, there was always something more.  Let's see--rape, murder, incest, illegitimacy, xenophobia, illegal abortions and reckless and illicit and just nasty behavior fill these pages.  And it matters not at all whether it is the town's leaders or the town's drunks that take center stage.  Metalious is an equal opportunity writer--everyone has a chance to be bad or good (rather more bad than good here, however). 

Do you know the movie Tootsie?  In order to get work Dustin Hoffman dresses as a woman so he can act in a TV soap opera.  When his contract is renewed, much to his chagrin, Bill Murray's character jokes that maybe there is a morality clause in his contract, but that he couldn't think of anything 'Tootsie' hadn't already said or done that would shock the audience in order to get him kicked off the show.  That's how it is with Peyton Place.  Of course Metalious is just shedding light on the cold hard facts that small town America is no better than the big city when it comes to morality and it is easy to judge what happens in our neighbor's backyard, but maybe a little attention should be directed to our own.  Small town America is just a little more repressed and judgemental while hiding its own shortcomings.  And that is the beauty of this book.  Nothing like turning the microscope onto ourselves.

Talk about soap operas.  This is pure, unadulterated melodrama.  No . . . Melodrama.  It calls for capitalization.  The cast of characters is large and the story opens on a sunny Indian summer afternoon when all is golden and beautiful.  There are a number of storylines each interrelated of course.  It opens and closes with young Allison MacKenzie initially a gawky teenager who will find her own by story's end, though I suppose she becomes somewhat jaded by the time those last pages roll around, and how could anyone not in a town like Peyton Place?  The story mostly revolves around three women--Allison, her mother Constance and Allison's friend Selena.  Mother and daughter (no husband/father in the picture and that is a story all its own) are middle-class but Selena decidedly lives on the wrong side of the track.  It's all the other characters who revolve into and out of their orbit or make up the background/town that flesh out the picture.  What happens?  What doesn't happen in this story.  Really, it is just average everyday life--trying to get by, make a living, find happiness circa 1950, but there are no rose color glasses involved here.

Peyton Place is a longish book, and it did weary me somewhere about halfway through the book.  I mean how much drama of this sort can a reader take?  But I was happy to persevere.  It would be a fascinating book to read again with an eye towards thinking of it with a feminist perspective since so much of what happens happens to women.  There is lots of sex.  Not exactly the liberating sort, more the sort that gets brushed under the carpet, yet Metalious allowed none of that.  Surely this book must have paved the way for a variety of other books--both Feminist and pulpy.  What came after?  The era of Valley of the Dolls?  (I read that years ago and should reread it sometime, too). 

So, quite a journey I took from Medieval France and England to respectable (or not so much, really) New England of he 1950s!  Interesting to compare and contrast and think of the different lives and how much they have changed and in some cases it's all the same problems all over no matter the century. 

Short Story 'Monday': Little Disturbances

A mere twenty pages stand between me and the end of Mary Costello's The China Factory.  I have quite enjoyed her writing and these Irish stories with their thread of melancholia that seems so pervasive in them.  They are intense and sometimes very dark.  I've not felt much joy or bliss in them to be honest.  The characters struggle in their situations and their relationships.  Particularly in their relationships.  These are average people leading mostly ordinary average sorts of lives and while that can be heavy going (and I am glad I didn't try and gulp these down quickly), I can see bits and pieces of these emotions and struggles in my own life.   I can't decide whether this makes me feel better or worse.  Better to think that I am not alone in my own 'struggle', yet worse to think are there no really happy relationships?  No one is happy all of the time, but I hope there are couples out there who are happy a good lot of the time, that the struggles and difficult moments are worth it in the end.

Once again I read two stories this weekend, "Little Disturbances" and "Room in Her Head", but I was drawn more to the first story than the latter one, so let me tell you about that one.

It's hard to face the end of your life when you feel moments of regret over the choices you have made.  Not the people you have ended up with but the way you chose to live your life.  How do you face not knowing whether you might have been happier had you taken some other risks.  Would you have been happier, might your spouse been happier, your marriage stronger if you had left Ireland and maybe gone to America?  That could be true of any of us, and I often think of those 'sliding door' moments myself.  What if I had made some other choice, said no instead of yes, gone elsewhere.  Would I be very different?  Would I be happier?  Would those around me have been happier?  You could drive yourself crazy wondering these things.

In my eyes, this is one of the things that struck me so much when I read this story. 

"He hears music when he wakes these mornings.  The notes float up from below, pouring softly into the room, and for a moment he thinks it is Miriam, Miriam perched on the piano stool with her legs swinging and the purple-flowered wallpaper swirling around her and the notes spilling from her fingers."

One of the things I like about Costello's storytelling is how she lures you into her stories by, in this case, this seemingly insignificant memory.  Miriam is the narrator's daughter.  One of his children who has gone off to Canada to live and now fears flying and so doesn't return home often.  We later learn that she had a disagreement with her parents.  The narrator, the father, is much older and there is the strong hint he is not well, that perhaps he is facing some terrible illness.  He tends to drift off into his memories and his wife is short with him.  They don't seem especially happy together, but maybe they are settled and comfortable, and when you have built a life together how do you give it all up?

