A Work in Progress

Last Year in August

Three books that I read last year, on a very very very (for me) clean night stand that I actually finished reading.  This is where I was at with my reading last year.  This week it was back to classes for the students at the university where I work, so I've mostly been absent here, though I had not planned to be.  It's Friday and I am feeling a little uninspired--mostly reading just a couple of books in order to finish (one by tomorrow which is going to be a challenge at this point) and not doing anything else very creative, so I was wondering what I was up to last year at this time . . .

Not surprisingly, as I tend to to this time of year, I wanted to change course and so cleared off that reading pile.  I wonder if I should do the same?  Maybe I should share my night table this year?  Something to do over the long weekend perhaps.

My reading prompt last year was "A Month in the Country" and apparently I didn't find what I was looking for in this pile as I ended up reading Eve Chase's The Wildling Sisters, which I recall liking very much.  I was not very long ago thinking I need to pick up another book by her.  Maybe I will see what is on hand this weekend.

I went to see this movie last year in August and it was very good indeed.  Maybe it is streaming somewhere and I can watch it again (though this weekend I have a date with The Great British Baking Show and I must admit I am intrigued by and may watch Amazon's Carnival Row--there has not been much on offer this month on TV that I have wanted to sit down and watch).

I was stitching, or thinking about stitching anyway!  I keep pulling this out, but I think I was out of one of the main colors and so it kept ending back up in my stitching basket.  I really do need to finish it, though I have started a new macramé project.  Alas, I have not gotten far as the pattern I bought calls for some knots that are new to me and I got confused when I had to add on rope, so I need to find a Youtube video to help me.  

I went book browsing and book shopping--what a surprise!  I have my weekly stash of library holds to pick up this weekend, too.

My NYRB selection was a book by Iriso Origo, which I read and enjoyed (she is someone I have read before so was happy to revisit).

And of this list of books I was looking forward to: I have read one of them, revisted Elly Griffiths (even if not the book on that list) and bought the paperback edition of the Adriana Trigiani novel that I was lusting after (see, patience--if I wait long enough I can get the paperback edition--maybe I should pull that out this weekend?).

And drum roll, please, I think my happiest accomplishment--last year at this time I decided I wanted to read Sue Grafton's Alphabet mysteries and had read letter A!  I am currently up to letter M and will keep rolling with Kinsey!  Thirteen letters down and twelve left to read.  I hope and expect to be at letter Y by this time next year.

Do you ever go back in your reading log/journal and see what you were up to?  I kind of like seeing where I have been and what I was planning on doing.  And those lists I make are always interesting to revisit--I might find a few of those books in paperback now or maybe the timing is right to finally read them.  

I plan on reading as much as I can this weekend.  I am finishing a film class and maybe seeing something new at the cinema.  The weather is going to be manageable, and I hope next week I will be rested and inspired and maybe I will have some new or different (or just some continuations) plans to share.  Happy weekend everyone!

And a New Arrival: The Flower Arranger

Since I am going to write about this properly on a blog tour when the book is released, I will just give a little visual teaser now.  Agora Books is a small London-based independent publisher who I have been fortunate enough to have discovered last year.  When they asked if I would like to read The Flower Arranger by JJ Ellis, I could not pass up the opportunity as it works perfectly with my Reading Japan project that I have been enjoying so much.  

I have just started the novel, which came in the mail yesterday (note the very cool packaging--I love that they send out their books with a little added fanfare!).  This is a thriller set in Tokyo and featuring a British journalist trying to break into serious news, Holly Blain, and a detective, Tetsu Tanaka, who are going to cross paths and become involved in a series of murders.  I am not far into the story but I am already hooked.  This is apparently the first of a planned trilogy, so if I like this as much as I am anticipating I will have more to look forward to.

I am nearing the end of Yasunari Kawabata's The Old Capital, which is one of the books that helped the author win the Nobel Prize in 1968.  The story is lovely and very evocative.  I want to Google all the temples and festivals and places that are mentioned in the text as they are so lovingly described.  The story is almost secondary to the imagery.  The book has been adapted to film twice, but I don't think I can get my hands on either film, sadly.  The Ellis crime novel will be a decided change and I am always happy to switch gears to something new (especially as I let  the Kawabata sink in and percolate a little).  Is it too soon to look forward to the long upcoming weekend?  My reading is all set out and ready to go.

