Housekeeping

Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson is one of those books that keeps popping up on must-read lists or group-read lists.  I really didn't know what to expect going in, but having read it, the cover finally makes sense.  It shows a railroad track going off into a fog with just the barest outline of the barrier-less bridge over the chasm that the railroad spans. Even the words of the title are blurred by fog. It is a brilliant cover and completely captures the themes of the book and the ambiguity of the journey the characters take in it.

I seem to be reading a lot of stories about sisters lately, and this is another one, but I really cannot draw a parallel to the other sister stories recently read (Sense and Sensibility, The Nightingale, The Small House at Allington) because this didn't follow the traditional sister motif of the others.

Housekeeping is narrated by Ruth, the younger of two orphaned sisters, who live in Fingerbone, a fictional semi-rural small town in western Washington first with their grandmother and then with batty Aunt Sylvie after their mother commits suicide. Ruth and her older sister Lucille are waifs, struggling to grow up and make sense of a world and community and family in which they don't seem to fit or have a place.

Published in 1980, the setting is in what feels like the 1950s, with Ruth reminiscing about her youth, and her grandmother's house and how she and Lucille and Aunt Sylvie try to keep the house and their lives moving forward and not derailing.  The story is heavy with house imagery and metaphors, traveling imagery and metaphors.  Lucille opts for safety--living within the norms of society, bridges with railings, houses with roofs.  Ruth tags after Sylvie and takes a leap of faith that the world will provide what her life requires for sustenance and that traveling is preferred to keeping house, staying put.

Ruth and Lucille live in a house that slowly disintegrates through lack of routine care that they as children cannot provide.  They also find various substitute homes--a cave, a boxcar, a boat.

This is a multi-layered book.  It is a somber story with an oppressive tone.  It is brilliant and thought-provoking and unsettling.  It is literary.  But is it good?  Yes, I think so.  I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure I would ever reread it.  I felt a sense of relief when I finished, though I thought about for a good long while afterwards.

This was one of the books I selected for my TBR Pile Challenge for 2016, and is the 7th book out of the pile that I've read this year.

Eventide

Eventide is evening, in the poetic sense, and Kent Haruf chose well when he chose this title for the second novel in his series set in fictional Holt, Colorado, a small town east of Denver on endless prairie.

I loved Eventide even more than the first book in the series, Plainsong, which I absolutely adored.  Some of the stories and characters continue seamlessly from one book to the next, particularly the story of the McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond, and the teen they befriend, Victoria Roubideaux, and her baby daughter, Katie, and some are new in the second book.  But it works because the tenor of life in the small town--the heartbreak behind closed doors, the struggles to work through the dark to the light, the comfort of an open heart and a willing spirit--is what really flows from one book to the next.

I loved the experience of reading Eventide--I loved the language, the stories, the tenor, the mood. Haruf was a master of his craft--his sparse prose creates a depth of understanding and compassion that is a joy to experience.

Eventide is the 6th book I've read on my TBR Pile Challenge.  We're a bit past the mid-point of the year, which means I'm a bit behind but making steady progress.

Bel Canto

I read Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, a couple of months ago but never got around to posting a blog on it.  Between getting ready for vacation and then actually travelling for a few weeks, it fell by the wayside but I am correcting that now because it was such a fantastic novel and one that affected me deeply.

Synopsis (extracted from Amazon blurb):

At a birthday party for Japanese industrialist Mr. Hosokawa somewhere in South America, famous American soprano Roxanne Coss is just finishing her recital in the Vice President's home when armed terrorists appear, intending to take the President hostage. However, he is not there, so instead they hold the international businesspeople and diplomats at the party, releasing all the women except Roxanne. Captors and their prisoners settle into a strange domesticity, with the opera diva captivating them all as she does her daily practicing. Soon romantic liaisons develop with the hopeless intensity found in many opera plots.

When I first found out that Bel Canto was a hostage story, I was not thrilled, but since I loved Patchett's State of Wonder and The Story of a Happy Marriage, I decided to trust her to give me a good book.  She did!

I was enthralled almost from the beginning, and came to love and understand and be invested in all the characters, the revolutionaries (both the leaders and the child soldiers) as well as the hostages.  I thought Patchett's exploration of the relationships that can develop between people who share a space in the world, even when separated by language, background, and prospects was profound.

***SPOILERS***
I was absolutely crushed by the ending.  I kept on wondering how Patchett could save the revolutionaries, and she didn't and I cried for them.  Also, I didn't buy that Roxanne Cox and Gen were a real couple at the end.  That came out of the blue and made no sense to me, given the rest of the story and who they were and who they cared about.  I've searched a bit and it seems like a lot of readers felt the same way about the ending that I did.

