A Work in Progress

December 16: Weekend Reading Notes

Three more or less "proper" book posts this week and I am tuckered out.  I think a Friday post calls for something easy and a little mindless.

If you blog or keep some kind of reading journal, do you ever get nostalgic and look back and see what you were reading last year or the year before?  'Tis the season of nostalgia, isn't it?  Everyone likes to look back over the year that was.  I am almost to that point (still have a few more books to catch up writing about so will try and do that next week), but I am still reading so it is a little too soon to reflect on this year's reading still.

Last year at about this time (I didn't post on December 16 in 2015) I shared the state of my nightstand, which I must say was pretty tame compared to what it is at the moment.  I can't see all the books in both piles, but I think I did fairly well in reading what was on hand.  I set the Deakin aside, only read part of the Ebershoff (saw the movie twice, though, and loved it).  I know I finished the Follett, the Todd and the White.  All three were carryovers into this year, but I did finish them at least.

I had good intentions last year at this time, too, when it came to reading more classics.  Such a pity that I never managed to read any of the books that seemed to be enticing me at that particular moment. I still feel like reading Ivan Turgenev and John Wyndham.  As a matter of fact I have a Wyndham novel on my 'considering reading' pile right now!

Last year I started and finished the year with books by Nell Dunn, both were Viragos (a most pleasant way into and out of a year I think).  I would like to kick off the new year (I think I have done this several years running now) with a quick, short novel (or novella as the case usually seems to be) to give me a nice feeling of accomplishment (and the sense that, yes, this is going to be another good reading year).  As a matter of fact I have another small pile of potential short reads.  Are you curious about them?  Would you like me to share them before the fact or would you rather be surprised?  There is much to be said for short novels.  Of course I have a whole run of Penguin Little Black Classics at my fingertips, too.

You're going to be shocked to hear this and I am not sure how long I can keep it up, but . . . I have finished the first of my last gasp books and will be writing about Maurizio de Giovanni's Blood Curse next week.  So that's not really shocking, but the fact that I have only been reading it (with Mary Stewart's Stormy Petrel as a back up) exclusively for the last few days.  I don't think I will likely be a convert to the only one book at a time method of reading, but I must say that continuity with (mostly only) one book does make for a very good reading experience.  So, now it is Stormy Petrel's turn and I think Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place will be the 'backup' and so on, perhaps, until I read my way through the pile?  By the way, my sidebar is updated now to show just the books I am trying to read my way through.  We'll see if the list grows shorter in the coming days?  Hmm.

So now you know what I will be reading this weekend, along with a few short stories as I catch up on my Advent Calendar (I've not written about what I am reading, but some of the stories have been really, really exceptional and I say again this is a real gem of a find and well worth the money!).

I leave you with two links, both lists of books (of sorts) from which I will be tailoring some of my reading next year:

Along with reading I have fallen hard for the movies, and now I go see at least a movie (sometimes two or even three) every week.  Here is a list of 2017's Most Anticipated Movie Adaptations.  Some I have read already and a few I am not likely to read, but in a few cases I will read the book before seeing the film.

And Caroline who blogs at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat has shared her list of 2017 Literature and War Readalong books.  I read three of this year's five books and still want to read at least one of the remaining two (just ran out of time this year).  It's a great list for next year and I am excited to read as many as I can manage.  First up will be N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn.

It's going to be cold and snowy here this weekend, so a perfect excuse to stay inside and curled up with a book!  (I wish I had a train journey to somewhere warmer to look forward to over my winter break, but it will have to be through the pages of my books that I travel).

Beyond the Glass by Antonia White

It started with Frost in May way back in the spring of 2014.  And then following quick on its heels that same year there was The Lost Traveller.  How did almost two years pass before I took the story up again with The Sugar House?  Poor Antonia White's most excellent quartet of Clara Batchelor novels (she started her journey as Nanda Grey by the way) has been dragged out and neglected a bit here online, but I did finally read the last of the books earlier this year finishing that long journey with Clara in Beyond the Glass.  I read it closer to the start of the year and here I am trying to write about it at the end of it.  Thankfully a very good introduction is in my edition of the book (any quotes I share come from that introduction by Virago founder Carmen Callil) which is helping me along, and as always thinking about it and writing about it after the fact helps set it more firmly in mind and allows me to revisit the story. 

It's easy to see why Frost in May was the very first Virago Modern Classic and easy to see, too, why VMC has published and kept in print all four volumes by Antonia White.  They are really brilliantly written and give a view upon a woman's life that VMC set out to do--tell women's stories.  If you think about 'women's fiction' in light of the books Virago has set out to publish there is no question that women write quality Literature just as well as men do (but we all already knew that, right?) and that, and here is the sticking point so often in literary novels, that their stories are just as important to tell and worthy to read about as men's. 

