A Work in Progress

Mid-Week Mishmash Reading Notes

I seem to have caught a summer cold.  Are they any worse than a cold caught at any other time of the year, or do they just feel like it?  It doesn't help having to contend with an old house that traps heat in the upstairs where sleeping is purportedly done.  Not that there was a nice restful sleep in my house last night.  So my regularly scheduled needlework post (I did make progress) will either show up tomorrow or I will resume it as scheduled next week).

Since I am feeling under the weather (and indeed the heat does seem to press down on me) and it has been even more quiet around here than normal (and normal anymore seems to be shh-library-quiet), I might just toss in the towel for a few days and hang up a 'gone fishing' (or gone reading maybe--wishful thinking) sign for the next few days.  I have a nice four day weekend to look forward to.  I am hoping, you know the drill . . . to do some extra reading.  I hope to see a movie or two and there is a chance I might go with my family here for the Fourth.  I haven't visited there since I was a kid and as I love touring historical homes, it would be great fun.  Check out their bookstore/gift shop, have a good lunch.  Fingers crossed it will work out.

My other exciting news is that I am well into the planning stages for another visit to Estes Park, Colorado late in August.  My thoughts had turned to Estes just a week or so ago.  I am already thinking of those cool rushing rivers.  I think we will be staying at the same place right on Fall River.  At least one visit to their most excellent little independent bookstore will be called for!  I hope we get to go back to this wonderful little museum (which as a lovely little gift store with lots of local history books).  And to draw out any good vacation, anticipatory reading is called for.  I can almost guarantee that a few books will also come home with me (to draw the enjoyment out even more).  Anyway, it is always a good thing to have something nice like a change of scenery to look forward to).

I have also been thinking of revamping my Lost in the Stacks posts.  I think I had threatened to do this once, but I have been feeling particularly nostalgic for some good, forgotten stories that are lurking on the third floor of my library.  I'm trying to think how I might make the experience 'interactive'--eliciting from any readers a year perhaps or a letter of the alphabet for the author's last name to help in my 'selections'.  I'll have to think it over this weekend.  

So, happy reading everyone.  I hope you have a good long weekend, too, or have something nice planned in any case (even if it is only curling up with a book on your front porch with a glass of lemonade).  While I'm away, a few links:

Check out this Feminist Library on Wheels. 

Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of Margery Allingham's death and if you are quick you can download one of her mysteries for just 99 cents!  I really do need to get back to Mr. Campion's adventures.  What a quirky man!  Edited: Oops, very sorry.  That was wishful thinking on my part--the ebook version is not free but only 99 cents.  Sorry for any confusion that might have caused!

I was looking for books about women forest rangers (yes, more contemplation over reading material about or set in Colorado) when I came across this great travel book list.

I really want one of these pins.  Because you can never have enough bookish accessories.

Oh, and one more link to pass on.  I read this today (Thursday) and can only say hear-hear to Maureen Corrigan.  I wholeheartedly agree with you.  This appeared in the Washington Post.  If I am doing this myself I am going to make a concerted effort to stop, as I do not think authors like Jacqueline Winspear (and you know how I love Maisie Dobbs) is any less worthy a writer/whose books are less worthy of reading any other writer (male or female). 

***

"It’s hip to read hard-boileds — novels by the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Lawrence Block, where the lone-wolf detective walks the mean streets of the city, facing down crooks and femmes fatales. It’s often regarded as merely quaint, however, to admit a liking for the milder-mannered cozies, tales of amateur detectives like Charlaine Harris’s Aurora Teagarden, a librarian turned real estate agent who’s forever stumbling on foul deeds in her small town."

"Why do women often feel abashed about reading this domesticated kind of detective fiction — chiefly written by and about women — whereas those fans (male and female) of more violent thrillers by, say, Lee Child or David Baldacci never seem to feel the need to apologize?"

No more apologizing!

Teaser Tuesday: A Sensible Life

I really wish there were more books by Mary Wesley out there.  She passed away, wow has it been more than a dozen years now, some time ago.  I went through a period of collecting and reading her books.  I own all of them (sadly she has gone out of print in paper versions here in the US), but it has been ages since I picked one up by her.  I haven't read my way through all of them and the time seems ripe to revisit her work.  Let's see, she is like--Rosamund Pilcher, or maybe Clare Chambers or Barbara Trapido or maybe Eva Rice?  For me she is one of my 'must read everything' authors who I am trying to concentrate on this year.  I started with Katharine McMahon (Mary Wesley is much like Katharine, too--smart fiction yet comforting and entertaining, a wonderful storyteller), then I moved on to Deborah Moggach (just finished a most delightful social comedy) and then decided to return to Mary Wesley.  I want to keep reading all these women's books (and can add to that list of 'MREs' Diane Johnson, Rumer Godden, Anita Brookner . . . I could go on . . .). 