***
I read this book as part of the TBR Pile Challenge for 2016.

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Of all the books on my TBR shelf, I think The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles has been there the longest.  I always meant to read it but I admit that I was put off by labels like "post-modern," "meta fiction," and the like.  I think I bought the book shortly after the 1981 movie was released with the idea that I would read it first.  That held true for the past 35 years--I still haven't watched the movie, but now I can...since I finally read the novel for my TBR Pile Challenge!

It turns out that it was extremely readable--great writing, interesting story, marvelous setting (Lyme Regis, 1867), troublesome characters, and a delightful narrator who not only didn't try to hide the fact that he was firmly planted in the 1960s but relished his puppet-master role.  Sort of reminded me of Thackeray's narrator in Vanity Fair.

There's actually a lot to write about, but I think what I want to comment on in this post is inspiration.  I really enjoy learning about the writing process and in particular what inspires, either consciously or unconsciously.  In this case, I saw the subplot of Charles Smithson's relationship to his valet Sam to be a reworking of Mr. Pickwick's relationship to the loyal Sam Weller in Dickens' The Pickwick Papers.

Not only are both valets named Sam, as the narrator helpfully points that out, both masters are involved in the breaking of an engagement--one overtly and the other completely innocently.

Both Sams fall in love with servants encountered in the homes where their masters visit, and both have the gift of the gab, are energetic, wise to the ways of the world, and ambitious.  The biggest contrast is that Samuel Weller is completely devoted to Mr. P and extricates him from countless predicaments, while Smithson's Sam betrays his master and sinks him completely in the face of his own self interest.

Just as The French Lieutenant's Woman can be seen as an ardently feminist book, I think it can also be seen as a paean on the undermining of the class system.

I really enjoyed it, so much so that I would actually like to reread it again.  Maybe I will in a couple of years when I can count it as a classic!

Meryl Streep as Sarah Woodruff, the French Lieutenant's Woman.

I know that watching the movie will put Lyme Regis even more firmly on my must-visit list.  Not only for Persuasion, but now for The French Lieutenant's Woman as well.

Kicking off the New Year...

Welcome to 2016!  Now that the holidays are officially over, it's time to enjoy winter.  I know that sounds crazy, but I like winter sports.  My son and older daughter and I went skating last week at our town's outdoor rink and had a blast.  My son left this morning for New York, heading back to college, and my two daughters leave for California this Thursday, driving the older one back to resume life and work in San Francisco.  They're all (fingers crossed) planning on spending the summer in Colorado, but meanwhile, I'm going to enjoy the snow and freezing temps and start an indoor herb garden.

Now on to books...

I love mysteries but haven't read many lately, so one of my mini, informal challenges of the year is to read from my TBR mystery shelf (bottom of the bookcase, mostly filled with next in series by many different authors).

I finished the year by reading the second in Louise Penny's series about Three Pines, Quebec, a small village near Montreal, Fatal Grace.  It was absolutely wonderful and fit in nicely with the Christmas reading I did in December.  There really are very few books with curling at the center, and having grown up in Colorado Springs, spending most of my time at the Broadmoor World Arena, I'm actually familiar with the sport!  Now, I'm already itching to get a copy of her third in the series.

I then went straight to Jacqueline Winspear's Birds of a Feather, which is the second in her Maisie Dobbs mystery series, set between WWI and WWII.  Also fabulous and so interesting.  Really loving Maisie as a private detective--her backstory is poignant and her approach to solving crimes and to finding her way in this crazy world is admirable.  I now find myself putting my right hand on my solar plexus and my left hand on my heart to calm myself when stressed.  I love her combo of intuition and common sense and her ongoing relationship with her mentor.

Late last week I had some outpatient medical stuff to deal with and needed a very distracting book to take my mind off of things, so I chose Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, which is a journal of the first year of her son's life.  I expected to give this 5 stars as I loved the other two Lamott books I've read (Bird by Bird, and Traveling Mercies), but ended up giving it only 4.  I like Lamott's irreverence and insights and her descriptions of her baby's journey was so nostalgic for me, but I felt she got pretty repetitive in her whining and her hyperbole got a bit old.  But the book did what I wanted it to do.  I easily lost myself in her writing and it helped me not think about feeling crummy.  Ah, the power of books.

BTW, Operating Instructions is on my TBR Pile Challenge, so that's one down!

Now, I'm determined to finish up a few books I started all the way back in November--namely Ghostly, Paris, Book by Book, and All the Light We Cannot See.  Stay tuned and happy reading.

TBR Pile Challenge

I haven't really found a TBR challenge that I like now that the TBR Pile Challenge that Adam at Roofbeamreader.com is no longer around.

