A Work in Progress

Your Favorite Reading Spots (and mine)

A long weekend looms closely on the horizon.  I know I am very ready for it.  I always plan on reading lots, but I somehow always manage to fritter the time away doing other things as well (or instead of), so I was thinking that a little mental planning was in order.  I need to get myself into the mindset of spending time quietly with my books.  Sometimes it's best to avoid home distractions (and the idea of 'earning' my pleasure reading by doing chores first!) and find somewhere away from the house to wile away a few hours.  Most often this involves a warm beverage of some sort.

Being happily ensconced in nature is also a favorite.  Only peace and quiet.  Background noises that are acceptable include gurgling water or birds chirping (of frogs croaking).  A nice bench away from crowds with just a book is about as good as you can get in my book.

If all else fails and I must be at home, I like to sit in my comfy rocking chair with books close at hand.

If I was going to do a reality check when it comes to my usual reading spots I would have to include a quiet corner at work on my break or the treadmill at the gym after work, but who wants to look at those places.  I have four days off and while I will spend a few hours at the gym, I sincerely hope that more than a few hours will be spent in other reading-inspired corners!

Where is your favorite reading spot?  And can we find you there this weekend?

Stowaway to Mars, John Wyndham

John Wyndham's Stowaway to Mars, set in England in the early 1980s, was published in 1936 under the pen name of John Benyon with the title Planet Plane (also published as The Space Machine).  It is an early work, only his second or third published novel and from what I can gather from reviews is now seen as an early and fairly weak offering (in some cases much maligned), particularly compared to most of his later books now seen as classics.  Being something of an outsider looking in on the science fiction/fantasy genre I don't think I can adequately place the work, though I do have two other Wyndham novels under my belt.  But I have seen the term space opera attached to Stowaway and also read that (at least in reference to later books) he writes something more akin to "cozy catastrophes". 

I would definitely say this is indeed a early work and that his stories get much, much better.  Stowaway does feel a bit like a space opera, and that while it asks some very interesting and provoking questions for the time it was written, it is also definitely a product of its times and the mores and attitudes of when it was written.  The stowaway in this case is a woman and there are moments when it is hard to overlook the very overt sexism of the writing (is that Wyndham speaking, simply a reflection of the period and not what he thought of women or was he being satirical?--probably just reflection of the period) and dramatic situations.  It's best to keep in mind that while the book is set in the post-1960s post-feminist-revolution world, it was written in the mid-1930s not even a decade after women in England won the right to vote on equal terms as men. 

The story opens with an almost suspenseful, espionage-inspired scene where a murder takes place at a science facility where a space ship is being constructed.  It's all very hush, hush, but someone has infiltrated the compound.  A man lies dead and a nightwatchman has been caught in the crosshairs.  He was spying on the design of Dale Curtance's ship.  A ship he is building to take him and a crew of men on a race to be the first men to travel to another planet, land and return.  The Keuntz Prize is on offer, not only is there much money involved, but of course bragging rights to the men and country who can get "there" first.  "There" being the planet of their choice and Dale has his sights set on the red planet, Mars!

Dale is an adventurer.  He has a passion for speed and flying and his accomplishments are impressive, but this is like the cherry on top of it all.  What he is doing isn't exactly "rocket-racing" but it's what he has wanted to do and be all his life--the very best.  Now that a spy has managed to get into his hangar and gotten himself killed, his plans will be uncovered and announced to the world before he's quite ready.  Dale is married with a wife who is expecting a child, and of course she wants him to give it all up and settle down into a proper family/home life.  So here is the first inkling of women and their place and men and theirs and just which is seen as the more important and exciting.  Mary is relegated to the house.  (Conversation between Mary and her mother-in-law:

"[To Mary:] It's not fair on you Dale or yourself or the child.  In your condition you can't afford to behave like this.  All we can do is what most women have to do--make the best of it."

If this was a movie, the next shot would move to another household somewhere in Wales where a young woman is reading the newspaper about Dale and his interplanetary plans, and she has a most interesting conversation with her father.  The plot thickens.  This rather mysterious conversation will very soon make sense, but it seems that father and daughter were somehow ridiculed away from their home and town, thought of as cranks and maybe charlatans. 