"Marie has gone from him little by little, year by year, and the going is almost complete.  He has never been enough; she had wanted a fuller life, and a small bit of glamour.  The years wore her down, the worry, the work."

And then he thinks:

"Something spills out of us, and it cannot be put back again."

And so the regrets and wondering.  "He thinks of all the blindness he ever had".  I guess in life there are more moments like this than the sort that soar.  Those moments of release of feeling that cloud lifting, those rare moments of beauty and the sublime.  But facing illness is a wake up call, if you will listen anyway, a chance to laugh and maybe forget just for a moment. 

And so that is the beauty in Costello's storytelling.  How she can take these moments of everyday life, important moments sometimes, and hold them up to the light, and sometimes you feel as though they are your own.  And I suppose it is the mark of a good writer if she makes the reader just a little uncomfortable.  She stirs things up inside a reader and leaves her just a little bit unsettled. 

I do admit, however, after the next two stories, "Insomniac" and "The Sewing Room", I think I will leave Ireland behind for a while.  I might pick up a collection of stories designed around a theme but consisting of the works of various writers.  Or I might give a recent collection by Ali Smith a try.  Actually, go read the blurb on Ali Smith's stories, it sounds quite promising and maybe a little lighter, too.  Lightness is just as important in life and storytelling as heaviness and darkness.

A Little Bookish Randomness

Did I tell you I am taking another yoga class?  For the summer session it is twice a week for the next five weeks.  I love taking yoga but it does cut into my online time, so just a very little randomness today (as I keep watching, and this is a good thing really, my 'finished reading' pile get larger while my review posts continue to dwindle . . .). 

I decided on two nonfiction reads.  Why not live dangerously.  They are actually related and one book sort of led into the other.  I like the idea, as a few of you also mentioned, of reading essays and being able to dip into them a little more easily on a day to day basis.  So, I have picked up Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi to read alongside Memories: From the Moscow to the Black Sea.  I started reading a few of the short essays in the first book and she pulled me right in and so it was just natural to pick up my NYRB subscription book with much more enthusiasm.  Maybe I'll write about what I've read so far tomorrow, or next week.  I can already tell this is another winner from NYRB.

I have been reading Katharine McMahon's novels, three fairly close together now, as I have decided she is an author whose work I want to read all of.  I've just finished the third book, a reread, and had all but decided on which of her books to pick up next, when I have changed my mind.  Me, books, change my mind, yeah--again.  I'll keep going but I need a little change of pace with another author who I read a couple of years ago and then decided that I needed to read all her books, too.  I liked the book so much I then had to start collecting all the other books she had written.  Those books sit in a pile by my bed next to all those books by Katharine McMahon (you know how it goes--you are looking at one book and then some other book sitting next to it catches your eye), and I had this urge to change course slightly.  So, now, the newest book selection dilemma.  Which book shall I start with by Deborah Moggach.  I easily have ten or so on hand so tonight I will be sifting through the pile and making a new choice.  (It takes so little to make me happy sometimes). 

As an aside and in reference once more to Katharine McMahon, I see that she might have a new book coming out later this year (looking at The Book Depository).  Is that only wishful thinking?  I cannot find any other reference save a tiny mention: "I am in the strange and rather wonderful position of finishing the first draft of a new book, whilst waiting for the imminent publication in paperback of my latest" (The Woman in the Picture--which I loved and still must write about).

I got loads of bookish email these days.  Somehow when you subscribe to one newsletter more and more ads and newsletters seem to pop up.  This is both good and bad.  Good because how else might I have come across author Charles Portis, who I had never heard of before but now really want to read.  Bad because I seem to add more and more books to my wishlist than ever before!

And then there is this wonderful beach reads list that I must now explore.  I like it especially as it is not at all your typical beach reads sort of list.  And a great list of forthcoming books about women that I will be looking over more closely.  On first glance there are a few I had already heard of and a few more I hadn't.  And I am excited to see that the sequel to a book I very much enjoyed is on that list and I am really looking forward to reading. 

And then there are book accessory deals that come to my attention and I find I really, really want one of these.  I mean you can never have enough tote bags to tote all those books around with you!  Buy a tote and get a pouch for free.  Sounds like a good deal to me.

And just one more (short story!!) goodie.  The O. Henry Prize Stories for 2016 have been announced.  I have read one.  There are links to a few more and then maybe I will start trying to track down the rest.  Maybe this is a prize list I can actually manage to read from--maybe even read the whole list (the book comes out in September and it will have the whole collection of them).  Because you can never have enough short stories to read, right? 

What bookish randomness have you come across lately?  Do share!