I like to set out a set of books that I commit to read from my stacks, and systematically read them.  I have found some real gems that way, and am rarely disappointed.

So I am going to do my own challenge, and reward myself in December 2016 if I complete my list.

Following the TBR Pile Challenge rules from years gone by...here are my 14 selections, of which I will commit to reading at least 12.

1. Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel - one from my 2015 list that I didn't quite get to.
2. Paris, by Edward Rutherford - ditto (and I've already started it!).
3. Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates - about Marilyn Monroe, whom I admire, and it will be my first book by Oates.
4. The Perfect Summer, by Juliet Nicolson - about the summer of 1911, part of my WWI reading project
5. The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton - every review of this book makes me want to drop everything and read it.
6. Eventide, by Kent Haruf - I want to read the next book in the series by this late, great Colorado author.
7. The French Lieutenant's Woman, by John Fowles - this might be the book that's been on my shelf the longest.  
8. Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson - this was a Colorado reads book a few years ago, and while late to the party (what else is new?), I would like to read it.
9. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett - I really enjoyed her State of Wonder and Story of a Happy Marriage, and so am eager to read more by her.
10. Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott - I loved Lamott's Bird by Bird (best book on writing ever!) and Traveling Mercies, and it's been too many years since I last read anything by Lamott.
11. Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives: The Industrial Resolution in Lancashire, by Sue Wilkes - I picked this up when I was deep into Elizabeth Gaskell and still want to read about the lives of my ancestors.
12. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini - I loved The Kite Runner, which was on my TBR Pile list in 2015, and loved it.  Also, trying to get outside my usual reading comfort zone.
13. Time and Chance, by Sharon Kay Penman - next up chronologically in her wonderful historical fiction series, the continuing story of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine
14. What Angels Fear, by C.S. Harris - first in a historical mystery series, featuring Sebastian St. Cyr, a nobleman who fought in the Napoleonic wars.  Comes highly recommended.

Part of the challenge is posting on the books read, so I'll commit to doing that as well.

I like that I have a good mix of contemporary fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, long and short books.  Nice to mix it up!

Happy reading in 2016!

I Know This Much is True

I finished Wally Lamb's 897-page tome, I Know This Much is True, two days ago.  And with it completed the TBR Pile Challenge for 2015, leaving unread two of the 14 books on my list, but they're going on some list for 2016 anyway!

I really had no expectations about I Know This Much is True going into it, only that many bloggers whose taste I trust liked it a lot.  It was a rough book at times, but always compelling, and always true and not contrived.  I found the characters interesting, their stories heartbreaking, and their resilience inspiring.  I thought Lamb did a masterful job in developing themes that spanned the various stories, with leitmotifs that connected the different parts together into a coherent whole.

For those of you who don't know the basic outline of the story that Lamb tells in I Know This Much is True, I think this paragraph near the end, in which Dr. Patel, the psychiatrist who helps Dominick, the main character out of the dark forest of his past, describes Dominick's story...

In ancient myths… in stories from cultures as far-flung as the Eskimos and the ancient Greeks—orphaned sons leave home in search of their fathers. In search of the self-truths that will allow them to return restored, completed. In these stories, knowledge eludes the lost child and fate throws trial and tribulation onto his path—hurls at him conundrums he must solve, hardships he must conquer. But if the orphan endures, then finally, at long last, he stumbles from the wilderness into the light, holding the precious elixir of truth. And we rejoice. At last, he has earned his parentage. And for his troubles he has gained understanding and peace. He has earned his father’s kingdom. The universe is his.

This is the story of Dominick, and in many ways, it is also the story of America.  It is a story of race relations, of domination and survival, of the evil of social Darwinism and tribal warfare.  But it is also a story of compassion and love and friendship and family.  I really loved how Lamb allowed each of his characters to be able to tell, in some fashion, his or her story that explained why or how they came to be as they are.  Some people gave in to the dark side more easily than others, but the narrator's compassion helped make some of the really rough stuff more bearable.

And the ending is pure joy.  If you haven't read this book and decide to, don't give up on it midway through.  This is a book where the ending rewards the reader for sticking with it.

Definitely one of the best books I read in 2015.