A Mini Weekend Mishmash

Since a few people asked to see my macramé wall hanging when it was finished, I'll start here.  The ends are just loose with a little bit of fringe at the bottom.  I was afraid I would not be able to remember the knots and be able to replicate the last two diamonds on my own, but with the help of photos I took of my teacher's finished hanging and a few diagrams I had no problem.  I might have fudged a few knots, but for a first try I am pleased with the result.

And a little close up of that middle section.  I have been looking for another simple beginner project to do on my own and I found a small plant hanger that looks pretty cool.  I had to buy the PDF from someone on Etsy, but the diagrams are very clear and it was not expensive--and also on the smaller side.  I have my rope and the brass ring it calls for, so I am going to start this weekend I hope.  My first solo project.  I have not forgotten my cross stitch.  Maybe this will inspire to pull out something in earnest (I have a few things close at hand but so far they are just waiting impatiently for me).

***

Have you seen Where'd You Go, Bernadette? yet?  I hope it doesn't matter if you've read the book or not, as I haven't and don't think I will manage it before trying to see it. 

I am excited to see Downtown Abbey on the big screen.  One of my local movie theaters is having a special dress party for the opening, though I think I'll just stick to seeing it on a nice, quiet random afternoon.  The trailer makes it look as lavish and beautiful as the series was, but I wonder what sort of drama they will manage in two hours.  The King and Queen are coming?  I guess it is an excuse to go all out for ceremony, but after the shenanigans that took place over how many seasons . . . It might be kind of tame in comparison?  

I am totally thrilled, however, for the forthcoming new season of The Great British Baking Show, which I have found to be hugely addicting.  I am not one these days to either cook or bake, but I can watch these episodes endlessly.  Often when I am not finding anything good to watch I will just pull up a show or two to keep me entertained.  More exciting--we get to see the shows at nearly the same time they are airing in the UK.

***

Now I have a request.  If you stop by here frequently you know I am very much a mood reader, and a reader who moves between books (probably to the detriment of my current reading piles) easily and often.  So, I am currently enjoying a reread of Susan Fletcher's award winning novel, Eve Green.  It has been so long since I read the book I only have a vague sense of knowing I enjoyed it immensely the first time around and so far am enjoying as much as the first go.  The story is told in retrospect--about a summer in the narrator's childhood which she now looks back on many years later.  Evie is sent to rural Wales after the death of her mother at the age of seven.  It's a pivotal summer in her life and she must navigate a strange world where she doesn't understand her background or the reason some of the villagers view her with so much animosity.  

Fletcher's writing is gorgeous.  It is a multi-layered story and told with a complexity that makes you think.  She slowly reveals things and you have to pay attention in order not to miss details and clues that will fill in this picture and create a whole.  If her other books are as good I definitely need to read them as well.  

Being the book glutton that I am, happy to immerse myself in a good story like this . . . I am enjoying the journey yet I know it is only going to make me want more when I finish.  I am a fan of a good coming-of-age story like this.  Preferably told by a girl/woman and one of those stories told from the vantage point of age and knowledge yet with that pitch perfect girlhood voice.  Now I am on a quest to find some similar reads and if you have any suggestions they are most welcome.

I have a short list of books that are similar, at least in that they are coming-of-age stories even if not quite the same way told.  These are books/authors who are my go-to reads as I know they are reliably good even the second third any maybe even fourth time around.  A few I have literally read that many times and a few are ripe for another read (like Eve Green).  I found this list I made years ago that has a few that fit closely with this description.  But these are the books otherwise that come to mind first, and I have read each one and in some cases multiple times.  

Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice

On Borrowed Wings, Chandra Prasad

Learning to Swim and In a Good Light, Clare Chambers

Coming Home, Rosamund Pilcher

Ferris Beach, Jill McCorkle

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

A Brief History of Montmaray, Michelle Cooper (the first book of a trilogy and maybe it is time to read the other two books)

Readalike suggestions, anyone?  Thanks in anticipation!

