Mindy's back!

I realize that I'm the Girl Who Cried Busy, and I fully accept that no one really believes how insanely busy I've been since I graduated in May but wow. Busy.

I did finally read something though, and I make no apologies for it being a celebrity memoir (it's too much work to incorporate "collection of personal essays" into this sentence grammatically) because Mindy Kaling! I loved her first book and when I realized the second one was coming I actually preordered it -- in hardcover! That's how much I was committed to this book.

Things I learned finding this image: Enrique Iglesias has covered a song titled "Why Not Me"

I've set you up for a "but" there, but I didn't mean to. This is a book with a different character compared to the first one, but if you like Kaling's sense of humor you'll like this book too. I habitually make a distinction between things that I like, and things that I think have objective merit (which is obviously a subjective judgement, but just go with it); I think Why Not Me? is maybe a little less meritorious than Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? but both are definitely things that I like.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? was a seriously polished book. In my post about it, I talked about how well-written it was, and it definitely felt like someone absolutely putting her best foot forward on a project that meant a lot to her. Multiple times since I read it, I've thought that I should re-read it, and I've always felt confident recommending it to people because I don't think you have to be predisposed to like her in order to find the book funny. Why Not Me? is a little more disjointed -- in the foreword she describes it as "more personal" and it certainly is. Structurally, the chapters are of very differing lengths and some feel a little more like filler than others. They are laugh-out-loud funny but often end with some very heartfelt reflection. I think it's a testimony to Kaling's talent that those sincere "moral-to-the-story" parts landed with me and didn't feel lame or tacked on. The whole book feels a little more relaxed, like the kind of friendship where you can just talk about what's going on without putting a spin on it or making it feel like a story that's going to have a tidy ending. Kaling can bring the comedy but she can also tell you what she's learned, if anything. Why Not Me? really does feel more personal, not in a schmoozy 60 Minutes/People interview kind of way, but in a really honest way, like someone who doesn't have anything to prove. That does mean, however, that I think you have to have some prior goodwill in order to really fully like the book.

I definitely recommend this book, especially if you liked Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? I think the last chapter is one of the best; it's a really good essay about confidence. The chapter where she outlines her working day is fascinating, and puts my "crazy" schedule to shame. Maybe for most of you this is a library wait-list book, and it's worth a spot on that list. Meanwhile, I will be ready for whatever question comes next. Is That What I Look Like From Behind maybe? Or Who Do I Have To Kill To Get Some Licorice In Here?

PS, how on trend are the colors on that cover? Those are basically the colors of my dream living room, the one in the alternate universe where I am not an impoverished slob.

Haven't we had enough voting this week? -or- Waiting for Goodreads to send my dang sticker

I don't really use Goodreads. I like the scanning of barcodes part (who wouldn't; except probably someone who spends their working days doing that anyway) and I like the idea of having this automagically generated report of what I've read. Furthermore it can be fun and rewarding to enter my page progress. But I don't write reviews, I hate doing stars, I don't really add people as friends, and it's a lot less cool to log in and see what I've abandoned or stalled out on. (Is there a good way to "finish" a book in the sense of quitting it? I haven't played around with it much, but Goodread's interface seems kind of inflexible compared to my usual patterns of reading, which involve a lot of not-reading.)

However, in addition to being a place where people can apparently carry on utterly pointless feuds, Goodreads is a place where you can click on buttons to vote for Book(s) Of The Year. I saw some chatter on Twitter that one book I definitely support had been nominated so I dusted off my log-in and cast my vote. Then I started looking for other books to vote for. When I didn't see any other books I've read as nominees I started thinking up write-in candidates.

And that's more or less when I realized how little I read in the year it's been published. There are a few things, notably Pioneer Girl, that I've read and liked and which qualify. One book, I really wanted to vote for it but the site wouldn't let me. Since I live in a pig sty studio apartment it was sitting in arm's reach, and I checked the publication date: 2014! Or no, wait, 2012; the US hardback came out in 2013 and the paperback in 2014. So fine, you win, Goodreads.

Since academics are slow, and since this is the centenary year, I think The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 still qualifies as a new book, though. It certainly qualifies as a book you should read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you want one book to read for the centenary, this is it. That's not a very original opinion; this book has gotten a lot of praise. July 1914 is a quicker, pacier read (and has bigger type), and is essentially narrative, whereas Clark goes broader and deeper, exploring various factors and facets of the prewar world in a more explicitly analytical way. If you are really getting serious about the topic (reading two books qualifies), I strongly recommend getting hold of the review essay by John Deak published in the June 2014 Journal of Modern History titled "The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: the Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War." Most academic libraries, I dare say, have some sort of public provision if you want it, and Deak's review of Austrian history and historiography is invaluable.

Anyway, back to the book. The first chapter of The Sleepwalkers is an overview of Serbian politics in the nineteenth century, which is such an amazing, mindblowing, perfect choice I can, indeed, hardly even. Chapter two then deals with Austria-Hungary and its internal politics. Clark sets the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary front and center, takes it seriously, and is never too eager to sweep it aside in favor of great-power conflicts that must obviously be the real truth. One of the simple but excellent insights here is the way Clark chooses to make an analogy between the Serbian nationalists of the 1910s and modern terrorist organizations. That kind of thing can be tenuous, and at any rate it's liable to become dated, but in this case it's convincing and moreover an extremely effective way to quickly get the reader into the scene. The second section, chapters three through six, treats the international political situation not simply as a matter of international relations or the interaction of policy but a messy tangle of individuals often working at cross-purposes. This is a theme that will resonate with the July 1914 book, but Clark goes into much more detail, focusing country by country with subheadings like "Who Governed in St Petersburg?" and "Who Governed in Paris?" This section deals with a lot of different themes and theories that appear in "1914" literature, so you get wonderful little passages like "A Crisis of Masculinity?" (Side note: Christopher Clark must be superhuman, for all that he's able to cover in this book.) Finally, in the third section, we get back to the July crisis proper. This section covers familiar ground but is able to draw on all the consideration of the preceding 360 pages to really supercharge the narrative.

Guys, I'm fawning over this book, which is so uncool and gets one nowhere in one's career, but whatevs. It's amazing the level of research here and even more amazing how effortlessly it's put across. I put this in my suitcase when I went to Rome this summer, even though it takes up a significant amount of space, simply because I couldn't put it down. It's a long book, I know, but if you like reading history I guarantee you will love this, and however far you get into it you will get a lot out of it.

This post brought to you in a cleft stick

Fun fact: you can be "finishing your dissertation" for a year (or more!) but at some point, you have to actually finish the dang thing -- and it's, like, work. But then, as you wait for the defense and hope hope hope there are five people not hating your work, you have some weird awkward space to attempt job applications and read things again.

When I bought this copy of Scoop at Open Books, having skipped out of a play with Alice like delinquents or possibly discerning theater-goers, she said something like, "you found a pretty-covered Waugh!" It is that exactly; I like these very distinctive editions, although I'm not fond of the fact that they have not even one sentence of plot description on the back. Look, I just want to be sure I haven't read this one before, but I guess I'm just supposed to be sold by the author's name. It's Waugh, what more could you possibly want to know, I imagine the publisher saying. Or it could be ironically appropriate since in Waugh's books actually knowing anything is generally a handicap, and those who can spin a line, go with the flow, bluff their way through, are the ones who get ahead.

Scoop is certainly in that vein; a socialite convinces a newspaper magnate to hire a trendy writer friend to cover a civil war in Africa, but the newspaper ends up hiring a rather Bilbo-ish country life columnist with a similar name and sending him instead. The civil war isn't real, unless maybe it is, although it doesn't really matter as long as the reports being filed at home are exciting enough.

