Estes Park, Sylvia Plath in 1953 and Other Weekend Reading Notes

I've been struggling to find a good absorbing nonfiction read to keep my attention.  While I have lots of great books waiting to be read, I need something easily portable and something engaging enough to make me want to reach for it over the massive stack of novels I am reading at the moment.  Now I think I have found not just one but two! 

The first book is my easy way into nonfiction again.  I bought Rocky Mountain National Park Dining Room Girl: The Summer of 1926 at the Horseshoe Inn by Kay Turnbaugh last summer when I was visiting Estes Park.  I am, by the way, hoping very much to get back there again this summer and have been talking about it (in the very early wishful planning stages) with my family about possibly going in August.  It is an easy and inexpensive little vacation, but the scenery is so vastly different than Omaha that it feels like getting far away from the mundane of everyday life.  It is a lovely book filled with vintage photos of Estes Park and of Eleanor Parker's summer working at the Horseshoe Inn lodge. 

The author's grandniece (?) wrote the book using Eleanor's journal and letters home to create a sort of illustrated memoir.  Eleanor was a college student who had just graduated from Upper Iowa University and was an avid horsewoman.  It's such an interesting book and I only wish there was more of it.  You could easily read it in an afternoon but I am drawing it out and savoring it as long as I can!  One of the cool things about the book is one of Eleanor's friends was from Omaha so I am enjoying the references and also the fact that many of the places she talks about I know from having visited Estes.  It is also a little teaser of what I hope will be another vacation there later this summer.  I will share more about this later (and hopefully find some readalikes--if not in locale then in the type of book this is--I love that it has mementos as illustrations).

The other nonfiction I pulled from a stack is Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder.  This is a light, breezy, almost gossipy sort of read.  It seems much more like social history (which I love) than a biography of Plath.  For someone who has read a lot about Plath or wants a critical work, something more substantial about her life or writing, then you might look elsewhere first.  I picked this up less to read in particular about Plath (she is almost just the 'draw' to get into this little moment in history) than to read about Mademoiselle magazine's guest editors and living in New York City in the early 1950s, which is a favorite era for me.  I love the elegance of the period.  And while I would not have wanted to be a woman in that time (gloves, marriage, lack of opportunities . . . seems so very restrictive) I think it is an interesting era for a variety of other reasons.

Plath was the guest editor in 1953 for Mademoiselle, which at the time was quite the plum job.  Mademoiselle was as much a literary magazine as a fashion and lifestyle magazine.  Here is a teaser so you get the tone:

"Decades before its end in 2001, Mademoiselle was admired for its élan and known for publishing new fiction by Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Flannery O'Connor.  (Sylvia Plath was an avid reader of Mademoiselle--she described it in her journal as 'the intellectual fashion magazine.')  The Mademoiselle girl was cultivated, career-minded, and just worldly enough.  She was still fresh--she could enjoy an Arthur Miller play and a Yale football game in the same weekend.  She shopped, danced, volunteered, and still made the honor roll.  She was (in Mademoiselle's own words) 'perfectly turned out for college, career or cocktails'  She probably planned on getting married a little later than her peers--no high school sweethearts for her."

In comparison I would have been (and really not much has changed since then . . .) quite a social misfit.  This is easy and interesting reading and just what I need to get my feet wet again in terms of reading more nonfiction (now must find the equivalent for a classic read).  The chapters are short and it is a book, though filled with lots of information, I can dip into and set aside and get right back into later.

It has also been really hot here (the last ten days in the mid-to-upper 90Fs), which is a little too toasty for me (I have been sleeping on the sofa in a cooler part of my house and it is getting rather old I must say seeing it is not yet officially summer).  I am having a less successful reading months than the last few and am hoping that by planning my reading and the book I most want to finish this month, I might be able to salvage a good reading month out of June after all.

To think I was dragging my feet for so long on Ken Follett's Fall of Giants and now I am within close sight of the end (maybe just a little over 100 pages).  That and Deborah Moggach's A Quiet Drink are on my weekend reading list in the hopes I can finish one or both of them.  I have a nice, neat reading plan all typed up as a gentle reminder of where my focus should be and my sheet has titles to finish this month highlighted in yellow and a few ideas of what I will pick up next (always open to modification of course).  I think I will press on with Ken Follett's trilogy as I have the second book on hand and I am so immersed in the lives of the characters I don't want the story to end (how convenient there are two more books).  The second book begins in the early 1930s and picks up with the next generation of characters--five families--American, British, Welsh, German and Russian.  He certainly knows how to create a page turner.  And of course more short story reading.  And maybe dipping into a few other things besides.  Whatever to take my mind off the heat!