Coming Attractions: New Books

I've been really fortunate of late to get some good review copies in the mail and in a couple of cases I will be reading to be part of an upcoming blog tour or two.  One book is still en route but will be a perfect addition to my reading Japan project.  The other is a book I have fallen into quite happily as it is a charming first mystery by a British author, so, right up my alley.  Rule Brittania by Alec Marsh is set in mid-1930s England and features a Cambridge historian who falls into a murder mystery.  So far it has this wonderful slightly madcap feel to it with a very visual sensibility.  The chemistry between the characters really draws you in and has me turning the pages quickly.  It is due to be published in September by the indie publisher Accent Press (which I see has a slew of interesting-looking mysteries I think I need to explore further).

I know I have mentioned Rebecca Alexander and her newest Sage Westfield mystery, which was published earlier this month.  I couldn't wait to get my hands on it, but then I got wrapped up in a few other books (notably an Elly Griffiths/Ruth Galloway mystery whose heroine is also a forensic achaeologist), but I am ready now to jump into A Shroud of Leaves.  I needed a little palate change before picking up another novel about forensics.  This second novel is about the discovery of a girl's body on the same plot of land where another teenager went missing two dacades earlier, but was never found.  Titan Books passed this one on to me.

I must admit I went directly to New Vessel Press and asked for a galley of Ronit Matalon's And the Bride Closed the Door, when I saw the announcement.  As it is getting closer to the October publishing date I think it must be safe to start reading.  It is a slender novel by an important Israeli author who shortly passed away after this book was published in Israel, where it won the Brenner Prize.  Aside from having an interest in literature from the region I was intrigued by the plot in which a young bride locks herself in her bedroom on her wedding day and refuses to go through the ceremony.

I'm waiting anxiously for one other book published by another small/indie press, (I am very fond of these small presses which don't get as much attention as they deserve, I think).  You'll be hearing more about all these books in the coming weeks or so.

August NYRB: Heaven's Breath

Every year I say this is going to be the last year (for a while) and rather than renew my NYRB Classics subscription I will instead read some of those books I didn't get to in the previous years.  I have been a subscriber since 2013!  So that is a year's worth of classics for 7 (or nearly so) years.  A total of 84 books by the end of this year, which I am happy to have, but I won't even count how many I have actually managed to read.  It is always a dilemma as the books are so good, but as much as I hope and tell myself I will keep up with my reading, I never do.  Case in point--the last NYRB I even mentioned here was back in March and I gave up on Max Havelaar.  Wrong book at the wrong time.  And being such a mood reader I have to usually feel inspired to pick up a book and then really engaged to keep reading.  More so these days when it comes to classics, though I would love to get out of my classics reading rut.

So it is surprising that this month's selection, a book about natural history, on of all things--the wind--that I am finding quite compelling.  I took it to the gym yesterday thinking I would read a few pages before moving on to one of my current novels, but ended up spending nearly my entire work out reading about weather patterns.  Who knew it could be so very interesting.  Of course I am a firm believer that in the right hands, with the right author, almost any topic can be made not only wholly accessible, but downright entertaining. 

Lyall Watson's Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind was originally published in 1984.  The back jacket blurb calls it encyclopedic and enchanting and if all nature and science books were like this one I would be an enthusiastic reader of all things science.  It brings to mind the books of Diane Ackerman (and now I kind of want to revisit my shelves and pull a book or two of hers off and add them to my reading pile).

Although this is only about 329 pages (not including 14 pages making up the Dictionary of Winds in the back of the book), it feels like a hefty tome, which is a little bit intimidating.  I admit that reading this is like having a cartload of information wash over me--it is a sensory overload almost.  Reading it is like being inundated with facts since he starts with the broader picture, the start of the world, and then works his way in.  I am enjoying what I am reading and penciling little bits that I would like to remember (and there are lots of pencil marks so far), but I know I am only absorbing a small portion of what I am reading.  It begins with the big bang and the arrival of the universe.  He describes the solar system and the planets and their natural satellites and what their atmospheres are like and then he begins to focus on Earth/Gaia.  It is so very fascinating.  At the moment I am reading about the physics of the wind--it is like building the framework and then he'll move on to specifics.  

This feels like a journey and in the introduction that is what this book is likened to.  Since I have no idea what to share from the text (though I might have to share bits and pieces as I go), let me give a teaser--the first couple of paragraphs of the introduction to give you a sense of what this is all about.