The only dificult choice was which one to pick up first.  But the description of her 1990 novel, A Sensible Life, just jumped out at me and it feels like the perfect summer-soon to be Fourth of July read.

"Flora Trevelyan is a ten-year-old misfit, despised by her selfish and indolent parents, and left to wander the streets of a small French town whilst her parents prepare to depart for life in colonial India. There she befriends the locals, acquires an extensive vocabulary of French foul language and encounters the privileged lifestyle of the elegant, middle-class British families holidaying in 1920s France. Introduced for the first time to kindly, civilised and, above all, caring people Flora falls helplessly and hopelessly in love with not one but three young men. Over the next forty years Flora will grow from an awkward schoolgirl into a stunning beauty and explore, consummate and finally resolve each of these affairs."

I have only the vaguest recollection of this story.  Mostly I recall the setting and a fond memory/contented sigh about it from my first encounter.  I have only just barely begun reading so here is a little teaser for you.  A first sighting of Flora by one of those young men who will become someone important in her life.  In the story it is February, but a beach scene nonetheless and perfect for June (and July!), too.

"The child, a girl, trotted along, crossing the beach at an angle.  She had thick black hair in pigtails and worse a light brown sweater with a matching skirt which she had stuffed into elastic-bottomed knickers; it gave her the grotesque silhouette of a toffee apple.  Her long legs were thin.  She paused at intervals to whistle to the heedless dog."

The boy watching is Cosmo and he is fifteen, wanting to know all about girls, but this one is just a child still.  I like that Flora is a misfit.  And I like, too, that Mary Wesley didn't publish her first adult novel until she was 71!  Hooray for women reinventing themselves (or doing new and important things later in life). 

Short Story Monday: Afternoon in Summer

A story called "Afternoon in Summer" sounds like a perfect summer Sunday sort of read.  Cannibalism?  The story included cannibalism?  How did I miss that?  Must go back and skim.  One moment please, I'll be right back.

Oh yeah.  Now I remember.  A young couple sits together--she's reading a book and he's just noticing her looking up from it with a look that says she's about to share something.  The book she's reading (this story was published in 1972 by the way) is about murders in the past twenty years. 

"Murder is an occupational risk for prostitutes."

"Hmmm, said he, clinging to the thread of his calculations.  They grew so engrossing that when next she spoke it took him by surprise. 

"And for wives, too--though not so much."

"Inwardly assenting, Willie asked, "What on earth are you reading now?"

Wait, though, it gets better.

"Are there any cases in your nice book about husbands who ate their wives?  I'd like to know their sentences."

"Oh, Willie, are you hungry?"

Hah.  This is Sylvia Townsend Warner we're talking about.  Such a wacky and humorous conversation is par for the course in her writing.  You see the pair are on summer vacation in cottage rental and all the food contained in the fridge consists of "a heel of cheese, some rye biscuit, on tomato."  And upon further consideration she added salt.  What sort of grocer closes on a Thursday?  Apparently a grocer in a small town. 

So the two set off on their bicycles to a pub where the plan is to have an enormous tea.  One puncture later they arrive only to find the pub isn't yet open and on the door a big sign letting them know "no teas".  Well, they are legally bound to open at six, Willie says?  Is that true?  Pubs in England being legally bound to open--ca. 1970!? 

In any case, this is where the story really gets good.  (In case that little exchange didn't get your attention).  So, now a church is in order.  Some place cool they can sit and pass the twenty minutes or so before they can have a proper tea.  Okay, another perfect conversational exchange.  I like Sally and Willie.

"I can't understand why people don't make more use of their churches."

"Sectarianism," said Willie.  "I don't suppose anyone will come near this place till Harvest Festival."

"Which is phallic, isn't it?"