Like A Handful of Dust, this is a book with a sharp, almost contemptuous driving energy. Western ideologues and journalists have concocted the fake civil war, while capitalist-imperialist interests are behind whatever is actually happening. No one operates under any concept of truth or justice, and this is as true in the fictitious Ismaelia as in London. I was reminded of the current fluster about Ebola as I read; hundreds or thousands of people can die in Africa but it doesn't get as much reaction as one death (or one possible ill person!) in America or Western Europe. Waugh's not making quite that point, but he is talking about a similar kind of self-centeredness and callousness.

It occurs to me that I might not describe Scoop as "funny". It is funny, start to finish it's funny; but if I had a dedicated shelf for comedy, it wouldn't get shelved there. (I am tagging this post humor, but that's metadata. Har har.) It's not a lighthearted book, I think. Waugh's writing reads as a bit angry to me, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm right about that. Maybe I'm bringing certain preconceptions about Waugh as a literary writer to the table, or maybe media manipulation, commercially expedient crisis, etc, just don't feel like much of a laughing matter in 2014. But I got this sense from A Handful of Dust too, where Waugh is unsparing in dishing out disaster in the real world outside the London social round. So, consistency in the writer or consistency in the reader?

"Quartet in Autumn" has an ugly cover, so no pictures for you

Fair warning: you should not read this book if you are having a "boo hoo, I'm going to die alone in a box under an overpass" moment. But otherwise you should definitely find a copy and read it. It's short.

I've only read three of Barbara Pym's books but I have a blog and no one can stop me from saying that Quartet in Autumn feels supremely Pymmian. The four main characters are all odd and unattractive; elderly people working admittedly useless and unskilled jobs, with very little apparently in their lives. The four don't really seem to have or want much of a relationship beyond their occupation of the same office, and when the two women retire not only is it uncertain what they will do with their time it is also unclear whether there is any relationship beyond the work relationship that can continue.

One of the threads in the book involves a well-meaning but frustrated social worker who finds visiting one of the retired women very unrewarding indeed. Lonely old dears might be cranky at first but they're truly grateful for the attention... eventually... right? The humor in Quartet in Autumn is less pronounced than in Excellent Women or Glass of Blessings but it's here, mostly making the point that sometimes a crusty exterior serves to hide an equally crusty interior.

There are a couple of other characteristically-Pym elements to this book. First, I think I commented in another Pym review that she portrays how badly plotted life can be, and here, instead of characters being pushed together by circumstances or discovering their feelings for one another, opportunities get hinted at and missed, and people are not particularly sorry for having stuck to the knowns. Secondly, the whole thing ends on a genuine, organic note of hope despite there not being much concrete foundation for it. I'm not an author (clearly) but I can see where it's easy to create a hopeful ending by, say, giving your character some cash or tickets to Paris or a new romantic interest. Pym gives her characters very little -- arguably in this book she takes away some of what the characters had in the beginning -- and yet she ends with new hope by allowing the characters a change in perspective. Or I wonder if it would be more accurate to say that the characters derive hope from a rediscovery of their own ability to choose. I'm thinking of this little Christian/Catholic book recommended by a friend, Interior Freedom, which discusses the idea that even if one is dissatisfied or unhappy with a situation, one can be at peace with it by freely choosing to endure it (obviously that's not a novel idea but this is the book I thought of off the bat). I wonder if that would be a better characterization of the way Pym's characters end up with a sense of a new beginning or if I'm refining it too much; it might fit with the Anglo-Catholic theme that runs through her books.

Quartet in Autumn is about old people and is mostly about how their problems are not easy to solve. It's not a sexy exciting book about sexy exciting people by any means. But they're not kidding on the back cover when they call it a masterpiece, and you'll be glad you read it. You'll also want to go open a retirement account, cultivate your relationships with your nieces and nephews, and otherwise figure out what you want life to be like when you're old.

I'm not convinced anything in this post makes sense

I'm sitting here having something of an omg moment, because there are so many things in the world and in my life that I want to (help) accomplish and yet I do so very little and, hello, exhibit A, there are two emails I've been avoiding in my inbox for two weeks now. And that's reminded me of something I could do to avoid those for a wee bit longer.

Welcome to this blog post, about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

I really liked this book. More specifically I was in awe of and delighted by it. From about halfway through I tried to put together my reaction and here's the best I came up with: say you're visiting an art museum for the first time. You're on vacation, or it's Sunday, or whatever, and it was free, so you're sort of drifting merrily through the galleries. Pictures pictures pictures: landscapes, ladies, naked ladies, landscapes, Dutch interiors, shoopdedoo. And then as you're casting your eye lazily across one wall, a picture jumps out at you. This, you think, this is the real thing. I've looked at all these other pictures that are superficially doing the same stuff: but this one works. This is the piece of art all those other paintings are trying to be.

You know you like my pretentious analogies, don't lie

I haven't read many (any?) other books about Jewish-Americans or golems or comic books or whatnot but somehow this book felt like it got something that other books I've read missed. It just clicked for me in a way I wouldn't necessarily have predicted. And it was darn entertaining too. I don't think it's changed my life or anything, and maybe I won't remember it at all in a few years, but man! It hit me the right way this time.

So lemme tell you a little story about this book. I bought it for £2 used with the express intention of getting rid of it when I was done. I actually finished it when I was staying in a hotel, and when I saw a bookshelf in the lobby with miscellaneous books on it, I got super excited about this perfect chance to pass the book on, indirectly, to someone else. So excited that I got rid of the book before I'd made any notes about favorite passages or copied out any quotes.

*~*~so genius~*~*

But, to cycle back around to the start of this post, I think one of the reasons I liked this book so much was the character of Josef Kavalier. Of all the characters, he was the one I was most interested in (and really, he's the main character, so that's good). During the Second World War, he gains a sort of notoriety among his fellow soldiers because he never opens his mail, and when someone confronts him about it he (I think, see above) responds that... he just didn't open it. He couldn't quite deal with it, so he didn't. So, uh, I don't think it says anything good about me and my psyche that I do that sometimes too, but it was a detail that I liked.

Let's have a book on a Saturday; why not

Who can resist a Persephone book? Not me, obviously. In my jetlagged state I bought myself a handful of books (yes I know), including this one: High Wages, by Dorothy Whipple.

The inside cover is the important cover

If you've looked into Persephone Books at all, you'll quickly realize that Dorothy Whipple is a kind of crown jewel of their lineup. A female author popular in her own day but overlooked more recently, she and her work are great examples of the value of republishing the kind of titles Persephone does.

Although I have previously fallen victim to Proserpinian charms, I had not bought anything by Dorothy Whipple, so when I decided that, yes, I definitely needed something grey-covered right now, I thought it was as good a time as any to give her a spin.

High Wages is a great read: entertaining, interesting, and not entirely predictable. It's a story about an ambitious and hard-working young woman who gets some -- but not all -- of the things she wants. The romantic side of the story is in some ways a little bland and unconventional -- one romantic interest is the posh and popular Golden Boy of the town, the other is bookish and sensitive -- but the way it plays out is, I thought, not conventional at all. This is not a book that ends with an unambiguous romantic triumph by any means.

