A Work in Progress

A Library Popular Reading Nook

I mentioned I would share an updated photo of my library's popular reading shelves and here it is.  See how much it has grown.  Some of the books are looking a little tattered but that just means they are being read and reread, which is a good thing.  We've had a few books going walking, which is not such a good thing, but I try and keep a slow but steady flow of new books on display.  The suggestion box has garnered a few new book ideas with that request for 'more science fiction and fantasy', and you all very kindly shared titles with me in the comments section of that previous post.  If you want to see what was recommended just click on the link. 

As we have only just started our new fiscal year, new book ordering is only now getting underway.  I have started out with novels by Jasper Fforde, Neil Gaiman and Oprah's book club selection, Imbolo Mbue's novel.  I always agonize over my choices.  I have a small budget to work with, so I want to make sure every book is a good fit.  And it always feels good to see a patron sitting on those chairs with a book from the shelves that they might be passing an hour with between classes.  Every so often the shelves look a little bare as so many are circulating.  Needless to say this is one of my most favorite parts of my job!

Teaser Tuesday: The Violins of Saint-Jacques

It's Murphy's Law.  I was trying really hard to be patient for my July NYRB to arrive, which is Patrick Leigh Fermor's only novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, but I finally broke down and sifted and sorted and moved and re-stacked and toppled books in my book room to find my own old copy--a John Murray edition reissued in paperback in 2004.  I knew I owned it.  For a long time I even knew where it was on my shelves (approximately anyway), but then I knew it had been moved and just wasn't quite sure where exactly it had been moved to.  So I held off.  I want to read the nice, new NYRB Classic edition which will have a lovely new introduction and spanking crisp white pages.  But it is a week and a half now into the month and my copy is still en route and I didn't want to wait a moment more.  So I spent a good chunk of my Monday night free time (which evening free time during the work week is very limited) sweating as I looked for the book.  And . . . success!  I even managed to only take it and only one other book away with me.

(An aside . . . the state of my book room was already terribly messy, but it is looking like a whirlwind [that would be me] blew through it and if the next time I go in and don't find a pile or two of books sprawled onto the floor in a big heap I will be very surprised.  Too hot at the moment to do anything about it, however.)

But you know Murphy's Law.  My copy will most certainly be in this week's mail.  Because no good deed (or effort) goes unpunished as the saying goes.  I have my old copy in hand however and now will happily start reading.  The story is set on an Aegean island where an English traveler meets an elderly Frenchwoman and is "captivated" by a painting she owns.  I think it is going to be a story within a story, as she tells him what the painting means and we learn the history of the island perhaps.  My teaser is a description of the Frenchwoman.

"Mademoiselle de Rennes lived in a white, thick-walled island house surrounded by flowers in ribbed white amphorae and by pots of marjoram and basil.  The headland on which it rested overlooked a steep bay and a wide stretch of the Aegean bounded on the east by the watersheds of Anatolia and to the south by the floating ghosts of Samos and Chios.  Mademoiselle de Rennes, with heavy horn-rimmed glasses across the high bridge of her nose, was reading in a deck-chair under a vine trellis.  Phrosoula, the girl of the evening before, soon appeared carrying a table that was already laid, and 'pot luck' turned out to be the best meal I had eaten for months.  The wine, too, from the surrounding vineyards which Mademoiselle de Rennes had tended for years, was excellent.  The conversation ranged all over the world once more and ended with a long and diverting account of some pre-fascist elections in Cagliari.  She asked me for news of the French West Indies, but she herself was less expansive about them than the many other islands in which she lived."

I think Mademoiselle de Rennes is going to be a very interesting character to read about.  And then Patrick Leigh Fermor does the exotic so very well.  For a man who dropped out of school and let the world be his education he was such an amazing writer.  I am going to enjoy this read.  With less than 200 pages I expect to finish it well before the end of the month, so I hope to get back to one of my other NYRBS (maybe Guy de Maupassant's Like Death).