Father and daughter have had the strangest experience involving a machine, a robot of which I cannot even fathom (being of a 21st century sensibility and knowing what machines can do and will do and can imagine AI and robots that look almost human and certainly think better than most humans).  They came across one that came from somewhere else, and managed to communicate with it, learned from it.  Before it self-destructed.  They don't know why, but Dale's voyage to another planet might just be the way to prove they were not lying.  

You see where this is going now?  October 1981 and the rocket prepares to take off with Dale and his crew of four other men--a reporter, a doctor, an engineer and another pilot.  Every calculation has been made and made again so there are no unaccounted for variables.  The plans are precise as well they need to be to take five men to Mars and back with enough fuel and provisions.  For Dale this is an opportunity to plant a flag and win a prize.  The doctor will take samples.  The reporter, well, he's going to have the scoop of the century, and the two others are going to make sure it all runs smoothly.  Only something has gone awry.  Some calculation is off.  The journey is off by several minutes and some strange weight is slowing them down.  Who has packed something he shouldn't have?

Ah.  A stowaway.  In one of the compartments carrying supplies is a young woman by the name of Joan and then all hell breaks loose.  In this bastion of make testosterone, narrow-mindedness and old world superstition . . . a woman on board?  Yes, it is as bad as you are thinking it might be.  Joan has stowed away to make contact with the people of Mars.  She has managed to learn some of their language and wants to be able to clear her father's name.  This is not about bragging rights and she is probably one of the most sensible of the bunch, but tell any of the men that (save for the doctor who has a more open mind, and the reporter who smells a sensational story).  She creates all kind of havoc, and we've not even landed yet.

It's what happens when they do arrive on Mars and what they find there that raises some interesting questions.  I won't delve into them too deeply, but one of the main questions Wyndham poses is what happens when the robots become smarter and more efficient than the humans who made them.  Actually I am not sure he is asking so much as presenting an interesting possibility.  There are more adventures to be had, lots of danger, unhappy moments for Joan and a very curious ending.  I think Joan gets a very bum rap at the end.  I'm not sure if it is short-sightedness on Wyndham's part of simply the reality of the times (once again).

As you can see this was a very provoking and provocative read for me despite its many shortcomings.  I am not sure what I think of it.  I liked it in many ways and was peeved off by it in many ways.  I could overlook all the moments of 'this could never happen', but then I am good at suspending disbelief when the occasion calls for it.  I know what Wyndham is capable of writing so I see this as an early curiosity while he was finding his feet so to speak.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading as it was simply the premise of a journey to Mars (and the appeal of what a stowaway could mean).  This was the second of two reads for my August prompt (I wrote about the other one here).  I would definitely point you in the direction of his later books, Chocky and The Midwich Cuckoos if you want to try John Wyndham's work and don't know where to start and save Stowaway to Mars if you want to read further in his oeuvre (though I suspect the novel would elicit some interesting discussions and thought!).  Now, onwards to September.

Teaser Tuesday: Quartet in Autumn

Barbara Pym has such a knack for telling a story of seemingly misfits and eccentrics with a deftness and lightness of touch that you just can't help smiling to yourself.  Buried in Print and I decided (well, maybe I sort of nudged but happily BiP is a willing partner in reading) on whim to pick a Barbara Pym novel and decided on Quartet in Autumn--a reread for BiP but a first go for me (and this is a novel I had wanted to read last summer when I bought the lovely Picador reissue that you see here).  What I like about Pym's novels is that I often see bits of myself in her characters, and what I like more is that they (or maybe she) doesn't take themselves/herself too seriously.

This is a novel set in 1970s London.  It follows a quartet of friends (colleagues in an office) who are in the autumn of their lives.  Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia.  "Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and - perhaps most keenly felt their worries about having missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them."  And since this is Pym, we're talking stylish, sparkling prose.

On the day we meet them, all four have (though not together) visited the library.  So, of course, this is where I draw my teaser from.

"Of the four only Letty used the library for her own pleasure and possible edification.  She had always been an unashamed reader of novels, but if she hoped to find one which reflected her own sort of life she had come to realize that the position of an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman is of no interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction.  Gone were the days when she had hopefully filled her Boots Book Lovers' library list from novels reviewed in Sunday papers, and there had now been a change in her reading habits.  Unable to find what she needed in 'romantic' novels, Letty had turned to biographies of which there was no dearth.  And because these were 'true'  they were really better than fiction.  Not perhaps better than Jane Austen or Tolstoy, which she had not read anyway, but certainly more 'worth while' than the works of any modern novelist."

