Reading, Writing, Working, Playing

Frenchman's Creek

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:14:21 PDT

I count Daphne du Maurier as one of my favorite authors. She is a master of the psychological thriller and a wonderfully inventive storyteller. So, you can imagine my delight when the Classics Club spin 2 rolled lucky #6, which meant I got to read Frenchman's Creek as my next classic.

It pains and astounds me to report that I was disappointed in the book. It started off wonderfully, with a vintage DDM description of the harbor, river, and creek in Cornwall that is the setting of the book. She transports the reader from the present to the 17th century, evoking the mists of time and the timeless beauty and magic of a beloved place.

The problem is that the premise is shallow, the plot unrealistic, and the characters are wooden. I can imagine DDM conceived of the premise while walking down a narrow path from her home, Menabilly, to a creek and thought about how pirates might've hidden in the rivulet and raided the neighboring hamlets with impunity. It's a great idea, but it doesn't have legs.

The French pirates are uniformly jolly, good-natured, loyal, and loving; the English gentry they rob, with the exception of Lady Dona, the protagonist, are uniformly oafish, thick in body and mind, and sour. Lady Dona is beautiful, of course, spirited, of course--bored with her life, her marriage, her money and seeks adventure in the arms of the pirate captain, the noblest man to ever breathe. He is expert at everything--fighting, making love, fishing, cooking, leading raids, sketching seabirds, sketching Lady Dona, etc.

Lady Dona actually fakes an illness and leaves her 18-month old son and 3-year daughter, both of whom she professes to love to distraction, in the care of a nurse while she goes on a raid with her pirate buddies. Puh-leaze!

While I was reading Frenchman's Creek, I couldn't help remembering the bio I read a few years ago of DDM. She wasn't the most caring of mothers, often neglecting her own children and marriage when she was in the throes of writing, which was most of the time. I couldn't help but feel that Frenchman's Creek was little more than the author's own fantasy of leaving her children and husband and escaping into a Disneyesque AdventureLand.

The book lacked the psychological insights and tightly wound, but real emotions that characterize her other stories and that has drawn me to them over time. I'm not ready to give up on DDM--there are still books of hers I've yet to read and many I plan to reread, but Frenchman's Creek won't number among the latter.

I did have fun looking at the various movie posters, though. There are some pretty cheesy book covers too!

The Ninth Daughter

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:03:30 PDT

I heard about Barbara Hamilton's Abigail Adams mystery series a few years ago, and just now got around to reading the first in the series last month, thanks to the wonderfully motivating TBR Pile Challenge. I'm so happy I did--I admire Abigail Adams so much and her voice in The Ninth Daughter was marvelously real and true to the historical Adams as I imagine her.

The mystery itself was absolutely spot-on--I didn't finger the murderer until seconds before the narrator did, which is gratifying, and Hamilton skillfully wove in actual events as well as interesting historical possibilities.

The action takes place in 1773--after the Boston Massacre but before the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Colony is becoming increasingly rebellious, and Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty figure prominently in the plot, as do Puritan fanatics, English soldiers, rebels and Tories. I love to read about this time in history, and it was particularly fun to read such a well-written, historically-intelligent, and all around interesting mystery.

Definitely The Ninth Daughter was the perfect combination of two of my favorite genres, historical fiction and mystery.

This book is also part of the Historical Fiction Challenge. I've now read 6 books in this challenge this year and this is one of the best!

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday: Call the Midwife

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 28 May 2013 08:32:43 PDT

Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday, wherein bloggers can share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book they are reading or thinking about reading soon. Here's my contribution to the cause.

My son gave me a copy of Jennifer Worth's memoir, Call the Midwife, for Mother's Day, knowing how much I love the series, and I started it yesterday.

It opens with this paragraph:

Nonnatus House was situated in the heart of the London Docklands. The practice covered Stepney, Limehouse, Millwall, the Isle of Dogs, Cubitt Town, Poplar, Bow, Mile End and Whitechapel. The area was densely populated and most families had lived there for generations, often not moving more than a street or two away from their birthplace. Family life was lived at close quarters and children were brought up by a widely extended family of aunts, grandparents, cousins and older siblings, all living within a few houses, or at the most, streets of each other. Children would run in and out of each other's homes all the time and when I lived and worked there, I cannot remember a door ever being locked, except at night.

More of the Introduction can be found here, if I've whetted your appetite sufficiently.

I'm about a third of way done with the book and it's absolutely marvelous. So far, the series has been very faithful to the book, although the first mention of Dr. Turner included a reference to his wife and children...

I have discovered that Jennifer Worth wrote four books about her nursing career so I imagine I will end up with all of them eventually.

Mailbox Monday - Memorial Day 2013

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 27 May 2013 15:30:02 PDT

Time for my favorite meme, Mailbox Monday, where book lovers share the titles they received for review, purchased, or otherwise obtained over the past week. This month’s host is 4 the LOVE of BOOKS--stop by and check out what other books are being profiled this week.

I've had a great new set of books enter my house via all sorts of paths.

Here's my new acquisitions...

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, by Anne Lamott - I really enjoy Lamott's non-fiction. Her honesty, story-telling, and fresh prose is always a joy to read. Really looking forward to this memoir of babyhood as my own nest empties this summer.

The Widow Waltz, by Sally Koslow - this is a review copy from a publicist; I don't accept many review copies because I tend to read books that have been out for awhile, but this one, about a newly widowed mother in NYC, appealed to me.

Highland River, by Neil M. Gunn - I found this author and title in Robert Macfarlane's wonderful book about distance walking, The Old Ways, and wanted to add it to my collection of books on walking. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Ken is a scientist, with a scientist's dispassionate eye for the material world, as he reviews his life from the difficult 1930s, through the slaughter of World War I, back to an idyllic boyhood in the Highlands. When the mature man finally reaches the source of the river that has haunted his imagination for so many years, he finds that the wellsprings of magic and delight were always there, in the world all around him at the time, inexhaustible and irreverent. Awarded the James Tait Memorial Prize 1937, Highland River is written in prose as cool and clear as the water it describes, and is the simplest, most poetic, and perhaps the greatest of Neil Gunn's novels.

Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer - I've read about this novel on many other blogs and it sounds fun. Another witchie read after The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which I just finished.

Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain - this book has been recommended for years, so I finally got a copy so that I could finally read it. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera Brittain’s elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war’s end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as a book that helped "both form and define the mood of its time," it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.

The Plantagenets: the Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, by Dan Jones - lent to me by a brother who came out to visit and who insisted I borrow it because I will love it. I will--starting this week!

The Last Runaway

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:56:22 PDT

I haven't been disappointed by a Tracy Chevalier book yet. I enjoyed Girl With a Pearl Earring and The Lady and the Unicorn, and loved Remarkable Creatures, but I think her latest, The Last Runaway is my favorite.