TBR Pile Challenge 2015

Now that I've finished the 2014 TBR Pile, I've been happily composing my reading list for the 2015 TBR Pile Challenge, once again hosted by Adam at RoofBeamReader.com

And the list is--12 are required, so the last two are technically alternates:

1. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett - I have heard such wonderful things about this book, that I have to read it early in 2015.
2. Travel as a Political Act, by Rick Steves - I got this years ago because I enjoy Rick Steves' travel books and videos and I like the premise and I enjoy non-fiction.
3. When Christ and His Saints Slept, by Sharon Kay Penman - Penman is one of my favorite historical fiction authors, and this book about 12 century England promises to educate me on a time in English history on which I'm a bit shaky.
4. 12 Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup - I want to watch the movie!
5. Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym - my JASNA friend Maxene swears that this is the best Pym and that I will love it.  'Nuff said.
6. Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, by Jenny Hartley - I find Dickens' various philanthropic endeavors to be fascinating and revealing about his personality and unique set of drivers.  Another non-fictional selection...yeah!
7. Ross Poldark, A Novel of Cornwall 1783-1787, by Winston Graham - time to get ready for the BBC's remake of the Poldark series, being broadcast in 2015.
8. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini - I'm always late to the party, but I really do want to finally get around to this book and get my armchair visiting other parts of the world.
9. The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott - book one of The Raj Quartet.  I enjoyed A Passage to India so much that I wanted to learn more about the country and its history.
10. Plainsong, by Kent Haruf - Haruf, a Colorado writer, passed away earlier this winter, and I would like to read some of his works set in my home state.
11. The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields - I missed out on this selection when my GoodReads bookclub read it, and I heard it was really good.
12. I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb - I've heard good things about Lamb and this novel in particular, and I can't get too mired in the past.  Must read something contemporary.
13. Paris, by Edward Rutherford - everything I know about pre-Revolutionary France I learned from watching The Musketeers.  About time I did something about that, and I love all of the Rutherford books I've read thus far.
14. Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel - I don't know why I keep putting this off as I really enjoyed Wolf Hall.

Happy Reading in 2015!

TBR Pile Challenge 2014 - Wrap Up

Down to the wire, but I made it!  Just finished book 12 from my 2014 TBR Pile Challenge. This challenge is hosted by Roof Beam Reader, who is hosting again in 2015--I'm working on my list now.

Turns out I really needed the alternates as I simply couldn't read my #2 selection, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho.  It was not at all what I expected--more mystical mumbo-jumbo than a memoir of walking the Camino de Santiago.  I also abandoned the first alternate I tried.

1. Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow -finally read this immensely popular book from the 1970s.  Enjoyed the movie after reading the book.  Good historical novel that merged real characters and situations with fictional.  Set in NYC, which is a favorite setting for me
2. The Pilgrmage, by Paulo Coelho - ditched it after 100 pages..  Life's too short to read books you hate!
3. The Taste of Sorrow (Charlotte and Emily), by Jude Morgan -one of my favorite books of the year.  Jude Morgan is an outstanding writer about writers.
4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer - my first 9-11 book; powerful and memorable.  As good as the movie.
5. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt - didn't live up to all the hype; I think this is best read while in your 20s.  
6. Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner - another best book of 2014 for me; Stegner's writing is a joy to read.  
7. Heat Wave, by Penelope Lively - interesting story by an author I would like to read more of.
8. A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster - and another fantastic book, and one that finally got me to India.
9. Highland River, by Neil M. Gunn - set in Scotland, it felt like a memoir but was actually fiction.
10. South Riding, by Winifred Holtby -fantastic novel, by a wonderful, interesting woman who died way too young!  
11. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath - only okay--again, I think I read it when I was too old to be wowed.  A very sad novel.
12. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Shiguro - stunning book--still need to watch the movie...maybe this week.

Alternates

1. On the Shores of the Mediterranean, Eric Newby - I tried and tried, but anyone who can make Venice dull isn't for me..
2. A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss - redeemed author David Liss in my eyes; so much better than The Whiskey Rebels, and now I know all about the South Sea Company!

A Conspiracy of Paper

I'm finishing up the 2014 TBR Pile Challenge with David Liss's A Conspiracy of Paper.  I didn't care for his The Whiskey Rebels, but found this one much more to my liking and would've given it 5 stars instead of just 4 on GoodReads if the plot hadn't been so darn complicated.

Set in 1720 on the eve of the bursting of the infamous South Sea Bubble, the first stock crash, in London, I found A Conspiracy of Paper to be a wonderful historical novel on several fronts.  First, it gave me a juicy historical event--I've heard about the South Sea Company for years, but never dug into it enough to really know what it was all about.  In his notes at the end of the novel, Liss says that he wrote the novel after researching the South Sea Bubble for his doctorate and felt writing a novel about the situation was the best way to wrap together the various complicated threads that he researched.

Unlike The Whiskey Rebels, the characters in A Conspiracy of Paper are realistic, well-drawn, distinguishable from each other, and his dialogue is convincing.  I really like his main character, Ben Weaver, a prodigal son of a Jewish family who left the fold to become a pugilist and then turned thief-taker, an occupation which has morphed into sort of a nascent private-eye at the novel's start.  Liss does a good job of showing us around early 18th century London through the eyes of someone who is both an insider and an outsider.  Ben works mostly with the seedy underbelly but also has clients among the peerage, and I found myself looking up place names regularly.  I knew nothing about the Jewish community of Dukes Place, for example, before reading this novel.