The books are based loosely on White's life, which was somewhat traumatic if Clara's story is anything to go by.  She wrote only the four novels as well as a collection of short stories (which I have and must get around to reading as well), a play, a couple of children's books and two volumes of memoirs.  Apparently she struggled for much of her life with writer's block, and perhaps that is why there is such a stretch of years between publication of the first volume in the quartet and the remaining three.  She spent much time writing advertising copy and journalism pieces though she long wanted to write a 'proper' novel.  She changed the character's name in the second volume of the quartet possibly to distance herself and her own story from that of Nanda/Clara's.  I think Nanda in particular was an evocation of herself.  When Nanda became Clara, White was writing less about her own life experiences than that 'proper' novel she so longed to write.

"Antonia White turned fact into fiction in a quartet of novels based on her life from the ages of nine to twenty-three.  'My life is the raw material for the novels, but writing an autobiography and writing fiction are very different things.'  This transformation of real life into an imagined work of art is perhaps her greatest skill as a novelist."

The four novels follow the story of Clara's life from her childhood, her conversion along with her father (that father figure was predominant in her life) to Catholicism and her Catholic education, to her first love affair and life as an actress (when she began questioning her Catholic faith), her marriage and then the failure of that marriage.  Finally in Beyond the Glass ("technically the most ambitious of the four novels") Clara grapples with mental illness.  This last novel was perhaps the hardest to read, hard emotionally.  Clara had struggled with her faith (though Antonia White makes a point, too, of saying that the influence of her Catholic faith "was profoundly enriching, in no way negative, part of an extraordinary life"--which just goes to show how little in life is ever black and white and that our lives are filled with many complexities).

"As a Catholic, her relationship with Catholic belief and practice has always been intense, a wrestling to live within its spiritual imperatives in a way which accorded with her own nature, clinging to her faith, as she says, 'by the skin of my teeth'.  The struggle is brilliantly felt in this quartet, permeating everything that happens to Clara, affecting her adolescence, sexuality, her relationships with men."

And really that quite sums up nicely what the books are about.  It is a coming of age of one young girl, into young woman and then adulthood but that passage marked along the way by so many challenges and roadblocks.  Life is messy and White really illuminates just how much.  She also brings to life the period--one girl's coming of age in the thirties and forties and just beyond the war years. 

Antonia White wanted to finish Clara's story and her reader's asked for yet another novel, but she never managed more than just a chapter more in Clara's life.  It is comforting to know (and I wish I could read that chapter) that Clara marries again (to the man she had an affair with in this book), has given up her religion and is living the "sort of life her father doesn't approve of . . . going out to work and having a wonderful time."  Clara, until her breakdown, had been writing stories as well as advertising copy, too, much like White.  And despite her struggles with her father, he had retired and was living with her mother in a Sussex cottage with a garden and full-size croquet lawn.  No matter the difficulties Clara (and her parents) faced along the way, it sounds like a happy ending was in store after all.

The books are well worth reading and I can happily recommend them to you.  I am not sure I could, the first time out, have read them all back to back, but I can imagine now reading them as a true quartet and seeing how Clara's life rolls out.  Even if there were only four novels, Antonia White was an amazing writer.

The Last Gasp of (wantofinish) Books

I've made a list and checked it twice and wouldn't it be nice to finish these before the end of the year.  It's that tidiness thing again; you have to forgive me.  Half of my brain is already making a list of books I really want to read right now (or start anyway) to take me into 2017, and the other half is still reluctant to send partially read books back to the shelf or carry them over into the new year (in a few cases I must amend that statement to read 'carry them over into the new year again').

So, aside from the Smiley, all the books on this list are partially read novels that have just been waiting for me to return to them.  In almost all the cases I have perhaps 150 or so pages left to read, so it seems like the reading list would be entirely doable if I don't let myself become too distracted.  So my last gasp reading list for the year (the stack of books in the front):

The Golden Age by Jane Smiley

Blood Curse by Maurizio de Giovanni

Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart (pretty much assured of finishing this one!)

Goodbye Piccadilly by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

Homesick by Eshkol Nevo

Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

To be honest the last few are holdovers from ages and ages ago but I am so close to finishing that it seems a shame not to just dive in and finish them.  Eighteen days left in the year nine books on my list.  One book finished every other day?  If I don't finish them all, that's okay, too.  It would be nice to have a shiny new slate (well, relatively shiny new as my pile for next year already has A Suitable Boy and a few other books--one classic and a couple of nonfiction that were intended as 2017 books that I just couldn't resist either peeking at or setting them at the ready).  Those would be the shorter stack in the back--what a nice thought that I could start out 2017 with that pile (or that pile plus one or two others . . . must be realistic here . . .).

My 'reward' for trying (in other words I get the reward one way or another) is to pick a new (or old one from the shelf but a new read) book for vacation-reading pleasure.

So, is there something you are dying to finish this year?  Please tell me I am not alone in wanting to clear the reading table off?