Edwin's visit is to consult reference works for research on a certain clergyman, Marcia uses the library as a warm place away from the office for a change of scenery, a place to pick up free leaflets and also a place to dispose of unwanted objects (not rubbish for the dustbin mind you, but other unclassified objects that could be left in a corner somewhere).

Maybe modern novelists don't write about people of a certain age who are solitary souls, but lucky for us Barbara Pym does.

Back to School Reading Projects, etc.

I was all set this morning to tuck a new book into my bookbag for the day (along with several other 'in progress' books), but I managed to talk myself out of it.  For the moment, that is.  As I have read a few very satisfying thrillers and am in need of something from that genre on my pile I was thinking it was time to pick up a good detective novel.  I have several candidates including a few translated works by women. 

But it was raining (and I wanted to keep my bag light) and I thought of the books I still want to finish this month (still optimistically have a whole week) and this weekend will be prime reading/finishing time.  So the book stayed at home and I continue with the same books that have been keeping me company for what feels like ages.  This is my problem, you know.  Surely I am not someone who can't focus for long periods of time on one book, one story, one author?  Do I really need a constant influx of 'new'?  I cave into whim and whimsy, what can I say.  You would think it would be enough to have more than a few books to select from off my night table, but apparently I don't just need different, I also want 'new'.  That it something I struggle with am working on.

But off on the horizon there are always bookish projects to look forward to.  With fall and the start of a new school year, I always feel like it is a nice for fresh new ideas and new projects and of course, I have several in mind. 

In September as part of a Gender Revolt/Queer Film celebration there is going to be a series of films at a local indie which includes Carol from a couple of years ago.  I missed it in the original release but I am happy to finally see it on the big screen.  Last night I pulled off the shelves my copy of Patricia Highsmith's Carol (The Price of Salt) and what might be a perfect pairing, Jill Dawson's The Crime Writer.  Both books I have long wanted to read and now have the perfect opportunity.  As part of that same film series I am reading Virginia Woolf's Orlando and plan on seeing the film tomorrow.  I don't think I will have finished reading by then (and part of the reason a new book stayed behind this morning), but I hope to finish it over the course of the weekend.  It is not hard reading, but I am trying to read slowly but suspect I am still missing important ideas.  Of course, for myself, Virginia Woolf's books always require more than one read, so maybe the film will help fill in the picture as I go.

There are several other reading pairings that I have on my radar this fall (well, in some cases I have wanted to do them for ages now).  I am very keen to read Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire, which is actually sitting at home on my library book pile.  I should really just dive right in, but as it is a retelling of Antigone, I had hoped to read the play first.  And I have found a couple of other versions of the play as well-reinterpretations like the Antigone Project and Burial at Thebes  by Seamus Heaney.  It's probably far too ambitious for how much free time I have to dedicate to reading projects but it sounds enticing nonetheless.

And on the back (back, back, back) burners are Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed along with Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Colm Toibin's House of Names and reading about Clytemnestra and Agamemnon.

I am thinking of my September prompt, which is 'back to school' and have a list of school-setting-themed books started.  So if you have a favorite novel set in academia, do share.  I have a few reading possibilities in mind already, but I never quite know what I will choose until that moment I start reading.

A sure sign of autumn (yes, I am ready for autumn!) is Carl's RIP readalong, which I have yet to see an announcement for, but I know if it happens it is literally just around the corner.  In any case, for me, autumn reading will include a ghost story or two, something atmospheric and maybe Victoriana-ish.  I have not given those reading possibilities too much thought yet, but I am sure I will have no problem thinking up a few books that would read nicely for the season.  (And again, if you have something you plan on reading this fall, do share).

I'm quite ready now to move on to these new reading pleasures, but a week left of August and the weekend coming quickly, so I will still be spending time for the next few days with Orlando, Nevil Shute, a mini trip to Mars and an unsettling stay in Greece . . .