Maybe it's because it is set in pre-Civil War America and I've been reading a lot about slavery and the Civil War lately; maybe it's because its main character, Honor Bright, is a quilter and I've been feverishly working on three quilts this spring and so can appreciate Chevalier's riffs on sewing; maybe it's because Honor is such an atypical heroine but one I can relate to and understand. Or, maybe it's because Chevalier is a gifted writer who continues to explore new stories and articulates so well internal dramas.

Quickie synopsis - Honor Bright is a young Quaker woman from England who accompanies her engaged sister in 1850 across the Atlantic to America to immigrate. The sister dies enroute to Ohio, and Honor is stranded in America, unable to return home because of debilitating seasickness, friendless, shy, and dependent on the kindness of virtual strangers. She settles in a tiny town near Oberlin, where the man who was to marry her sister lives. Honor is befriended by Belle Mills, a local haberdasher, whose brother, Donovan, is a runaway slave hunter. Donovan fall in love with Honor, who acknowledges a spark of attraction for him but abhors his occupation. Honor marries a local dairy farmer, Jack Haymaker, and struggles to find her place within his family. Her mother-in-law, Judith, is rigid, demanding and condescending. Her sister-in-law, Dorcas, is jealous of Honor and not to be trusted. And, with the recent passage of the Fugitive Slave Laws, the Haymakers have decided that they cannot risk losing their farm by helping slaves along the underground railroad as they pass through the Oberlin, OH area on their way to Canada. Honor defies them by helping the runaways she encounters...and therein lies the heart of the story.

There's a lot of Fanny Price (Austen's Mansfield Park heroine) in Honor Bright--both are quiet, unassuming, and completely dependent on others and yet their moral compass is so strong that they muster the courage to defy the authority figures who rule them and will not be swayed from following the dictates of their conscience and heart.

There's also a lot of Elizabeth Gaskell's Thornton family (from North and South) in the Haymaker family. Judith Haymaker and Mrs. Thornton are definitely cut from the same cloth--neither thinks the pretty foreigner who comes to town is good enough for her princely son, and neither is afraid to make her feel small, uncomfortable, and unwelcome. Dorcas Haymaker has a sister in Fanny Thornton--both are awed by the new girl in their lives and both deal with it by flaunting their own more secure status and indulging in fits of jealousy and spite.

Despite the similarities between the Thornton women and the Haymaker women, I have to stress that Jack Haymaker is no John Thornton. He was actually the hardest character for me to wrap my mind around. Honor married him after a very brief courtship, primarily because she couldn't see any other choice given her lack of family in America to look out for her. While he has his moments, he never achieves a heroic level--he lets life happen around him but doesn't really work to shape that life. Both Thornton and Haymaker experience devastating losses early in their lives, and both assume the mantle of head-of-household at too young an age, but they handle this role very differently.

My favorite characters, however, after Honor, are Belle and Donovan. Belle is a wonderful, energetic woman--free-speaking, blunt, independent, and big-hearted. Despite their vast differences in temperament and demeanor, she and Honor become true friends. This is one way in which Honor's story differs from Fanny Price's--in Mansfield Park, Fanny never has a true friend, to whom she can unburden her heart and who always has her back with no strings attached.

Donovan is a wonderfully interesting character because while he is definitely a villain, dangerous and mean-spirited, he loves a good woman and this makes you think that redemption might actually be a possibility for him. Donovan loves Honor not just because she is pretty and compliant, but because he sees and appreciates the light of her spirit, something Judith Haymaker is never able to do.

I think the premise of an English Quaker girl encountering slavery and coming to terms with the otherness of the slaves and then their humanity and very personal connection to herself and her own story is a brilliant way to comment on America's "peculiar institution." Honor experiences slavery first as an outsider who is horrified by what she sees, and then as an insider (once she marries into the system) who must resist the impulse to simply protect self-interest when crimes against humanity are being perpetrated. I think the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law probably accelerated the timing of the Civil War by decades because it forced so many people to finally take a stand against slavery whereas before the Law they were willing to "live and let live" as along as they didn't have to help recapture slaves.

Finally, I really loved reading about Honor's sewing--her English patchwork as opposed to American applique, her technique of making rosettes, and her analysis of what makes a pleasing final product. Here's a Star of Bethlehem quilt from the 1830s and now housed in the Brooklyn Museum. This quilt pattern is mentioned many times in the novel. I may have to make one myself.

Star of Bethlehem quilt, circa 1830, Brooklyn Museum

Lucky Number 6

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:23:46 PDT

The Classics Club Lucky SPIN number is 6!

This means I get to read Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier by July 1.

What an absolute treat I have in store.

Here's the Amazon blurb:

Jaded by the numbing politeness of Restoration London, Lady Dona St. Columb revolts against high society. She rides into the countryside, guided only by her restlessness and her longing to escape. But when chance leads her to meet a French pirate, hidden within Cornwall's shadowy forests, Dona discovers that her passions and thirst for adventure have never been more aroused. Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him. Frenchman's Creek is the breathtaking story of a woman searching for love and adventure who embraces the dangerous life of a fugitive on the seas.

I read a lot of du Maurier's novels in my teenage years, but somehow never read this one. Sometimes it's good to hold out on finishing up on an author so that you can have a treat later on!

Captains Courageous

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:25:30 PDT

I've had a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous on my shelf for years, and so it was a natural to put on my Back to the Classics list under the Classic Adventure category. It is a classic boy's story and definitely in the mold of an Horatio Alger story, in which hard work, courage, and determination provide the path to glory.

Rudyard Kipling is most well-known for his stories and poems extolling the wonders of the British Empire, so I was a bit surprised to find out the story is firmly planted in the American mythos. Published first serially in 1896, Captains Courageous is the story of Harvey Cheyne, son of a railroad tycoon and insufferable brat of 15 who is washed overboard early into a journey from NY to England on an ocean liner with his mother. He is rescued by a fishing boat, the We're Here, whose captain refuses to cut short his fishing season to take him back to NY, even though Harvey assures him that his father will reward him handsomely. Instead, he sets Harvey to work, making him earn his keep, and in a fairly short time, Harvey is relishing the hard work and the camaraderie of his new life.

When he is finally reunited with his parents near the end of the book, his father, in particular, is immensely proud of the man his son has become under the tutelage of Disko Troop, the We're Here's captain. The father acknowledges that he gave his son a life of privilege and so deprived him of the opportunity to make a man of himself through that magic elixir of hard work, courage, and determination that the father experienced himself.

It's good that Captains Courageous is a short novel because the saccharine quality of the story would become too much to swallow after awhile. As it was, I enjoyed it for what it was in the pantheon of Boys Stories, and I particularly enjoyed reading about life in a fishing boat circa 1900 in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. I also absolutely loved the description of the train trip that Harvey's parents took from San Diego to Boston after they receive word that their son had been rescued. According to Wikipedia, it is a classic of railway literature.