McMahon, Enright, O'Farrell and Wesley

I wonder which side of the brain is assigned to tidiness.  That is, tidiness in relation to reading and books.  (Not in relation to dusting and vacuuming).  I think I might have an especially well-developed side of the brain when it comes to bookish tasks.  (But my brain seems to ignore other kinds of tidiness, it would seem).  I've already got a notebook for next year.  I used to keep one for jotting down notes on books I was reading, and it was always very helpful when I wanted to write about my reading here.  Maybe it is due to my laxness in note taking this year that has caused me to become lazy about writing about my finishes (aside from the fact I have also been very lax about starting new books and not finishing them, I have finished a number of good reads that I have not written about).  So, now the first of a few posts to try and rectify that, though the books are really all deserving of more thoughtful posts.  Better a few brief mentions than none at all.  And maybe next year will be better.

***

First up Katharine MacMahon, whose writing I love and happily will read any of her books and then reread them, too.  In the case of The Alchemist's Daughter I listened to the novel on audio a long time ago and have had it in mind to read my way through all her books (I switched gears earlier this year after reading/revisiting The Crimson Rooms and The Woman in the Picture).  I am very particular when it comes to audio books, but I have to say The Alchemist's Daughter was one of the best audio book experiences I have had.  There was an exceptionally talented reader and she brought the story to life.  I enjoyed reading the novel after the fact, too.  Katharine MacMahon writes historical fiction really well, I think.  Her stories are similar in style, but the settings are generally quite different.  She may offer happy endings, but they never come without a price and they are not necessarily of the happily-ever-after variety.  Yet every book by her I have read has been quite satisfying, too, both in the execution and in the storytelling.

The Alchemist's Daughter pits the rational against the emotional.  Buckinghamshire, England ca. 1725.  For Emilie Seldon, raised solely by her natural philosopher father, she is almost an embodiment of one of his experiments.  She is nothing if not rational and has been raised practically in his laboratory.  Both as his apprentice but also (not really understood by her) but as his subject as well.  Her mother died in childbirth and her only female companionship and guidance is thanks the the household's cook.  So Emilie is a very unique and intellectually astute young woman.  She and her father have been long trying to accomplish a feat no other scientist has managed--to reintroduce life back to dead matter--a feat of alchemical sleight of hand if they can succeed. 

Emilie may be pure rationality, yet she has a heart and a woman's soul and the two are awakened when an attractive Londoner arrives on the Selden's doorstep hoping to learn Emilie's father's alchemical secrets.  She has no understanding of the emotions he awakens in her and falls for his pretty words and flattery.  If there is a volatile reaction to the emotional chemistry young Robert Aislabie awakens, it's going to happen but with devastating results.

***

I thought I had written about Anne Enright's The Green Road, which I had so looked forward to reading, but it ended up being a rather uneven reading experience for me in the end.  I'd never read Enright before, but I was sort of expecting and not surprised to find that there was a certain amount of melancholy in her storytelling.  The Madigan family, about whom the novel centers on, reminds me a little of Jane Smiley's Langdons.  Like the Smiley in scope, The Green Road takes place mostly in Ireland and over the span of thirty years or so following the four children growing up, growing apart and going away to vast corners of the world.  It is probably very much a stereotype to say this, but it felt (but why shouldn't it be true, all things considered) a very Irish novel.  What is so reminiscent between the two books is that there is no glossing over the relationships and how easy it is to hurt one another.  Another story grounded in the realities of (often dysfunctional) family life.

Each Madigan child, and their mother Rosaleen, has their story to tell.  What serves as a sort of framework to the story is the desire of Rosaleen to sell the family home, which is what provokes their gathering, their coming together in the end.  The reader is given glimpses of the Madigan family from childhood and over the intervening years, and while told in a linear fashion it is done in fits and starts almost like a series of interlinked stories.  Some I got on with better than others, mostly I felt like the Madigans weren't especially likable, which isn't certainly a requisite in any reading experience, but I think these elements are what created the uneven quality to the storytelling for me. 

It is hard not to compare Enright's The Green Road to Colm Toibin's Brooklyn or Nora Webster, both of which I loved, but there is no denying that Enright is a masterful writer in terms of prose.  The Green Road won a number of awards and I am glad I finally read something of her work.  Eventually I will pick up another of her novels and hopefully the story will resonate with me more than this one did.

***

If the Enright didn't quite work for me, Maggie O'Farrell's This Must Be the Place certainly did.  It's a pity I didn't write about it at the time I read it, since it might easily be a contender for year-end-favorite.  This is another case of a story told from a variety of perspectives and again over time and distance.  I like that one review called it a story told as if in "surround-sound".  It is a sort of jigsaw puzzle of storytelling like forming a picture through a prism that you turn and see in a slightly different manner depending on how the pieces come together and fall apart.  I thought it quite brilliant really how O'Farrell plays with narrators and in which voice (not just first or third person) the story is told. 

This Must Be the Place is ultimately a contemporary love story, but one that starts out happily with characters coming together and then falling apart and maybe eventually coming together again (much like real life again).  In this case, Irish-American Daniel meets the beautiful but singular (read that as bohemian who moves to her own tune) actress Claudette.  They fall in love, have a family but all sorts of things get in the way to drive them apart.  The story of their lives and love is told through the eyes of other family members and witnesses, all like planets orbiting around each other.  If the chapters take on various perspectives that might seem almost like short stories (actually I never thought of the story in those terms), they were so tightly and nicely linked that it never felt like the reigns had been set down and picked up again by someone else--at least not to me.