Hah.  Don't answer that.  Willie didn't get a chance in any case as just at that moment the couple is joined by a coffin and a crowd of "partially blackened mourners".  I won't tell you what happens next, considering the very tongue-in-cheek representation of Sally and Willie.  You may or may not guess.  I will just say why does sex and death seem to always go together?  

A little light comic release this weekend.  Just what I needed.  Nothing like a good story to elicit a nice guffaw or two. 

I did read another story in The Music at Long Verney.  "A Scent of Roses" come to think of it, was a perfect pairing.  Another story from 1972 which is set, or rather begins, some time just after WWI.  An only son who lives with his widowed mother.  Surely that must have had an effect on his personality.  Howard spends the better part of his adult years in a relationship with a, ah, um, a mistress?  Okay, a lady of the evening who keeps slippers for her clientele.  So when Howard spends time with her, out come his particular pair of slippers.  Who can judge a relationship that works?  He even buys her expensive gifts on their anniversaries.  Sorry, have to share the last bit, if you don't want to know, turn away now. 

Another, hah, moment.  Why shouldn't a prostitute look to her future?  And as a lady who is a cut above the rest (maybe even a cut above Howard!) it's something of a shock when she announces her retirement to France with her longstanding betrothed!

***

So, I gave into temptation and ordered Alice Hoffman's The Red Garden, which is a set of interlinked stories about the residents of Blackwell, Massachusetts over the course of centuries.  I have not read much of Hoffman's work.  Actually the only thing that comes to mind is another book of interlinked stories, which I really liked. 

The first story is set in 1750 when Blackwell was first known as Bearsville when there "were nearly as many black bears in the woods then as there were pine trees."  Blackwell might never have even been founded had it not been for a seventeen year old woman from England who married the first man who asked her (having been in the Americas for only a few months), and he turned out to be a ne'r do well.

Hallie Brady, an orphan in England, does what she needs to do to survive and save for a ticket to the new world where she can make a new start.  A woman who would prefer to die trying to save herself than do nothing at all waiting for death to arrive.  A small group of settlers, led by William Brady, makes the bad plan of setting out for a good place on the other side of the mountains to settle their small new town--a place where there is endless land and they can have it for free.  But who has the bad sense to begin this journey in October?

I fear that while ultimately the stories may be good, they are going to be marked by hardship and tragedy, which is what happens in "The Bear's House" the first of more than a dozen stories.  If this first one is anything to judge by, the stories are going to have Hoffman's trademark dash of magical realism.  Circumstances might just challenge a reader's perceptions on reality and a little suspension of disbelief might be called for, but I think this is going to be a great collection.

The next story will jump about forty years ahead and has the curious title "Eight Nights of Love".  Next up for Sylvia Townsend Warner is "Tebic" and "A Flying Start".  Lots of good short story reading for my upcoming long weekend!

Too Early for Fall? New Books!

It's not too early to think about fall is it?  I guess I should at least wait until after the Fourth of July, but since I have been getting emails teasing me with forthcoming releases, I might as well pass a few (that have particularly caught my eye) on to you!

Moonglow by Michael Chabon -- "Chabon’s novel unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man referred to only as “my grandfather”—a tale of madness, war, adventure, sex, desire, love, existential doubt, and model rocketry."

Swing Time by Zadie Smith -- "Two girls dream of being dancers—but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, and about what constitutes a tribe and what makes a person truly free. The friendship ends abruptly, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten."  I really do think it is time I read some of her work.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple -- "A day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future as an encounter with a former colleague threatens to reveal a buried family secret."

The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine -- "The new novel by the National Book Award finalist is about an Arab-American poet whose adult life in San Francisco spans the AIDS decades, and his struggle to remember and forget the events of an astonishing life."

Mr. Eternity b Aaron Tier -- "An ambitious genre-bender spans 1,000 years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love."  Hmm.  Not sure about this one but it caught my attention!

Nine Island by Jane Alison -- "An intimate autobiographical novel is told by J, a middle-aged woman living in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach’s lush Venetian Islands as she tries to decide whether to withdraw forever from romantic love."  Yup, this one is for me.

Another Place You've Never Been by Rebecca Kauffman -- "In her mid-30s and living in Buffalo, N.Y., Tracy spends most days at the restaurant where she works as a hostess, despite her aspirations of a career that would use her creative talents. A novel in linked short stories illuminates the ways in which families are created by being destroyed."