Jane, the main character, is a shop girl with a particular genius for women's clothes, so the story follows her from working in a well-established shop for an insecure and stubbornly old-fashioned businessman to opening her own shop, filled with modern ready-made clothing. There's a lot that's interesting here, in relation to the history of women's clothing as well as women's work (more on this note below). By the end of the novel, though, Jane is questioning the way her life has been devoted to women's clothes: is this all so important, really? Granted, she has a lot else on her mind by then to make her feel a little weary, and she doesn't suddenly become some sort of anti-fashion radical or anything (thank goodness), but I thought this little note of ambivalence was great. It's just an example of how Whipple is able to portray a thoughtful character, not to mention the way people change their thinking over time in subtle and sometimes imperceptible ways.

This is an unmistakably feminist novel which succeeds nevertheless in not beating the reader over the head with feminism (a point which is nicely made in the introduction). Whipple is maybe a touch more subtle than Winifred Holtby but both authors successfully show rather than tell what's wrong. Jane is not only mistreated by her employer, but she encounters some really gross salesmen when she sets up on her own. Just as in another novel you might be really angry along with the main character when someone insults her, here you can just feel the ickyness of some of the situations Jane gets into.

My only minor complaint was that the writing seemed a little "simple" and straightforward at times, like being told a bedtime story. But then I read it when I was jetlagged so maybe it was just my ability to process language that was simplified...

Overall, it was a very enjoyable book and absolutely cram-packed with period detail, some more intentional than others. If you want a good representation of some of the new ideas about love and sex between the wars, here you go. This is another one for my theoretical list of books that could be assigned to a class.

Oh crap, there's only one image in this post. Uh, uh, uh.... Amy, help me!

In which I fulfill my contractual obligations

Bel Canto easily wins the prize for the book I have most often put in my suitcase or purse with the intention of reading it, but then not reading it, and even buying other books to read instead. I threw it into my box at the Open Books warehouse sale with Alice because she said she liked it and the box was one flat price. Since then it's done a lot of traveling. But I have finally, at last, read it, and I thought it was therefore appropriate to make it the book post that breaks my not-posting spell, even though I have four (I know, I KNOW) other books that I could potentially write about. (The other ridiculous thing about the non-posting spell is that I made a special effort to post even when I was travelling for two weeks, and then promptly dropped the ball as soon as I got back home.)

So, Bel Canto is a focused sort of book. An opera singer, a Japanese businessman, and a hodge-podge of international guests are taken hostage in an unnamed Latin American country. As the days and weeks go by, relationships start to break down barriers and suddenly potential for life and happiness is everywhere despite the outwardly desperate circumstances. In the end, the "crisis" is more like an unreal, almost magical, moment outside of time -- although, of course, it has to end eventually, in a sudden burst of tragedy.

"Telling detail" is a difficult thing to achieve in writing -- everyone wants to be able to throw in that one little action or trait, wrapped in the perfect bit of language, that will instantly transmit the author's vision to the reader. Patchett is very good at using detail to convey a lot of information, and her descriptions of characters and events and motivations really sucked me in. Every character is distinctly, recognizably a person (well, except for the thirty or so hostages who pretty much don't get mentioned, but that seems inevitable). Once I started the book, it was very easy to keep going to the end. This is really good fiction: enjoyable, engrossing; not overly serious but full of enough humanity to feel worthwhile in some deeper sense.

Ugh, that was so many words that I had to type with my poor little fingers. Is there something else I'm supposed to put in a post? Whatever. Here, it's broadly opera: a bit of The Messiah.

MUSIC, feel its POWER.

Debt = bad, love = good

Let's talk about another Trollope novel! I know how you don't love those, and I don't care.

This is another pleasant little Barsetshire book, with lots going on. There's some politics, there's some love, there's some social awkwardness, a little of everything. Plenty of characters, and a few of those awful political chapters where Trollope just spins himself into a satirical tizzy about Victorian politicians that no one really cares that much about anymore. Boo, back to the romance.

better.

One of the main plotlines has to do with the dangers of credit and debt. Trollope goes into great detail about the emotional consequences as well and material and social when a young clergyman, Mark Robarts, foolishly helps a friend borrow money from a shady lender (anti-Semitism, ahoy) and then ends up on the hook for more money than he makes in a year. I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction (like, any) but a plot that warns about the dangers of debt seems sort of old-fashioned, and yet -- let's get topical -- it seems almost timely. Maybe our society would benefit from a little more horror of owing money. It is a little eerie that the dissolute spendthrift friend, who doesn't much care about who gets ruined along with him, is the one who sees borrowing money as completely normal and unproblematic.

The storyline raises a lot of questions about the proper lifestyles of clergy, and the specific customs and remuneration of Anglican clergy, but ultimately this is a rather uncomfortable corner for Trollope, I think, and nothing is really resolved. Trollope likes to see his clergy living genteel, comfortable lives and being jolly with their genteel neighbors, and on the whole I think he likes the inconsistencies that come with an old system of parishes and livings; but this doesn't do much for those who get the wrong end of the stick -- and it doesn't provide any disincentive whatsoever for men to become "sporting parsons". The debt plot lets him hold forth on the proper distance a man of the cloth ought to have from Worldly Ways, but I don't think he really solves all the problems he raises.

Miss Dunstable returns in this book, which is exciting except her character has been modified since the last book. Trollope makes her older by about a decade, and whereas the last time we saw her she was very shrewd and capable, here she's more bowed down and jaded and Trollope marries her off in a sort of tying-up-loose-ends way. It's not impossible for her character to have evolved along these lines, but Trollope doesn't (I don't think) have her change so much as he just retroactively retools the character.

And so I haven't really said anything about Lucy Robarts and Lord Lufton. This is one of those relationships like Frank Gresham and Mary Thorne, or Luke Whatever and Rachel Ray, where you know they're going to end up together from fairly early on but it's just a matter of working out the details. Trollope's heroes and heroines don't have to do much changing to win their loves; mostly the men just have to be persistent. My inclination is to say that this is more evidence of Jane Austen's superiority, as I think she likes to have her heroes and heroines learn and change and grow, rather than having their parents learn and change and grow enough to stop opposing the match (or just having a big bag o' money fall from the sky to make things possible). If I'm wrong about this don't tell me. I like Trollope but Austen is a god(ess).

More marriage-in-crisis literature

So the book in the last post was about a marriage on the rocks in interwar Britain, and this one... well, only broadly and for the sake of pithy blog post openings could one describe A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym as being about a marriage on the rocks in 1950s Britain, but there it is.

Really, there is an enormous difference between Pym and Waugh. Waugh takes his story to the ends of the earth in a way; his book is a worst case scenario. Pym on the other hand is supremely realistic. Something I liked about both Excellent Women and Glass of Blessings is the way she captures how life is sometimes poorly plotted. You get very excited for something and then it doesn't happen for weeks and when it does happen you don't really care anymore, or it's not really what you had expected in the first place. Or you meet someone and sparks fly and it all seems very significant, and then nothing happens but maybe you run into them a year later at the grocery store or something. Pym manages to capture this without being totally boring about it.

The title is a reference to the way the novel concludes (so, "spoilers" I guess, although this is more a slice-of-life novel than a nail-biter). Wilmet Forsyth is the main character, essentially a woman of leisure. She doesn't regret not having children but she feels vaguely dissatisfied and fears that her life is empty and aimless. When she meets her best friend's handsome brother, and that same friend's husband starts hitting on her, Wilmet starts to think maybe she needs to get out of a rut. Meanwhile she is deepening her friendship with a very pious unmarried woman, whose charity and goodness make Wilmet uncomfortable. Lots of things happen, but at the end Wilmet decides that she shouldn't think of her life as a boring rut but as richly blessed: why should she feel guilty and unhappy because she has been provided for? It's an interesting way to conclude the novel, and I like the way the title interacts with the story and the reading experience.