"Sailing back from the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men land on the island of Aeolia, the domain of Aeolus, the Keeper of the Winds.  Aeolus gives them an oxhide sack that contains the captive winds of the world--apart from a gentle westerly to waft them safely home--with strict instructions not to open it.  Believing there is treasure inside, the greedy crew do just that.  The opening of the sack unleashes a chaotic gale that hurls their ship upon the waves, out across the wine-dark sea, blowing Odysseus madly off course.  His adventures last ten years."

"[This book] is that oxxhide sack.  All the winds of the world are inside.  If you open it, you will be blown to places you never expected."

"Lyall Watson is a modern-day Keeper of the Winds.  His natural history of the great invisible forces that shape our planet--from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the serotonin inside our brains--twists and turns, uplifts and surprises like the subject it describes.  'Wind is defined as air in motion,' he tells us early on, then explodes this apparently simple statement in every conceivable way.  The reader is propelled back through recorded history into deep time, from the formation of the universe, through physics and mythology, biology and psychology, religion and sociology, in and out of an extraordinary diversity of cultures."

I was thought the most interesting parts (mythology and religion and psychology and . . .) were going to be the best bits, but he has me on an area that feels quite foreign--the physics.  It can only get better.  At this rate a book about wind might well be one of my best reads of the year.  See, it is books like this that make me waver.  Maybe I will renew my subscription after all.  What other gems might I miss otherwise?

Macramé Project 2: Wall Hanging

Just a quick and short Friday afternoon post.  I wanted to share a few photos from the second macramé class I took earlier this past week. I really enjoy this and love taking classes.  I didn't (and I think none of my other classmates either) quite finish, but I think I can manage the last bit at home.  This second class was to make a wall hanging.  The first part just a repetition of knots I learned last time.  Good old square knots.

However we learned something new and a little more complicated.  These are clove hitches which are used a lot, but which I struggled with as I kept looping the rope the wrong way.  So, something new for my brain to learn and always good to make these new connections.  I am sure with practice I will get it down pat.

Those knots are what created this lovely (well, mine is perhaps a little clunky, but not so bad for a first try) diamond shape.  I will share the finished piece when I get there!  Now I am on the lookout for a pattern that is easy that I can attempt on my own.  No more of these classes for the short run, though I am going to take another basket weaving class and some weaving classes this fall!  A nice break from the books, but no worries there, as there will be lots (I hope) of reading taking place this weekend. 

Reading Japan: Update

I have a few chunskter size crime novels by Japanese authors that I have wanted to dig into, but their near door stop size does make me hesitate.  With a really good read, the longer the better.  But the hesitation on my part is more a matter of carrying the book about.  Since most of my reading time doesn't take place at home, one hefty book can make my tote bag and daily walk something of a slog (the solution is to only carry that book with me . . .  not three . . .  what a thought!).  The Japanese crime novels I have been reading have been especially satisfying of late and I think at least one or maybe even two might make my best read of the year list.

Miyuki Miyabe is one of my great finds this year (as is Seicho Matsumoto who I wrote about not long ago).  All She Was Worth (Kasha in Japanese and translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum) is a crime novel that was a best novel of the year in Japan when it was published in 1999.  It is not only entertaining and interesting but quite timely, too, as it deals with identity theft and consumerism and the banking crisis.  I know that might sound a little boring as mysteries go, and there are a few places in the story where there might be more explication of how the financial world operates than some readers might like, but I found it all fascinating.

Perhaps it was the exotic nature of reading about how it all works in Japan.  Similarities to here but how the mystery pans out and how the stealing of identities was done was very foreign and particular to the place.  The story opens with a request to find a missing person.  Honma is a Tokyo detective on leave due an accident that has him limping and recuperating.  He is a single parent (his wife died) with a young son, Makoto.  Isaka is an older friend who does the cooking and helps take care of Makoto.  I must admit that part of the enjoyment of this mystery was the likable qualities of these characters.  They seem such a tight family unit.  Makoto worries about his dad and how he should be resting and not walking without his cane. 