The novel is really a mystery and is structured that way, with Ben not discovering the truth behind his estranged father's murder as well as four other individuals, until the final pages of the novel.  I found the plot incredibly complicated and sad to say a bit tedious with all its twists and turns.  The premise of the novel--that the South Sea Company and its dealing with the Bank of England and the British government was complex, shady, and secretive--I can totally buy into, but I'm not sure the plot needed to be so intricate for the message to come through loud and clear.  I think I would've grasped Liss's assertion that paper securities are a flimsy foundation for a nation's well-being to rest upon without all the maneuvering.

I don't want to suggest that this isn't a good historical novel--it definitely is--Liss just got a bit carried away is all.  I will definitely look for other novels by Liss--I do like his approach and his history is sound, which is very important to me.

Highland River

I can't remember where I heard about Neil M. Gunn's novel Highland River, but I think it was probably a Scottish author reading challenge that provided a list of appropriate books.  Going into it, I categorized it as a Scottish equivalent of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It.  Having read it, I think that categorization was right, with a bit of Proust and Rembrance of Things Past.

Calling Highland River a novel is a bit misleading, although I haven't found any evidence that suggest it is even semi-autobiographical.  To say it is about a boy growing up in the Scottish Highlands, in a fishing village on the eve of the Great War is accurate, but the book is mostly Gunn musing about fishing, religion, family, class system, and war.

I found the chapters in which Kenn actually does something--catch a fish, catch a fish with his brother, catch a fish with a friend, evade the game keepers, go fishing with his father--to be the most enjoyable parts of the book.  I longed for more story, but the writing is beautiful and the musings profound, albeit a bit hard to follow at times.

I must've liked the book because I earmarked dozens of pages and Tweeted a fair number of quotes.

Here are my favorites to give you a feel for the book:

"Rock and bird and plant, grasses and mosses and trees, hollows and ridges, were the world through which their river ran."
"He took to his mothers people. He was a movement of memories for her. She glimpse dead persons in him.""...youth's memories have always this happy trick of living in the future."

The book is well-crafted and literary--Kenn, the main character, explores the course of the river in the course of his life, ultimately ending up at the source of the river, high above the village where it empties into the sea, and he uses it to connect Kenn to his Scottish ancestors and the ancient Picts.  When Kenn is on his river, time as a concept becomes irrelevant.  The timelessness of nature and cycle of nature make Kenn one with his forbears.

This is definitely a book you don't fully get one reading, at least for me.  I think I'll try to remember to reread it a few years.

I read Highland River as part of my TBR Pile Challenge.

Crossing to Safety

Wallace Stegner is becoming one of my favorite writers.  I really enjoyed his The Angle of Repose, which I read three years ago--has it been that long already?--but I absolutely loved his Crossing to Safety, which I finished this morning.

The title is from a Robert Frost poem, I Could Give All to Time, and the last stanza is quoted at the front of the book:

I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

I found myself rereading these lines several times during the course of reading the novel, and they do beautifully and concisely, and poetically, encapsulate the novel.

Crossing to Safety is literature at it's finest.  Though it is the story of two couples and their friendship over four decades, Stegner didn't need horrific circumstances to explore the dark places of the heart and pysche.  Even when one of the characters is struck by a devastating illness, this takes place mostly off-stage.  It is the drama of life--living, loving, working, striving, disappointing, expecting, and being blind-sided--that Stegner navigates with a sure hand and a compassionate but honest voice.

According to Wikipedia, the novel is semi-autobiographical (note to self--find bio of Stegner).  The main character, the first-person narrator, is Larry Morgan--a writer and professor of English.  He and his wife Sally are befriended by Sid and Charity Lang when Larry lands a job at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1930s.  Sid is also a professor of English, and Charity is a budding matriarch, coming from a Boston family littered with intellectuals and strong women.

The story is told in flashbacks, beginning with Larry and Sally's arrival at the Lang family compound in Vermont in 34 years after the couples met, where Charity is facing terminal cancer and Sid is facing a life without Charity.

It is a beautifully crafted story, and an absolute pleasure to read.  There are many threads to the story, many parallels that provide ample fodder for thought.  Here are a few things that struck me.

- While Larry is often critical of Charity's controlling nature, which subverts Sid's desire to be a poet/farmer instead of a tenured professor, he does recognize a kindred spirit in her when he writes of relishing his role as novelist to control the world he creates for his characters.  Charity was a novelist who tried to create the world she wanted and tried to mold her family and friends into characters of her making.  And yet, many novelists talk about struggling to actually control their characters--many are surprised to find themselves recording stories they have unleashed.