A Gambler's Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem -- "The author of Motherless Brooklyn returns with a novel about an international backgammon hustler who thinks he’s psychic. Too bad about the tumor in his face."  Hah.  Have never read Lethem but I have Motherless Brooklyn, and the description elicited a mental guffaw.  Must check this one out.

Nutshell by Ian McEwan -- "From the bestselling author of Atonement, this is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a unique perspective and voice."

**The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis -- "Davis’s debut novel pulls readers into the world of New York City’s glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where a present-day journalist living in the renovated and renamed condo becomes consumed with uncovering a dark secret buried deep within the Barbizon’s glitzy past."  I've starred this one as the publisher kindly offered a galley copy of this to me (I think it is even now winging its way to me), so I will definitely be reading it and telling you more about it later this summer!

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster -- "Nearly two weeks early, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, N.J. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths."

The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies -- " Four lives—a railroad baron’s valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood’s first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian-Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption—illuminate United States history through the experiences of Chinese-Americans."  I loved his first book and am excited to see a new novel coming soon.

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton -- "A debut novel is set at the edges of civilization: a lonely scientist in the Arctic, and an astronaut returning from a long journey, each haunted by questions of love, memory, and regret, in the face of an uncertain future."

Faithful by Alice Hoffman -- "Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt."

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles -- "In 1922, Count Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov must live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors."  Loved his first book!

Angel Catbird by Margaret Atwood -- "On a dark night, young genetic engineer Strig Feleedus is accidentally mutated by his own experiment and merges with the DNA of a cat and an owl. What follows is a humorous, action-driven, pulp-inspired superhero adventure—with a lot of feline puns."

The Trespasser by Tana French -- "Antoinette Conway and her partner, Stephen Moran, of Dublin’s Murder Squad have a new case that looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad, but other detectives are pushing Antoinette and Steve to arrest the female victim’s boyfriend, fast. The pair soon learn that all is not as it seems."  I have read (and enjoyed) all of her novels save the most recent, which I have in paperback in my reading pile so must get to very soon.

Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb -- "A spirited and revealing memoir by the celebrated editor of the New Yorker and Knopf, where his list included Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, and Bill Clinton, among others."

A Literary Tour of Italy by Tim Parks -- "contains a selection of the acclaimed novelist and short story writer’s essays on the literature of his adopted country, from Boccaccio and Machiavelli to Moravia and Tabucchi."

Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created edited by Laura Miller -- "is a fully illustrated collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 distinctive fictional realms."

Literary London by Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison -- "is a snappy and informative guide that moves through time and genre, from Shakespeare to Amis, from tragedy to chick lit, showing just why—as another famous local writer put it—he who is tired of London is tired of life."

Landmarks by Robert McFarlane -- "For decades, British author Macfarlane has been collecting obscure local words for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather. In this book, he uses his research to explore the literary and linguistic terrain of the British Isles."

Vanity Fair's Writers on Writers edited by Graydon Carter and David Friend -- "collects pieces from Vanity Fair, as well as essays that have never appeared in print, of authors on their favorite writers, including Martin Amis on Saul Bellow, Truman Capote on Willa Cather, and Salman Rushdie on Christopher Hitchens."

Oh, so much good stuff to look forward to.  I guess I should stop here.  I am sure there will be more later, too . . .

If I Forget You, Thomas Christopher Greene

Thomas Christopher Greene's If I Forget You is a lovely little gem of a novel.  It is perfect summer reading, light without being lightweight, and without giving anything away it has one of the most satisfying endings I've read in a long time.  It is a story about lost loves and second chances and while the story develops along fairly predictable lines it was a comforting and entertaining read with just enough suspense and uncertainty to draw me along. 

It's hard not to like a story about a poet and a painter.  Henry and Margot are an unlikely pair but then when has the road to happiness not been paved with difficulties.  Each character tells their side of the story moving forward and backward in time.  It begins in 2012 when on a beautiful spring day Henry Gold, a poet and professor who teaches at NYU, sees Margot across a busy Plaza.  It's literally a pigeon that first catches his eye.  The bird unceremoniously slams into the glass above a revolving door just as Margot is exiting.  All three are stunned at that moment.  The bird, Margot who leans down over it to see it is still alive, and Henry who calls out to her.  When Margot realizes who has said her name she rushes to a taxi and speeds out of sight.  And so the scene is set and the mystery of Henry and Margot begins to unravel.