The couple travel in the Cheynes' private rail car, the "Constance", taken from San Diego to Chicago as a special train, hauled by sixteen locomotives in succession. It takes precedence over 177 other trains. "Two and one-half minutes would be allowed for changing engines; three for watering and two for coaling." The "Constance" is attached to the scheduled express "New York Limited" to Buffalo, New York. The car was transferred to the New York Central for the trip across the state to Albany. Switched to the Boston and Albany Railroad, the Cheynes complete the trip to Boston in their private car, with the entire cross-country run taking 87 hours 35 minutes.

I read a little bit about Kipling and discovered that he lived in Vermont for awhile early in his marriage and wrote this novel whilst living there.

I also learned that the book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which opens with the line "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt." Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers, published in The Times in 1892.

Here's a sample of the kind of writing that exemplifies Captains Courageous and that made it a fun read for this landlubber who had a print of Winslow Homer's Sailing the Catboat in her room when she was a child.

It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his hand on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky.

Sailing the Catboat, by Winslow Homer

The Classics Spin

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:03 PDT

The Classics Club Spin #2 - I wasn't a member for the earlier spin this year, but I loved the idea of having a random number generator pick what classic I would read next.

Here's the format.

Pick twenty unread books from your list. This could be five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice.
Number them from one to twenty.
On Monday a number will be drawn.
That’s the book to read by July 1.

Mystery Mile, by Margery Allingham
Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Elizabeth von Armin
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (reread)
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Frenchman's Creek, by Daphne du Maurier
Trilby, by George du Maurier
Felix Holt, by George Eliot
The Art of Eating, M.F.K. Fisher
The French Lieutenant's Woman, by John Fowles
The Sybil, by Par Lagerkvist (reread)
The Leopard, by Guiseppe di Lampedusa
The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates
Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by R.L. Stevenson
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (reread)
Dr. Thorne, by Anthony Trollope

If left to my own devices, I would go with #8, #18, #19, or #20 as they are all on my Back to the Classics Challenge.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros:

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:14:29 PDT

Hosted by Diane @ Bibliophile by the Sea

This is my first time doing this meme.

My selection is from The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton. It's the first in her Abigail Adams mystery series, and I'm about half way through the book now.

Abigail Adams smelled the blood before she saw the door was open.

In November, Boston didn't reek the way it did in summer, especially down here in Fish Street. The coppery blood-stink cut the more prosaic pong of fish-heads and privies from the moment she stepped through the gate into Tillet's Yard, the way the single thread of gore seemed to shriek at her against the gray of the wet morning, trickling down Rebecca Malvern's doorstep.

I'm really enjoying this book, and Hamilton's Abigail seems very authentic--I keep hearing and picturing Laura Linney, who played Abigail superbly in the John Adams mini-series, and who I think got it right!

Thoughts?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:03:48 PDT

I have wanted to read Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, for years. I was pleasantly surprised awhile ago when I finally read Dracula--I don't read horror, except on rare occasions--but I really liked the book and could see how it captured an audience and never let it go. I've been anticipating a similar experience with Frankenstein. Furthermore, I think Mary Shelley is an interesting person--her position as daughter, wife, and friend to pillars of English literature and philosophy as well as her authorship of a book that sparked a legend and an industry makes her fascinating to learn about. As someone interested in the evolution of the novel, it was simply a matter of time before I got around to this seminal work.

Now that I've read it, I confess that I was a bit disappointed, primarily because I found the character of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster and the purported hero of the story, to be insufferable. As a parent, I simply cannot forgive his abandonment of the creature he created. I found the middle volume of the book, in which the monster tells his own story, to be the most interesting part of the novel and I felt far more sympathy for the monster than I could summon for his creator.

The story of Frankenstein is told as a story within a story, and I also found the initial narrator, Robert Walton, to be as irritating as Dr. Frankenstein. Their egotism and recklessness in the name of scientific ambition was hard to swallow, and I'm struggling to figure out whether Shelley intended for them to be seen as heroic or whether the point of her story was to show how tragically genius can be squandered when the aim is solely fame.

The reason that I have mixed feelings about Frankenstein is that I really think that Shelley saw Frankenstein's decision to not create a mate for his monster as a noble one. In her story, he consciously sacrificed the safety of his family for the good of mankind--without a mate, the monster can't procreate. However, Frankenstein made a bargain with his monster that I don't think the monster would have reneged on. While the creature thought that Dr. F. was making him a mate, he refrained from killing. Without hope for ever having love or companionship, the monster snapped and returned to killing everyone beloved by Dr. Frankenstein. Dr. F. kept on saying how persuasive and eloquent his monster could be--he was right, he convinced me that he would have kept his promise to be good.

By assembling body parts and applying electricity to them, Dr. Frankenstein created a living being. By denying him access to society and failing to teach him how to live productively, Dr. Frankenstein made that living being into a monster. On Mother's Day, it seems fitting to point out the Dr. Frankenstein was a very bad parent.

I think the idea behind the story of Frankenstein is brilliant--it is a thought-provoking book and provides incredible insight into the anguish of marginalized people, as well as society dealing with technological capabilities that outstrip the moral code. It has some good writing, particularly the middle section in which the monster waxes as eloquently as Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, one of the first books he taught himself to read!

It's certainly not one of the best books I've ever read, but it definitely is one of the most interesting.

Frankenstein is part of my Back to the Classics challenge.

The Classics Club - May Meme

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:18:07 PDT

The Classics Club meme for May is:
Tell us about the classic book(s) you’re reading this month. You can post about what you’re looking forward to reading in May, or post thoughts-in-progress on your current read(s).

I just finished Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and look forward to blogging about it shortly. It's been on my reading list for years, and I have mixed feelings. I expected to unconditionally love it, but I had a few issues. It was still a great read and a timeless classic.

I am almost done listening to Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. Just two chapters left, and it is terrific. Sort of a mini version of Moby Dick--I feel like I have been well-schooled in fishing vessels at the turn of the last century. I'm even inspired to maybe add a question or two about it to the Goodreads' Never-Ending-Book-Quiz, my personal favorite procrastinator's tool.

I'm about to start Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguao. I had meant to read his Remains of the Day first, but I joined a read-along this month and so changed the reading order.

Mailbox Monday - May 6

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:50:14 PDT

Mailbox Monday is hosted by 4 the LOVE of BOOKS--stop by the site to see what other bloggers just added to their TBR shelves.

I picked up a copy of A Little House Sampler--no it's not about cross-stitch that Laura and Mary did--instead it is a collection of fiction, essays, articles, columns, poems, drafts, unpublished manuscripts, notes, and musings of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her journalist-novelist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.

