janeajones' jumble of books

1. Toni Morrison, Home, novel:
2. Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle, novel:
3. Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles, novel, myth revisioned: 1/2
4. John Ashberry, Girls on the Run: A Poem: narrative, surrealist poem: 1/2
5. Kim Thuy, Ru: A Novel, novel, trans. Sheila Fischman:
6. Anthony Burgess, Byrne, narrrative poem: 1/2
7. Rich McKee, The Culprit, novella:
8. Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, novel: 1/2
9. Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In, non-fiction:
10. Leo Perutz, Leonardo's Judas, novel:
11. Dorothee E. Kocks, The Glass Harmonica, historical novel: 1/2
12. Frederick Turner, The New World: An Epic Poem, narrative, sci-fi-fantasy poem: 1/2
13. Louise Marley, The Glass Harmonica, historical/fantasy novel:
14. Ursula Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea, fantasy novel:
15. Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, retold fairytales:
16. Emily St. John Mandel, The Lola Quartet, novel:
17. Peter Hoeg, The Quiet Girl, novel: 1/2
18. Riikka Pulkkinen, True, novel: 1/2
19. John Preston, The Dig, historical novel:
20. REREAD -- Ana Menéndez, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, stories:
21. REREAD -- Ana Menéndez, Adios, Happy Homeland!, stories:
22. Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter, novel: 1/2
23. Ana Menéndez, Loving Che, novel: 1/2
24. Ana Menéndez, The Last War, novel:
25. Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Mermaids on the Moon, novel:
26. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, historical novel:
27. Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings, memoir: 1/2
28. Rebecca Campbell, The Paradise Engine, novel:
29. REREAD -- Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, revisioned fairytales: 1/2
30. Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies, historical novel:1/2
31. Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, travelogue, history:
32. Thomas Penn, Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, history, biography: 1/2
33. John Gardner, The Life and Times of Chaucer, biography, history:
34. Helen Castor, Blood and Roses, history: 1/2
35. Mary Novik, Conceit, historical novel:
36. Adam Nicolson, Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War, cultural history:
37. William Shakespeare, Richard III, chronicle play:
38. REREAD: Jean Webster, Daddy Longlegs, novel: 1/2
39. Jean Webster, Dear Enemy: novel
40. Selma Lagerlog, The Lowenskold Ring: novel

Less than a week left to the new year :O

Hi Jane--Hope to see you around here this year.

Thanks for stopping by aruba -- I'm hoping for more reading and more posting this year.

1. Home by Toni Morrison

I wanted to start the year's reading on a high note, so I decided to read Morrison's latest book. It fit the bill -- spare, profound, humane. Morrison's recent books don't have the rich and lush descriptions of Song of Solomon or Beloved, but their resonance continues to ring deeply as she reveals the heart of the American experience.

Nice summary of Home, Toni Morrison Jane, it sounds like an excellent start to the new year.

Reminds me to read Beloved sometime. Good start Jane.

Oh DO read Beloved, Dan -- I think it's my favorite book of all time.

Well, with that recommendation, I guess I need to read Beloved too – I don't believe I've ever read Toni Morrison before.

I consider Beloved one of my favorite books as well. I think about it often.

Seeing your 5 star review for Home makes me more determined to read it this year. She is such a wonderful writer and as others have said above, Beloved is one of those books that remains with you.

Cait, Jane and Judylou (and Dan too) -- Morrison is tops on my list of contemporary authors. I think I've read Beloved about 4 times (I teach it regularly) and have read Jazz, Sula, and Song of Solomon at least twice. Listening to Jazz read by Morrison was incredibly revealing of how the rhythms of the language work and meld with the music.

>12 janeajones: Last year I listened to it on audio, read by Morrison. Fabulous. (It just occurs to me that I never noted that in my book list. Hmmm).

Hi Jane--happy new year. Home was a great read for me, too. I had no idea that Morrison read Jazz. I'm definitely going to make room for that this year. I'm overdue for a reread of Beloved. Sure wish I could hear your lectures on it.

Hi thea -- nice to see you again. Have you set up a new thread here -- I'll definitely star it (as I have Lois's). Hope you can find the audiobook of Jazz -- it gave a whole different appreciation for the book.