I've read Maggie O'Farrell and was suitably impressed by her storytelling abilities all those years ago--so much so that she has become one of those authors who I have 'collected' over the years and will continue to do so.  Now I just need to get around to reading more of her books rather than letting them sit unnoticed on my shelves.

***

Just one more for today.  Mary Wesley is in the same category as Katharine MacMahon in that I love her writing, have read her before and will happily read and reread her again.  I set out to do just this with all her books this year, but sadly I have thus far only managed A Sensible Life (I have quite a few 'must read all her works' authors so they all just keep carrying over from year to year, and that's okay).  I was absolutely sure I had read this book before and was expecting certain things to happen and a twisty sort of ending, but apparently I just have looked at the book so many times I thought I had read it.  In the end it was a happy surprise to find it was all new to me.

Like Katharine MacMahon (and I guess this is why I like both writers so much), they are reliably good storytellers of what you can easily call comfort reads, but there is still something a little more that sets them apart from mere entertainments.  The writing is good, the storytelling exceptional in terms of style, plus there is the sense of the unpredictable to their novels, too.  You know the story is going to be good, but it always ends up being really, really good, if you know what I mean.

The story begins in 1920s and the setting is the French seaside and poor Flora Trevelyan has two of the most narcissistic and neglectful parents you are likely ever to meet.  She is essentially left on her own in an hotel with only a Russian emigré as a teacher and eats her meals alone with the serving staff.  Younger than most of the other youthful guests she serves as a most keen observer of manners--both ill and happy.  She falls for and in turn over time is fallen for by three very different young men.  Time passes and Flora and the other guests move on to larger, fuller lives but their paths will cross later time and again in different circumstances.  Flora, considering her upbringing, has no choice but to wish for and try to lead a 'sensible' life, but it is gratifying to know that happiness is still obtainable at the end of a very long road no matter how unexpected.

I'm happy to have revisited these books by writing about them so long after the fact of having read them.  Thinking about them now makes me want to go pull books by any and all of the authors and discover something new . . .

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

The story of one family set against the panorama of a hundred years of American history means you get a very broad overview of the lives of an extended farm family.  With each new addition, each new generation, the Langdon family, which began its history in 1920 in the small farming community of Denby, Iowa, starts spreading far and wide.   The family tree, thankfully illustrated at the front of the book, is growing and getting more complicated, which is not surprising since the Langdons are a complicated family.  Not a few of them have messy lives, sometimes unhappy lives, but then when is life not a little messy and occasionally unhappy anyway?

Early Warning picks up the story of the Langdons, where things left off in 1953 in Some Luck.  This is the second book in a trio known as the Last Hundred Years trilogy and will see the family through most of the eighties where things  leave off in 1986.  I've been reading the books alongside Buried in Print, which has been helpful in a variety of ways.  We chat about the stories as we go; I often complain about some of the characters (and find I am not alone in my opinions) or need clarification of who's who, and most helpfully reading in tandem helps keep the momentum going. 

As much as I enjoy these books, since this is an epic family saga, and I like epic family sagas, the stories are less your traditional historical fiction and more firmly planted in reality.  As fine a line as there might be between historical fiction and fiction grounded in reality, I think there is indeed a distinction (though I am not sure I can adequately explain what I mean by it).  I fully expect drama in historical fiction, but in the Smiley novels the overlap with real life can sometimes be startling and I sometimes feel an emotional weariness, which might sound a little curious in such a broadly written story.

Birds eye view or not, these are fictional characters who do feel flesh and blood and who the reader revisits year after year and who are portrayed not only in their own words or actions but also through the eyes of their children, siblings, parents and the rest of the extended family, which is always illuminating.  This installment opens with a funeral and there are other tragedies along the way.  Walter Langdon, the patriarch dies in the previous novel and here the family gathers together at his funeral.  And, also much like real life, the next three decades races by in what feels like the blink of an eye. 

I've been trying to decide whether the cultural/historical markers along the way have been simply background detail, the world's events playing out as backdrop, or whether they should really be read with weightier significance.  Is this all a Forrest Gump moment (where he is at every important historical moment), rather than as with an actual diary, where the diarist happens to be alive at a most important moment yet is focused on the personal rather than the political without hardly a single mention of world events.  I'm guessing it is a little bit of each.  It's the personal with the Langdons that comes to the fore, yet their lives are sometimes touched by those events that touch everyone's lives. 

The story opens with a funeral but then there is a plane on the tarmac of a foreign country and bags of money involved. Clandestine actions in tricky places.  There is the Kennedy election, and the Cuban missile crisis.  There are the Beatles touring America and the Vietnam War and even Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple.  There's Nixon shaking hands with Mao, Reagan and the beginnings of the HIV crisis. 