The Farm in the Green Mountains

Where does NYRB find these wonderful memoirs?  Thank goodness they do and that they are reissuing these modern classics.  The Farm in the Green Mountains by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer is yet another delightful book that was originally published in 1949 as a series of essays/columns in a newspaper and then collected in the form it's in now and translated from German into English in the mid-1980s.  Alice and Carl Zuckmayer, along with their two daughters fled Hitler at the start of WWII.  Carl was a playwright whose most recent play satirized the militarization of Germany garnering the wrong sort of attention from the government.  They went first to Austria, then Switzerland eventually landing in the US and ultimately an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the Vermont countryside.  Lucky for us, since Alice's memoir of their experiences in America during and after WWII makes for a most entertaining read. 

The book is made up of a collection of reworked letters that Alice wrote to her in-laws and then fleshed out and added to later.  The introduction calls the nineteen chapters "vignettes", which is an apt description.  It has an interesting history as a few of those letters were initially published in a Munich newspaper after the war by author Erich Kästner (known here for his book-turned-movie, The Parent Trap).   Happily they must have had enough success to call for more material.

"The intricacies of their days, the ins and outs of life on the farm as it is learned and lived by these unlikely inhabitants, this is superficially what The Farm in the Green Mountains is about.  On a deeper level, it's a story of perseverance, protection, everyday heroism, and joy."

So, Carl is a writer and Alice a former actor turned medical student, though the research she seems to be involved in during her years in Vermont appears to have more of a historical slant.  The book covers the war years and some years after, but it was written in hindsight--some chapters much much later as the book itself was edited and the chapters collected decades after their years in America when they were again living in Europe.  Interestingly Alice notes that she wrote it in German and had to look up some farming terms as it referred to a world she knew only in English.  Many immigrants, or in this case exiles from the war, came to the US only temporarily.  They worked to earn money to return to and live in Europe.  For the Zuckmayers, however, they were somewhat adrift.  Their former home was no longer theirs, at least in spirit, once they returned to Europe.  They ended up living in a new home with no history attached.  So they would work and earn abroad so they could return to Vermont to live.  In a sense that farmhouse was what they thought of as "home".

It's always interesting to see your own country through the eyes of those who come from or have lived most of their lives someplace else.  The Zuckmayers had a very good experience living and traveling in the US and in particular Vermont, and Alice writes about it with much affection and humor.  She particularly liked our libraries (I do, too) and there are several chapters of what the academic library she used (Dartmouth's) was like and what a pleasant experience it was and how it compared to those she knew from home.  Of course we have known that all along, but it is nice to get that affirmation from a visitor so to speak.

The Zuckmayers and their daughters were really more than visitors, however.  Although Alice certainly, and maybe Carl as well, must have had some experience of farm living or care of animals to a certain extent in Europe (the editor calls them "urbane sophisticates") the vignettes chronicle their education as farmers.  Their farmhouse was fairly rustic (but with their landlord they improved it), Vermont is filled with as many eccentric individuals as we might imagine, and the USDA (as it was then at least) was hugely helpful in getting their farm up and running.  They raised birds--chickens, geese, ducks among a few other animals.  Once an animal had a name it was no longer up for slaughter, and weird as this may sound, the chapter on "rats" turned out to be one of my favorites in the whole book.  I saw it and thought, 'oh, dear', but more than once Alice had me utterly riveted to her storytelling!

"We had begun the farm experiment with the illusion that it would be a foundation for self-sufficiency and would give Zuck [Carl] the possibility of doing his work."

"He had had the choice of rowing as a slave in the Hollywood galleys with the convict's wages for forced labor or, on the other hand, doing his own work as his own mater.  But in America everything is always different and unforeseeable."

The book follows their adventures but there is a mishmash of topics really.  She writes generally about America, the holidays and their search for a place to live, and then there is much about turning their farm into a working farm.  It's fascinating stuff and memorably told.  There is lots about the animals and the people of Vermont (sort of kind of in that order even), but also about how they lived and where they went and then later what life was like going back to Europe. 

As I was reading I marked so many passages and dog eared so many pages thinking I would share this and this and this, but now there is too much to choose from and maybe it's better to just virtually present the book to you with a nod and a smile, and a 'you really have to read this . . .'

Reading Notes & Weekend Links

I'm patiently waiting for my July NYRB subscription book (trying, as I am not generally a patient person when it comes to books!).  As I am between NYRBs I had thought to pick up one that I had received previously but not read, but I want to jump right into Patrick Leigh Fermor's only novel, so best to keep the deck clear so to speak.  Besides I am in the middle (or well into the story if not quite the middle in most cases) of a number of very enticing books. 