Bits of each character's lives are slowly revealed and cobbled together to tell their story.  Henry is divorced with a daughter he sees on the weekends.  His promising career as a poet has slipped into something comfortable and maybe a little predictable much like his personal life.  When he sees Margot across that plaza it is obvious many years have passed and some unknown history between them exists.  To see her now raises all sorts of questions and sparks emotions he thought long buried.  He knows she has seen him, too, but he has lost sight of her and is left only with her name on his lips--a "tiny poem of a name" he thinks.  Margot was only in the city for the day to lunch with her mother, a grande dame kind of woman.  Margot has made what appears to be a "good marriage" when looking in from the outside.  A successful husband, two grown children, summers on the Vineyard and time to paint.

How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found is a question that has haunted Henry for far too long.  And then the story slips back in time some twenty years earlier to Bannister College where Henry is an unlikely student--the son of Jewish working class parents with a Brooklyn accent and a way with words.  It is thanks to his talent playing baseball that he ends up at Bannister in the first place, but he soon turns in his bat for a pen to pursue his true passion.  Margot Fuller is wealthy and entitled but not self absorbed.  She might carry wealthy baggage but she doesn't flaunt it and she falls hard for Henry.   And so their love affair begins despite the challenges of their different backgrounds.

To reveal more of the plot would be to spoil the journey, which races to its not entirely unexpected conclusion.  It's how Henry and Margot come together and are forced apart and find each other again and how Greene weaves it all together, throws in a few surprises and ends the story with such eloquence that makes this such a pleasure to read.  The narrations separated by character and time work together quite nicely to create a rhythm,  the mystery of this relationship filled with unknown (to the reader) obstacles presented in the opening pages are followed by scenes from the present interleaved with scenes from the past to paint the picture of their love affair.  Somewhere just past the middle of the story the strands all meet up and then the hard part begins, how do you pick up the pieces of a love affair seemingly irrevocably lost so many years before. 

In the acknowledgements at the end of the book the author writes about his inspiration and how the book came about, impressively written in only six months.  The story must have literally flowed from his pen, and reading about Henry and Margot you can tell.  Many thanks to St. Martin's Press for sending If I Forget You my way.

Needlework: A Cooling Fountain

First, last week's progress (and a much brighter, nicer photo).  I'm afraid I took this week's photos later in the evening and in poor light. 

So, I have grown another flower and have a roof on my house.  I completed the fountain and just need to turn on the water (and then I might just jump in myself since it is has been still so very toasty warm here--end of July and August weather already in June . . . far too soon for my taste).  I am hoping to finish this soon.  Now that we are officially in Summer, it is time for me to think of starting my Summer Sampler.  I need to order more linen, but the color palette will be the same.  I am working now on the upper left branch and will be giving my robin a friend.  To be honest I think I like the summer design least of the quartet, but maybe I will like it more when I begin stitching.  Unsurprisingly I like the Fall Sampler the best--it will be even more welcome to work on it when the weather has turned cooler.  Is it too soon to be thinking about cool, fall weather?  I guess I should at least wait until after the Fourth of July!

A few other bookish notes for today as well:

How did I miss that Lois Duncan just passed away this past week?  I loved her books as a young adult and still have fond memories of her writing.  I recall a few in particular and as she was writing in the 70s (actually she was quite prolific), I think I might see if I still have any on hand and add them to my 1970s pile.  Check out the New Republic's article on her, too.  And more on her at The New Yorker.

And more on women crime writers, I thought this was a fascinating article as well--why women are writing the best contemporary crime novels.

So, stay cool and read lots of books!

To Summer Read, or Not, is the Question

Summer has now officially arrived!  Of course the summer temperatures (and I'm referring to high summer--almost dog days of summer weather) arrived here nearly two weeks ago.  So since summer is well and truly on the mind, the question is--do I have a little summer reading project or not?  While I have plenty of books on my reading pile or in my mental queue, I think I can do a little reading project that combines a theme I have in mind with some of the books I have been thinking of reading lately.  I'm almost always thinking I need to read more mysteries and spy novels.  And I might also manage a classic, too.

So I think I have settled on . . . drum roll please . . . What did I do on summer vacation?  Reading the 70s!  Sounds like a groovy idea, right?  Don't ask me why I have  fixated on the 1970s.  I was a very young child in the 70s and have fond memories of that decade.  And now I want to relive some of it via my reading.  Besides it will make for a nice change from my usual WWI, WWII, years between the wars reading.  And I think it will still be fertile ground for some good mysteries and spy novels (am thinking good old Cold War stuff). 