But the historical becomes the personal.  Frank's wife Andy is long in therapy, there is anxiety of nuclear war and the some of the Langdons go to, or try to anyway, Vietnam.  There are interracial relationships, disaffection with the Communist Party, breast cancer diagnoses and other health scares, a near miss with a cult, sibling rivalry, affairs, failed marriages, disappointed children and disappointed parents.  So, life basically, in all is hope and glory and all its regrets and sadness.  So you see where there might be a little emotional fatigue going on? 

The third book, Golden Age, is already in hand and 1987 has come and gone and now I will see out the 80s and the story will take me beyond even the coming year.  I'm curious to see how Smiley handles those years that have not even yet been lived, but then this is fiction and I wonder what, if any, cultural markers will be.  Since I grew up in the 80s and know the years after intimately I am looking forward to seeing where they take the Langdon family which will be well into the third generation. 

It's too hard with a book as broadly told as Early Warning to talk about specifics, but Smiley managed to surprise me (and then not at all really, considering it's all so consistent with real life) with a few twists among the characters and their interactions.  Some Langdons I like very much and others not much at all.  Sometimes I feel like I am just looking in, as if at a snow globe, at this curious Langdon family, fictional, yet so very real, too.  Smiley did just enough at the end of this book to shake things up, shake up the Langdons and so the momentum keeps going.  And hopefully my reading momentum will as well.  I get to meet (and return to) the Langdons in their Golden Age.

Ready for the Weekend Reading Notes

I love this image and what with the cold weather we've been having and the short days already so grey and cloudy-filled, there is something inviting about this image.  It looks so nice and cozy there, and I shall be trying hard to mimic the reading woman in her quiet solitude this weekend.

Thirteen days until my winter break (and then eleven free days when the university is closed to do mostly as I please).

Twenty-two days until the end of the year.

Twenty-two days to read how many books to clear off my night stand?  Twenty-two days to catch up on telling you about all the books I meant to tell you about when I finished them (but was lazy about).  Actually today's post was meant to be one of those catch up posts, but maybe in the end it will just be one long post with lots of very brief 'reviews'.

I feel like I need to focus on (this has been a constant theme with me since about August, hasn't it?  But soon the new constant theme will be new books and reading ideas for 2017) what is at my bedside that I am immersed in at the moment. 

I am into part seven of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and you will be happy to know that Lata has again taken center stage.  This is the longest section yet with over a hundred pages so it should help move the story along at what I hope will be a nice, brisk pace.

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that I am reading Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's Goodbye Piccadilly: War at Home, 1914.  I am about halfway through and as always, I enjoy CHE's writing.  This is a very Downton Abbey-ish-Upstairs/Downstairs sort of story.  I am not sure how many books she plans to put out about the WWI era, but I think there are at least three and maybe a fourth is forthcoming.  Maybe through 1918 when the war ended?  In any case I want to read them all and thought it was time to get a start before she gets too far ahead of me.

I've also been reading (in earnest now as I have let this one sit for far too long) Laurie King's The Game, which is the seventh Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mystery.  I think I lost a thread there somewhere.  This time out Mary and Holmes are in India and they had been traveling as itinerant magicians and it felt like they were forever traveling and nothing much was happening.  Of course it never helps when you only read a few pages at a time--then it really does feeling like they are only and forever walking and never arriving.  So it just took a little attention and a nice chunk of reading time and the story has picked up again and reminded me how much I love the character of Mary Russell.  How many women do you know would go pig sticking in Simla, and even though she gets in over her head she always manages to pull it all off creditably for her sex (I do love a smart, independent woman).  Oh, and it was not exactly a pleasure she opted to do for fun but in the service of solving a mystery.  I have already got number eight at the ready as it is set in San Francisco.  I am moving slowly through these books, but I am at least reading them roughly one after the other (rather than letting years pass by before picking up the next book).  I think there are about fourteen books in total, so I have my work (pleasant work however) cut out for me.

I've been juggling India with Italy as I am also reading in earnest (same situation here as above) Maurizio de Giovanni's Blood Curse, which is the second in the series of Commissario Ricciardi's 1930s Neapolitan mysteries.  It is another series I hope to read at a steady pace.  There are only eight books featuring the Commissario so far.  If you recall, he sees dead people.  I love the characters and the twist and enjoyed the first book immensely.  I also want (and maybe I will switch gears next time out when I finish this one) to read his newer contemporary crime series also set in Naples (so far only two books plus one earlier that can be read as a standalone as well as a precursor to the series).

Mary Stewart's Stormy Petrel has been my escapist lunchtime read.  It may be highly optimistic and probably too ambitious to think that I will spend too much time over the weekend with it, but you never know what you'll be in the mood to reach for.  I need to pick up Jane Smiley's Golden Age, which is the third book in her Last Hundred Years Trilogy, this weekend if I hope to finish before the end of the year.

I'm really counting on these last three weeks of the year to be filled with lots of reading time, as you can see.  There are a few other books that are awaiting my attention but first these books.  My reading list is always too long, but we'll call it hopeful rather than hopeless!