Paper Girls, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan

So this was one weird and wild ride and, of course, it has ended on a cliffhanger leaving me with more questions than answers.  Like any good serial comic book story will do.  Let me give proper credit where it is due, Paper Girls (volume 3 collecting issues #11-13) has four creators--Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson and Jared K. Fletcher.  After reading the first two collections I contemplated buying the individual issues rather that waiting for the next collection/installment in the story.  Now I am once again faced with that same dilemma, since I pretty much gulped down this story as soon as pulled it out of the mailer. 

So this is a weird, wild wacky story that sort of comes straight out of my own childhood, though thankfully mostly not, too.  The story begins back in the late 1980s Cleveland one strange Halloween eve.  Four friends, Erin, Mac (Mackenzie), Tiffany and KJ are out on their bikes and while it is not explained what happens, imagine an end of the world scenario.  Or, at best, a 'where did everyone go' scenario. 

That fateful night they are harassed by boys roaming the streets, and if that is not bad enough, nasty alien-ish creatures arrive on scene as well.  Has Cleveland been invaded by aliens?  Some sort of nuclear accident or a war no one knows about?  I still have no clue.  But what I do know is that a strange time slip thing is going on--quite literally they fall through a hole in the atmosphere that takes them back and forth through time to strange places, places of the past and of their adult selves.  Imagine meeting yourself in your 30s when you are a mere tweenie?  (Now that might indeed be a frightening prospect), and then finding out the 'you' might not actually be you (or a nice version of you). 

When last we met the quartet they were in the basement of a house and had discovered a spaceship. It's going to appear in this new volume as well.  And the two women on the cover?  Neither are the girls in our story so far, but they are going to prove important in ways I am not sure I even know yet.  Once again, this volume begins with a weird dream that KJ has that involves girls playing field hockey (mean girls by the way) who turn out to be creepy zombie-ish creatures as well as KJ's grandmother(?) on whose wrist is tattooed a number, and then, KJ wakes up . . . to find she is in some other time and place and that crappy dream?  Well, as Erin so kindly points out . . . 'you're still in it'! 

The four are together after having been separated in the last book, but Mac seems to have wandered off on her own.  Mac is the 'bad girl' of the group, hard talking girl with a 'tude, if you know what I mean.  But then she saw into her future and didn't like what she saw, so she has an excuse, right.  Mac, walking by a river, meets up with the woman on the left (cover illustration) with her baby attached to her back speaking a language that none of the girls has ever heard or even imagined before.  They seem to have traveled back in time.  Way, way back in time.  Almost to what seems like biblical times, though when they pull out their trusty wrist-watch-thingy they came across on their weird travels that acts like a Babel-fish translator they can communicate with her and learn she calls the stream, stony stream (rather like their Cleveland neighborhood) Stony Stream. 

And then things begin to get really weird.  Mammoth animals attack and alien-ish men try and get her baby and then another woman (the one with the cool mohawk) arrives in a spaceship . . . 

This is probably making no sense to you at all (if you have even read this far!), so suffice it to say, that Paper Girls continues to be one wild, crazy and entertaining ride!  I like the description on the website: "Stand By Me meets War of the Worlds in this YA adventure".  I know all these people the girls are meeting are important and the 'toys' they are acquiring--this translating wristband, a funky hockey stick (last book) that seems to have almost magical qualities, a 21st century computer disc with interesting abilties (though not a trusted model--an early one that has 'issues') are going to come together somewhere along the way and it will all make sense.  So, read on.  Actually I think I might go back now and read them all again in quick succession.

And issue #16 comes out in September.  So the question again is, do I buy the comic sooner or the collection later?

Teaser Tuesday: The Living Infinite

A new read (in celebration of the eclipse? . . . or do I need an excuse?).  I could not resist.  Europa Editions (whose front and backlists are like a reader's smorgasbord of delights) kindly sent me a review copy of Chantal Acevedo's forthcoming The Living Infinite, which has been on my reading wishlist.  Now it is here and I have cracked open and started reading.  I am in the mood for some good historical fiction and this sounds like a winner:

" . .  . based on the true story of the Spanish princess Eulalia, an outspoken firebrand at the Bourbon court during the troubled and decadent final years of her family's reign.  After her cloistered childhood at the Spanish court, her youth spent in exile, and a loveless marriage, Eulalia gladly departs Europe for the New World. In the company of Thomas Aragon, the son of her one-time wet nurse and a small-town bookseller with a thirst for adventure, she travels by ship first to a Cuba bubbling with revolutionary fervor then on to the 1893 Chicago World Fair. As far as others are concerned, she is there as an emissary of the Bourbon dynasty and a guest of the Fair. Secretly, she is in America to find a publisher for her scandalous, incendiary autobiography, a book that might well turn the old world order on its head."