Fiona Barton's The Child is a library book with a long line of people waiting behind me for their chance, but luckily it seems a fast read, so I should manage to finish before the due date.  There are a number of narrators, two women and a reporter and a few others besides it seems that have something to do with the death of a baby, which was found buried and only was discovered as the earth is being plowed at a building site. 

Earlier in the year I started reading Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris drawn by the exotic setting of a world that seems closed to western eyes.  I think I must have hit a slowish spot and then got distracted so it was set aside, but on a whim I picked it up over the weekend and now am finding it hard to put down.  It is eye opening and surprising and quite maddening by turns.  But curiously addicting, too.  I already have the second book and suspect I will cave in and order the third and hope she continues to write about these characters. 

And all of a sudden I have been utterly sucked into Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden.  Again, I was feeling things drag just a bit and the thread of the story set in 1900s London was just not all that interesting at first.  And then you know how it goes--wham.  Things got exciting within a few pages and now the story is very much resembling Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, though with it's own different slant.  Now I am happily losing myself within those pages.

Anita Brookner's slender novel, Leaving Home, may seem like a quick read, but I want to make my way through it slowly.  I binged on her books ages ago and then nothing at all for years, so I forgot just how much I love her prose and sharp observations.  She's absolutely amazing, I think, and I have to stop myself from marking every passage that seems so perfectly done (as there are far too many of them).  So glad I picked this book and even happier that I own just about her entire oeuvre!  I wonder if I like her so much because I see myself in so many of her heroines?

I might just dip into a few other books on my nightstand (or maybe will be tempted to start another of my library books), but I hope to spend most of my reading time with these books to keep the momentum going.  Oh, and there will be more Australian reading, too (maybe a short story or essay), but more about that next week.

I have a few links to share on this hot summer's weekend.  Here's a project in the making . . .  I came across this list of most anthologized short stories of all time.  I can see myself reading through the short stories (have already read a handful of them)!

I only recently watched the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  I was unsure whether I would be the right audience, but I have to say I found it thoroughly enchanting and I am happy to see the second film is in the works!  (I will say, however, any movie that stars Eddie Redmayne has to be good).

I already knew Daphne du Maurier was wonderful, but I am glad someone else is pointing it out, too.  Maybe it is time to read or reread one of her books.  Or pull this biography out that I bought earlier this year and finally crack open.

Summer is definitely here.  It is going to be a hot (mid and high 90s/35C) next week (I'm not looking forward to it), so here's a list of forthcoming fall fiction to look forward to (bring on cooler days, please).

I have a few coupons to use, so I will be heading to the bookstore this weekend and seeing what might tempt me.  And I have the next episodes of The Great British Baking Show and Prime Suspect: Tennison (watched all the original Prime Suspect episodes with the lovely Helen Mirren!) to look forward to.  Am totally addicted to both shows.

Happy reading and stay cool everyone!

In Fairleigh Field, Rhys Bowen

Should I email Rhys Bowen and ask her if there is going to be a sequel to her most recent novel, In Fairleigh Field?  I've checked out her website looking for clues and had a look at Fantastic Fiction, but I see nothing that hints at further adventures of the Westerham sisters, in particular Lady Pamela and Ben Cresswell, a neighbor and childhood friend who plays an important role in this story.  While the mystery and drama is neatly concluded and all the threads are joined nicely at the end, there is just enough story that could easily translate into another novel.  And this is indeed a perfect mixture of drama, mystery and espionage all set during WWII with just a touch of romance.  Okay, so it's listed as a standalone, but how can she leave us all hanging?

Fairleigh Field proves to be a place of excitement, mystery and maybe even a little danger.  So, of course this is where the youngest Westerham daughter, Lady Phoebe and her London evacuee friend Alfie happen upon the mangled body of a British soldier.  It appears the man, who is wearing the uniform of the West Kents, has jumped from a plane but had the misfortune of having a defective parachute.  It failed to open.  Instead he has fallen in a field attached to Fairleigh Hall (that would be a Great Home of the Westerhams who are aristocrats).  Twelve-year-old Feebs has the tendency to be in places she shouldn't and shockingly little seems to phase her.