C'est Fini: Winter's Last Stitches

Drum roll please . . . release the birds!  Did you wonder if this day would ever come?  I did.  Here is Prairie Schooler's Winter sampler all finished.  Well, the stitching is done.  I need to hand wash the linen and then press it and then I will take some (hopefully) nicer photos to share.  But I was so excited to be done I had to show you finally!   I'd like to squeeze my initials and maybe the date in there somewhere still.  Now I need to think about how I want to (proper) finish the designs.  Pillows maybe?  Frame the quartet of them to hang on my wall?  I'll have to think that over.

And now (tardily!) onwards to the Spring Sampler, and I have put in a few more stitches so it is officially in progress and I am turning my full attention to it now.  Once again I am starting with the door and will likely work my way first from center to the right edge and then fill in the opposite side.  Since I hold the linen in my left hand, and it tends to get pretty wrinkled I like to work middle to right and then to left so I am not holding on to the section already stitched.  Another brown house with a blue door, but (yay) no snow and I had best get to planting that garden since it is soon going to turn quite warm!

Hopefully the spring sampler will go a little more quickly as there is no white floss used at all.  The garden, however, does have some small detail.  Still, it will be much nicer to work with a slightly different color palette.   I have still not decided whether to partake of the Lizzie Kate Halloween Mystery Sampler, but I am very tempted.  It is probably a really good thing I do not do much online browsing of all the new needlework charts that my favorite online stores have been getting (particularly since I have a pretty health stash collection and can easily pick new things to work on and never worry about running out of things to stitch).  I love working on my seasonal samplers (and starting a new one does help rejuvenate me), but I also like the idea of adding some variety to my stitching rotation.  For now, though, spring it is!

A Very Few Nonfiction Reading Notes

It's amazing how much time I can fritter away thinking about books, and thinking about what I should read next.  You, too?  I am especially indecisive about nonfiction reading selections.  Maybe it is because, unlike with novels, I will generally only allow myself one book on the go at a time.  I can juggle lots of stories, but nonfiction is always slow going for me since I want to absorb as much detail as I can.  And with nonfiction, those books tend to be chock full of all sorts of information.

This year I have spent far too much time grazing and then setting aside nonfiction books.  I won't even go into which books I have had in my hands and then decided I was really in the mood for something else.  There has been nothing wrong with any of these books except the idea that I just want something else.  I can be so very tenacious in other aspects of my life, but apparently not with nonfiction.  At least at the moment.

So, the moment has come once again--I am in the mood for something else.  I'm just not entirely sure what.  I want it to be really absorbing and gripping.  I have a small (whittled down I will have you know) pile of potential reads.  Are you curious what is on the stack?  

I heard a great podcast of an interview with historian Nathaniel Philbrick about his new book Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution.  Who would have thought a book about Benedict Arnold could be so interesting?  At least the interview with the author made it sound pretty exciting.  And then maybe a day or two after I listened to the podcast an email landed in my inbox with the offer of pre-ordering the book, for the low-low-low price of $7.50.  How could I possibly pass up getting a chunky history book that sounded so good at such a great price?  Well, I couldn't of course.  So now it sits next to my bed and I want to read it now, but it is a hardcover.  Remember what I was just saying about carrying hardcovers about with me?  

For a while now I have been wanting to read about Colonial America and the Revolution and I have been accumulating books along those lines.  So the Philbrick would be perfect.  Or I could pick up one of my paperbacks, like Joseph Ellis's First Family: Abigail and John Adams.  I've heard that Ellis is a great storyteller when it comes to American history.  And Abigail Adams has long been of interest to me in general.

But then I was also thinking about reading something about 'walking'.  There are loads of books out there about different aspects of walking and I bet I own more than a few of them.  I like the sound of Robert McFarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, which brings together lots of different topics--history, geography, geology, literature, natural history and even cartography.

These all sound really great, but I am sort of leaning just a tiny little bit towards Olivia Laing's The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.  As someone who is inclined more so than not towards solitude, I am very drawn to this book.  From what I've read about it, however, it sounds like it leans more towards a book about artists rather than a book simply about the psychology of loneliness in general.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing as I love books about art and artists, but I want to make sure it is what I'm looking for (or it will be another case of a little taste and then setting it aside--better to think about that now rather than letting myself get too far into it). 

Really, I should just turn my head and reach for Teffi's Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea since it is my NYRB selection and I need to dig in and read before June arrives.  Considering how quickly the month seems to be passing already, my next book is not too far off from being delivered.  Technically it is a biography so it would fill that nonfiction gap quite nicely.  

Whichever I choose, I need to make a commitment and stick with it.  Read the book each and every day and allow myself time to fall into the 'story'.  I think most of my problem stems from not allowing myself daily reading and spending a chunk of time (necessary in my mind) reading whichever nonfiction book I happen to have on the go.  

Tenacity.  Tenacity.  Tenacity.  Don't be tempted so often.  Those should be my watchwords!  I've been pretty good at returning daily to just a couple of novels and am making steady progress.  Nonfiction should be no different.

Not to allow any other temptations into my reading life, but you know I am always curious.  What are you reading in the way of nonfiction right now?  One book?  Several?  None?  Just curious.  Really.