Any good reading project calls for a book list to draw inspiration from.  So here I shall start a list, which will by no means be the only books I read this summer (because I, admittedly, am greedy when it comes to books, but then you knew that already) and I won't even begin to fantasize reading all the books on the list.  But variety is good to choose from.  Feel free to chime in with reading ideas if something good comes to mind.  I am thinking the books I choose will be either books written now but with a 1970s setting or popular books written (and set in) that decade. 

In no particular order, my list (to be added to as I go) of potential 1970s era summer reads:

Once is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann (1973)

Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner (1975)

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)

Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran (1978)

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner (1977)

Lawrence Block mysteries (I read the first Matthew Scudder novel recently which was published in 1976)

Something by Ruth Rendell and/or Sharon McCone

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James (1977)

Love Story by Erich Segal (1970)

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (set in 1977)

Fallout by Sadie Jones (set in the 1970s)

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (set in 1972)

Restless by William Boyd (set in part in 1976)

The Backward Shadow by Lynn Reid Banks (1972) This one is also on my beginning of the year list from last January.

The Cheer Leader by Jill McCorkle (set in early 1970s)

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Well, there will be more, I'm sure, but a jumping off place in any case.  I think I might start with the Rossner novel as I have long wanted to read it!

Short Story Monday: Love and Stay Corydon

Two more short stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner who is not only accomplished in the art of understatement but is also such a fey writer I am often not sure what I think or am meant to think when I finish my weekend reading.  Then again more often than not I have the tendency to want to read more into what I am reading than is either actually there or even intended by the author.  The stories in this collection are not presented chronologically by the year they were written or published, so I am not sure if the order has any significance.  The first of the two stories "Love" was written in 1976 and the second "Stay Corydon, Thou Swain" came out much earlier, in 1929.  It's interesting to try and understand how Townsend Warner changed in the ensuing decades either in subject matter or in style.

"Love" is about marital felicity.  It is told from the perspective of an older couple who are looking to rent a little cottage.  The wife looks about the cottage on offer and thinks how it smells of woodsmoke, which always makes her sentimental.  The current owners, a young couple, are getting ready to move to Rhode Island.  The most curious thing happens when the couples are chatting.  A fire breaks out and throws everyone into a frenzy as they try and remove as many belongings as they can.  The fire is brought under control by two men in a passing lorry, so it was a frenzy that was all for nought. 

Later the older couple are in their hotel room the husband muses over his "strange wife" and how even such a long life together doesn't make him know her any better.  She will be as "unknown" as ever.  Whatever house they end up in will become familiar-he will know the light switches and come to know all the little creaks and noises, yet this woman sleeping beside him will remain unknowable.  I understand that familiarity and also that lack of familiarity, too.  The story seems sort of random yet I think Townsend Warner was very calculated in the writing--from choosing woodsmoke as the smell from the wife's memory to the search for this unknown new home that will be known and familiar at some point while his wife will remain just slightly out of reach.  There is a nicely interesting balance to the story though it is presented in a quiet--understated manner. 

"Stay Corydon, Thou Swain" was written more than forty years earlier.  The title is  taken from a madrigal by by John Wilbye that is a rif on classical metamorphoses.  This is a story that would be perfect either as a 'Once Upon a Time' read or even for RIP reading later this fall.  Very fey and even a little eerie if you let your imagination run away just a bit.  Mr. Mulready, a draper by trade, with two daughters and the ability to read music at sight has an active imagination indeed.

"The moon was at her full, and the Choral Society of Wells in Somerset was holding a practice.  Moonshine had to be consulted, for many of the singers lived outside the town and would not venture from their homes by night unless they could see the ruts and puddles.  Mr. Mulready, however, was independent of the moon; he lived in the market place, and a gas lamp shown in at his bedroom window until 10:30 P.M., when all the street lamps gave a little jump and died."

So, the choral society is practicing the madrigal which shares the the title of this story.  It is a song he knows well but that never dims in pleasure no matter how many times it is sung.  One of the lines reads "thy nymph is light and shadowlike".