Thanks, Jane, but for now I'm just going to star and follow some friends. So I'll be around.

The Asolo Rep season has begun. They just launched a 5-year commitment to American plays -- noble, but that means no Shakespeare, nothing European or Asian :-{ . However, the two season openers were a wonderful contrast in values -- You Can't Take It with You and Glengarry Glen Ross. For info and reviews see: http://www.facebook.com/AsoloRep and http://www.asolorep.org/

And yes, the Douglas Jones in both productions is the one I've been living with for the past 44 years.

2. Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym

I can't say this is one of my favorite books. It's the first Pym I've read, and based on this one, I'm not sure I'm interested in another -- though I am open to discussion. Maybe it's just too village-English for this American. But where are the young people (with the exception of the curate), the children, the old people, the eccentrics? -- it seems to be just a collection of stuffy middle aged spinsters, bachelors, and one sort-of unhappily married couple. And little besides eating and church fairs occur. Wish I had enjoyed the humor that so many of Pym's readers relish -- I guess it just didn't do it for me.

It must be an English thing Jane. I can't say having never read any.

I haven't read that one, Jane. I think it's her first novel. I did read her second one, Excellent Women, written much later, which I enjoyed, and a much later one, Quartet in Autumn, which I loved, which is not to say that you would like them any better than Some Tame Gazelle. I appreciated her gentle irony and her ability to stay well this side of "twee."

Oh, and congrats to your husband!

I think disliking a Pym novel is tantamount to heresy on some LT threads! Some Tame Gazelle sounds like it would be too village-English for this Englander.

Thanks for the congrats, thea.

I was reading Pym with the Virago group centenary read, and it turns out that this IS her first book written in the 1930s. It turns out that she was projecting the image of herself and her friends into the 1950s and speculating what they would be like 20 years on. I think I'll try another -- maybe Quartet in Autumn.

Jane, I just read Some Tame Gazellle too, and I was somewhat underwhelmed, although for slightly different reasons. I like her wit and gentle irony but I just couldn't get into it; I suppose I just didn't care enough about the characters. (Although what you say about it being a projection of Pym and her circle 20 years into the future perhaps changes that...) Anyway, I remember enjoying Excellent Women much more, although I now remember nothing about it.

3. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Miller retells the tale of the Trojan War from the narrative view of Patroclus, Achilles' lover and boon companion. Patroclus, a prince in his own right, is exiled from his homeland because of an accidental death and sent to be fostered in the court of Peleus, the king of Phthia and the father of Achilles.

While I found this novel an intriguing read, it was also oddly unsatisfying in its lack of character development. We discover little about Patroclus's personality, beyond his kindness and lack of appetite for war, despite his role as narrator. Achilles is essentially the golden boy (both literally and figuratively), strongly tied to his mother, the goddess, Thetis, and finally fully aware of his fate.

Besides the fierce Thetis, the most interesting characters are those who appear in cameos: Odysseus, Agamemnon and Diomedes -- the leaders of the Greek forces against Troy. They embody the violence, the ambition and the hubris of the Mycenean-led forces who drag kings and warriors into battle and corrupt the heart.

The Song of Achilles has been on my wishlist for a while, but it does seem to provoke diverse responses. I have a friend who presented a paper on this book and how it relates to The Iliad, but I unfortunately couldn't attend the presentation. Still, seems quite interesting.

25> It is interesting and quite readable, but The Iliad is much better, and for a revisioned Trojan War, I have to say I preferred Christa Wolf's Kassandra. I'm trying to find my copy of Mark Merlis's An Arrow's Flight which tells the story of Achilles' son Pyrrhus, but it seems to be hiding somewhere it doesn't belong.

Henry Darger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger

4. Girls on the Run by John Ashbery

Girls on the Run is Asbhery's homage to outsider artist, Henry Darger, now famous for a posthumously discovered 15,000 page fantasy manuscript titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion and its hundreds of drawings and illustrations.

