A Work in Progress

Inspiration for German Literature Month

Here we are heading towards the end of November and reading has been going on all month for the tenth annual German Literature Month already, so I am very tardily going to share a stack of books that might be read now (or later in my case).  I am reading one of the books with my sights set on another one to sneak in before the end of the year.  But the beauty of a pile of books is that they can be read and enjoyed anytime.  

My current read from this pile is After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life That Came Next by Jana Hensel.  I have been interested for a while now in the former GDR and this is proving a really interesting read.  So many of us can look back fondly on childhoods spent elsewhere and maybe even return to the locale and still feel a sense of what came before.  Hensel's childhood has all but disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  

As a companion read I cam across and have borrowed from the library Savid F. Strack's Letters Over the Wall: Life in Communist East Germany.  Strack was a German language teacher who kept up a decades long correspondence with four East Germans.  I can't wait to dig into this one.

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann -- "In Malina, Bachmann uses the intertwined lives of three characters to explore the roots of society's breakdown that lead to fascism, and in Bachmann's own words, "it doesn't start with the first bombs that are dropped; it doesn't start with the terror that can be written about in every newspaper. It starts with relationships between people."

Gilgi, One of Us by Irmgard Keun -- "Gilgi knows where she's going in life: she's ambitious, focused and determined, even when her boss tries it on with her, even when her parents reveal a terrible secret on her twenty-first birthday. Then she meets the charming but feckless Martin and, for the first time, Gilgi finds herself bewilderingly and dangerously derailed. Irmgard Keun's electrifying debut was an instant sensation in Weimar Germany, with its frank, fearless exploration of sex, work and love."

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder -- "Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of theresistance against East Germany's communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain--and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany's brutal state security force."  A very different perspective on life behind the Wall.

The Have-Nots by Katharina Hacker -- "Jakob and Isabelle meet at a party on September 11. They marry and move to London, where Jakob takes the post of a colleague killed in the World Trade Center attack. But the couple's relationship, like the world they once knew and the happiness they once shared, proves more fragile with each passing day."

And a recent find and perhaps one (along with the book of correspondence) to read for my December prompt!  I Have No Regrets: Dairies 1955-1963 by Brigitte Reimann -- "Frank and refreshing, Brigitte Reimann's collected diaries provide a candid account of life in socialist Germany. With an upbeat tempo and amusing tone, I Have No Regrets contains detailed accounts of the author's love affairs, daily life, writing, and reflections. Like the heroines in her stories, Reimann was impetuous and outspoken, addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the era of the German Democratic Republic. She followed the state's call for artists to leave their ivory towers and engage with the people, moving to the new town of Hoyerswerda to work part-time at a nearby industrial plant and run writing classes for the workers. Her diaries and letters provide a fascinating parallel to her fictional writing. By turns shocking, passionate, unflinching, and bitter--but above all life-affirming--they offer an unparalleled insight into what life was like during the first decades of the GDR." 

Any good books about the GDR or just interesting novels or nonfiction about Germany that you have read recently?

Reading Notes: Valentine Edition

By coincidence I am reading a few books, though one in particular chosen especially, that seem perfect choices for Valentine's Day.  Although the three are more romantic love than any other kind, in my own life I fall into the other kind--love as an appreciate for friends and good books and sunny days and happy mail.  

Let me start with a book I came across by chance and bought for Valentine's Day reading--because I am always drawn to letters, letter writing and on those especially happy days, days where something other than bills arrive in my mail box!  Have you heard of the Juliet Club in Verona, Italy?  It is a real place, and I vaguely recall seeing a movie based on it, so when I saw a collection of some of the letters they had received, I could not resist.  Dear Juliet: Letters from the Lovestruck and Lovelorn to Shakespare's Juliet in Verona by the Juliet Club and Giulio Tamassia is pretty lovely.  

The book is a collection of letters from all over the world--the facsimile of the letter side by side with the translation and in a few cases even a response from Juliet herself.  Although I am on the curmudgeonly side when it comes to love these days, maybe there is a tiny warm place in my cold heart for something like this.  Maybe it is true for someone out there, which is a nice thought and why I read books--if nothing else the stories are happy and we all need a little happy in life.  The letters are about love--lost, unrequited, in search of, filled with problems, and sometimes found.  

I think how the organization came about is really interesting--it began in 1972 by a group of artists and scholars and their love for Shakespeare's most famous pair of lovers.  It started as a way to celebrate the story and has ever since received letters from all over the world.  The Club awards a prize, the "Dear Juliet Award" for the most beautiful letters and there is also an international prize for literature, Scrivere per Amore, dedicated to novels, which I am very curious about.