"He wished to see a nymph again: not from motives of curiosity, not because he thought a nymph would be a pretty sight to gaze at, not for any reasonable, pleasure-seeking reason--for how could anyone entertain a rational wish about mythological fancy?  What he felt was more than a whim; it was an earnest  desire, a mental craving somehow to re-create a bright image that Time had once timelessly given, and then by course of time effaced."

So, what does a nymph, a real one that is, look like?  Apparently like one of the young women who works in his drapers shop.  The same one he invites to go cycling with him, who he looks upon with pleasure--not in a lustful way, but simple appreciation.  They stop by a wood and decide to take a walk inside.  A wood that palpably seems to breath and upon entering seems to darken and make Mr. Mulready a trifle sick . . .

I'll only say that Townsend Warner practices more of that understatement here.  Left up to your own imagination it could be a frightening and malicious outcome or hints of something dark happening after this encounter.   She leaves it up to the reader to finish the story . . .

(Cue scary music!). 

Next weekend: "Afternoon in Summer" and "A Scent of Roses".  By the way I ordered a biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner by Claire Harman, which I am hoping might shed some light on her stories, or her writing in general.

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!

Do You Podcast? (Books or Others . . .)

Do you podcast?  I have started subscribing to podcasts.  There's an app for that (there is an app for everything, right?).  So, yes, there is an app on my (I use 'my' loosely since it actually belongs to my work but I have mostly appropriated it for bookish uses--libraries/books--it works, right?) tablet.  Like most bookish resources they can be both wonderful and a distraction.  For instance I love magazines, but when I have a spare moment and I want to fill it with some sort of reading I almost always reach for a book.   I always think I could spend this half hour either idly looking at a magazine or reading a book.  So, normally the book wins out and it makes me wonder just which one is actually the distraction . . .

The nice thing with podcasts, however, is I can multi-task.  If I am stitching I can listen to a podcast, or cooking or doing some other mindless chore.  The bad thing is while I am listening and doing something else with my hands I hear all sorts of good references to books that I want to jot down for later perusal, but my hands are busy with something else.  Inevitably, if someone is talking about books I am likely going to be tempted by one or two or five or six. 

At the moment my podcasts of choice are: Penguin's Beaks & Geeks where authors are interviewed about new and forthcoming books.  I often will listen even if the book isn't something I am drawn to as it can be fascinating to listen to the authors speak about their work and their writing experiences and on more than one occasion I have requested a book from the library (at least to look at) that I might not have otherwise.  

I think I must be on a million e-newsletter lists as I get a (large) variety of them in my email inbox every day.  More danger as you will surmise, but all sorts of wonderful and helpful things, too.  HarperCollins will often link to a podcast with in their Book Club Girl new releases newsletter.  The current featured podcast is a serialization of the complete audiobook (eight parts) of After the Funeral by Agatha Christie as presented by Sophie Hannah.  The first episode lasts an hour and half so I have yet to listen to it in full, but it looks quite promising.  (By the way, I have yet to read Sophie Hannah!--must rectify that one--and am curious, too, about her Poirot novels which have been authorized by the Agatha Christie estate).

But my most recent (and if this last podcast I have listened to is anything to judge by) find is BBC Radio's Books and Authors.  Actually I think you will only find clips at that link, but for full podcasts go to Open Book.  Their June 12 episode had a segment by S.J. Parris who discusses the latest offering (women spies in fiction are on the rise--happily for me) of spy novels featuring women.  The segment is a mere five or six minutes so if you have an interest do give it a listen, but here's my list of books (well, the list is longer but the books associated with this particular topic) that I have gleaned from it.  Spy novels (a few anyway) I want to read:

Exposure, Helen Dunmore

Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan

Tightrope, Simon Mawer

I Can't Begin to Tell You, Elizabeth Buchan

A Quiet Life, Natasha Walter

Some of these books are older and a few new or forthcoming.  Are they all British authors?  Surely there must be U.S. authors writing female spy novels?

I am especially intrigued as she mentioned a reworking of John LeCarré's The Night Manager filmed using a female (and pregnant--at least the actress was at the time of filming) protagonist.   I think it has already aired in the UK? I wonder if we will get it over here sometime soon?

Anyway, lots of interest to me (and maybe you, too?), and I had thought I might have a new 'summer reading project' in the works and now I am drawn once again to spy novels (an ongoing affair I guess).

So, do you 'podcast'?  Listen to anything good?  Bookish or otherwise?