I have been eyeing her books for a while.  For some reason I thought she wrote in Spanish and would be a perfect WITMonth author (I have not done very well at reading WIT this month as it turns out), but she was born in Miami, but it's all good.  She has written several other books, all seem to have received very favorable reviews, so I think the moment has come for me to read her, too.

I've only just started reading and Eulalia has just 'arrived'.  Isabel is her mother and has gone through twelve births with only five living children, but Eulalia is already showing promise after an iffy beginning.

"Isabel let out a bark of laughter when the little infanta sneezed, but the sounds converged with shouts of anger and cries of anguish coming from the streets of Madrid--anger because the flag and the salvos had announced a girl, and anguish there would be no spare son, so ardently for in those dark, frightening days.  She was named Eulalia, which meant 'well spoken.'  No other Spanish royal had shared the appellation, and so it was a name for the present and the future, a name without a past."

I fully expect great things from Eulalia and I imagine her life will not always be an easy one.  But I am rooting for her and am ready to follow her life and adventures.

Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry

Flynn Berry's Under the Harrow is a disconcerting, unsettling kind of read, which when you consider it is a story of suspense and mystery is really a good thing.   I was already impressed, as this is a first novel, by the fact it is an Edgar Award finalist but the reviews were also quite promising--even Maureen Corrigan called it a "superbly crafted  psychological thriller" which is "exquisitely taut and intense."  I have to agree with her.  About the time I was calling into question the first-person narration I noticed that the cover is sort of sparkly in the right light.  It shimmers a bit and looks as if something was splattered across the image as there are dark splotches.  I do read a book at lunchtime . . . was I careless and spilled something?  No, it's not me, the shimmers are made to look like blood.  All of a sudden I was feeling all sorts of creepy.

Nora and her sister Rachel are as close as two sisters can be.  Nora lives in London and is a writer, but travels often to the small country village where her sister lives and is training to be a nurse.  They depend on each other as there are no parents in their lives--a mother who has passed and a father they avoid.  They spend their holidays in Cornwall, which holds a fond place in their hearts, but Nora is arriving with good news as she has been offered a grant to work in France.  She comes expecting to find Rachel waiting for her at the train station or happily ensconced in her kitchen engaged in her favorite pastime, cooking.

There is no Rachel at the station, and the house has an odd feel to it when she arrives.  It's as if something has flown out at her when she opens the door.  And then she sees Rachel's dog Fenno, dead and dangling from the stairwell banister.  Her sister obviously tried to fight of her murderer.  She crawled up the stairs leaving bloodied handprints on the stairs and wall.  By the time Nora realizes her sister is gone and she must call for help, she herself is covered in blood and the world around her is reeling.

All the details are there, from the first few pages on.  So many things to notice and take in and over the course of the story it all begins coming together, but in odd juxtapositions.  Like any good mystery, this is a puzzle to be sorted out and put together, but the more you read the more you realized that the pieces are not fitting, or that the picture they are revealing is not at all the one you are expecting to see.  Rachel told Nora that Marlow, the village where she lives, is not 'quite right'.  Something is wrong there and girls have gone missing or were assaulted.  And some years back Rachel was attacked, but the perpetrator was never caught and Rachel's own behavior was called into question.\

And the deeper you go into this slim novel, the more you begin to question not only Marlow and its residents, but Nora herself.  Maybe she is unhappy with the way the investigation is going, but perhaps more so, she is continuing Rachel's inquiries into the men who might have assaulted her all those years ago.  Surely it must be related to her death now.  She is sure it must be one man in particular who had shown such an interest in Rachel.  Nora's behavior verges on the obsessive.  Is it only the ties that bind two very close siblings?  Or is there more to their relationship that is not being told to us?