Anita Abriel's,The Light After the War, which I am currently reading might be an odd choice for a love story, since it is a post-WWII historical novel which moves back in time from Naples after the war and Hungary during the war.  Of course some of the best love stories are also war stories and usually they come with a good dose of the bittersweet.  I have been a little wary of war fiction of late, particularly WWII as there is just so much of it around these days.  It can be hard going, but this comes with as much lightness (and maybe more) as darkness.  

The story opens with two young women, lifelong friends sitting in a sunny piazza in Naples savoring pizza and the sight of happy people going on about their business.  This sweetness of life is tinged with sadness as the two are survivors of the war burdened by their losses and the pain that comes with living when so many of their loved ones have suffered and died.  But here is the difference--the story is more forward looking and life is filled with new beginnings and potential love stories and happy endings, which sets it apart from so many other war novels these days.  I like a story with a different slant than the rest.  Bad things happen, or rather happened.  But this is a story of 'after the war' and the promises that new beginnings bring.  And there are many different kinds of love stories.  Here there is promise or potential romantic love, but the affection that the two friends have for each other is as strong as, and maybe even stronger than any romantic love.  

Anita Abriel based the story on actual events in her mother's life.  Both she and her friend escaped the train carrying them and others to Auschwitz.  It took them six years and journeys across four continents to begin their lives.  The stories were told to Anita and now they carry on through her novel.  Many thanks to the folks at Atria Books for sharing this wonderful novel with me.

Signe Pike's The Lost Queen never crossed my radar when it was first released.  It somehow made it into my email inbox in an offer for a review copy on its paperback publication.  I was in the mood for historical fiction, but not of the war kind (as noted above!).  A story that is a cross between Camelot and Outlander?  Hmm.  A sweeping saga for fans of The Mists of Avalon?  They had my attention.  But it was a podcast between readers who loved, no--Loved, the book.  Their enthusiasm carried me along and I had to have the book to read, too.  I will say, they are right.  I admit it took me a bit to get into the story.  I liked the start, but as Languoreth comes into her own as a young woman--I am totally engrossed and don't want to put the book down.  

So, somewhere in the 6th century in a place that sounds much like early Scotland where the old ways are the perhaps beginning to wane we meet a set of twins--Lailoken and Languoreth as children. Their mother, a Wisdom Keeper, is dead.  Their father is King but the kingdom is getting smaller as their pagan ways are being edged out by Christianity.  While Lailoken will lead men and become a Wisdom Keeper, Languoreth is left to mend ties and unite kingdoms.  For a woman this means marriage.  Of course she has fallen in love with one of her father's warriors, she is meant for greater things.  This means she must marry into the family of not only another king, but a Christian one at that.

As I write this post she and her father and brother have just set off to cross the Clyde River to meet her potential match and unite two disparate kingdoms and hopefully settle any problems and unify against the warring Picts who are increasingly pounding at their doors.  

I believe this is the first of three book, with the second, The Forgotten Kingdom, coming out in September.  I am thoroughly enjoying this story.  It is engaging and atmospheric.  Historical fiction done really well.  I can feel the mists swirling around and know the pain Langoureth feels to face a future she does not want and a love she cannot imagine with a man who is nearly an enemy to her people and way of life.  What will happen next?  I finish my post here to go find out.  Many thanks to the people at Atria Books (again).  I am busy with their books, it seems.  Good stories, perfect for today (or any day).  And my own perfect Valentine Day reading!

January 17: Notes-Letters and Diaries

I've been thinking about the Read Harder Challenge.  It's not as though I am not already immersed in a number of really, really good reads.  I am as a matter of fact.  But if I am not actually in the act of reading I like to think about what I am going to read next.  We all do that, right?  (Or am I just more OCD than everyone else, which is entirely possible).  

My first task completed was to read a Manga comic, which I did.  It's not my usual genre, but I enjoyed it.  I was contemplating continuing on with the series, but there are so many other books pressing for me to read them now, that I want to move on to those instead.  I am in the middle of Death in the Air by Kate Winkler Dawson, which I mentioned before, am thoroughly enjoying and will work for the book by or about a journalist.  

So, what next?  There is so much to choose from at this point I can easily pick up any number of books, but I am in the mood for something of an epistolary format.  So do I choose a novel written in letter form?  A book of actual letters?  Can I fudge a little and chose a book that uses diary entries instead, or an actual diary (I have loads of those).  Is an epistolary novel only made of letters?