The same can't be said about the eldest daughter Olivia.  Just twenty-something and she is already a staid married woman with an infant son.  Her husband is 'doing his duty', though conveniently (that's not how Livvy feels about it . . .) he is guarding the Prince in Bermuda!  (And probably busy playing polo).  Lady Diana, or Dido as she is called, is a little too young to be doing her part for the War effort but old enough to have had her 'Coming Out'.  Pity the war got in the way of that.  So, a very flirtatious Dido is mostly interested in wearing the trendiest fashions, getting soldiers to buy her drinks (too eager to grow up) and more than a little resentful of the sister closest to her in age.  Enter the star of our drama, Pamma, or Lady Pamela.

Lady Pamela is the most intriguing character as she is working at Bletchley Park.  Work that is all very hush hush.  Her family and friends think she is doing the most boring of clerical jobs . . . perhaps filing papers or doing odd secretarial tasks.  Little do they know she is actually translating German transmissions and breaking codes.  Impressive work, if only anyone knew she was doing it.  Pamma has been living in London, though not having quite the wild and exciting life Dido thinks she's having.  When things heat up her job is moved to Bletchley and her job becomes ever more complicated.

The mystery surrounding the body in the field ends up in the office where Ben Cresswell is working.  More hush hush MI5 stuff, but as he knows the families in the village it's a given he's the best person to make inquiries.  Although the dead man seems to be a British soldier, too many details don't mesh and no one is missing from any of the regiments.  Is the man really a German spy on an operation gone awry?  Rhys Bowen captures the mood of the era well.  So much uncertainty and fear of the 'Other' infiltrating British soil, and so much secrecy that everyone is thrown into suspicion.

Although the subject matter seems dark--WWII Britain and the Blitz underway--there are scenes, too, of Occupied Paris where another of the Westerham sisters, lady Margot, has been living--the story is treated with a very light touch.  There is just enough drama and suspense to keep the pages turning, but I never got the feeling that things would end badly.  Another perfect vacation (or staycation!) read.  If you are looking for a good period drama that is not too taxing but eminently readable, I can warmly recommend this.  If Lady Pamela stars in another drama I know I'll be reading it, but until then I think it is time to finally explore the Royal Spyness books, which sound like even more of an entertaining romp of a series (and there are ten to bask in) beginning with Her Royal Spyness.

The Secret Life of Violet Grant, Beatriz Williams

Two books now under my belt, and both immensely enjoyable.  I really like Beatriz Williams.  I like her storytelling style.  I like that she tells a good historical story with parallel storylines, usually in two different eras.  Not everyone can pull that off well, and I think Beatriz can.  I like that her characters return in other stories as aunts or sisters or distant relatives.  They shift about in the books--in one they are the protagonist and in another they move to the periphery, but you get a sense of a big family with interesting pasts.  And her women characters are strong, intelligent and in this case sassy gals.

It probably doesn't matter that Beatriz Williams's books are read in any particular order, but I do plan on working my way through them in the order she published them.  Two years ago I read A Hundred Summers and I just finished The Secret Life of Violet Grant.  Lily of the earlier novel does make an appearance in The Secret Life, but the story mostly revolves around Vivian Schuyler in the 'current' story set in 1964 and her aunt Violet, who Vivian assumes is dead.  Violet, the daughter of a wealthy, well-respected New York family did the unthinkable in 1912.  A bluestocking, Violet left home against her family's wishes and with their distinct disapproval and went off to England to study physics.

It's all a bit hush hush now, whatever became of Violet, but out of the blue and a good fifty years later a suitcase belonging to Vivian's aunt shows up at the local post office.  Vivian finds a card in her mailbox telling her where to pick it up in the opening pages of the story.  Violet is not talked about according to Vivian's mother.  It's scandalous what she did.  Not just leaving home on her own to study physics.  It seems she had the audacity to kill her husband and then run off with her lover.  This was about the time the First World War was breaking out.  And then she was never heard from again.  Until now. 