The book features a gay character who is apparently So Gay that everyone who meets him goes, "oh, so that's what's going on!" Of course, you the reader can't see him so it's kind of hilarious. The one cue in the narration on his first introduction is that he is engaged in the supremely domestic activities of grocery shopping and cleaning the flat. It reminded me a bit of the way Ron Santo (God rest him), the very colorful radio commentator for the Cubs, would sometimes start laughing about some sign in the crowd without actually telling the radio audience what it said. Anyway, one nice touch is that the young man is employed as a waiter and a model for knitting patterns -- and when Wilmet gets home, she opens up a knitting magazine and there he is. Meanwhile, there is another character who is really obviously So Gay, at least to the 21st century reader, and no one makes any comment. If you're doing that LGBT reading challenge, you might want to have a look at this book.


I'm on the road this week so I don't have the book to hand to give you any funny quotes, but I really enjoyed this one. It's a fun book that manages to capture the "feel" of real life without being dull.

Waugh, I get it now

This book reminded me of nothing so much as An Evening of Long Goodbyes, even though I can't remember many of the details about that book, and since AEoLG obviously is much more recent I suppose it's more appropriate to say that Paul Murray's book takes after Evelyn Waugh's -- but guys. You guys. You know you have to lower your expectations when you come to this blog.

This book is hilarious and it is brutal. I think I really get why Waugh is such a respected writer now. Reading this, more than anything else, gives me a genuine desire to (re-)read Brideshead Revisited. See, Brideshead is one of those Important Modern Classic kind of books that people tell you to read, but I generally try not to read things unless they have a real emotional appeal to me in the moment, as opposed to a theoretical appeal. Also, I read Brideshead when I was in high school and my "I am above all your childish teenage books" phase and I did not get it at all. It's sort of humorous the way I will see a reference to some important theme or character or event in Brideshead and have no idea that was even in there.

Anyway, back to the book I did read.

Tony Last is a deeply unfashionable person: he is in love with his life as a country squire, with his historic house, with his family's history and traditions. What he loves most of all is a quiet Sunday at home: he goes to the service at the village church more out of respect for the ritual than any personal religious feeling, and on the way home he picks a flower for his wife. He's a simple person with simply, old-fashioned pleasures. His wife Brenda, is a former London beauty who regards this lifestyle as a kind of role-playing game -- until John Beaver comes to stay a weekend with them. Beaver is a sophisticated mooch who is a kind of professional social straphanger, mostly getting invited to parties at the last minute to balance out the genders. Brenda and Beaver start an affair -- the urbane London people of course have no problem with this as a matter of principle; of course Brenda would want to escape that boring life in the country, although Beaver is a comical person for her to latch onto. Then something unforgivable happens. By the end of the novel, everything is in pieces, not that society knows or cares.

And all for nothing seems to be Waugh's point. It's perfectly acceptable, even laudable, to the fashionable set that Brenda has her affair -- it's also unsurprising when the affair peters out, after Tony and Brenda's marriage is irreparably ruined. No one gets anything they want, except for the bored society ladies who get a few years of juicy gossip, and both Tony and Brenda lose everything they had ever enjoyed. Although Tony's humble, good-hearted relatives end up with the historic house and the good country lifestyle, so there is some goodness to the ending, although it's a bit like seeing plants in the ruins of a building.

There are all kinds of cliche book-review words that spring to mind: "unflinching" "savage" etc. This is not a happy book, but it is good, and it's also very funny. One of my favorite jokes was the priest in the village church, an old man who spent much of his life ministering to the army in India. Since he's so old and senile he just reuses all his old sermons indiscriminately...

The vicar preached his Christmas sermon. It was one to which the villagers were particularly attached. "How difficult it is for us," he began, blandly surveying his congregation, who coughed into their mufflers and chafed their chilblains under their woollen gloves, "to realize that this is indeed Christmas. Instead of the glowing log fire and windows tight shuttered against the drifting snow, we have only the harsh glare of the alien sun; instead of the happy circle of loved faces, of home and family, we have the uncomprehending stares of the subjugated, though no doubt grateful, heathen."

A Handful of Dust reminded me of An Evening of Long Goodbyes in the way it combined wickedly funny writing with a sad and even disturbing story. Both books go from a darkly fun beginning to a much darker ending, although unsurprisingly I think Waugh is clearly the master here.

Incidentally, one of the creepier stories in the collected volume I read earlier this year makes a reappearance here as the fate of Tony Last. I was a little sad about that because as soon as I got to that section, of course, I pretty much knew how it was going to play out. Another argument against reading short stories and/or "collected works"!

And what do YOU think?

Alice talked me into going to Open Books a few weeks ago when I was in Chicago for a wedding. I tried to say no, in my defense. And then I wasn't going to buy anything and then I found something I wanted, and then I bought a whole stack of things (= three) because it's Just Wrong to put $5 on a credit card... although then it turned out I had cash. But I bought all the things anyway.

Reference not intended, but I'll take it

So what set me off on this downward spiral? Well, it was a fairly snazzy purple copy of The Book of the Courtier. I'd just come down from an informal reunion at my alma mater so I was feeling susceptible to purple. And then it was nice and new -- there's a post-it note with a few series of page numbers stuck in the front, and lo! there are no books so pristine as those bought by slacker college students.

Why this rando when there's actually an extant portrait of the author?

The Book of the Courtier -- and I suppose there's some deep scholarly reason why Norton has the author's name spelled "Baldasar" and not "Baldassare" -- is what I think of as a Social Studies book. It's something I've mostly encountered for its historical* value and have probably even had as an ID at some point along the line. I took almost no literature classes in college, but I would assume it probably gets discussed in that context too.

I was rather pleasantly surprised with how well the text flows. The format is a kind of courtly debate or discussion: as a "game", the gentlemen of the court are directed to propose and then debate the various skills and qualities that would be possessed by a hypothetical Perfect Courtier. Of course this is all very formal and stylized, and nothing like what we would now call "natural", but Castiglione is very successful at portraying the give and take of a conversation, and the different ways that people express their opinions.

Probably my least favorite aspect of the book was the real estate devoted to "examples" of funny stories. Humor: it doesn't translate across languages or time periods very well. But of course even I can see how this book has a lot to tell us about the culture that produced it. If anything, this historical angle was even a little distracting.

I didn't read the articles in the back because, who's gonna make me?, but I did skim through the one by the improbably named Amedeo Quondam about the origin of the text, and learned how well documented the writing process is. Like, they have the rough drafts and have been able to identify different people's handwriting in the margins. Pretty cool, to say the least.

If I were Alice I would throw in some kind of random GIF here to close this out but... I'm not... so I'm just going to back away awkwardly...

Another post in the books.


*Bah, I really had to stop myself typing "world-historical" there.

No EVOO necessary

Hmm, you say to yourself as you pick up this book.

Is this the heartwarming tale of a brash young woman who wins her true love through tasty Italian-inspired cooking and learning not to shout so much, all against the background of a feud between high and low churchmen? Or perhaps it's a cookbook of 30-minute recipes inspired by a certain nineteenth century British Civil Servant and novelist?

No, it's neither of those things. Rachel Ray is the heroine, living with her weak-willed widowed mother and strong-willed (and very Evangelical) widowed sister. Rachel is modest and good, and willing to be obedient to her mother, but totally unwilling to be bossed around by her sister. The hero is Luke Rowan, a headstrong gentleman-entrepreneur who wants to become a brewer in Rachel's small town. They fall in love, of course; he gets embroiled in a business dispute; her mother and sister try to convince her that her little romance is sinful; there's a local election; it all works out. I liked Rachel and Luke, and I liked the book.