I've been doing a little browsing and thinking about what I already have on my shelves (and I had really wanted to try and only read from my shelves, but if a library book would fit better I am not averse from choosing that instead).  

Some books that have come to mind--Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar about Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell has long been on my TBR (so long as a matter of fact that I had to have it when it came out and so have a cloth copy).

I could pick a classic and one that is not in my usual comfort zone period-wise and read Murasaki Shikibu's Diary of Lady Murasaki.  It's less than 150 pages, but slight does not always correspond with easy reading.

If I wanted to opt for more letters in a more formal format there is In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deobrah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, though it is rather chunky.  Or a book I have long wanted to read, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters 1922-1928, which is the first of a number of collections by her.  I wonder how What There is We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell reads?

I have the first of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: 1903-1917, but you know I would then have to read some of her stories, too.  And also long on my shelves Song of Love: The Letters of Rupert Brooke and Noel Olivier, 1919-1915.  

I know I have a book of letters between Abigail and John Adams and I am almost sure I have one or two collections of letters from World War I.  

The more I think about what might be on my shelves the more expansive my choice seems to become.  And there is this list that I can easily dip into (and I have a  number of the books unread on my shelves, too).

The appeal of choosing a book of letters is knowing I could keep the book on my bedside pile and read a few every night and just work my way slowly through.

Such is the dilemma now of choosing.  Have you read any of these books of letters?  Or is there some other you read and found riveting?  Ah, the pleasure of thinking about a new book to add to the reading pile.

Writing Letters & Reading Letters

If a month of letter writing is inspiring me to send off a daily card or letter, why not read some letters, too? 

Seeing as Chekhov was on my list of reading ideas to begin the new year, and I have not one but two books of his letters, this seems a perfect place to start.  And as it is for February and a month of letter writing, why not love letters, too.  So I have pulled Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper from my shelves.  Seeing as Chekhov is known not only for his short stories as for his plays, it is no wonder that the love of his life would be an actress.  

"He was Russia's greatest playwright. She was the leading actress in the Moscow Art Theater. But they were more than artistic collaborators. From 1899 until his death in 1904, Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper were friends, lovers and, finally, husband and wife. But her work and his health caused them long separations. Revealed through their letters, this was one of the most extraordinary love stories in the history of theater."

And always one to pair off my reading if I can, and as I have been 'collecting' Chekhov's works, I have tentatively pulled his one novel (at least I think it is his long full-length novel), The Shooting Party, off the reading pile as well.

"When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationships with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhov's earliest experiments in fiction."

Drama, love, murder, mystery, aristocrats, Russia . . . what's not to love?

And one slightly related side note that I forgot to mention last time.  Did you know the Letter Writers Alliance has a book club (because you can never have enough opportunities to read along . . .)?  It looks like they have been active for a while and the group is managed via Goodreads.  I think I will have to join the group!  Past selections look letter-writing- or just author/writing-related, and next up is Joanna Rakoff's My Salinger Year.  It was on my list of books to explore, so explore I just may!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Month of Letters, Anyone?

Did you know that February is the official Month of Letters?  I've participated in the past and plan on doing so again.  While I won't officially sign up, I am looking forward to sending out a card or letter each and every day of the month of February (had better go soon to stock up on stamps!).  If you do want to be an active participant, there is a page full of goodies you can take advantage of. 

I am a great fan of snail mail as some of you know!  Some time back I signed up with the Letter Writer's Alliance (I wonder if my membership is still valid . . . ), but I didn't have much luck with penpal exchanges via them sadly.  I do, however, correspond with a few fellow readers/bloggers and a few of you might find an occasional postcard in your mailbox (mail surprises are almost as much fun as bookish surprises, don't you think?). 

I even indulged in a pigeon, which I have never gotten around to sending on a journey out into the world (it sounds, alas, he would have to stay within the US).  Maybe now is the time he made his inaugural flight. 

The idea is to send a card or letter and get one in return.  And while I am never too concerned about getting mail back, it is always a happy surprise to find something other than bills in my mailbox.  So, here is my proposition. If you email me with your address, I will happily send you a card sometime in February.  If you are in the US and are willing to send him back to his home roost, I will surprise someone with a note via Pigeon Post (return mail is $3.09 first class--instructions on mailing here).  If you just want a bookish or artsy, or otherwise very colorful postcard I will happily send one out to you (anywhere in the world for a card) and you don't even need to send one back (though cards are happily received by me, too).  Just drop me an email with Month of Letters noted so I don't inadvertently delete it: [email protected]

I'll share what I am sending and what I am (if I am so very lucky) receiving.  And I will even document my pigeon's first flight!  Ah, the excitement . . .