The poem is a dream-like, surrealist, sort-of narrative that evokes in a kind-of ekphrastic way Darger's illustrations. I really have no idea what it's about or what Ashbery was trying to achieve. I have a feeling if one read the poem a dozen times or so and was much more familiar with Darger's work than I am, some kind of tenuous meaning could be teased out. But I'm afraid I don't have the patience for that.

There is some lovely, wonderlandish language, however:

Other dreams.
Judy the petulant watered her flowers
from a sprinkling can, and the rose hurtled into bloom.
My message is it's all right to go on, it said.
Sure enough daisies and yellowbirds paired off in the peace of the moment,
which is to be lasting, but someone unearthed the old saw
on the gravel beach. "We can't use this." No but we'll go over the top
and down into the wrinkle on the other side, you'll see.
So they did what was natural and becoming and all were satisfied
and rewarded. And some
shall be excused, and other have to go and wait on the border for it.
And we should come nearer, it's warmer,
if we want to, only on that other side
which seems so far away from us, but alas is too near
almost to count. With that the hedgerow winked
good-humoredly, and they stand, they stand
unimpressed but interested perhaps
even today, and that's the gist of it.

And I did have vividly impressionistic dreams the night I finished the poem.

John Ashberry is not the easiest poet to fathom at the best of times and so your comment does not surprise me. Did familiarity with Darger's work lead you to read the Ashberry poem.

Many people seem to love The Song of Achilles and so your more sober reflections give pause for thought.

Barry -- Actually I got an email from another professor about using a PPT I have posted on ekphrastic poetry, and he mentioned that he was teaching Girls on the Run, so I thought I would check it out. If I were younger and had more time, I might have the patience to tease more out of it -- but on this first reading, I just let myself enjoy the sound of the language and the images evoked.

>29 baswood:, 30 Agreeing with Barry that Ashberry can be very difficult, from the little I've read by him. Ekphrastic poetry is an interesting field, which I would like to investigate more. Any suggestions, Jane?

ekphrastic...this required a google.

Tough love on Madeline Miller's acclaimed book. In my fantasy world I have firm plans to spend a year reading the Iliad and they Odyssey and then reading books like these that relate... but what if these books don't hold up, when set side-by-side like that?

Dewald -- I really haven't done any scholarly work on ekphrases -- what I do in my Intro to Poetry class is very elementary. I did recently read a book review on Medieval Ekphrasis here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/15268/13.01.12.html?seq...

Dan -- I sympathize. Modern retelling of myths can be pretty hit or miss. I've done a lot of myth-revisioned reading (I gorged on Arthurian tales when I was contemplating writing a dissertation on Malory about 30 years ago), and I enjoy seeing what the authors do with their reinterpretations, but I'd say that while many have intriguing insights (more about their own views and the times they live in than about the original eras), most don't hold up to the originals.

5. Ru: A Novel by Kim Thuy, translated from French by Sheila Fischman

Kim Thuy won the 2010 Governor General's Award for her first book, Ru: A Novel. Although the book is styled a novel, it is based on Thuy's own experience and memories. When she was 10 years old, she and her family fled Vietnam on a boat that took them to a refugee camp in Malaysia, eventually ending up in Montreal.

This is a gorgeous book. It's written in brief vignettes traveling back and forth in time and from place to place to finally piece together a picture of identities and a family split asunder which emerge into a new life. Many of the vignettes are prose poems (and great credit must also be given to the translator of the English edition) that capture fleeting moments:

After the old lady died, I would go every Sunday to a lotus pond in a suburb of Hanoi where there were always two or three women with bent backs and trembling hands, sitting in a small round boat, using a stick to move across the water and drop tea leaves into open lotus blossoms. They would come back the next day to collect them one by one before the petals faded, after the captive tea leaves had absorbed the scent of the pistils during the night. They told me that every one of those tea leaves preserved the soul of the short-lived flowers.

An interview with Kim Thuy on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2012/11/24/165563101/a-refugees-multilayered-experience-in-ru

>33 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. The only ekphrastic poem I really know is "Ode on a Grecian Urn", although I think Yeats also has one.

Had to look it up: "On A Picture Of A Black Centaur By Edmund Dulac"

>34 janeajones: Ru: A Novel sounds good. Thanks for the review.