Boccaccio's Mrs. Rosie & the Priest

Penguin Little Black Classic #1 Mrs. Rosie and the Priest

Who would have thought a 14th century Italian classic written at about the time of the Black Death would be such a hoot.  The four "tales" (I think they are considered novellas, but the four I read are fairly short) in my Little Black Classic edition were of the outrageous/eyebrow-raising variety.  I think you have to read these in the spirit they were written, though without any sort of introduction or contextual information I am doing a little extracurricular reading about the Decamaron, from which these were taken. 

The Decameron is a "frame story", which means the disparate tales are connected by their individual storytellers, so stories within a story.  A group of women and men (seven and three respectively) shelter in a secluded villa outside Florence as they try and avoid catching the Plague.  The tales they tell over the course of ten days (ten stories each day) make up the book (sort of like a scheherazade situation perhaps).  I see it called a mosaic, which is fitting since each teller has a different style most likely, and while the stories are interlinked they are all slightly different, too.  There is a little bit of everything, humor, love, death, tragedy, practical jokes.  I'm imagining they are tales on the foibles of mankind.  According to the wikipedia the book is written in the "vernacular of the Florentine language" and it gives a taste of what life was like in this particular time and place.   I wonder if (despite being fiction/literature) you could count it as a primary resource?

It sounds like Boccaccio used other works for his inspiration in his retellings (which just goes to show you there really are a limited number of stories out there and it is all in how they are told that makes them fresh or different).  But then the Decameron served as inspiration to the likes of Chaucer and Dante, and so it goes.

Some things I have learned from my wanderings online to learn more about the Decameron.  Decameron actually means "ten days work", hence ten days with ten stories each day.  The group spends a full two weeks together, though the other days are given over to other activities religious or otherwise.  Each person has a day where they 'reign' and would set the day's activities and themes.  My little mini version with just a few tales has four.  The first two are from day two of the group's gathering and Filomena is the day's 'Queen'. 

The first story in my little black book is "Andreuccio da Perugia's Neapolitan Adventures" in which Adreuccio from Perugia has come to Naples with five hundred gold florins in order to do a little horse trading.  Ah, young man, careful.  He is soon parted from his money (somewhat ignominiously including a fall out of a window without his clothes into a filthy alleyway).  It is a little comical what he goes through, but in the end he may have lost his florins but he leaves with a beautiful ruby!

In "Ricciardo da Chinzica Loses His Wife" it would seem a man with more brains than muscle fails to realize he must satisfy his young wife a bit more often than a mere "monthly treat".  So many holy days in which to abstain and then the poor man needs a glass of fortified wine and a biscuit as a pick-me up after his rare act of congress.  Ahem.  Beware of fishing trips wizened old men with young wives.  You never know when a corsair will happen by and make off with your wife!  She may in the end prefer his company to yours.

I must say there were some pretty entertaining double entendres in "Mrs. Rosie and the Priest".  Yes, it is just as naughty as the title implies.  We are all the way to day eight now with Lauretta reigning for the day.  Let's just say there were some illicit acts of congress, a cloak and then a mortar and pestle being exchanged and/or borrowed.  I'll leave it up to your imagine what the mortar and pestle signify.  Ahem.

Finally with the last tale on day ten, "Patient Griselda" we have a King for the day, Panfilo, directing the day's events.  I must say Griselda is indeed more than patient in this story.  She marries above her, but the ordeals her lofty, aristocratic husband puts her through in order to test her faithfulness is more than I would have put up with.  I wonder what the lesson (are there meant to be lessons learned in the Decameron?) learned (patience mainly, I guess) when your husband takes both your children and tells you he has murdered them (he really didn't however), and then tells you that you must leave (in only your undergarments!) as he must find a new wife.  Well, she passes the test and apparently they live happily every after, but you must wonder how she manages to overcome any resentment.  A better woman than I, I think!

Such a tiny little book.  Fifty or so odd pages, but what a tiny portal into a massive and very vivid unknown world to me.  There is so much to the Decameron that it seems almost rude to not give more time and energy to Boccaccio.  I am sure it is filled with all sorts of meaning and linguistic brilliance.  These books are, I can see now, going to be very very dangerous.  You see, after hooking me, Boccaccio has gotten me to buy his whole, and unabridged, work.  I opted for the newest translation (interesting to see how the translations compare--they are quite different) by Wayne Rebhorn which won the Pen Center's Award for Translation.  Maybe reading the Decameron in full will be one of my 2017 goals (and that would be a whole project in and of itself) . . .

And now, my next selection from my bounty of little black Penguins is Kenko's A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees, which I will tell you about next week.  I will only say that now, it too, has opened yet another new can of worms.  (But good worms.  Classical literature worms).  My only disappointment in this set is that so few women writers are represented. 

A Midweek Mishmash and Miscellanea

Brr.  It's cold outside!  Perfect weather to stay indoors and under a blanket (and with feet on hot water bottle), which I will be doing very shortly, I think.  I have lots of things I could tell you about . . .