Bring on February!

Lillian and Dash

Artistic, literary or otherwise, romances fascinate me.  Those relationships are probably much like anyone else's, with all the regular problems and concerns the rest of us have, but it's the creative aspect, how they play off each other, help each other, maybe compete or inspire each other that I am really interested in.  Often the relationships are difficult or volatile (Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner?--whom I would still like to read about--the latter in particular), but it's Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman who've been on my mind of late, and by all accounts the two had a passionate and longstanding relationship.  I've been reading a few shorter works about Hammett and Hammett and Hellman, and once again I find it's just the tip of the ice berg in terms of what I want to know and what other books are out there.  Of course I'd like to get my hands on them in order to learn more.

I was digging around my library's online catalog looking for something more to read about Dashiell Hammett--maybe not a full length biography or anything too long (am already dug in too deep with other books at the moment), when I came across a couple of interesting-looking books that had essays about the author that I could easily dip into.  The first is a book I wouldn't mind exploring more, Significant Others: Creativity & Intimate Partnership edited by Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron.  There are just over a dozen creative couples that are covered in the book--from Sonia & Robert Delaunay, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant to Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West and Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera.  I'm especially curious since in the pairings each of the two are famous in their own right and what role does gender play in their relationships (since both are artists are the relationships still typical?).

Of course I've started with Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman.  I know even less about Hellman than Hammett, and have only a cursory knowledge of her more famous books.  I know she was a playwright and know of her feud with Mary McCarthy (with those very scathing words uttered by McCarthy on the Dick Cavett show).  She was also a memoirist.  She and Dash met in a Hollywood restaurant in 1930.  Both were married, and while each left their respective spouses, they never did marry but they also never married anyone else.  They had a longstanding love affair/partnership, however, that lasted for the next thirty years.  Both were unfaithful--in Hammett's case the infidelities were casual whereas her lovers were men who whom she loved and admired and often returned to former lovers.  The physical relationship ended in 1942 she she declined his drunken advances.  He was determined never again to pursue the physical aspect of their relationship thereafter.

Whatever the physical aspect of their relationship was, they still shared a close and affectionate relationship with each other bolstered by their literary interactions.  By the time they met, his best working years were all but behind him.  He never managed to achieve the same literary heights as he did with works like The Maltese Falcon (perhaps his most famous and best work), though he continued to write and was a voracious reader.  He supported Hellman, however, in her work which was just beginning to develop.  The editors allude to this sponsorship filling the need for him to embark on a new writing career.

"Theirs was a co-existence determined by their insistence on their distinct individualities, with agreed-upon dependencies and a delicate balance of shared concerns.  Their mutual values were first set by their affluent lifestyle, their network of intellectual friends, and their literary work, but would become solidified in the late 1930's by their strong political convictions."

Both writers were brought before investigative committees due to their leftwing leanings.  Hellman managed to talk her way out unscathed without actually giving anything away, but Hammett absolutely refused to cooperate (though he was not actually guilty of anything) and was jailed for his beliefs.  Subsequently the FBI continued to harass him and the IRS hounded him for back taxes, so the comfort and security that he had built up completely drained him of his wealth and it was Hellman who later supported him.

I found an interesting set of reviews in Margaret Atwood's Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005 about two books about him as well as a collection of his work (published posthumously).  All three are reviewed favorably (one I've already ordered and the other two I'll try and get from the library eventually); The Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1960 edited by Richard Layman with Julie M. Rivett, Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers by Jo Hammett (which is the book I couldn't pass up) and Dashiell Hammett: Crime Stories & Other Writings selected and edited by Steven Marcus.

Atwood begins by noting that Hammett was a writer she discovered as a preadolescent.  She read him, didn't necessarily understand him (she found the world he wrote about "very, very sophisticated), but unlike Erle Stanley Gardner or Ellery Queen, she returned to his work.

"What was it about these books that intrigued me as an avid but ignorant child reader?  Their world was fast-paced, sharp edged, and filled with zippy dialogue and words I'd never heard pronounced--slang words such as 'gunsel', fancy words such as 'punctilious'.  This was not the Agatha Christie sort of story-there were fewer clues, and these were more likely to be lies told then cuff buttons they'd left strewn around.  There were  more corpses with less importance bestowed on each: a new character would appear, only to be gunned down by a fire-spitting revolver.  In a 'clues' novel, everything depended on who was where; in a Hammett one it was more likely to be who was who, given to disguises and false names as these folks were.  The action was dispersed, not sealed up as in a nobody-leaves-this-house puzzle: dark, means streets were prowled, cars were driven at speed, people blew in from elsewhere and hid out and skipped town."