I'm looking forward to reading a new novel that's just on the horizon, A Wilder Rose: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Their Little Houses, by Susan Wittig Albert, and I wanted to get a flavor of their non-Little House writings first. While I've read the LH series many times, I haven't really read much else that they wrote.

Strong as Death - A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:28:47 PDT

I usually don't read books in a series out of order, but when I heard that the fourth book in Sharan Newman's mystery series set in 12th century France took place during a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, I knew I had to read it.

Newman did an excellent job in filling in the backstory of Catherine LeVendeur so that I was able to read Strong as Death as a standalone novel, and I hope to read more in the series as I liked the characters, the writing, and the overall setting. Sort of Brother Cadfael meets Outlander--there was a lot of medieval Christianity content and Catherine and her husband, Edgar, really reminded me very strongly of Claire and Jamie Fraser from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Both Catherine and Claire are feisty, capable, practical, compassionate, emotional women, and both Edgar and Jamie are loyal, strong, steadfast, and hopelessly in love with their respective wives.

Now on to why I read the book in the first place, the Camino. According to the afterword, the author walked the same path as her characters did, starting in Le Puy, France and it was great fun to Google the places where the pilgrims stopped along the way and gaze at the pictures of towns that really don't look like they've changed much during the past millennium. It seemed that all of the churches, shrines, and other landmarks mentioned in the book remain for today's pilgrims to enjoy.

The mystery itself was pretty good. I did guess at the murderer fairly early on, but I thought the story was sound and tight and not too fantastical and I loved reading about the customs, religious issues, and day-to-day living issues that constituted the world of the 12th century pilgrim.

This goes on my Camino bookshelf, and I imagine I will be rereading it before I begin my own pilgrimage two years from now.

Conques, France - near the beginning of the journey to Compostela

Joining the Classics Club

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:16:39 PDT

A lot of my blogger friends are members of the Classics Club, and since this seems to be my year of jumping on the bandwagon, I decided to join. Here is my list of fifty classics in five years.

Only one is currently in-progress, Frankenstein, the rest are books that I plan to read or reread within the next five years.

Most are novels, but there are a couple of non-fiction books in there as well.

With this list, I will finish my end-to-end reading of George Eliot, begun a few years ago, and make good headway with R.L. Stevenson and John Steinbeck. It also accounts for finishing up Trollope's Barset collection. It has a couple of books set in Venice and about the Civil War, both of which are current reading interests. It also includes a number of firsts--my first Joyce Carol Oates, my first Sir Walter Scott, and my first Ann Patchett.

Mystery Mile, by Margery Allingham
Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Elizabeth von Armin
Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte
Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte
Camilla, by Fanny Burney
A Diary from Dixie, by Mary Chestnut
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
No Name, by Wilkie Collins
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens (reread)
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (reread)
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Frenchman's Creek, by Daphne du Maurier
Trilby, by George du Maurier
Felix Holt, by George Eliot
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot
The Art of Eating, M.F.K. Fisher
The French Lieutenant's Woman, by John Fowles
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James (reread)
Daisy Miller, by Henry James
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
The Sybil, by Par Lagerkvist (reread)
The Leopard, by Guiseppe di Lampedusa
The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
Battle Cry of Freedom, by James M. McPherson
The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates
State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett
Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
The Black Arrow, by R.L. Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by R.L. Stevenson
Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (reread)
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck (reread)
Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Dr. Thorne, by Anthony Trollope
Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope
The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope
The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Anthony Trollope
1876, by Gore Vidal
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh (reread)
The Buccaneers, by Edith Wharton
Germinal, by Emile Zola

Top Ten Tuesday: What I liked...more or less

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:30:27 PDT

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's focus on which books exceeded or didn't meet our expectations. Like many memers, I chose to go with the 5 in each camp approach.

What I liked MORE than expected:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I put off reading this classic American novel for decades because of its saccharine sweet reputation. When I finally read it, I was astounded by how good it was. Yes, it was sweet, but there is a darkness there, and grit and realism and courage that make it a wonderful novel and an important novel in American history.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - I assumed that it was nothing but propaganda, but the writing is excellent and the characters multi-faceted and nuanced. I am so glad I finally read it and consider it one of the most important documents ever written in America.

Dracula by Bram Stoker - I tend to avoid horror stories and horror movies, and vampires are so over-exposed that they're cliche, but this original story created a genre and I found myself impressed by the realism and style. A real nail-biter in which the author doesn't romanticize the monster...what a novel idea!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I went to the movie whilst on vacation with my kids and husband and was surprised by how much I liked it. So I read the book and was really impressed by how good a book it is. I had dismissed it as YA sensationalism, but it has an interesting premise and is well-executed.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe - I expected to be rolling my eyes at the gothic excesses of this classic novel, but instead found myself enjoying it immensely, from the panoramic scenes to the dastardly deeds of the villain to the timely fainting of the heroine. Yes, it's over-the-top, but in a very entertaining way.

What I liked LESS than expected:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - I started this with great anticipation and while I liked it well enough to give it a decent review, I didn't like it well enough to consider rereading it. I'm not sure it lived up to its hype.

The Aspern Papers by Henry James - While James and I don't get along all that well, I was expecting to enjoy this story after reading about it in John Berendt's City of Falling Angels. However, I found this novella almost interminable--dull, dull, dull. I just finished rereading City of Falling Angels, and am once again considering reading The Aspern Papers--do I not learn from the past? Why do I think this time it will be any better?

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough - I've enjoyed a number of McCullough's books over the years--Logan's Run, The Thornbirds, The First Man in Rome, and others, so I was so excited when I heard she had written a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. This is seriously one of the worst books I've ever read. I should have abandoned it, but I received a review copy and was determined to read it cover to cover and to see if it redeemed itself. I still have no idea why McCullough decided to write this book. Truly awful.

Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara - The prequel to The Killer Angels, written by Shaara's father, Michael, I found it almost unreadable. The Killer Angels is one of my all-time favorite books--I've read it about four times and foist it on anyone who expresses an interest in the American Civil War. Where The Killer Angels is humanistic, moving, and insightful, Gods and Generals is pedantic, preachy, and trite.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens - After not reading a Dickens novel for roughly ten years, I returned to the fold with this book and he almost lost me again for another ten. I found it preposterous and arrogant. It's as if Dickens got so full of himself as a reformer that he forgot his craft. Reading this book was truly a chore, and I breathed such a sigh of relief when I finally reached the end. I knew I wouldn't like it--I always felt that he ripped off Elizabeth Gaskell with this book--but I really didn't expect to loathe it!

Mailbox Monday - April 22, 2013

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:46:47 PDT

Time for my favorite meme, Mailbox Monday, hosted in April by MariReads.

"Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It was started by Marcia, previously of The Printed Page and is now a Blog Tour, hosted by a different book blog each month."

I have a lot of new books on my shelf--I suppose doing so well with my TBR Pile challenge has given me license to acquire books to fill the empty slots.

Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott - I have wanted to read Scott for the longest time--he was one of Austen's favorite authors, and a favorite of so many other of my favorite authors that I really would like to have a personal knowledge of his stories. The back of my brand-new Penguin Classics copy promises that this is "the first romantic historical novel and international bestseller." Published in 1814, it will be a nice complement to the Outlander series as it also tells the story of the Jacobite rising in Scotland.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe - this is the May book for Tuesday Book Talk on Goodreads. I've been a member for a few months but haven't participated in the discussions yet. Here's part of the blurb on Goodreads and what prompted me to vote for it:

Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.

The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore - time to find out what all the fuss is about. As a long-time reader of Sherlock Holmes stories, this promises to be a fun summer read. I have a couple of long airline flights in June that I think this will be perfect for.

Chesapeake, by James A. Michener - a fellow blogger mentioned this book on her blog and I remembered that I have been wanting to read it for years. I absolutely love sprawling millenium-spanning novels about specific places. I love Edward Rutherford's books, and it's been a long time since I read a Michener.

The Eight, by Katherine Neville - Ryan at Wordsmithonia mentioned this book, and I decided it sounded so interesting that I just had to get it. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Katherine Neville's debut novel is a postmodern thriller set in 1972 ... and 1790. In the 20th century, Catherine Velis is a computer expert with a flair for music, painting, and chess who, on her way to Algeria at the behest of the accounting firm where she is employed, is invited to take a mysterious moonlighting assignment: recover the pieces of an old chess set missing for centuries.
In the midst of the French Revolution, a young novice discovers that her abbey is the hiding place of a chess set, once owned by the great Charlemagne, which allows those who play it to tap into incredible powers beyond the imagination. She eventually comes into contact with the major historical figures of the day, from Robespierre to Napoleon, each of whom has an agenda.
The Eight is a non-stop ride that recalls the swashbuckling adventures of Indiana Jones as well as the historical puzzles of Umberto Eco which, since its first publication in 1988, has gone on to acquire a substantial cult following.

Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, by Claudia L. Johnson - I recently attended Austen at Altitude, a conference co-sponsered by the two JASNA organizations in Colorado and held in Denver. Claudia Johnson was the keynote speaker and I was so interested in her talk--on the sublime in Austen--that I wanted to get one of her books for a little lit crit indulgence reading. The wonderful Tattered Cover bookstore, one of Denver's crown jewels, had a book fair at the Saturday afternoon performance of the Sense and Sensibility, the Musical that was going on during the conference, and so I picked this one up at their table.

The Crooked Branch

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:01:54 PDT

I heard about Jeanine Cummins new novel, The Crooked Branch, on a book blog and just had to interrupt everything and read it. Set in 1840's Ireland during the Potato Famine and modern-day Queens, it is a very interesting novel about family, genetics, motherhood, fear and courage.

Often with double-narrative stories, I find that I favor one over the other and am irritated when one story stops mid-frame so the other can progress. I didn't find that to be the case with this novel--both stories, and both narrators were equally compelling, and I thought it was extremely well-crafted so that the two stories unfolded and progressed with a similar cadence and their intersections were masterfully handled.

While I did like the 1840's Irish narrator, Ginny Doyle, as a character more than I liked modern Majella, I don't have to necessarily like a character to like her story. Odd as it seems, I could relate more to Ginny and the choices she had to make in order to save her family from starvation than I could to Majella and her struggle to adjust to being a full-time mother with a newborn. Ginny's issues seemed much more real to me than Majella's--maybe that's because Majella is a modern mother and a whiner with not a lot to whine about, whereas Ginny was truly facing life and death decisions. That said, Majella did grow and develop as a character whom I came to care about...although it still creeps me out that she tuned in her friend's nursery on a baby monitor and spied on her. I never did get over that breach of what is acceptable.

I read this book shortly after our family's spring break trip to NYC where I finally got to visit the Tenement Museum on the lower east side. We took the Irish Outsiders tour, and it was fascinating to read about a family who might have experienced much of what we learned about on the tour. Visiting the Museum just before reading the book enriched the experience that much more for me.

Believe it or not, this book was NOT part of any of the three challenges in which I am participating. I picked it up because it sounded great, and I wasn't disappointed. Now, back to the reading plan...

The Virginian

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:57:12 PDT

Back before there was John Wayne, Louis L'Amour, or Zane Gray, there was The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, by Owen Wister. This was the novel, first published in 1902, that launched a genre, and remains the archetype of the western.

It has everything--gunfights, cattle rustlers, Indians, card games, and a rough cowboy who falls in love with a proper Eastern lady turned schoolmarm.

I enjoyed it immensely, not only for its place in American literature but as a novel of the west. Wister, who was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt and Frederic Remington, writes beautifully of the prairies and the mountains, the vistas , the changing climate, and the wide open spaces of Wyoming at the turn of the last century.

His narrator is a greenhorn, fresh off the train from the East, who develops a friendship with the Virginian, a cowboy who hails from the south and who is never given a name in the book. The Virginian is a noble savage--one of a large family, he left home at 14 and has been fending for himself for ten years when the novel opens. He is handsome, skilled in the arts of survival (i.e., he is a quick draw, has a poker face, and can outride and outrope his peers), but more than that, he is a natural aristocrat--honest, courageous, and the friend of the underdog. He is uneducated but smart and cagey, observant and keeps his own counsel. He likes to have fun, and is not above playing elaborate practical jokes when the stakes are right.

Enter Miss Molly Stark Wood, from Bennington, Vermont. Of a poor but good family, eager to support herself and find adventure in the west. For the cowboy, it is love at first sight when he rescues her from an overturned stagecoach in a raging river. For the lady, it is a gradual acknowledgement that her heart was lost the moment he rescued her.

One of the best things about the relationship between the Virginian and Molly is his willingness to read the books that matter to her. He is uneducated and knows that his lack of schooling matters to Molly. So he asks her for books to read and for the most part reads them and discusses them with her. The only exception is Austen--he just can't read Austen, but he comes to love and enjoy Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, and his observations on Shakespeare, in particular, are just wonderful.

The book is unabashedly romantic--in a way it is as much a prototype romance as it is a prototype western. I am so glad I finally read this book--a love story, set in the west, in the 1880s. Perfect!

This book is part of my Back to the Classics challenge and the TBR Pile challenge.

Top Ten Tuesday - pre-blog favorites

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:15:44 PDT

I think I may just become addicted to Top Ten Tuesday--this week, The Broke and the Bookish, host of this meme, asks what books were favorites before blogging opened up the world of new authors, titles, genres, etc.

I take favorites to mean, what did I reread until the book fell apart and had to be replaced...