I am six stories into my Short Story Advent Calendar, and yes, I am enjoying the whole experience immensely.  It was an investment I am happy I made and well worth the price!  And I promise, I will tell you all about what I have been reading soon.

Boccaccio was my first choice of Penguin's Little Black Classics.  Now that was an interesting reading experience (and another I will be telling you about very soon).  The only down side to these little excerpts is no introduction or biographical information or criticism to put the work into context.  So let me do a little research and then I promise to share.

I have finished the second of Jane Smiley's The Last Hundred Years trilogy and want to tell you all about it as well.  I am enjoying getting to know the Langdon family.  We are now three generations in and one more book to go.  However, as much as I like the Langdons, this is a flesh and blood family with all the dysfunction and turmoil and happiness and sadness that comes along with them and I think I need a small breather.

. . . so, I have picked up (changing gears big-time) Mary Stewart's Stormy Petrel.  Life can be weird sometimes, weird and difficult and you just need a little literary comfort occasionally, and now is one of those occasions.  Also, perfect pairing--Mary Stewart and a hot water bottle on a very-cold-almost-winter day.

I could tell you all about any of these things, but it's midweek and it's cold and I am feeling very unambitious and did I tell you my PC is in the throws of death.  A very loud, painful death.  It feels alternately like it is ready for lift off or that it is ready to explode.  Neither scenario is pretty.  I rarely turn it on these days, so spending time in front of it contemplating what I have read last and wanting to write a proper, thoughtful post is not easy or fun. 

Which brings me to the next topic.  I am in need of a new computer.  Rather than a PC I have decided a laptop is in order.  One that has a DVD drive so I can watch movies on it.  My DVD player also died this year.  I am easy to please and I don't expect to lug a laptop with me, so I just need something average size (not too big and not too small) and portable that I can use for basic computer needs (email, blogging, bookish surfing).  Any suggestions?  I am only tech savvy in a most basic way.  So, if you have experience with buying something like what I am in the market, advice is  most welcome.

So that was the mishmash and here is the (bookish) miscellanea. 

I knew there was a reason I wanted to visit Iceland.  Maybe.  Someday.  You never really know.

Have you been getting the Season of Stories in your inbox?  I have but I am afraid I have fallen behind in my reading (must create a folder to keep them organized I think).  If you are enjoying the daily short story bookishness, here is a list of more literary goodness that you can subscribe to--there are even more short story opportunities. (And you can never have enough short stories, right?).   And for my poetry-loving friends I believe there was a poem a day sort of subscription, too!  I plan on partaking of a few of those myself.

If you are in the UK, lucky you, since you get to enjoy a new Maigret TV-adaptation on Christmas Day!  Alas, I won't get to watch it, but I did at least get to see the preview . . .  Maybe it will air here in the US eventually.

If crime is not your thing, maybe you'll be interested in the remake of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.  I think that is the one book I have reread most often.  I am not sure I can do it again, but it seems (sadly) relevant these days.

Have you started your 2017 reading list yet?  I have (I started it a while ago . . .).  I have just added Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent to it.  I already have it on my reading stack as a matter of fact.

That's about all the bookishness I can muster today.  I think Stormy Petrel beckons. 

Teaser Tuesday: In Search of Fatima

I bought Ghada Karmi's memoir, In Search of Fatima: A Palestine Story, several years back when a Goodreads group I follow was planning on reading it together. Unfortunately I have let my GR membership lapse somewhat and I have not checked in with that reading group in ages, but it was the first inspiration for me and the jumping off place to begin investigating books about the Middle East or by authors from the region.  Then I took a couple of Israeli Literature classes and I was well and truly hooked.  It was just a matter of time before I began reading about the region in earnest, and I hope this is the start of a new reading 'love affair' for me.

Ghada Karmi's memoir was originally published in 2002, but the events she writes about ended some ten years before this particular edition.  She is an excellent writer and it is easy to get caught up in her memories.  She was born in Palestine but emigrated to England with her family in 1948 after the start of the (what you call it depends on which perspective--) War of Independence/1948 Palestine War.  At the end of the British Mandate the United Nations settled on a partition of lands, but the ensuing war redefined the territories leaving Israel with more land than initially they were given (and sorry if this is a terribly simplistic description--it's all very complicated to me).

I've only just started reading the first section titled "Palestine" about her life (she was born in 1939) living in the Qatamon neighborhood of Jerusalem.  The memoir, I think, will perhaps be about the politics of the region, but more so about the personal.  Karmi is writing from her own vantage point and if she has an agenda, it has less to do with right or wrong, but everything to do with giving a voice to the people who lost everything in 1948.  So far, when she writes, she talks about her family, her beloved Fatima who was a village woman who helped care for the house and children against the backdrop of life in Palestine.  The memoir will eventually move on to England, but for now it is very interesting to get a taste for what life was like there.

I have been especially struck by Karmi's memories of the embroidered clothes that Fatima wore. 