As silly as it sounds, it gives me little goosebumps to read Atwood's response to his work, since I know just what she means and that's why I am drawn to it, too.  Interspersed with her reviews of the books Atwood weaves in bits about Hammett's life, both on his own and with Hellman as well as says some other interesting things about his work.  As I plan on reading more about Hammett, I'll save that all for later.  I do want to share a couple of other things, however, she says about his writing.

The book of letters, Atwood writes, have lots of interesting things to say about the period (especially intellectual and politics life in the Thirties and Forties), as well the letters to his first daughter illuminating on the questions she asks about the current affairs of the time, and of course the letters to Hellman show the thoughtful and deep relationship the two had for each other.  And then there are the letters to his publishers, particularly his editor at Black Mask magazine which published so many of his short stories.  He tends to often be self-deprecating.

"But such gentle ridicule of the genre alternates with earnestness: in a 1928 letter to his book publisher, he says he wants to try adapting the 'stream-of-consciousness method' to the detective story.  'I'm one of the few--if there are any more--people moderately literate who take the detective story seriously,' he says.  'I don't mean that I necessarily take my own or anybody else's seriously--but the detective story as a form.  Someday somebody's going to make 'literature' out of it . . . and I'm selfish enough to have my hopes." 

How prescient.  And his own books went a long way to turning the genre into literature I think.  Atwood offers a bit of advice about reading his short stories, too, which I will keep in mind.

"They're best read one at a time, with pauses in between, since too much at once dulls the edge.  They are very much of their period and genre-'hardboiled' was the term used of this kind of side-of-the-mouth crime fiction.  (Hard-boiled eggs were what blue-collar workers had in their lunch boxes).  But despite their adherence to formulas, it's easy to see from the stories why Hammett rose so rapidly."

I'm so glad to know Margaret Atwood approves, but then I knew all along I was in the presence of something really good.  I want to read all of Hammett's work, the letters eventually, and am looking forward to reading his daughter's biography, too.  I will be searching for an essay that Raymond Chandler wrote about Hammett and that Atwood mentioned (more about that later if I can track it down), and then I'll have to get another perspective by reading something by Hellman, too.  As a matter of fact I've got her National Book Award winning, An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir winging its way to me.  Oh, and I'm going to give the fictionalized Lillian and Dash by Sam Toperoff a whirl, too.  Once again, one book leads to another.

April 2: Book Notes

A while back I mentioned these very cool commemorative stamps that had just been issued by the Royal Mail in celebration of the two hundred year anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the hope that I might find one or two on some mail coming my way.  In just the last week look what has appeared in my mailbox, kindly sent to me by two friends in Britain with whom I correspond.  I've now got three of the six designs (you can see them all here), so how lucky I am to have not only received them, but received different stamps--for Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility.  (Many thanks to John and Julia!).  Sometimes the stamps on cards and letters are tiny works of art, don't you think?  This puts me in the mood to pick up one of Jane Austen's novels, which I hope to do at some point this year. 

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Last month was a busy month in more ways than one.  A very busy work month and there are no signs of any let up this month or even next.  Even though when I leave work I leave behind all the worries associated with it, they somehow seem to absorb me so much when I am there that I can still feel them in my body when I am at home, and they have nonetheless spilled over into my "home time".  I am forever behind in things online, so please do forgive me if I seem somewhat absent here even though I am still managing to post fairly regularly.

Last month was a busy month, too, for group reads.  I'm hoping this month to catch up on those books I had started for readalongs/book groups, but for which I seem to have missed the discussions.  I love reading along with others, as this is often a great way to discover new books, but I always forget how slow a reader I am.  I dive in without thinking of possible time constraints, but no one minds, so I'll keep plugging away at my books.  The only structured reading this month will be Timothy Findley's The Wars for the Literature and War Readalong.  I'm hoping to read a book or two along with friends this month, however, but more at leisure than in too structured way.

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Litlove is planning on reading a series of creative nonfiction books over the course of the spring and summer and into fall and has posted a list of titles.  So more opportunities to read along.  There are a few that have caught my eye and I do hope to join in this summer.  Something to look forward to. 