Comments

[LizF]

Both those NF titles sound good - I might look out for the Plath one although I suspect I might find it hard to get hold of the other one.
My NF reading seems to be mostly nature related: as well as my two monthly nature reads, I have just got a book about a year in a wood in the Chiltern Hills from the library and it looks as though I will have to get reading as soon as possible as there is quite a waiting list for it and financial cut backs mean that they have only bought a couple of copies for the whole of North Yorkshire (a very big area)
I grew up in the northern edge of the Chilterns, so it is quite a nostalgic read for me but I am hoping that the writer, who is a well-respected scientist, does not get too technical or I might struggle, not being particularly of a scientific mind!

[Terra at Terragarden blog]

I like to read biographies too, that are more about social history than the specific biographee. Like the book Sisters about the Mitford sisters which is a fascinating social history. The Follett trilogy sounds intriguing.

[Danielle]

The Plath should be around and by now you could likely find a really cheap used copy--I am enjoying it quite a lot. The book about estes is available on Amazon here but I see that it is one that doesn't ship in 24 hours so it might not be as readily available. I will show some of the photos from inside when I finish (and when it is not so disgustingly hot here in my computer room--surely this heat must take a break sooner or later--later I fear...). It is a fun book and I love this sort that shows vintage ephemera like in a scrapbook to tell a story! I have not read any nature books in a while. They always appeal, but I just can't settle with anything at the moment--maybe when it is cooler.... I am not scientific either--I like it and think it is interesting, but it depends on how it is written and presented. I hope the book on the Chilterns turns out to be a good read. Was that your MP that was murdered by the way? I think I read she was from Yorkshire--what an awful world we seem to live in these days!

[Danielle]

I love social history--especially if it has to do with women. I like memoirs that are a bit looser in style and content and more personal and I do like biographies as long as I don't get overly bogged down by detail. I really must get to that Mitford biography--I have it and it looks so interesting. I had this idea I would read it in conjunction with some of Nancy Mitfords fiction, but you know how all those plans go--too many books and too little time. I just started reading the last section of the Follett--WWI has just ended--quite a fun read to get lost in if you like those epic sweeping sorts of book with a full cast of characters. Once you get into the story--no worries about keeping them all straight. It is interesting as he writes a lot about Russia and the events there which you don't often get in a book about the war.

[LizF]

Jo Cox wasn't our MP (ours is a waste of space but that's another story) but her constituency is only about 30 miles away and we know it quite well through work. We also know people who knew her and I know that she was hugely popular because she was one of those incredibly rare politicians who went into it to do good for others not herself.
There is a lot of shock and sadness here that such a lovely, vibrant woman, the mother of two very young children, is no longer with us because of a man with neo-Nazi views,
Sadly this referendum has stirred up some very nasty people - we don't know if it played a part in Jo's murder as yet, but there is a lot of very negative energy swirling around!

[cath]

There is a sort of revival interest in Sylvia Plath in my country because of a fictional biography (didn't know that as a genre I must say) written about Ted Hughes and his marriage to Sylvia Plath. It won a major Dutch literature prize this year. I still am not sure whether I want to read it, because of the genre.

[Anne]

If you are planning on visiting Estes Park, be sure to visit before October. CDOT will be closing the road from Loveland to Estes Park for 9 months to fix the damage done to Highway 34 due the the September 2013 flood. August should be fine for visiting.

[Danielle]

Such a terrible thing and she was so young, too. Why is it that people with peaceful and practical solutions are such a threat to people. I'll never understand.

[Danielle]

I had no idea there was such a genre either, though I know there are lots and lots of books out at the moment that are essentially fictionalized biographies of famous people. I read one about Hemingway's wife (The Paris Wife) a few years ago. I tend to pick and choose these sorts of books--sometimes they appeal, but sometimes I think I would just rather read an actual biography. I wonder if it will be translated since it won awards and it would likely be very popular over here, too.

[Danielle]

Thanks for the heads up! I didn't know this. I don't think we would go so late in the season, but as we have not made any actual plans yet (and we first talked about going in May or June....) I might have to press my family to set a date! That sounds like quite an undertaking but I know there was a lot of damage due to the floods.

[Kathy]

I'm falling dreadfully behind on your posts, Danielle, but I wanted to pop in and say hi. I very much like the sound of the first book you discuss--I love that sort of book. I'm sorry it's been so hot already--it's been that way here, too (except for today when we got a lovely reprieve) and it's so hard to sleep when it's hot. Of course, we have AC and run it constantly, but I always feel for the parts of the country that don't typically have such high heat, since they're often not set up well for it. It's great that you have a nice little vacation to look forward to, as well. Hope the weekend reading plans went well!

[Danielle]

No worries about not having read posts--I completely understand how busy it is in the summer---and also how hot and sometimes the last thing you want to do is sit in front of a computer! Of course, I always love it when you drop by and the chatting part is the best when it comes to blogging! The weather has been really crazy--just day after day of heat. And while it has not broke 100, it is still hot. I swear they make it sound on the news that the "really" hot weather is when it is over 100, but I think anything over 80 is to be honest! ;)At leas the Fourth of July is coming up quickly-it always feels like we are past a big summer milestone when I can put that holiday behind me!!