- Despite Charity's controlling nature, no one questions that she is generosity itself.  Time and again, she selflessly cares for others--her smile lights up the room, and she is intuitive and sensitive, caring, and open.  She is well-named--she is charity...and yet, with charity comes power.  There is no such thing as a free lunch, in the end.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"The matriarchy simply unhinged its jaw and swallowed him as it swallows all sons-in-law."
"Nothing is so safe as habit, even when habit is faked."

"...there is this snake, no bigger than a twig or a flame of movement in the grass. It is not an intruder in Eden, it was born here. It is one of Hawthorne's bosom serpents, rarely noticed because in the bosom it inhabits it can so easily camouflage itself among a crowd of the warmest and most generous sentiments."

• This is one of the most interesting ideas in the book. The snake doesn't intrude into Eden, it was born there! Eden's idyllic state is inherently unstable because the serpent is of Eden.

As a hiker I was thrilled to find Larry and Sid quoting Bliss Carman's A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

And finally and most fittingly:
"How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?” 

Crossing to Safety is a quiet book about decent, intelligent, interesting, ordinary people--it is a wise and thoughtful book, heart-breaking in its compassion.  It tells a story of survival, and reminds the reader that survival is only temporary: I would give all to Time...and what I would not part with I have kept.

Crossing to Safety is a TBR Pile Challenge book on my 2014 list.  Another favorite from the TBR Pile!  It's only the 4th book I've read this year from my list of 12--I need to get cracking on the list and stop getting side-tracked.  We've just passed the Solstice!

The Sibyl

One of the last books that I read in college was The Sibyl, by Par Lagerkvist.  The book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1951.  I  remember loving it's power and challenging point of view.

It is a framed story, in which a man who is cursed by Jesus on his way to Calvary for not letting him rest his head on the side of his house, stumbles upon a hermit woman living with her mentally disabled son high on a mountain outside of Delphi.  The man bemoans the curse he is under, that of having to wander the earth, blessed with eternal life but cursed with being unable to be at peace.  He asks the woman whether she knows what it feels like to have the eyes of god fall upon you.

The woman replies that she does and that "There is no joy in seeing God."

The bulk of the book is the woman telling her story.  She was the sibyl (or oracle) of Delphi from the time she was a young girl to middle age.  During festivals and holy days, she would go down to the pit in the temple after fasting for three days, bathing, and chewing on laurel leaves, and her God, Apollo, would inhabit her body and speak to his worshipers through her.  The rest of the time, she lived be herself, only being cared for by servants of the temple.

After decades of living like this, on a rare visit to her family she meets a man, falls in love, and the God Apollo wreaks his vengeance on her for betraying her role as his bride.

It's a grim, but fascinating story. It reads like a parable--the write is clean and brisk and the mood is somber. It is unsettling.

The book closes with a comparison of the two Sons of God as they ascend to heaven - Jesus and the son of Apollo, the mentally-disabled man living with the sibyl.

I don't love the book the way I did 30 years ago--I guess I just can't accept the basic premise that the author lays out, that Jesus would curse someone.  Perhaps Lagerkvist's point is that the religion that became Christianity is neither kinder nor gentler than the one centered around the Oracle at Delphi.  Regardless of one's religious beliefs, it's safe to say that that action on the part of Jesus is completely inconsistent with any reading of the Gospels.

I'm glad I reread this book, but not sure I will tackle a third time.

This book was on my Back to the Classics for 2014 list and also counts in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Huzzah!

TBR Pile Challenge - 2014

I loved doing this challenge in 2013 and discovered some wonderful books that were "hidden" on my TBR shelf for lo these many years.

Now, I'm signing up for the 2014 TBR Pile Challenge, and narrowing down my selection to just 12 plus 2 alternates is a challenge.  This challenge is hosted by Roof Beam Reader.

Here goes:

1. Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow - I have wanted to read this for years, and have heard great things about it. Having recently read 1876, by Gore Vidal, I'm eager to read about life in America circa 1900.
2. The Pilgrmage, by Paulo Coelho - since I am still planning on walking the Camino de Santiago in 2015, I'm jazzed to read about Coelho's journey on the pilgrim's path.
3. The Taste of Sorrow (Charlotte and Emily), by Jude Morgan - I absolutely loved Morgan's Passion, about the Romantic poets and their lovers, and so have high hopes for this fictional bio of the Sisters Bronte.
4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer - I loved the movie and thought it was a remarkable movie about a remarkable story.
5. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt - this comes highly recommended.  
6. Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner - I loved Stegner's Angle of Repose, and lots of other Stegner fans say that this is even better.  
7. Heat Wave, by Penelope Lively - I've been meaning to get around to reading Lively for years, and I read a blogger's review of this book and thought it sounded perfect.
8. A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster - Forster's A Room with a View is one of my favorite books, and I know so little about India that I figured this was a great way to learn about the country.
9. Highland River, by Neil M. Gunn - I'm expecting this to be a Scottish version A River Runs Through It - beautifully written, metaphoric use of nature, melancholy--a stick-to-your-ribs kind of book that you think about for years.  WWI figures in the book, which is appopriate as 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of that cataclysm.
10. South Riding, by Winifred Holtby - I loved the Masterpiece Theatre mini-series and have heard great things about this novel.
11. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath - I'm anticipating this book with the same feelings I had with regards to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood--apprehensive but expecting to be wowed.
12. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Shiguro - I finally got around to reading Shiguro's Remains of the Day in 2013, courtsey of the TBR Pile Challenge, and loved it.  I have great expectations regarding this book too.

Alternates

1. On the Shores of the Mediterranean, Eric Newby - a travel memoir; I'm planning a trip to Italy in the fall of 2014 and this should really whet my appetite.
2. A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss - I didn't like his Whiskey Rebels when I read it for the 2013 TBR Pile Challenge, but I've heard this novel is better.  Another historical fiction book set in America.

TBR Pile Challenge - It's a Wrap!

I am happy to announce that I completed the  TBR Pile Challenge 2013, hosted by Roof Beam Reader, and am definitely signing up for it in 2014.  Not only does it feel good to get those books off the TBR shelf and into their permanent home (alphabetized in the fiction part of my personal library), but I discovered some real gems amongst them.  In other words, with only a few exceptions, I acquired these books in the first place because they held a promise of a good read and I was mostly not disappointed.

Here's my list with linked reviews in no particular order--certainly not in the order I read or reviewed them:

1. Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin - I love New York and I really enjoyed this book.  I was surprised after I read it how many mixed reviews it had received.  
2. Madame Tussaud, by Michelle Moran - I won an ARC copy of this years ago, and languished for years unread.  This was definitely one of my favorites of the year!
3. Hamlet's Dresser, by Bob Smith - I heard about this on a blog awhile ago, got it, and promptly forgot about it, but it ended up being a wonderful memoir of a very interesting person and how Shakespeare helped him deal with some very severe trauma in his personal life.
4. The Testament of Mariam, by Ann Swinfen - a gift from the author, it's about the sister of Jesus, and it was beautifully written.  One of those books I will think about for a long time, and someday reread.
5. The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro - absolutely brilliant; I cannot recommend this book enough.
6. The Virginian, by Owen Wister - I bought my copy roughly 35 years ago in a used bookstore and never got around to actually reading it.  A wonderful Western, archetypal with bonus lit crit from a cowboy.  
7. The Whiskey Rebels, by David Liss - very disappointing.  It had come highly recommended, but I ended up panning it.  I have another Liss book that I will try this year, but if I'm disappointed again, he's off the list!
8. Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver -I love her books--this was absolutely superb.
9. The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton - the first in a mystery series with Abigail Adams as the slueth.  Enormously fun to read.  Simply reinforced my notion that Abigail Adams was fantastic.
10. Cleopatra's Daughter, by Michelle Moran - I got this shortly after I finished Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff, and I was mildly disappointed.  The main character rubbed me the wrong way, but Moran wrote Madame Tussaud (see #2), so all is forgiven.
11. 1876, by Gore Vidal - excellent historical novel, part of a 7-part series, from one of the best American writers of the 20th century.  A pleasure to read.
12. Katherine, by Anya Seton - another new favorite.  Loved, loved, loved this book.

True Confessions: I tried reading The Leopard, but found I just didn't know enough about 19th century Sicily to enjoy it, so I turned to one of my alternates, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and found I couldn't stand the protagonist (an annoying meld of the protagonists from We Have Always Lived in the Castle and I Capture the Castle), so I abandoned that and read my other alternate, 1876 (see #11), by Gore Vidal, and loved it.

Great reading year, great challenge, looking forward to posting my 2015 list later this week...or next!

Armchair traveling to New York: Eat the City and Brooklyn

I visit NYC a couple of times a year, but I like to visit it even more often in my reading. Reading is a great way to tap into the heartbeat of a place and I find my sense of place is stronger after I've read about a place I visit.

Last November I got my husband Robin Shulman's Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York for his birthday.  By Christmas he hadn't had a chance to read it yet, so I snagged it and read it in tandem with a couple of other books that I wanted to get under my belt early in the year.  I enjoyed it quite a bit and found the stories and people Shulman dug up to be interesting and inspiring in various ways.