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Last year I decided I wanted to reread Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Cazalet Chronicles, which I'd read years ago and loved.  I only managed to read the first volume, The Light Years, but I have Marking Time sitting on my night stand.  I have been gently nudged to return to it as Howard will be publishing the fifth and last volume this November.  That should surely give me plenty of time to read the other three, right?  The last book is called All Change, but as yet there is no listing online for it.   

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After the challenge of reading Elizabeth Bowen this weekend, I was thinking it might be time again for something frothy and frivolous (à la Cashelmara perhaps).  Something a little different and mindless, kind of 'on the side', if you will.  So I've been 'trying out' books this afternoon and at the moment I have them narrowed down to Georgette Heyer (I usually like to read a Heyer or two every year, but I think I've not picked up any of her books in a couple of years now--definitely time), Judith Lennox and Jennifer Donnelly.  Unless something else catches my eye that is.  I have quite an array of comfort reads to choose from, so it is always a dilemma.  Also something nice, too, to take to work when I need something not requiring too much concentration on break time!

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You've probably heard that Google Reader is going to retire July 1?  Although not entirely happy with GR as the best way to read blog posts, it is much easier to corral them in a feed reader, so now I will need to find a good alternative.  Lots of people seem to be using/switching to Bloglovin, so I will likely check them out, too.  How does everyone else read/keep track of blog posts?  Teresa at Shelf Love raised some interesting concerns about RSS feeds and the high use of other social media venues.  Although I do occasionally use Twitter, I am not on Facebook, and find already that my time online is limited, so I'm unsure how these changes will affect foot traffic here.  I'm not very good at promoting posts and taking advantage of other reading/blog sites.  Typepad is not always very good at incorporating other methods of reaching out to readers through their blog add-ons (email subscriptions for example), so it tends to create more work that I tend to ignore.  Then again for my small readership and my own very quiet corner of the web, maybe it doesn't matter. 

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And now in typical, I'll worry about those questions later, fashion, I'm off to decide which comfort read to choose.  Priorities. 

Letters from Constance by Mary Hocking

Although poor John Keats and his letters to Fanny Brawne got set aside, his replacement, a fictional correspondence between two friends that lasts more than forty years, has proven to be a much better fit for my reading mood of late.  As a matter of fact I liked Letters from Constance so much I've been adding more of Mary Hocking's books to my reading pile.  If it's a little voyeuristic to read published diaries, letters might almost be more so.  There is something very intimate about a private conversation between two people even if the conversation happens to take place long distance and on paper.  As much as I love the immediacy of email, there is something special about getting a letter in the mail, knowing that it began its journey in a different place and in different hands and then traveled so far from mailbox to mailbox. 

Epistolary novels are quite interesting and can be an unusual, maybe even slightly artificial way to tell a story.  Hocking pulls it off remarkably well, however.  I had expected to fly through the book, which begins in the late 1930s and follows the lives of Constance and Sheila, two young women who enjoy a lifelong friendship, no matter the distance, situations or directions each life takes.  The two, however, are true letter writers and their correspondence is filled not just with frivolities--the minutiae of their daily lives, but also with their hopes and dreams, pains and tragedies that fill everyone's lives.  Faced with so much thoughtfulness it's not surprising that the letters had to be read with care and attention.  Meaning the reader must slow down and take it all in.  And with such a long friendship, covering so many years, it's not just a glimpse into the intimate worlds of these two women but a broader look, too, at how the world at large changed and affected the women themselves.     

"Sheila was one of those highly intelligent people who are unable to come to terms with the telephone--a disability which I sometimes think altered our lives.  Whenever one phoned her it was sure to be the wrong moment.  At best, she was stilted, at worst, abrupt and uncommunicative.  She was, however, adept at letters of apology, explaining that she had been in the garden, the bath, hair-washing, plucking a chicken, sickening for 'flu...  So, in place of the trivialities people so often exchange over the telephone, we wrote letters."

Sheila's life is viewed entirely through Constance's eyes.  The letters in this book are only those written by Constance, so it's perhaps a slightly skewed view, but Sheila's presence is nonetheless always felt.  Constance's letters tell the story of her life but they are also a reaction to Sheila's life as well.  A poet who enjoys a certain fame, Sheila asks Constance to destroy her letters when the time comes, but she's unable to do so.  She's on occasion referred to as "the absent one", but aside from their youth and a few times as adults where they live close enough to visit in person, it's the times when the two are separated that the reader is privy to.