A nephew of Honma's deceased wife shows up asking him to look into the disappearance of his fiancé.  Things were going along just fine until they decided to marry and he discovers she had declared bankruptcy and was in all sorts of financial difficulties.  Looking into the disappearance is no easy matter when Honma discovers that the girlfriend was living under an assumed name.  She took the identity of another woman close to her in age and appearance.  Now both women are not to be found and it becomes quite a twisty turny investigation.  One of the things I found fascinating was the use of a family register, which in the story anyway, appears to be a standard practice in Japan.  A family has a register of births and deaths and residences and the woman's name would be removed and added to her husband's when she marries.  In the case of the missing woman she had established a brand new one when she took on a new identity.  In every respect this was a wholly satisfying read and I wish the author would write more stories featuring Honma.

I found Banana Yoshimoto's Moshi Moshi (Moshi Moshi Shimokitazawa in Japanese and translated into English by Asa Yoneda) much more satisfying by story's end than I was expecting.  I was enjoying it with some reservations, but it all came together in the end.  The full Japanese title actually makes more sense now that I have finished the book than the English title, but I didn't know the reference to Shimokitazawa until I was reading the story.

This is a coming of age story of sorts.  Yoshie's father has died in a weird accident.  He was part of a lover's suicide pact, only he was not a willing victim, which makes it all the more strange.  The woman drugged him and then took him with her into death.  He had been having an affair with her and on the night of his death he left his cell phone at home.  That phone will make an appearance later in the story in the dream's Yoshie has.  She dreams her father is calling her on the phone.  Her mother is having similar dreams.  I am finding that it is not unusual for their to be ghostly appearances in Japanese stories (at least in the handful of books I have read).  I think there is something very different culturally with family and ancestor respect and the idea of the spirit or soul not necessarily being at rest at death.  

In order to make a clean start Yoshie moves to the neighborhood of Shimokitazawa, which is (or was--maybe now it has gone somewhat touristy or lost some of its bohemian flair?) where she begins working in a restaurant (another theme I am coming across--food and cooking) and trying to regain her equilibrium as she was quite close to her father.  Her mother soon follows her and moves into her small apartment, which Yoshie initially resents.  But this is a story about coming to terms with grief and finding this new environment--filled with good friends, good food and potential new loves both healing and life affirming.  

I have a nice healthy stack of books set in Japan and by Japanese or Japanese-American authors at my fingertips.  I think I have read about seven or eight now and hope to at least get to ten before I think about 'finishing' this project.  Or maybe I will just keep pulling books from the stack as I am finding Japanese culture and literature and film so very fascinating.  I am now trying to decide on a new read and am contemplating either something by Gail Tsukiyama (an American author of Chinese-Japanese heritage) or Nobel Prize winner The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata.  The choice is, of course, so hard as they all sound so good.