I like to grow and prepare as much of our food as possible--I'm not fanatical about it--but I do try to eat locally and in season, and I find how people procur food to be interesting in and of itself.  Also interesting is the rules and regulations that evolve as a city/society's values ebb and flow.  Beekeeping, for example, was in the not too distant past outlawed in the city, but now it is allowed again.  People have converted vacant lots to vegetable patches during lean, leave-the-city times, and those same lots are now being swallowed by urban renewal.

I also really liked reading about how various waves of immigrants worked to recreate the food from their homeland and youth, and how they worked in the different aspects of the food industry over the centuries that New York has been around.

My second New York book for this month was a novel, Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín.  The back cover describes it as a bittersweet coming-of-age story, and that is the best description possible.  It's a quiet read about a quiet Irish girl, Eilis Lacey, who immigrates to Brooklyn shortly after WWII.  She battles homesickness and the boredom of a clerk job, but finds a new life, ambition (she enrolls in a bookkeeping program at Brooklyn College) and falls in love with an absolutely wonderful young man, Tony. 

A family tragedy back in Ireland forces her to return home, where she is increasingly pulled back into her old life and struggles to extricate herself from the circumstances and feelings that hinder her return to Brooklyn.  At one point in the story, Eilis and Tony go to the beach at Coney Island and she talks about the pull of the tides and the undertow.  Tóibín is not overt when it comes to symbolism and metaphor--his writing is calm and strong and a pleasure to read--but the forces that pull Eilis are not unlike the tides and undertow that can exhaust and claim even the strongest swimmers. 

Eilis is just the kind of character I love--she is fully of many admirable traits and is attractive in many ways, but very human, subject to jealousy, self-doubt, irritability, and guilt. Her story is one that feels so true--as the daughter of immigrants, I've heard all my life of the disconnection that comes from living in a country you love and admire but always feeling the pull of "back home."

The strength of the story took me by surprise.  I gobbled it up and read it every chance I could while traveling this past week, but when I read the final third of the book on the plane ride back to Colorado, I found myself with tears streaming down my face. 

Brooklyn is a soft, strong story about finding one's own life without being being swept out to sea by forces that can pull you to pieces without your even noticing.

Brooklyn was one of the books I bought for myself during one of Borders many "going out of business" sales.  It's been on my shelf for awhile, and I finally got around to reading it thanks to the TBR Pile Challenge that I signed up.  One down, eleven to go!

TBR Pile Challenge

Okay, this is one challenge that I can definitely get behind.  Twelve books from my TBR shelves that I've had for over a year--review them and link to the reviews.  That I can handle.  Here are the details of the TBR Pile Challenge, hosted by Roof Beam Reader, if you want to take the plunge as well.

My list for 2013 for the TBR Pile Challenge--the highlighted books are linked to my review of them.

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin - I love New York and am so looking forward to getting to know Brooklyn.

Madame Tussaud, by Michelle Moran - I won an ARC copy of this years ago, and it's languished though I know I will love it.

Hamlet's Dresser, by Bob Smith - I heard about this on a blog awhile ago, got it, and promptly forgot about it, but the back cover promises that it is "a portrait of a person made whole by art."

The Testament of Mariam, by Ann Swinfen - a gift from the author, it's about the sister of Jesus.

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro - why haven't I read this book yet?  I know I will love it.

The Virginian, by Owen Wister - I bought my copy roughly 35 years ago in a used bookstore and have been meaning to read it ever since.  Someone told me it references Emma, so that should be fun!

The Whiskey Rebels, by David Liss - I love historical fiction, and I've heard Liss is at the top of the game.

Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver - I am really becoming a Kingsolver fan, and as a gardner need to go back and finally read this novel.

The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton - the first in a mystery series with Abigail Adams as the slueth.  I'm expecting this to be a lot like the Stephanie Barron Jane Austen mysteries.  I adore Abigail Adams so I hope it's good and worthy of her.

Cleopatra's Daughter, by Michelle Moran - I got this shortly after I finished Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff, and then I saw another shiny object and this novel has been waiting patiently ever since.

The Leopard, by Guiseppe di Lampedusa - so many of the Regency and Victorian authors and poets I admire were inspired by Italy that I really am trying to educate myself about Italian life and politics.  This is a novel set in the 1860's that is reputed to be excellent.

Katherine, by Anya Seton - again, I've heard this book is so wonderful and yet it sits on my shelf, pining for my attention.

Alternates, which I will probably end up reading anyway:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley - gotta follow the crowd on this one!

1876, by Gore Vidal - I loved his Lincoln, and I really have a gap in knowledge when it comes to the latter part of the 19th century.