Austen's novels - at least one a year, going on for 4 decades now...chapter and verse.
Little House - I started reading these in fourth grade and never really stopped. My last time all the way through was with my kids about 10 years ago. They are perennial favorites and stand the test of time.
Anne of Green Gables books - see Little House blurb, and ditto everything. I didn't read these with my kids, however. We listened to the audio versions, which was also delightful.
Middlemarch - I first read this wonderful Victorian novel in college, and read it every 5 years since then. It's on my list for later this year. Can't wait. It also made my TTT list of most recommended books.
The Years With Ross - this James Thurber memoir about his years with The New Yorker magazine was a favorite ever since my dad gave it to me to read in high school when I fell in love with Thurber's short stories and talked about becoming a writer. I reread it a year or so ago, and reviewed it here.
Sherlock Holmes stories - I'm on my third collection, and again started reading these as a teenager and never shook the habit.
Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series - I do love series, don't I? Apart from the SH stories, the series I like best are really one long story told in multiple volumes. They have everything--admirable heroine, stalwart hero, action, romance, time travel, humor, grit, and perspective.
Rebecca - I'm on at least my third paperback of this romantic thriller; innovative, seductive, manipulative, du Maurier is a master of a genre I absolutely love.
Jane Eyre - I'm getting repetitive, but I've read this countless times, having started on my Bronte journey at age 13, and have multiple editions, some of which literally fell apart from age and use.
Dickens' novels - I haven't read them all, but my favorites (Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Pickwick Papers), I've read multiple times, and when I'm looking for something to read, there's always a Dickens' novel to consider taking up.

Reading before the days of blogging.

Cleopatra's Daughter

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:32:03 PDT

I had some mixed feelings about Cleopatra's Daughter, but ended up giving it four out of five stars on GoodReads, so I guess the feelings were more positive than negative in the final tally. I think the basic idea of the subject was great--what happened to Cleopatra and Marc Anthony's children after the two of them committed suicide following their defeat by Octavian? I did trust that Michelle Moran did her homework and that the society, geography, architecture, etc. were accurate, as well as the ultimate fate of the three children who were taken by Octavian after he conquered Egypt.

My main negative issues were with the voice of Selene, Cleopatra's daughter. Unfortunately, she ended up sounding more like a modern teen than I care for. I kept on thinking that the book was sort of a cross between a Magic Tree House book and I Claudius, which I recently finished listening to (still need to blog about that one!). Selene and her twin brother, Alexander, pal around with Marcellus and Julia (Octavian's heir and daughter, respectively)--getting into scrapes, gossiping, flirting, ditching school, hanging out at the racetrack, shopping, and basically giving the reader a view into "life in Ancient Rome." I loved reading Magic Tree House books with my kids when they were young, and this book definitely had that vibe.

I'm pretty good at suspending my disbelief, but I never for an instant believed that I was really getting a believable vision of who Selene might have been or how she might have lived. It was a fun book to read, and I enjoyed it, but I never really believed that the characters in the book lived in the world depicted.

I'm reading Moran's Madame Tussaud later this year, so I'll be interested in see if I feel differently about it.

This book counts for both my TBR Pile challenge and my Historical Fiction challenge. I'm actually very proud of my progress in all three challenges that I signed up for in 2013. It's great to read books that have been on my shelf for years!

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Recommendations

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:30:21 PDT

This is my first time doing the Top Ten Tuesday meme, hosted this week by The Broke and the Bookish. I was intrigued by the category because I tend to not recommend books unless specifically asked, though I do give books as gifts, which is tantamount to recommending a book. I recommend books I think someone will enjoy rather than ones I think everyone "should" read, which would be a completely different meme list.

Disclaimers aside, here's my list as best as I can remember in no particular order.

Pompeii, by Robert Harris - I have recommended this book several times (to my husband, daughter, and sister-in-law). I love reading about Ancient Rome, Pompeii in particular, and Robert Harris is a great thriller writer. I have yet to be disappointed in one of his books. One of the best historical novels about Ancient Rome, in my opinion.

Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin - I have recommended this book to lots of people online, but my husband actually is reading it based on my raving about it. So interesting, so well-written and tight in focus and theme. An excellent book about the Civil War, Lincoln, and American politics.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot - I really think this is one of the best Victorian novels around. It has a large cast of characters, something for everyone, an interesting set of stories that both interweave and run parallel, and beautiful writing. Plus, Eliot is such a sympathetic narrator that I find her voice to be kind and gentle despite the very human failings she documents in her story. I don't know how many people have taken this recommendation to heart, but it's on my list when someone says they want to read a Victorian novel.

Cannery Row/Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck - there is something so warm and quirky and utterly American about this set of novels that I love so much. I find them to be wonderful comfort reads and among my favorite books of all time. I often recommend them to people who want to read classic American fiction and just can't face the thought of reading Moby Dick, or The Scarlett Letter, or even The Great Gatsby.

Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara - I've heard this described as the best war novel ever written. I haven't read many war novels, but it is a fantastic book. In it, you live in the minds of the major players of the battle of Gettysburg, and come to understand both sides of the problems between the States. Excellent book regardless of whether you like reading about war, or history. Compelling and well-written.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson - I love his travel books, but I find myself recommending this book over them because not everyone cares for his snarky writing which is mostly absent from this fascinating book about science, nature, the world, society and how things work.

This Organic Life, by Joan Gussow Dye - this book was a game-changer for me. It inspired me to garden more purposefully, eat locally, think about where my food comes from and at what cost, and what I can do about it. Plus, it has the recipe I use for tomato sauce, which I make every summer and which lasts (frozen in the freezer) until my next crop of tomatoes is about to ripen. I have recommended this book countless times when people ask me about gardening, canning, freezing, etc.

Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen - one of my favorite books about Austen's works, hands down. I've read it cover-to-cover 4-5 times, and have loaned it out, recommended it, earmarked it, and refreshed my understanding of Austen particulars with it more times than I can count. Love this book!

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons - I vividly remember the first time I read this book. I had spent my teenage years reading D.H. Lawrence until finally the melodrama just made me roll my eyes. Years later I discovered this book, and had a rollicking good time laughing at my younger self and enjoying the parody that CCF is. A wonderful book that I have given to most of my siblings to enjoy and is usually a top recommendation to blogger friends.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett - I have recommended this many times to friends, family, internet bloggers, and anyone who's looking for a good story with interesting characters who face real moral/ethical dilemmas. I enjoyed it immensely, and feel it tells a powerful story about courage, identity, society, family, and friendship.

Marmee and Louisa, Louisa and Laura

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:22:01 PDT

For someone who spent the better part of my life avoiding reading Little Women and hence Louisa May Alcott, I seem to have been doing an awful lot of reading about LMA since I finally read LW a year or so ago.

The latest in my reads about LMA is Marmee and Louisa, by Eve LaPlante, a descendant of the Alcotts. I really enjoyed the book and felt that LaPlante did a superb job in defending her premise that the relationship between LMA and her mother, Abigail May Alcott, was the most important in her life and was fundamental to her success as a writer. But then, I was a sympathetic reader from the outset.