I think it's a mark of the book having been written by a man that Luke starts out as kind of a jerk and ends up as a jerk vindicated. He figures he has every right to do as he pleases, and hurt feelings will shake out later. Luke inherits a partnership in a brewery, and when the current brewer refuses to let him act as a true partner or take any of his suggestions, Luke decides he'll either offer a settlement that involves the old brewer leaving, or he'll just take his money and start his own brewery on the other side of town. His impetuousness is what gets him in trouble with Rachel and her family too, since he's quite straightforward about calling her "Rachel" and paying her "particular attentions" which scares her a bit and her mother and sister a lot. He doesn't seem to have any notion of what their objections or worries might be, nor does he feel any particular need, it seems, to find out. We, the readers, know he's well-intentioned and so on, but it's hard not to sympathize with his enemies. I kept thinking that Jane Austen wouldn't let him get away with it. If Luke Rowan were an Austen hero, he have learned by the end to be less arrogant in pursuing his rights.

There's a parliamentary election in the story, and the two candidates are a rich Jewish tailor from London and the son of the local squire and Hoo Boy. Indeed, the title of this plotline could be "Anti-Semitism in Action". This bit is saved from being totally unreadable by virtue of Trollope's close attention to all the many ignorant reasons various voters have for disliking the Jewish candidate. He's always interested, I think, in satirizing the way two people can hold the same strong opinion but for opposite reasons. So, for instance, Luke's mother and his spurned boss's wife visit Rachel in order to break them up; the boss's wife because she thinks Luke is worthless, and Luke's mother because she thinks he's too good for her; so the two women are just on the edge of insulting each other even as they pursue their common cause. I think that same dynamic is in evidence in the election passages: Trollope likes showing how the small town voters' professions to hate or love the Jewish candidate based on some noble principle actually boil down to some petty local rivalry or ignorant superstition, and therefore people's attachment to "noble principles" is pretty thin. That being said in defense: yeah, it's kind of a yucky subplot, and it's unpleasant to have your various characters taking part. For me, at least, given when the book was written and given what I wrote above and given that of course Trollope is going to like the local squire, it wasn't a book-ruiner.

Hilariously, according to the introduction, Rachel Ray was originally supposed to be published as a serial in an Evangelical magazine, but the magazine cancelled their contract after a couple of installments. Hm! Mysterious! Perhaps because the book is unrelentingly negative about Evangelicals?? Oh Trollope, what were you thinking?

Let's have some quotes. A long one, since this book is available on Project Gutenberg:

I venture to assert that each liberal elector there would have got a better dinner at home, and would have been served with greater comfort; but a public dinner at an inn is the recognized relaxation of a middle-class Englishman in the provinces. Did he not attend such banquets his neighbours would conceive him to be constrained by domestic tyranny. Others go to them, and therefore he goes also. He is bored frightfully by every speech to which he listens. He is driven to the lowest depths of dismay by every speech which he is called upon to make. He is thoroughly disgusted when he is called on to make no speech. He has no point of sympathy with the neighbours between whom he sits. The wine is bad. The hot water is brought to him cold. His seat is hard and crowded. No attempt is made at the pleasures of conversation. He is continually called upon to stand up that he may pretend to drink a toast in honour of some person or institution for which he cares nothing; for the hero of the evening, as to whom he is probably indifferent; for the church, which perhaps he never enters; the army, which he regards as a hotbed of aristocratic insolence; or for the Queen, whom he reveres and loves by reason of his nature as an Englishman, but against whose fulsome praises as repeated to him ad nauseam in the chairman's speech his very soul unconsciously revolts. It is all a bore, trouble, ennui, nastiness, and discomfort. But yet he goes again and again,—because it is the relaxation natural to an Englishman. The Frenchman who sits for three hours tilted on the hind legs of a little chair with his back against the window-sill of the café, with first a cup of coffee before him and then a glass of sugar and water, is perhaps as much to be pitied as regards his immediate misery; but the liquids which he imbibes are not so injurious to him.

Here's the nasty Evangelical sister:

"I've taken tea, thank you, two hours ago;" and she spoke as though there were much virtue in the distance of time at which she had eaten and drunk, as compared with the existing rakish and dissipated appearance of her mother's tea-table. Tea-things about at eight o'clock! It was all of a piece together.

This made me aww. Rachel goes to Mrs Sturt, the farmer's wife next door, for comfort when her mother, in consultation with Mr Comfort, her pastor, forbids her to correspond with Luke.

     "It's little I think of what clergymen says, unless it be out of the pulpit or the like of that. What does they know about lads and lasses?"
     "He's a very old friend of mamma's."
     "Old friends is always best, I'll not deny that. But, look thee here, my girl; my man's an old friend too. He's know'd thee since he lifted thee in his arms to pull the plums off that bough yonder; and he's seen thee these ten years a deal oftener than Mr. Comfort. If they say anything wrong of thy joe there, tell me, and Sturt 'll find out whether it be true or no. Don't let ere a parson in Devonshire rob thee of thy sweetheart. It's passing sweet, when true hearts meet. But it breaks the heart, when true hearts part." With the salutary advice contained in these ancient local lines Mrs. Sturt put her arms round Rachel, and having kissed her, bade her go.

Awww.

Ha --- hm!

I guess I have some things in common with Ron Swanson. Not many; I'm not quite so enthused about guns, wood working, or whiskey. But I like breakfast foods. And I like Patrick O'Brian novels.

Pretty sure my parents have that lawnchair.

So imagine my intrigued-ness (keep moving) when good ol' Alice gave me two Horatio Hornblower novels.

Beat to Quarters is the first Hornblower book of a series which we might possibly be more familiar with as a TV show. (I first became aware of Hornblower via discussions of Sharpe on a Lord of the Rings message board Way Back When.)

Three Hobbit movies is such a bald grab for ticket money but FINE.

I found Forester's writing style sort of simple, although I'm not entirely sure of what I mean by that. One odd feature is that the narrator occasionally jumps in to remind us that we're in the past, for instance when Hornblower finds Lady Barbara tending the wounded after a battle:

It was a shock to Hornblower to see her engaged thus. The day was yet to come when Florence Nightingale was to make nursing a profession in which women could engage. No man of taste could bear the thought of a woman occupied with the filthy work of a hospital.

Perhaps the best evidence I can give of the "simple" style of writing is that these kind of interventions aren't totally jarring. It's a very narrated book. O'Brian, of course, has that knack of completely impressing you with the difference between modern and historical attitudes without spelling things out.

Oh yeah, there's a LADY on board the ship. They pick her up pretty early on. She's pretty and classy and rich and so on, with the charm to make friends of everyone while putting them at their ease blah blah. Also she's unmarried and like 27 with famous brothers and a title yadda yadda. The last portion of the book is all SEXUAL TENSION between Hornblower and Lady Barbara, culminating in a little making out which Hornblower ends because he realizes it's undignified. Oh right! And also he's married. His wife is super frumpy though, but then again she did take care of their kids before they died in some sort of plague. When Hornblower decides that a quick game of Blow the Horn in her cabin (OH GOSH THAT TURNED OUT MUCH DIRTIER THAN I MEANT IT I'M SO SORRY) is unbecoming of his status as the captain* (*also, married), Lady Barbara gets all offended and huffy and leaves the ship in a very wrapped-in-her-dignity state. Meanwhile, the narrator seems to be pretty much pro-adultery, basically regretting that they didn't have more time left in the journey to work things out. Classy.