It's Going to be a Long Week: Reading Notes

• I probably should not start the week with the idea that it is going to "be a long week", but I have a feeling it is going to be a long week.  It's only Monday and I am already dreaming of Friday.
• It has been a really long time since I have made a bullet point post, so here goes.
• I think my current state of being can only work in disjointed thoughts.  Perfect bullet points.
• My nighttable was so full of books (as if that is a bad thing?), that I separated possible 'false starts' from 'midway through and plan to finish' books.
• Those 'false starts' are now sitting on the floor next to the night table, so I have to do something with them.  I can't have a new category of books piled on the floor.
• Because I already have other piles of books on the floor that also really need to be shelved.  (Random newish books mostly).
• Last night I was waiting for a load of laundry to finish spinning so was passing those few moments by looking at piles of hardcovers which sit next to my desk (in another room I might add) and ended up pulling about six books that I had not looked at in ages.  I then proceeded to pick one which ended up in my bookbag this morning.
• Such complete disregard for those 'false starts'.  Here I am with another start.  And a pile of other 'starts' now almost abandoned.
• I am almost finished reading three books, however.  So, maybe I will count that new one as an 'in anticipation for finishing something else' book.
• Yes, that is how I think.
• Maybe I think about books too much?
• I have five books waiting for me on the hold shelf at the library.  
• I have this tendency to request books pell mell, but then when they come in I peruse them in the library standing in front of the hold shelves.
• I often end up only taking one or two home.  I do this all the time and am too embarrassed to take them up to the circulation desk and admit I asked for them but now don't want them.
• Shhh!
• I then check them all out and then drop the ones I don't want into the outside book return.
• I probably should not admit that.  It strikes me as a little odd or obsessive.
• I should really just put books on the 'for later' virtual shelf in my account.  
• But I don't often go back to that virtual shelf and request books from it.  Because there are always new books being flaunted everywhere that I want to request from the library.  Endless new books being paraded and requested.  And then dropped into the return bin outside the library.
• I am reading Sue Grafton's M is for Malice at the moment.  Kinsey is feeling sort of depressed.  Or, she is sort of questioning her purpose in life.  I am happy not to be the only one in a melancholy sort of mood.
• Summer feels like it is almost over (but apparently Not the humidity, which is going to last forever it seems).  But then, really, does it matter as my schedule is the same.  All four seasons.  Same.  My life is filled with saminess. 
• Except for books.  Those are constantly changing.
• See above--'false start' pile of books.
• Even if I have a pile of false starts I am still enjoying the in progress books very much.
• My must finish next book is my Japanese Literature choice, Banana Yoshimoto's Moshi Moshi.  Isn't that a great title?  I am enjoying it, but . . . 
• I am ready to finish it to be honest.  I don't mind stories where not much happens, but maybe it is the fact that the characters--a mother and daughter who are dealing with grief.  Yoshie's father committed suicide--it is curious as this is the second book by a Japanese author where characters have made a suicide pact and the pair of lovers killed themselves.  
• Well, technically the other one was a mystery and it was a murder that looked like a suicide.  And there was some manipulation in this story as well.
• I think my next book is going to be historical fiction.  No deaths (at least no suicide pacts) I hope.
• Tomorrow I am taking another macramé class.  This time we are making a wall hanging.  I'm really looking forward to it.
• I pulled out an unfinished cross stitch project over the weekend, but I am missing one important color (which is probably why I set it aside) so I need to dig around in my stash so I can get back to work.
• Last time I did a bullet point post I was wishing I could click my heels together and wish myself away somewhere different and exotic.  I think I hadn't been on vacation that year either.  (And that was several years ago).
• Guess what.  I wish I could click my heels and do some more wishing.  Where would I go?  Maybe one of the coasts--but not anywhere hot.  Somewhere quiet and with a really good view.  Ahh, the sound of waves and lapping water.
• Click - click - click.
• Nothing.
• Sigh.
• Last night I watched the last episode of season one of Stranger Things.
• Sure, a little closure.  One character comes back.  But another one disappears.  One character is picked up in a car driven by the "bad guys".  Hmm.  He comes back and then takes food from a Christmas party he was at and leaves it in a box in the woods.  Who is he leaving it for?  So, kind of tidy-ish ending but not really.
• Drat.  Now I guess I have to start watching season two.
• A new show to watch, some needlework projects waiting for me, some reshuffling of books and the promise of a new selection.  Maybe this week won't be so very long after all.

As Close to Us as Breathing, Elizabeth Poliner

Sometimes it is the unexpected, the unplanned for, that is the most rewarding and ultimately the most satisfying when it comes to stories.  When I set myself the prompt " A Day at the Beach", I really had in mind something light and frothy.  An easy story with a certain charm and lightness.  I had no idea what I was in store for with Elizabeth Poliner's As Close to Us as Breathing.

It is a book I have long had on my shelves and would pick up and look at but never quite get around to reading.  A story set in a place known warmly by the families who spend their summers in Woodmont, Connecticut as "Bagel Beach" for the influx of Jewish families who assemble there.  For the Syrkin sisters it is their special place to escape to.  1948, however, would be a pivotal moment in all their lives.  There were the years before, and then the world after, and the moment that changed everything.  That moment, and you find this out in the very first sentence, was the moment the youngest son dies in an accident.

So there is always this weight somewhere at the edge of your imagination as you are reading the story, but it is so well told and so engaging are the characters you just allow yourself to be drawn in to the lives of this extended family.  It is told mainly by the younger daughter of one of the three sisters.  Molly is Ada's daughter--sandwiched between the elder Howard and the forever young Davy who you grieve for even before the accident happens knowing the end before the story has a chance to play out.  The story shifts in time and place, but you never quite lose track of things so tightly is the telling.  You fall into the rhythms of the lives of this family--the men who stay in the city to work during the week.  The children who find their summer freedom, yet the restrictions placed on them both literally and figuratively.  Their little squabbles and happy discoveries.  The lives of the three sisters, their histories and disagreements that set the tone for everything that follows.