The more I read the less I found to like about Nora and the more I began to question her motivations.  Was she becoming unhinged because of the grief or was her true self coming out?  There was something sinister about this story, so kudos to Flynn Berry for making me question the storytelling and the narrator, as for me that is a good suspense story.  The pieces really are all there, but you don't realize what is important  and who is being truthful until the very end.  And then she still might surprise you!

Dippable Books and Other Reading Notes

I'm not going to Colorado this year, but this is about the time I would normally go with my family, and I was thinking how serene being in the mountains and sitting by a river would be about now.  I can only inwardly sigh and rely on old memories and then escape back into my books.  (And hope next year might include a little away time).

Since books are my 'away' at the moment, I am not thinking of them too much as indulgences or feeling guilty about the number I seem to be switching back and forth from.  They are my own little mini celebrations.  I have been coming across very dippable books and now my pile includes three.  I'd like to think I will read all of them cover and cover and I will certainly try, but they are books I can take my time with.  They all contain very short essays or writings or poems that I can easily spend time with each every day or two and make slow but steady progress with. 

The first is one that I have written about here as it was a NYRB subscription book last year (that I did not finish reading . . .).  I've picked up once again Robert Walser's Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories, which are just as weirdly quirky and charming as I remember them.   Walser was a Swiss writer born into a German-speaking family, and the pieces are often very playful while at the same time being tinged by overtones of sadness and melancholy.  They span the early part of the twentieth century ending just before WWII, so that must explain a good part of the tone.

The other two books are library discoveries, one being a recommendation I made that they filled.  I just picked up Robert Finch's The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile-Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore.  I have yet to do more than open the book and take a peek, but I am sure this is right up my alley!  The thousand miles he refers to isn't, of course, the length of the beach but an approximation of all the many walks he made over the years.  How fortunate to be able to be so close to such an amazing place, and hopefully I will get to experience it in just a little way by reading his essays. 

The last book I am not sure how I find, but it must have been during one of my many bookish online wanderings.  This is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton.  It looks like another very manageable book of essays by a variety of contemporary authors.  The Palestine Festival of Literature was started in 2008 as a way of creating ties between Palestine and the rest of the literary world.  The short essays are the writer's experiences taking part in the now tenth decade of the festival.  It looks really interesting.

Along with these I have my usual reading to look forward to--I am hoping to finish reading John Wyndham and Flynn Berry, maybe read Eileen Chang's short Lust, Caution and we'll see what other directions my books take me.

***

And then there are always a few bookish links that have caught my eye over the course of the week that I will share with you, too.

I am 'happy' to see that someone else owns more books than me and has even less space in which to 'house' them.  I am in a decluttering mode, trying to get rid of possessions rather than accumulate more (well, except in the case of books), and a day will come when I sell my house and move into a much smaller space (that requires so much work) but I already fear how I will manage with so many books!

A little news on forthcoming book to big screen movie adaptations.  I really do need to read Oscar Wilde.  I love the idea of a female lead in the main role . . .  And I do have that Donna Tartt book on my reading pile.  And yes, I am in line at the library for Ruth Ware's newest thriller.

Yeah, so I didn't get any books to read before the great eclipse, but just in case here are a few for later (and I even have one of them on my reading pile already).

Oh, and a reminder that I need to look for a copy of Antigone, since I want to read Kamila Shamsie's book.  (See how my reading pile grows a little each day, and with each new bookish email newsletter that I receive?).

I found this really interesting and would love to visit the houses myself (and then read the books inspired by them), but as my budget won't allow maybe I will just order a copy of the book!

More wishful purposes--I want this book, too.  (Because it goes without saying that of course I would rather be reading).  And you can never own enough t-shirts (they are like tote bags, right?).  This is the one I mostly have my eye on. 

Happy weekend (reading) everyone!

Omaha Reads: The Bones of Paradise

The 2017 Omaha Reads book selection has been announced and this year Jonis Agee's The Bones of Paradise won.  Every year or so there is a list of books presented and voted on.  There will be a variety of events offered for readers to take part in and that includes an author talk next month, which hopefully I'll be able to attend.  I have read Jonis Agee before (I think in pre-blogging days, so it has been a while).  She is a local author and teaches at the University (not the same campus where I work, however) and her writing often reflects the local environment and history, and I have heard many good things about The Bones of Paradise. 