This being a book written in the 1930s about the early 1800s, there is also a fair bit of racist language and so on. The worst of this is definitely Lady Barbara, who has a black maid I almost can't tell you about. Let's say she likes men and gets some bad treatment from Lady B. What makes this especially bad is that the maid is barely mentioned -- her stereotyped-ness and bad treatment is just a footnote. Somehow the casual nature of this bit of racism is much worse than the sailors' attitudes toward Spaniards and native South Americans. It manages to come across less as "that's how people were then" and more like "that's just what stupid black women get". Ugh.

So the pro-adultery stance and racism toward maids (and we all know how bad that is) were two very unfortunate drawbacks.

The boaty portion of the book focuses on a crazy South American rebel/dictator who believes he's an Aztec god and sentences those to displease him to die of thirst. In the story, the bigger picture of political alliances and rivalries between Britain and Spain shift the picture around under Hornblower's feet so that while at first he has to help the crazy torturer, then he has to help the Spanish fight against him, and finally the Spanish send him packing as an interfering foreigner. So obviously the book is interested in moral complexity (kind of), although I don't think it's ultimately very successful. Lots of battles though.

Shall we drag this post out further and talk about Hornblower as a character? No, I think I shall save that so that I can post this now and go do Actual Work.

Beat to Quarters is an entertaining, lightweight sort of book, full of plot. Events follow on events, and there is plenty of battle and maneuvering for your reading pleasure. As a historical novel it does an adequate, although not particularly engrossing, job of setting the stage and portraying another time. Its moral compass does seem a little muddled, and perhaps because Hornblower doesn't seem to think about the Right and Wrong of situations. He might be uncomfortable with helping a deranged and brutal tyrant, but apparently more because he's concerned for his ship's safety than because he feels he's collaborating with evil. I don't ask that he necessarily do the right thing, by his lights or mine, mind you; but I didn't think the book did much to show us what his lights are, which seemed odd when dealing with the theme of how rapidly-changing political boundaries can be, and how duty to one's country can mean opposite things from one day to the next as a result. But anyhow, it was an enjoyable book -- and I'll be back to talk a little about Captain Hornblower himself at some point.

The engrossing tale of two coats on a coat rack

I picked up Major Pettigrew's Last Stand for $1.50 at our local St Vincent de Paul store. Yes indeed, they had marked the price up quite a bit, no doubt because it was in hardback. I was pleasantly surprised at how thin it was (although maybe that's the norm now? I dunno, I still expect a "proper" novel to have three volumes) and I remembered it being popular whenever it came out, so I decided to give it a go.

This has got to be the most geriatric novel ever. "Well duh," you say, "the protagonist is a man in his sixties." Yeah yeah, smart guy. What I mean is that the world portrayed in the novel is basically the worst. Everyone cares about money nowadays, no one actually cares about tradition. Except for Muslims, but they're just holding onto horrible oppressive traditions. Also, everyone's super racist, and classist, and worst of all, they have American friends. (The stereotypically rich-and-arrogant American characters in this book prompted me to look at the author profile, and while Ms Simonson grew up in England she wrote the book from her home in Brooklyn. Mmhm.)

The story is rather lightweight. For some reason absolutely everyone is strongly opposed to the Major and Mrs Ali getting together. Maybe I'm being naive, but really? I know, I know, everyone's racist and/or classist and OH NOES the white guy's going to marry that Pakistani shopkeeper but it makes for kind of a boring novel. There's a lot else going on besides the love story, including drama in Mrs Ali's family surrounding an unwed mother, and drama in the Pettigrew family surrounding a pair of loved but extremely valuable shotguns. Meanwhile, there's a supervillain-worthy plot to build a luxury development in their village that will only house snooty old families. Yes: people who come from old landed/titled families but who can't afford to keep up their estates will move into these densely packed McMansions, while the villagers will be trained as craftsmen and servants and boutique shopkeepers. THAT SOUNDS TOTALLY VIABLE. You know what would make this plan better? If instead of being in an English village it were on an island. Or under a volcano!

I pass over the utterly ludicrous cliff's edge showdown that forms the climax of the book. As another character points out, there is an interesting parallel/connection between the Major, a man of old-school honor, and a nephew of Mrs Ali's, who is intensely attached to a rigid sort of Islam. But nothing really comes of this. Nothing ever comes of the Major's relationship with his dickish yuppie son, Roger. Roger is the purest distillation of materialist assholery you're likely to come across; everything, and I mean everything, comes down to social climbing or business advantage. The Major gets angry with him basically every time he talks to him, and rightly so because Roger is effing offensive, but although he sort of tries to rebuke him now and then, at no point does he actually attempt to really get Roger's attention or put him in his place. Blah blah blah, a father's love, but for serious Major. Roger disrespects and insults, consciously and unconsciously, to his father's face, basically everything the Major holds dear. And he is exactly the same at the end of the novel as at the beginning. It just seemed deeply unlikely to me that a retired Army officer, the son of an Army officer, someone professionally acquainted with the concepts of discipline and respect, would not do something about this fool. Or maybe I'm just bitter that we didn't get a "Roger finally gets slapped" scene.

So yeah, this was not a life-changing novel for me. That said it wasn't all that bad. It was fairly entertaining, and certainly quick-moving. It jumps straight into the story, with the Major and Mrs Ali meeting on page one, and by about page five it's already obvious that they're a totally cute couple. I think for me, though, and I know this sounds just terrible, the cover art might still be my favorite part.

In which I ramble my way across a book

It's a major pet peeve of mine when Jane Austen gets referred to as a "Victorian" novelist. It's one of those line-in-the-sand things, like referring to Obama as a "socialist": either you know what those words mean or you don't. (Oooh, edgy!)

Jane (reporting from this rad mug) and I are unimpressed by poor periodization skills

But, y'know, I can sort of understand the inclination. Austen is not only super-famous, she sort of stands apart, time-wise. It's been ages since I've taken an English Lit class, so maybe I'm off base, but who else from the early nineteenth century do we still really read, eh? Scott, maybe. Burney's earlier and only nerds know about her. Radcliffe if you're a suicidal nerd. There are the Romantic poets, but they're poets. Mary Shelley gets treated as a genre author. For all the Austen family's novel-reading it doesn't seem like there are a whole lot of survivals from the period.

Well, here's a book to help round out that picture: Marriage, by Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, published in 1818. I downloaded this for freeeee through Manybooks.com. This is the Project Gutenberg edition, which obviously gets the job done but is slightly annoying in various ways. There's a fairly extensive Victorian introduction that has all kinds of background about Ferrier and the novel, but the lack of formatting obliterates the footnotes and block quotes and makes it sort of a headache. So I skipped it, although probably I would enjoy it if I made an effort. (Bah, effort.)