The suitcase is the impetus.  For a girl like Vivian, the temptation of a juicy story is too much.  Vivian is a modern girl of the Sixties.  She lives in Greenwich Village and works in the enviable offices of New York City's elite magazine, The Metropolitan.  She's looking for her first big break and this might just be it.  If she can get to the post office before it closes that is.  With just minutes before the window closes, she manages to get her aunt's suitcase that has been traveling (it would seem) since about 1914!  And, Vivian manages, too, to meet a dashing young doctor for whom she falls hard.  And so this romp of a story filled with drama and heart break (and lots of scandalous doings) begins. 

The Schuylers are all very upper crust, Fifth Avenue sorts.  And this being the Sixties, and Vivian such a modern girl, she knows the score when it comes to mumsy and daddums.  She may come from money, but she lives in a walk up flat with a roommate and earns her keep through her writing.  She's the sassy one.  Doctor Paul is a newly arrived physician fresh out of medical school and their romance is electric, but as much as they come together they are also flung apart and the cause is called Margaux, or Gogo as Vivian calls her.  Gogo is the publisher's daughter (that would be Vivian's boss's daughter) who usually gets what she wants.  Now to be fair to Gogo, she is actually quite a likable character, and Vivian for all her sassiness is a decent young woman, so you can imagine what sorts of trials and tribulations their romance will face.

As for Violet?  She is no less impressive but far more sedate.  She is an intellectual, but it's the Teens and to go off to England unattended is more than enough.  There is a certain naivety about her for all her knowledge.  Science and society don't necessarily mix well.  You know the old cliché.  A young student falling for her professor?  In this case, Walter Grant may be a scientist, and one of the top men in his field, but he is not stodgy.  His extracurricular activities are pretty reprehensible, but what does Violet know about that?  It's his brain that she is attracted to.  How she falls into his clutches is questionable.  Enter young and attractive Lionel Richardson, now a soldier but formerly one of Dr. Grant's students.  More electric (or in this case atomic?) attraction. 

Can you see the set up for this page turner of a story?  Perfect beach reading (or armchair in the air conditioning reading if that is your pleasure).  So far it would seem Beatriz Williams's characters are wholly engaging and the stories hard to put down.  No worries about the sheer size of her books since they can still be easily devoured.  I already have Tiny Little Thing pulled out and set by my bedside.  Tiny (short for Christina) is Vivian's sister, so the Schuyler saga continues.

Oh, and if Vivian's/Violet's stories sound a little run of the mill for this type of book, there are actually some surprising and surprisingly good twists at the end, which made it all very satisfying indeed.

Two Novels of Women's Independence

Another long weekend winds quickly down to an end.  And while I know it's not at all true, I feel like I have frittered away four free days and now it is time to get back to work.  Maybe it's better to just say--where has the time gone?  I thought I had all but decided for sure which book to read this month (see post below), but every time I sat down to start reading I found the book was too much for my concentration, so the timing is just not quite right.  I was all excited to read Ali Smith again, but apparently not while the neighbors are shooting off fireworks!

So another quick browse through my shelves earlier today and I think I have settled on two books.  I'll start with Anita Brookner's Leaving Home (I thought she might well have the perfect book, and it does seem a good fit).

"In her exquisite new novel, acclaimed author Anita Brookner deals with one of the dramas of our lives: growing up and leaving home.  At twenty-six, Emma Roberts comes to the painful realization that if she is ever to become truly independent, she must leave her comfortable London flat and venture out into the wider world."

Well, there will be more to the story, but doesn't that sound promising for a theme of "freedom/independence"?  And it has been far too long since I have read any of Anita Brookner's novels.

I read one of Attia Hosain's short stories a year or so back and liked it so much that I ordered a couple of her books.  And now her novel, a Virago Modern Classic, might just be a perfect fit of a book.  Sunlight on a Broken Column works on two different levels. 

"Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather's house by orthodox aunts who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of a liberal but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. Here, during the 1930's, as the struggle for Indian independence intensifies, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics. But Laila is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against the claustrophobia of traditional life, from which she can only break away when she falls in love with a man whom her family has not chosen for her."

Independence for a country and a woman. 

I'll be starting with Anita Brookner.  Though I feel like I didn't "accomplish" much over the long weekend, I did actually finish a number of books at the end of June (so now back to picking up a few of the same books so I can make steady progress), and now I need to write about them.  So lots of catching up this week (I hope).