I picked up my copy from the library and already two people have seen it in my hands and remarked upon it and how good the story is.

"A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land—its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass, and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness—and the durable men and women who dared to tame it. Intimate and epic, The Bones of Paradise is a remarkable achievement: a mystery, a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration of the beauty and brutality, tenderness and cruelty that defined the settling of the American West."

Author Stewart O'Nan has called it a "gritty, bloody romance set a decade after Wounded Knee.  Half murder mystery and half family saga, [it] is a spirited reweaving of history". 

I have never properly visited the Nebraska Sandhills, but I think they are a really beautiful and unique geographic region, and I won't even begin to tell you how much I think the Keystone Pipeline that is proposed to run through this area is a really, really, bad (and terribly sad) idea.  It would be wonderful to take a little field trip there after I read the book, but I might have to simply content myself with looking and visiting virtually and through the pages of a book. 

A little taste from the opening pages.  A rancher, J.B. Bennett, (no spoiler as this is noted in the jacket blurb) is about to be murdered, but here he is reflecting on the land.

"A new patch of low-lying prickly pear cactus had sprung up beyond the windmill and water tank.  He'd have the men dig it out.  It was a constant battle to hand on to the grass, the only thing to support the cattle that made his living.  A person had to keep his eye on the smallest detail while the vast emptiness constantly tugged at his vision.  You can get lost in a heartbeat out here, he'd told his wife.  It took him most of his life to realize the significance of his own words.  For some reason this morning every little thought was like a handful of nettles, singing and chiding him as he tried to drop it and move past."

Teaser Tues: Swimming Toward the Ocean

One of the things I like about having a nice (probably far too large for my living circumstances, but oh well) personal library is that when I have a reading whim, I can usually without too much effort come up with a few books, and in some cases a large stack, of reading possibilities.  Name a place or a subject or a time period and I bet I can find a book to match that will be a satisfying read. 

I am a slave to my reading whims, I think.  Last night at the gym I had this sudden urge (and I am not even sure what prompted it) to read something set in NYC.  I had a mental look through the books already in progress on my reading table and fished around in my memory for a book started but set aside, but I could come up with nothing.  When I got home I started peering at shelves and stacks of books until I had at least four and then had to sit and peruse. 

Of course I have had this book on my radar.  One that I read years and years ago.  I recall liking it, though now the details are (unsurprisingly) pretty hazy.  I came across it looking for another book and made sure it was handily on top of a pile in my little bookroom, and then not long ago I brought it from my book room to my bedroom.  And voila, last night it made it into that pile of four.  In the end I grabbed it and dropped it into my bookbag and will start reading, actually re-reading, it later.

The book?  One you may not have heard of, or perhaps had but maybe have forgotten.  Carole Glickfeld's novel Swimming Toward the Ocean was published in 2002, which is probably when I read it.  The novel is set in 1950s NYC about a Jewish immigrant family.

"Chenia Arnow is a Russian-Jewish immigrant in 1950s New York, a sharp-witted, Betty Grable look-alike whose accent and Old-World superstitions mask untapped passions and intellectual curiosity. Her husband Ruben is a handsome philanderer who has a knack for creating phony lawsuits. Their precocious daughter Devorah, tells–and often imagines–the richly involving story of their lives.  No one expects."

It is still in print and in stock, so that will tell you something.  I have good memories of it, and this is how it begins:

"I imagine my mother straightening the decks of cards, then lining up the Parchesi game with the Chinese checkers board before she takes my sister's jump rope off the closet shelf.  She doesn't lock the apartment door when she leaves.  In her backless slippers, she walks up two flights, clopping with each step.  The door to the roof is heavy.  She has to pull hard to open it.  Only a few pyramids of snow remain from the storm a few days earlier, in the recesses that the sun fails to reach.  My mother wears a cotton dress, short sleeves, no coat, although it's November.  Thanksgiving almost.  It doesn't matter that she's cold.  It might help, she thinks."

Yes, I think this will do very nicely indeed.  Books really do save me, in a variety of ways.  I can't imagine not having a book close at hand or going even a day without reading.  If you have a copy or can get a copy from your library and feel the inkling, too, please join me.  I remember liking Chenia and it is time to visit her again.