Even while I was reading Eden's Outcasts, by John Matteson, which is about LMA and her father, A. Bronson Alcott, I felt that LMA and her mother were closer in affection and temperament than she and her father. Of course, there is no love lost between me and Bronson Alcott, whom I consider one of the most selfish, egotistical, and hypocritical personages of the nineteenth century. Anyone who compares himself favorably with Jesus and then lets his family starve and beg their relations for rent money doesn't deserve many accolades for his ability to talk...nonstop...about himself.

Marmee and Louisa is by no means a definitive biography, but that's okay. I like the laser focus on the mother-daughter relationship, how they interacted, depended on each other, and supported each other.

I also thought LaPlante did a good job of putting their lives into historical context, and I learned a lot of social history about the nineteenth century. For example, she quotes Nancy Theriot (author of Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth Century America: The Biosocial Construction of Feminism): "the late nineteenth-century generation...was 'the least married group of women in United States history, with a record 13 percent remaining single," making the point that LMA was not uncommon in remaining single. It did cross my mind, however, that many of the men these women might have married were killed in the Civil War, but lack of eligible men doesn't undercut the idea that women who worked for the emancipation of slaves might chafe at remaining in bondage themselves.

Whilst reading about LMA and her mother and how this relationship affected her success as a writer, I also thought about that other towering American author for girls, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Both LMA and LIW came from a family of girls, both were the second daughters of four girls, with still-born brothers; both grew up in poverty, and went to work to support their families at an early age. Both wrote fictionalized accounts of their youth, smoothing rough edges and reinventing and reshaping events too painful to even acknowledge decades after they happened. I can't help but wonder about the impact LMA had on LIW, whether she knew it or not.

I do love reading about authors--what drives them, inspires them, influences them, and shines through them.

Prodigal Summer

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:31:01 PDT

I really like Barbara Kingsolver's books but somehow never got around to reading Prodigal Summer until this winter. As usual with Kingsolver's novels, this one blew me away. I loved the structure (three stories that interweave), the setting (small farming community in Appalachia), and the message (ecosystems are fragile, balance is critical to the health of the organism, and lifeforms will find a way to reproduce).

There is no better way to jump start spring fever than to read Prodigal Summer in the winter. I absolutely relished reading about life in all its Appalachian abundance while my own garden is frozen and brown. I felt my own furnace kick in as I read about Lusa canning cherries, harvesting tomatoes, and befriending misunderstood children, Deanna watching over her mountain's coyote family with a mother's anxious heart, and Garnett thawing his own heart so that his mind could be receptive to a different approach to life. I'm ready to head up to the garden shop and get some starts of lettuce and peas going!

I tend to earmark pages that contain passages or quotes that speak particularly strongly to me while I'm reading a book. In reviewing this book's earmarked pages after I was done, I noticed that I had a quote from each on the main threads. Here's what I marked as worth remembering:

"...God's world and the better part of daily life were full of mysteries known only to women."
This is from the Old Chestnuts thread, about Garnett Walker and his feud with his neighbor, Nannie Rawley. Garnett is a widower and he and Nannie, both in their late seventies, fight over his use of pesticides and herbicides. Garnett is a curmudgeon and proud of it, but also lonely and hapless without his wife, adrift in a world he doesn't understand and that has passed him by.

"...the gospel according to Deanna. It's a sin to kill a spider but not a turkey."
This is from the Predators thread, featuring Deanna Wolfe, a forty-something forest service employee who has been living alone on the mountain above the farming community she grew up in, enjoying her solitude and communing with nature. And then, Eddie Bondo, a hunky hunter from Wyoming crosses her path and she learns that opposites attract and he learns that killing predators can be catastrophic to an ecosystem.

"I'm married to a piece of land named "Widener."
This is from my favorite thread, Moth Love, about Lusa, a young woman from Lexington who marries a farmer, Cole Widener, and has to learn how to deal with her new family and cope with the vagaries of marriage that she never anticipated. Lusa is a biologist and is in love with bugs and sees human interaction through the eyes of an entomologist I loved reading about her evolution from larvae to butterfly.

Prodigal Summer is a beautifully crafted novel, peopled with real characters whose stories work together to convey a world view that is both promising and cautionary. I loved it, and now I'm ready to plant my garden.

Prodigal Summer is the third book I read for the TBR Pile Challenge. I really love this challenge--I have those books on my shelf because I figured I would like them. Being disciplined about rewarding myself with good books is such a win-win.

Mailbox Monday: March Madness

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:36:57 PST

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Caitlin of Chaotic Compendiums this month. It's a place to share what new books bloggers have recently acquired, and one of my favorite memes.

I have a wealth of new books that have just arrived on my doorstop, begging to be read and tempting me to discard my TBR Pile Challenge good intentions. Luckily I have a couple of long plane rides over the next couple of months, which does wonders for my reading time.

Here's what is trying to lead me astray right now.

Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear - so many fellow bloggers and Janeite friends have recommended this book that I simply couldn't not get a copy to read. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Hailed by NPR’s Fresh Air as part Testament of Youth, part Dorothy Sayers, and part Upstairs, Downstairs, this astonishing debut has already won fans from coast to coast and is poised to add Maisie Dobbs to the ranks of literature’s favorite sleuths.

Maisie Dobbs isn’t just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence—and the patronage of her benevolent employers—she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.

The Pilgrimage, by Paulo Coelho - another book about walking, pilgrimage and El Camino de Santiago. My own pilgrimage on the Camino is now on my calendar for spring 2015 and between now and then I will be reading all sorts of books related to it as part of my preparation. I haven't yet read Coelho's The Alchemist, but Amazon seems to think it grew out of this book.

The Space Between Us, by Thrity Umrigar - this author was listed on a fellow blogger's Top Ten Favorite Authors, and I thought it a good way to broaden my reading horizions. Here's what Amazon had to say:

The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar's poignant novel about a wealthy woman and her downtrodden servant, offers a revealing look at class and gender roles in modern day Bombay. Alternatively told through the eyes of Sera, a Parsi widow whose pregnant daughter and son-in-law share her elegant home, and Bhima, the elderly housekeeper who must support her orphaned granddaughter, Umrigar does an admirable job of creating two sympathetic characters whose bond goes far deeper than that of employer and employee.

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, by Gretchen Rubin - I'm willing to give Rubin a try, though she seems to have as many detractors as fans. I do want to learn more about Churchill and I like the premise of looking at multiple facets, some contradictory, of one of the most important people of modern times.

The Prodigal Son, by Colleen McCullough - back when I read McCullough's atrocious The Independence of Mary Bennet, I vowed never to read another McCullough novel. But then, a fellow blogger was doing a giveaway of this book recently, and I liked the premise and remembered liking some of McCullough's novels once-upon-a-time, so I entered and won. I do hope it's good. Perhaps finally the healing will begin!