Vivie, Ada, and Bec are the three Syrkin sisters who are equal owners of the cottage they return to each summer.  Their parents didn't get to spend quite as much time there as they would have liked but it is a respite from regular life for the sisters and their families.  They arrive each summer and not even taking time to open the house properly they walk down to the beach and reclaim their space.  Ada and Vivie both have husbands and children; Vivie's daughter Nina just a little older than Molly and forever in competition with Howard.  Bec, though, has a career and a few secrets of her own.  Bec isn't the only one carrying a secret or two and over the course of that summer some secrets remain hidden deep inside and others come out crashing down.  So many small things come into play the day of Davy's accident, which will forever change the lives of the family.

The Syrkins are Jewish and their religion dictates how they shall live and behave--at least for the elder family members is it accepted as such, but the children are ready for a new world and new choices and opportunities that are not so closely tied to their faith.  1948 is not just a life changer for the Syrkins, but also for Israel, and while the action is mostly taking place at the beach, hovering on the periphery are the events that take place that year abroad.  There is the independence of a small country which changed the lives of so many refugees from the war and the earth shattering event that occurs in one small community at home.

When you have a good reading experience, like I had with As Close to Us as Breathing, you tend to look up the author and want another story by them to read.  Elizabeth Poliner, though, is a poet.  She has a book of interlinked stories and a book of poems.  I am not surprised to hear she is a poet, so beautifully done is this narrative.  It was not quite the breezy story I was expecting, but it was much better--a story of a family that feels flesh and blood touched by tragedy and making the best of life as they can.  Life doesn't always work out the way we hope and dream, but sometimes it can be just as satisfying.

July in Stillmeadow

Doesn't the name Stillmeadow, as a place that is, evoke peace and quiet.  A place outside the city where nothing but aspects of nature stop the eye's gaze.  Maybe the road, and it should be a road and not a street, passes by, but not too close by.  A still meadow.  Now that has a lot of appeal to me at the moment.  My monthly forays into the pages of this book, and into the inner space of my imagination are a very welcome distraction from how frazzled I have been feeling of late.  

July is lazy in my opinion, or it should be anyway.  It has a lazy feel in this chapter, too.  Gladys Tabor writes about July at Sillmeadow in her usual meandering way.  Some family news and reflections on the weather and nature in general.  A few recipes are included, and a story or two about the dogs and grandchildren (not that I mean to pair them like that, but it seems in her eyes they are all equal.  Everyone is family and so worthy of mention).

I think sometimes I reach for older books, books published in the early part of the twentieth century, to get away from the noise of today.  I am finding that watching or listening to the news is increasingly dispiriting.  I need to listen to it, but I don't want to.  Part of the charm of Stillmeadow is the feeling of nostalgia the book has.  It is a lovely escape, but Tabor is critical, too, of the world about her as much as she appreciates her family and home and the natural world.  I sometimes think why didn't we listen harder then (this book was published in 1967) and do more, and every day I wonder if now it is too late and we are heading so quickly down a path that I wonder if we can ever turn back from.

So I have only two excerpts to share for July.  One is a gentle critique, which now in hindsight feels even more critical for our lack of action.  But I will also share one that is a bit more hopeful, as Gladys Tabor seems a most hopeful person.

"Nature replenishes herself unless man interferes.  It was a man who made he dust bowl.  As I read Stewart Udall's book The Quiet Crisis, I wished it were required reading for every American.  It is a beautiful book, although parts of it are heartbreaking.  It maybe that no country in the world has such varied natural beauty and wealth of rivers, lakes, mountains, plains, and forests.  But we have been busy destroying it since we first took it from the Indians.  It is time, now, today--not in fifty years when it will be too late--to realize we must conserve every resource.  The quick dollars we acquire ruining the land will not feed our children and their children."

*****

"Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone.  It is good to listen, not to voices, but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen.  If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity.  And then, in some unexplained way, we share some of it with others."