"At the time of my childhood in Jerusalem, no woman who was not a peasant would have been seen dead in such a caftan [Fatima wore the traditional dress--a caftan with panels of embroidery], however beautifully embroidered.  Middle-class women like my mother were keen on the latest fashions coming from Europe, as portrayed in Egyptian films."

***

"No one then could have known that after the loss of Palestine in 1948 this despised peasant costume would become a symbol of the homeland, worn with pride by the very same women who had previously spurned it.  In exile, it became obligatory for each Palestinian woman to have her own caftan and to show it off at public functions."

It is the cultural and social aspects I find the most intriguing, though all the historical and political bits are added to whatever details I have gleaned from my other reading.  As always with nonfiction, there is so much information that I am not sure how much I will take with me, but certainly all the personal stories will linger long in my mind I hope.

So, the first of what I hope will be many (many more in 2017) books about the Middle East I am looking forward to reading.  Eventually I will share a list of books I have acquired and have on hand (and likely a few more on my wishlist).  I am happy to start with a memoir, though, as it is always good to get the personal perspective and hopefully over time I will get many different vantage points, too.

A Suitable Boy: Part 6

Moving right along.  Part 6 already.  Or, twenty pages just shy of part six, though in all truthfulness I should have been writing this post last week and by the end of the coming week (had I not strayed from my mental schedule) I should be telling you about part seven.  Still, let's look on the bright side and note that I am almost 400 pages into the novel now meaning there are just over a thousand pages left.  (Maybe I'll just consider that a little comic relief, but 400 pages is still practically a whole novel in and of itself, right).  My reading went all wonky in November but I am hoping to bring it around this month.  Alas, I am not off to the best of starts, but thankfully it is not a race, so let me tell you about part six of A Suitable Boy, which will help reorient me and get me back on track.

Last section I met some new characters, got in the middle of a riot, listened to a few impassioned speeches in a court inquiry (which came about thanks to violence during said riot), and was witness to some nasty family rivalries.  This story is nothing if not dramatic.  Lata, where are you Lata?  How is it going in Calcutta?  I heard about you through a letter from your mother, but more about that in a moment.  There was just a small reference or two to her, and I do hope to catch up with her news soon. 

But is is mostly the Kapoors who have been center stage this section, and in particular Maan who is besotted with the courtesan Saeeda Bai.  Actually he is more than a little moonstruck over her, silly boy (doesn't he know she may be toying with him, but she is a working girl, more or less, and must look after herself and her younger sister).  The affair is being talked about and it is becoming something of an embarrassment to his family.  He does have a suitable match lined up and I think his family is ready to move things along so it might all get pretty interesting on that front very soon.  He is actually learning Urdu in order to speak her language and be able to read poetry.   Now that is a serious crush indeed.

This is where the story gets interesting and complicated.  Here are where some of the nuances of Indian culture are coming out (and I am still trying to understand it all and sort it out in my mind, so forgive me if I make a misstep somewhere).  Maan is Hindi, but Saeeda is Muslim and while they can communicate fine, they each know different languages.  I suspect they are also perhaps different caste, but I have not quite figured all that out yet.  I think in this culture, and at least at this particular period in time, to be cultured is to not only appreciate fine music, and ghazals, but to be able to recite the poetry (so ghazals are a form of poetry and Saeeda sings them) but to be able to respond and know the references.  And I think part of it is the rhythm of the language and the play on words. 

There has also been more talk about the zamindars (which to put it into a context I am more familiar with--they are the aristocrats and landowners of Indian Society) and the Abolition Bill which is being negotiated in parliament.  I'm glad that I am not the only one confused by it all, as even some of the characters have expressed bewilderment by what it all means.  It may not be fair that a few own so much when so many have so little, but they do serve as patrons of the arts--including helping the musicians and performers stay afloat and make a living. 

Maybe we'll let Maan continue mooning (in his annoyance at being turned away from Saeeda's door not just once but several times this section) and hope that he behaves himself when he decides to spend time in the Tarbuz ka Bazaar, where there are singing girls (of the lower orders, like Tahmina Bai--no relation to Saeeda) and gambling to help Maan in his dissolute pursuits, and check in with what Lata's mother had to say in her latest letter to Savita and Pran:

"Lata is now spending a lot of time with Meenakshi's family.  Meenakshi's father Mr. Justice Chatterji things highly of Lata, I think, and Meenakshi's sister Kokoli is also fond of her."

And:

"Lata I fear was very angry and hurt with me when we first came to Calcutta and also worried about her exam results and not like herself at all.  You must telegram the results as soon as they come, no matter whether good or bad.  It was that boy K of course and nothing else whom she met in Brahmpur and he was clearly a bad influence.  Sometimes she made a bitter remark to me and sometimes only gave me minimum answers to my questions, but can you imagine if I had let things go in that way?  I had no help or sympathy from Arun at all in this but now I have told him to introduce Lata to his covenanted and other friends and let us see."

I do hope we get back to her in the next section as I am eager to see how she is getting on and whether, if indeed, Arun has been bringing suitable boys her way!