Here's what Amazon thinks it's about:

HOLLOMAN, CONNECTICUT, 1969. A lethal toxin, extracted from the blowfish, is stolen from a laboratory at Chubb University. It kills within minutes and leaves no trace behind, and worried biochemist Dr. Millie Hunter reports the theft at once to her father, Medical Examiner Dr. Patrick O’Donnell. Patrick’s cousin Captain Carmine Delmonico is therefore quick off the mark when the bodies start to mount up. A sudden death at a dinner party followed by another at a gala black-tie event seem at first to be linked only by the poison and the presence of Dr. Jim Hunter, a scientist on the brink of greatness and husband to Millie. A black man married to a white woman, Dr. Jim has faced scandal and prejudice for most of his life, so what would cause him to risk it all now? Is he being framed for murder—and if so, by whom? Carmine and his detectives must follow the trail through the university town’s crowd of eccentrics, no matter how close to home it may lead.

Best wishes for a wonderful week and happy reading!

A Tale of Two Cities - Allegory and/or Apologia

jagreensmith@yahoo.com (Jane Greensmith) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:35:36 PST

My first official classic of 2013 is what I term a Classic classic--it's one of those top five or ten books that just about everyone has either heard of, been forced to read in school, or shows up on a Jeopardy question in the easiest category. My list of Classic classics includes The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, and A Tale of Two Cities.

For some reason, I never got around to reading A Tale of Two Cities until now but what a wonderful treat. It is every bit as good as its reputation and is the best Dickens novel that I've read. I loved just about everything about it--the tight focus of the plot, the limited cast of characters, the interwoven themes of redemption/resurrection/forgiveness/sacrifice/retribution, the historical setting, and all the doubles (cities and characters). I'm looking forward to reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde later this year, and comparing both to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I really like doppelgangers!

And then there's the writing--of all his novels, I feel that in this one Dickens is not showing off, preening by inventing character after character, and meandering his way to a point. It's focused, tight, and it works. There are some vividly beautiful passages (I already blogged about his first description of Sydney Carton, which took my breath away), and some stunning imagery (e.g., the sun and the moon, rising and setting, illuminating horrific scenes and blessing domestic ones), all of which combine to make a great novel. It's a brilliant premise for a novel, and Dickens executes it brilliantly.

Now that I've gushed sufficiently, I'll get down to what I really want to talk about in this post and what I thought about whilst reading the novel. I've heard the theory that the characters an author invents are actually facets of himself and the story a novelist writes is ultimately a story about himself.

With regards to A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens, I totally subscribe to this theory. While hundreds of term papers have been written on how Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are two contrasting aspects of a single individual, namely Dickens, and it's now fairly well-documented and accepted that Lucie Manette was modeled on Nelly Ternan, Dickens' mistress, It strikes me that the characters of Dr. Manette and Jarvis Lorry are also aspects of Dickens and reflect facets of his relationship to Nelly/Lucie.

The novel was written in 1859, shortly after Dickens had irrevocably broken his marriage. After years of moaning, he had moved out in 1858 and established a separate residence from his wife. In the introduction to the novel, he acknowledges that he came up with the idea for the book whilst acting in Wilkie Collins's play, The Frozen Deep, in 1857 with members of his family and friends. One of those friends was Nelly Ternan, an actress, who along with her sister and mother had been recruited to help fill out the cast. Dickens fell in love with Nelly, and in a relatively short time, set her up in her own household and assumed the role of lover, father, husband, caretaker, benefactor, and champion of not only Nelly but her mother and sisters.

In a way, it is easier for me to see Dickens in Jarvis Lorry (i.e., the benevelent business man who toils for years for others--rescuing, managing, and organizing the lives and cares of those around him) and Dr. Manette (i.e., the intelligent, capable man who became obsessessed with work during his years of imprisonment, and who slips into dementia when severely stressed), than in Carton and Darnay. Carton and Darnay are handsome, young, noble (though one does a good job of being a reprobate), and worthy of Lucie's love. They are the lover aspect of Dickens, albeit a Janus-type lover. Mr. Lorry is the caretaker and organizer side of Dickens, and Dr. Manette is the manic artist (note that even Dr. Manette has a split personality!) who must be cared for even while he is caring for others.

Not content to stop thinking along these lines, it also occurred to me that Madame Defarge can be seen as representative of Dickens' wife Catherine, and Dr. Manette's time in the Bastille as the 18 years that Dickens felt himself to be "buried alive" in their marriage. While the Dickenses were married for 28 years before Dickens walked out, their early years together were happy ones. Taking this even further, I can see in Miss Pross, Lucie's companion, Georgina Hogarth, Dickens' sister-in-law, who remained loyal to him after the separation and kept house for him. It is not insignificant that Miss Pross was rendered deaf after defeating Madame Degarge, just as Georgina must have been deaf to her family and friends who railed at her for deserting her sister for Dickens.

Finally, getting back to Carton and Darnay, I can see in Sydney Carton's assertion of his will, his insistence on sacrificing himself for Charles Darney and Lucie, Dickens' own vindication of the assertion of his will to break his marriage and defy social norms so that he could create a new life with Nelly.

One of the motifs throughout the book is weaving--Madame Defarge and The Vengeance are the Fates from Greek mythology, controlling the destiny of the mortals. Dickens repeatedly talks about how they knit the records of the people they denounce. And Book 2, the book in which Lucie reigns as the lovely goddess with a plane tree in her backyard, no less, is titled "The Golden Thread." The overall tone of the novel is oppressive with destiny. There is an inevitability as France moves into chaos and terror and Darnay is trapped tighter and tighter within the madness. But Sydney's assertion of his will overcomes Darnay's preordained fate to die for the sins of his fathers.

Darnay's destiny was to die, but Sydney's will overcame that fate. Free will conquered destiny so that love could reign. Whether it was subconscious or not, for me A Tale of Two Cities is a reflection of Dickens' love for Nelly Ternan and what it meant for him to break with his wife and family in order to make a new life with her.

Ever since I read Peter Acrkyod's bio of Dickens roughly twenty years ago, I've really had a problem liking Charles Dickens as a person. Reading A Tale of Two Cities has helped me understand the man behind the story and be more sympathetic to how he felt about his life, his work, and the people he loved. Whether he saw his story as an allegorical tale, I see it as an apologia for the actions he took in his personal life.

If you're interested in reading more about Dickens' relationship with Nelly Ternan, I can recommend Claire Tomalin's wonderful book, The Invisible Woman.

A Tale of Two Cities counts for books read in two of my 2013 challenges...Back to the Classics, of course, and Historical Fiction.

Now I have to decide which adaptation to watch. Any suggestions?