Constance and Sheila meet as girls in a summer camp and realize they live only a few streets away from each other.  Their lives, of course, will follow very different trajectories.  It's Sheila who is seen as the intellectual and gifted one.  She goes off to university while Constance dives straight into war work joining the WRNS.  Though both marry, Constance's life is one of oppressive domesticity.  Sheila marries a musician and becomes a poet, whereas Constance marries an Irishman (to the consternation of her family who decide not to attend the Catholic wedding in order to avoid having to explain the situation to their friends) and finds herself faced with a large (not exactly according to plan) family.

"I am become to dull, Sheila.  I have no conversation, no interests, not much in the way of thought at all really.  Now, I can barely perform the functions of housewife and mother.  I go to bed drained and wake exhausted.  Even my kitchen has turned against me, each implement has become a dead weight."

"I don't remember what I did at Christmas.  The house was full of people.  I suppose I fed them."

"Help me!"

Constance sees Sheila's life as one of opportunities and creative outlets, but in the end it all comes at a price.  At times Constance looks at what Sheila has with envy, but on reflection her own life is filled with as much happiness with her husband and children as anyone can hope to have.

"I can see, looking back, that for years I have been presenting you with my view of your life.  It seemed to me that you were uniquely fortunate in having such a close, all-embracing relationship.  You're right.  As the walls went up around you, I stood by and applauded.  I did indeed find cause for congratulation in the disorderly house, the wild garden, the empty hearth and the untimely meals."

This is a beautifully written story of two women's lives.  It's as much about the struggle to find happiness and meaning in life as it is about a deep and enduring friendship fraught with difficulties but ultimately one filled with love and caring.  I have Melwyk to thank for picking this book up.  I will definitely be reading more by Mary Hocking (whose books are sadly out of print it seems).  Next up I am reading Just a Very Pretty Girl from the Country: Letters from Gertrude Stein's Paris by Sylvia Salinger, which is a book of actual letters written just before WWI.  I have a small (and growing) stack of other books of letters (fiction and not) that I am looking forward to reading over the course of the year.

Letters Between Friends

I brought a really interesting book home from the library today.  Actually I discovered it in my online meanderings and requested it from  interlibrary loan on a whim, but I have a feeling it may end up being a little treasure.  I think I was searching around for books by women about WWII when I was working on compiling this list.  Intrigued by not only the war aspect of it, how could I pass up a book of letters as well?  I'd not heard of Joyce Grenfell before, but it sounds like she's quite famous in the UK.  Joyce and Ginnie: The Letters of Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham is a collection of letters covering a fifty year correspondence.  Imagine!

I don't know if I'll read the book straight through (it's pretty massive and a heavy hardcover that would have to be lugged around), or if I'll  just dip into it and maybe read the letters covering the war years.  Perhaps I'll start reading and be so captivated I'll just keep going.  I thought I'd share a few interesting bits that I've read in the preface and introduction that have me thinking this is a book worth spending time with (and would of course fit in perfectly with my other letter-writing-reading I am doing this year).

This is Virginia Graham and Joyce Grenfell.  The two met first when they were seven and became close friends when they were teenagers.  They began their correspondence when they were nineteen and it lasted until Joyce's death in 1979.  Joyce was an actor, writer, comedian and musician and Ginnie was a writer.  When they were apart they wrote almost daily.

In her autobiography Joyce wrote:

"My only continuous practice of putting words to paper was in the diary-letters I wrote to my mother and in the letters I had written to Virginia ever since we were about fifteen and one of us was away from London. These were unedited communications: they rambled on, were sometimes graphic, occasionally funny, sad, 'holy', thoughtful.  Their main merit was their liveliness.  Virginia told me they read as I spoke.  It is amusing to compare how differently in the war, I described the same incident to my mother in America and to Virginia, then living in Bristol to be near Tony who was with an anti-aircraft battery.  Because I knew my Ma was agonised about my being in and near London during the bombing, I was gentle about what I told her, played down the unpleasantness of the raids and made light of the damage done.  To Virginia, undergoing her own noisy raids in the West Country, I was not so delicate.  You would hardly think the letters were written about the same events, or from the same pen."

In writing about Joyce, Virginia notes:

"These letters, written daily when she was not in London, provide a very thorough survey of the world development over the past fifty years in all fields save the political, and as fodder for future historians they are surely invaluable.  Joyce wrote at great speed and just as she spoke: if anyone wants to know the price of a Melton Mowbray pie in 1962 or what one wore to a wedding in 1949, it is all here.  Here, too, in detail, a whole assortment of people and birds and flowers, all of which she loved.  Incidentally, in writing letters she not only demanded of herself full particulars, but also accuracy."