This is clearly a didactic novel, meant to illustrate good and bad approaches to girls' education and how these lead to success or misery in marriage. At the center are twin baby girls and their three mother-figures. Their birth mother, Lady Juliana, is a spoiled, air-headed London beauty who elopes with her Scottish suitor in the name of love; she keeps one of the twin girls with her when she returns to London from Scotland. The other twin girl is adopted by a saintly aunt by marriage (mother figure #2), Alicia Douglas, who is also English but thoroughly intelligent and virtuous. The third potential mother figure is Aunt Jacky, a spinster aunt who represents the other end of the bad mothering spectrum, being completely small-minded and ultimately almost as empty-headed as the birth mother despite being more useful around the house. Ferrier is pretty scathing about Miss Jacky and her brand of "sensible woman":

Miss Jacky, the senior of the trio, was what is reckoned a very sensible woman--which generally means, a very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women and children--a sort of superintendent of all actions, time, and place--with unquestioned authority to arraign judge, and condemn upon the statutes of her own supposed sense... At home her supremacy in all matters of sense was perfectly established; and thence the infection, like other superstitions, had spread over the whole neighbourhood. As sensible woman she regulated the family, which she took care to let everybody see; she was conductor of her nieces' education, which she took care to let everybody hear; she was a sort of postmistress general--a detector of all abuses and impositions; and deemed it her prerogative to be consulted about all the useful and useless things which everybody else could have done as well. She was liberal of her advice to the poor, always enforcing on them the iniquity of idleness, but doing nothing for them in the way of employment--strict economy being one of the many points in which she was particularly sensible. The consequence was, while she was lecturing half the poor women in the parish for their idleness, the bread was kept out of their mouths by the incessant carding of wool and knitting of stockings, and spinning, and reeling, and winding, and pirning, that went on amongst the ladies themselves. And, by-the-bye, Miss Jacky is not the only sensible woman who thinks she is acting a meritorious part when she converts what ought to be the portion of the poor into the employment of the affluent.

I thought that economic point was rather interesting. The contrast is that Alicia pays the boys and girls of her neighborhood to take care of her garden rather than doing it herself.

Ferrier is an entertaining writer, and so even though most of her characters represent some precisely mapped combination of [good/bad] nature and [good/bad] nurture, they're still interesting personalities. Plus it's just fascinating to see what she saw as plausible "types" of her day. For instance, saintly aunt Alicia, we are told, was a poor cousin raised in a well-bred family, and when she and her titled cousin fell in love -- you know the fall out here, right? The two are separated, forbidden to marry, etc etc. But! Alicia, though heart-broken, accepts that this is totally reasonable, that her high-born aunt has every right to forbid her son to marry a poor cousin, and steels herself to get over him. When he's super-persistent, she marries the nicest of her suitors and goes to live with him in Scotland, and is very happy with this. Contrast this with her sister-in-law Lady Juliana, and you get the feeling that Ferrier has some doubts about this whole "love match" business.

Aside from historical perspectives on education and marriage, Marriage also paints a delightfully nineteenth century picture of Scotland. The contrast between the Scottish highlands and London's highlife (eh, eh? see what I did there?) provides a geographical contrast as background to the moral/intellectual contrasts in the book. Plus it offers lots of colorful scenery and characters.

"It's impossible the bagpipe could frighten anybody," said Miss Jacky, in a high key; "nobody with common sense could be frightened at a bagpipe."

On descending to the dining-parlour he found his father seated at the window, carefully perusing a pamphlet written to illustrate the principle, Let nothing be lost, and containing many sage and erudite directions for the composition and dimensions of that ornament to a gentleman's farmyard, and a cottager's front door, ycleped, in the language of the country a midden--with the signification of which we would not, for the world, shock the more refined feelings of our southern readers.

If you like historical fashions, this book is worth looking at: there are plenty of intriguingly detailed descriptions of the Scottish women's practical clothing as compared to Lady Juliana's finery. For instance, one highland lady arrives at the house with her skirt "carefully drawn through the pocket-holes" and wearing "a faded red cloth jacket, which bore evident marks of having been severed from its native skirts, [and] now acted in the capacity of a spencer."

In re education, "true religion" seems to be the magic bullet. Here is Alicia summing up the take-home lesson:

"Oh, what an awful responsibility do those parents incur," she would mentally exclaim, "who thus neglect or corrupt the noble deposit of an immortal soul! And who, alas! can tell where the mischief may end? This unfortunate will herself become a mother; yet wholly ignorant of the duties, incapable of the self-denial of that sacred office, she will bring into the world creatures to whom she can only transmit her errors and her weaknesses!"

I'm only halfway through; the twin raised by Alicia has just arrived in London to meet her sister and her mother, and that's going about as well as you could expect. I'm considering not finishing, just because I'm a little frustrated with how long I've been reading this already. It's not the book's fault; I no longer have a daily commute which means I have to figure out some other way to get reading time into my day. So I rate this: Worthwhile, if you like old books.

(There's no reason for that to be there, but I think you'll agree, it had to go somewhere.)

A Spark of life

Strangely enough, I have more short fiction to share with you today. I guess these are what would be called "novellas": The Driver's Seat and The Finishing School, both by Muriel Spark.


If I were at all smart, I would not be talking about two books in one post. It should be pretty obvious that I need all the material I can get these days; with my return to the US looming in the very near future, I've been reading more scholarly stuff and spending my time on the trains staring at the ads fretting (and frankly the future forecast looks like more of the same). The highlight of my bookly life lately has been recommending a book to The Manolo (!).

But it's best for you the reader if I talk about these two short books together, and I am all about you the reader and that's why you love me. Ahem.

The Driver's Seat is a creepy, creepy little story: there's a lot that's off and unsettling but I couldn't quite put it all together until the very end. Whereas...

The Finishing School is lower-key, featuring two characters who are obsessed with each other, and how their obsession grows and impacts the rest of the community. The Driver's Seat was first published in 1970, and The Finishing School in 2004. The Finishing School understandably has that little bit of unreality about the way it portrays its young adult characters. It's hard to put a finger on any particular scene or detail that's wrong; although the characters have cell phones and laptops it just doesn't quite feel organic. Really the effect is to make the time frame of the novel feel vague, which is not such a bad thing.


Reading these two novels... novellas... really brought out an interesting characteristic of Sparks' writing, which is the way she plays with the timeline and with what you know and don't know. For example, in The Driver's Seat, she states fairly early on that Lise will soon be found murdered. She doesn't hint; she states; it's not so much foreshadowing as foretelling. She does this in The Finishing School as well, and there she also will abruptly move into a scene with two characters discussing something whom you wouldn't expect together. Then the camera moves back, so to speak, and Sparks tells you that they're discussing the matter in bed, and they've been sleeping together for the last several weeks. It's an interesting technique, and I think it helped keep both these shortish stories moving.


The Driver's Seat is part of the Penguin "Modern Classics" series and has an introduction -- which is actually really good. Or maybe I'm just saying that because the author tells you to stop reading at a certain point if you don't know the story already. Thanks, introduction writer! It was one of the hard lessons I had to learn at some point in my grown-up reading career, that "introductions" despite the name are rarely any good for someone reading the book for the first time. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration. But it's an exaggeration I stand by.

Oh hey, it's a book I read

I find it orders of magnitude more difficult to pick a book to read when I'm not currently reading something. Or maybe I should turn that around and say, when I'm in the middle of something I have no trouble at all queueing up three more books with a sense of enthusiasm. My favorite theory (of the five minutes I've spent thinking about it) is that it has to do with a perceived level of difficulty. When I'm currently reading something I'm aware that it doesn't actually take me that long to read a book, and I don't feel like I'm condemning myself to a potentially boring week every time I set a book on the stack. Whereas when my hands are empty, I'm picking something for right now, and right now I want something good. At such moments I am particularly susceptible to recommendations; the possibility of blaming someone else if the book turns out to be a stinker is always attractive...

As you may have guessed, I have recent experience with this dilemma. I got back from Paris (lovely if damp and intimidating) having finished the scholarly Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe (predictably uneven and ultimately disappointing, although containing invaluable insights into national histories usually overlooked in the English literature). What to read, what to read. Nothing on my Amazon wish list looked any good of course. Finally a blog I read mentioned Evelyn Waugh's Scoop in a recommending kind of way, and off I went.