At a time when the US postal service is faltering to a point that it is stopping Saturday delivery and annually raise the prices of stamps, I am amazed to read that in the early days of their correspondence, "sending letters was a fast and efficient business: there were five deliveries to homes a day.  A letter posted at breakfast-time reached its destination by tea-time."  The two women were close friends and had an obvious affection for each other.  Joyce wrote nearly 4,000 letters to Virginia, and Virginia wrote more than 2,000 to Joyce which I also find sort of amazing.  Letter writing really is a lost art I think.  I am trying to be a better correspondent to my own friends (because there is nothing like writing about the world--even if it's not necessarily the larger world--and getting a reply back).  I'm looking forward to dipping into the book as well as reading more books of letter or books on letter writing this year.  I'll let you know how it goes.

February 26: Reading Notes

Joy!  A good mail day as you can see.  The only thing that is missing from my photo is the mailer that has a book in it, which I forgot to grab for my photo.  They all sit unread and unopened at the moment (have only just cut the tops of the envelopes to pull out the contents), as I like to get all my chores out of the way first and then sit leisurely to read my postcards, letters and open my parcels at the end of the night.  I sort of like the anticipation and having something to look forward to before bedtime (mail and then a few pages of a good book).  I rarely get so many good things at once (has the mailman been holding back on me?)--five postcards (two are Postcrossing cards) and three letters.  A few of you might recognize these missives and I thank you in advance and will be replying soon.

So, the perfect segue into my next topic of business before I get into my regular bookish mode.  Just a few random items today, the first of which is once again mail-related.  Have you seen these very cool commemorative stamps for the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?  I don't really collect stamps per se, but I do greatly appreciate a letter that comes with colorful and unusual stamps.  I am hoping one of my British friends will include one or two on a letter or card sometime in the future.

It seems the season of book prizes is upon us once again.  Thanks to Marg for the heads up on The Stella Prize.  This is a new prize for Australian women's writing, and they have just unveiled their inaugural longlist.  Whatever you think about book prizes, I see them as a way to discover new authors and some potentially good books I might not have heard about otherwise.  I definitely need to read more Australian Literature, so I am looking forward to exploring the list. 

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award (that's quite a mouthful) has announced their shortlist.  I had thought I would read all the stories on the longlist, but I've not had a chance to track down the original publications where the stories were published.  The stories are available digitally for Kindle users but not outside the UK sadly.  It's akin to waving some little treat in front of my eyes and then saying sorry none for you.  Not that I am at a loss for good stories to read.

The L.A. Times has announced the finalists for their 2012 Book Award.  I've only read one of the books from their mystery/thriller list and have a few more on my reading pile. 

I'm curious about the longlist for the former Orange Prize, now the Women's Prize for Fiction (the name's just  not the same, is it?--sort of bland).  I thought the list comes out in March, but I don't see a date for it yet.  

A little closer to home I have my own list of reads that I hope to tackle in March.  I'm very much looking forward to reading Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong next month.  Perhaps I'll also manage a few of Bowen's short stories, too, for Mel u's Irish Short Story Month.  I have a thick collection of her work on my shelves which I think I'll go grab now.

While I am still working my way through Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost for Cornflower's most recent book club choice (which she notes is well worth persevering to the end, so I shall keep reading), but I have ordered her March selection as I'm in the market for a good nature book (is it too early for Spring fever?), Richard Mabey's Nature Cure (hmm, maybe that's what's in my mailer waiting to be opened).

The Slaves of Golconda are going to read Diana Athill's Stet: An Editor's Life in March.  Of course anyone is welcome to join in.  It's "a beautifully written, hardheaded, and generally insightful look back at the heyday of postwar London publishing by a woman who was at its center for nearly half a century".  Sounds good, don't you think?  I have a book of short stories by Athill I'd like to read sometime this year. 

And I've got the last book for this round's Postal Reading Group, Lisa St. Aubin's The Palace.  It sounds like a retelling of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, which is one of my all-time favorite books, so I'll be very curious to read it. 

Of course there will be the usual Art of the Novella installments, and a new NYRB Classic (to add to the pile--I am quickly falling behind there).  I made the mistake of looking through my most recent New York Review of Books and discovered that March's book will be Pitch Dark by Renata Adler.  I sort of like the element of surprise, but now I know since I had to read the ad so will just look forward to getting the book.

As you can see I have my work cut out for me next month.  Maybe I need to plan a few afternoons off from work for a little quiet reading time.  Good thing March is a long month.  Now I'm off to read my mail!