Sadly there is very little Waugh available on Kindle. As long as I'm complaining about this, I'll note also that Amazon has volumes 2-4 of Sigrid Undset's Master of Hestviken for Kindle... yes, 2-4. This is the kind of moment that makes me feel impatient with "OMG e-readers are killing books" articles. Don't worry, people; the sellers of e-readers are not in danger of making the experience too attractive. But: Waugh's complete stories are available, and for the sake of getting on with something, I bought it.

 
Now, short stories are not my favorite thing. The format lends itself to more insinuation and ambiguity than I usually like. Furthermore, I tend to think that collections of a novelist's short stories are a bit more for the completist or literary scholar than for Jane Reader. But although that latter assumption was more or less borne out, I did enjoy this quite a lot.

There are some really wicked little stories here, in which people are the victims of monumental irony. There are a couple are are simply howls of rage against contemporary social trends. There are also two chapters of an unfinished novel that are so good I was sad to remember it was unfinished. The sad thing about the Kindle is that it's difficult for me to go back and tell you anything more specific about the stories; but I enjoyed the collection.

After the unfinished/fragmentary works comes the juvenilia -- if there is a better argument against becoming a famous author than the possibility of having your juvenilia published, I don't know it. For the most part this stuff is not particularly good reading, although there is a pretty awesome introductory letter in which the (teenage?) Waugh congratulates himself on overcoming the handicap of a literary family to write a novel. There are no notes or anything on these pieces to indicate when they were written or how old he was when he wrote them, which I thought was disappointing. Sure, maybe there aren't dates attached to the manuscripts but surely some scholar out there has a theory and it would be better for the average reader to offer something rather than nothing.

So there we are; back on the book-horse. Although all this rain is really putting a cramp in my reading-on-train-platforms style.

Historical fiction I didn't hate!

I can best describe this book as a successful version of Clara and Mr Tiffany, which longtime readers will remember I disliked.

The story is framed as a sort of pseudo-memoir, but functionally it's more just a first-person story. Sira, the main character and narrator, is a seamstress in Madrid, engaged to an ordinary guy, living with her mother in a poor neighborhood, when she's swept off her feet by a sexy typewriter salesman. A very sexy typewriter salesman, the sexy typewriter salesman of your sexiest dreams. When he leaves her destitute in Morocco, she has to start again from scratch, reinventing herself as a high-class dressmaker. This mixes her up with influential people and she eventually returns to Franco's Madrid as a haute couturier and British spy.

Maybe it's a matter of reading the book in translation, but I thought Sira's character was a little disappointing given the dramatic twists and turns her life takes and how successfully she handles them. She comes across as a little flat somehow; you'd expect her to be a little livelier and more confident or something. Despite all the changes in her circumstances I had a hard time seeing how her perspective or personality was changing. It's very possible that this is just me, though. The scene where Sira is confronted by her old fiance was genuinely gripping, even though I thought the book gave that phase of her life short shrift.

One of the main aims of this book is, of course, to tell the story of early 20th century Spain, particularly the Civil War and the Second World War, and more precisely to tell the story of Juan Luis Beigbeider and his English lover Rosalind Fox. Yes, there are some clumsy fact-dump conversations, but they have the benefit of being about things I'm unfamiliar with and therefore inclined to give a pass. On the whole I'd say the history aspect is well-balanced with the novel's plot.

Not to say that the book didn't share some of Clara and Mr Tiffany's quirks. If I hadn't been reading this on the Kindle, I would go back and calculate how many of the chapters end with something like this:

But for that we had to wait a few weeks yet, six or seven. And over that time, things happened that--yet again--transformed the course of my life forever.

My estimate is that something like 40-50% of chapters ended with "little did I know that my life was about to change yet again." But the good news, and the #1 thing that differentiates this book from Clara and Mr Tiffany, is that this only happens once:

"Coffee?"
     I hadn't yet finished my fruit but I accepted. He filled the cups, having first unscrewed the top part of a metallic receptacle. Miraculously the liquid came out hot. I had no idea what it was, this machine that could pour out the coffee that had been there for at least an hour as though it had just been prepared.
     "A thermos, a great invention," he said, noticing my curiosity.

I always assume that translated books must be good, but in honesty I have to think this one was translated largely because English people feature so prominently as Good Guys. But overall it was an enjoyable read and worth picking up if the history appeals to you.

One final detail: in this book, like Mysterious Benedict Society, the spies communicate using Morse code. Why do authors do this? It's not like they have to work out an actual code, they just have to write "I encoded the message". In this book, the rationale is presented as "the Germans keep breaking our codes, so we'll use Morse" -- i.e., since they keep figuring out our codes anyway, we'll just save them time and use one we know they know! In France, I'm pretty sure SOE used book codes, but maybe -- and I have to bow to the author on this -- in Spain they just used Morse. Anyway, I warn you now that the next book I read that features Morse code as a super-secure top secret method of communication will probably get laughed at more than it deserves.

This is the last, absolutely the last, paper book I will buy in London

Voila!

Mais oui, I have booked my tickets and hotel for Paris. It's mon premier temps, and although I ne parler pas any French (as you will no doubt have guessed at this point), I look forward to my German and Italian making a strong comeback as soon as I set pied on French soil. I was never a girl who had a fascination with Paris, but I enjoy wine, cheese, coffee and croissants, so I'm confident this will be a success.

Plus I intend to go and see this:

I get a strange number of Google search hits for "bayeux tapestry" so let me reiterate: that is a picture of the Bayeux Tapestry, and I am obsessed with the Bayeux tapestry.

As I say, this is my first time, and I don't have an enormous list of must-sees other than

for good measure

so I have set myself the excitingly low bar of (1) walking around a bit and (2) going to the Louvre.* And this particular guidebook is (or seems like -- not like I've tried it out yet) the perfect book for such a person. It is made up of a series of walking tours that take you through the various neighborhoods, with a particular emphasis on the architecture and architectural history. The walks link up, which is an interesting approach. In theory, I guess, you could take the back half of one and the front half of the next one together, I guess.

The book is pretty stripped down; it's certainly no DK Eyewitness Guide (my parents' guidebooks of choice). The main decoration is in the form of simple pen sketches by the author of some of the buildings. Nearly every two page spread has a sketch so it's not completely plain but the only color comes from the headings and so on being in dark blue ink. On this aesthetic point, my only real objection is to the cover; what works well for the interior is not so great for a cover. The main contents are generally good (again, as far as I can tell), and there's a little glossary of architectural terms with explanations of the major styles, plus a "further afield" section which is always a nice feature. If you want the usual sort of guidebook things like hotels and restaurants you'd have to look elsewhere, but that's no big deal. My only complaint is that the little map of "Paris Districts" just has them labelled by number, while the walking itineraries only give their colloquial names and don't mention the numbers.

And now I will completely contradict my post title and say that I'm open to your suggestions of what I should read in Gay Paree, since, despite my lack of previous attachment to the city, I admit that it does seem sacrilegious to read a Kindle by the Seine. Preferably not history (I took two French history classes for some reason in undergrad, and they dented my GPA), and preferably something light or at least not depressing. I already read The Dud Avocado. I'm thinking maybe I'll just pick up some kind of cheap disposable paperback for the trip, something that, despite all previous experience, I'll be able to just give away or leave behind somewhere without being tempted to fit it in my suitcase.

*Incidentally, it seems cruel that everyone says you can't possibly cover the Louvre in a day and yet they don't sell any sort of multi-day ticket.