Dewald -- it you want to see some ekphrastic poems, this is a good website: http://valerie6.myweb.uga.edu/ekphrasticpoetry.html , and here's the PPT I use: http://faculty.scf.edu/jonesj/JanesPPT/LIT2030/EKPHRASES.ppt

Thanks for those links, Jane!

>34 janeajones: I've been meaning to get Ru, your comments reminded me about it. It sounds excellent.

38> It's a lovely book, Vivienne, I highly recommend it.

and Ru goes on the list!

Awesome PPT, Jane.

Nice review of Ru, Jane. And thanks for the information about ekphrastic poetry!

Thanks, Dan and Darryl.

When we were in NYC a few years back, the Folk Art Museum had an exhibit of Henry Darger works. They're compelling and fascinating, yet sometimes very weird. I won't attempt Girls on the Run, but have added Ru to my Kindle.

Interesting notes on the Ashbery poem, Jane. I've not read much Ashbery, so I can't comment, but the poem would make for an interesting study.

6. Byrne by Anthony Burgess

Published in 1993, Byrne, the poetic obituary of the musician, composer, painter, and prolific progenitor, Michael Byrne, is also Burgess's prescient obituary of the 20th Century, and perhaps his own -- it was his last book.

Reviewers of the book point out the autobiographical elements, but as a reader, not particularly familiar with Burgess's life, what struck me about the poem was the embodiment of the furious race of artistic ideas, political ideologies and conflicts, and the decline of Europe throughout the 20th Century.

As a cultural touchstone, the book is wickedly entertaining whether or not the reader agrees with all of Burgess's assessments of his artistic contemporaries. He dismisses James Joyce -- "There was a Joyce (the ignorant said James)", viciously parodies Marlene Dietrich as a German film diva -- "But it was she who bit, bit till men bled" and Erica Jong as the American writer Rayne Waters whose influence on a young girl is described:

That girl had been much moved by Mistress Waters,
Whose novels answered Freud's frustrated whine
About what women wanted. All Eve's daughters
Now knew what women wanted -- to decline
Sex as pure thrust. Sex they must redefine
As clitoral ecstasy, best with a vibrator,
Neck of a bottle of expensive wine,
Even a male as slavish excitator,
Cooly and fully used, coldly discarded later.

The poem is divided into five sections. Four written in ottava rima stanzas (eight lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ababababcc) and one in Spenserian stanzas (9 lines of iambic hexameter rhyming ababbcbcc). The rhythm and rhyme are rollicking and contemporary and carry the poem forward quickly. I read it through the first time for the story, and the second to more thoroughly orient myself in the ambience of the characters and locales.

The first section details the life of Michael Byrne, born in 1900 in Liverpool to fugitives from the Irish famine. Talented as a musician and one "who loved mendacity" and the female sex, he flees from one city to another leaving behind expectant mothers. Landing in London, he is taken up by the aristocratic bohemian set in the 1920s, marries a film cosmetician and sires twin sons, is seduced by the German film diva and spends the 1930s in Hitler's Germany, flees to Switzerland in the 1940s where he bigamously marries again and begins to paint horrific erotic visions, and continues his journeys to Asia and Africa until the narrator finally loses sight of him.

And who is the narrator? A journalist hired by Byrnes to write his obituary in verse:

Somebody had to do it. Blasted Byrne
Pulled out a bunch of dollars from his pocket
Escudos, francs and dirhams. 'Let them learn
If they've a speck of talent not to mock it
But plant it and expect a slow return.
I whizzed mine skywards like a bloody rocket.
Tell what they call a cautionary tale.
Here's on the nail. Expect more in the mail.'

The obituarist (?) never got any more cash in the mail, but continued because of an obsessive fascination for Byrne and a lurking suspicion that s/he might be one of his myriad of children. When the trail for Byrne is lost, the narrator turns to his children.

The second section makes Timothy Byrne, one of Michael's legal heirs, and twin to Thomas, the protagonist. We're now in the mid to late 1980s; Tim, a Catholic priest, is contemplating resigning from the priesthood. He visits his half-sister, Dorothy, who is obsessed with videos chronicling the horrors of late 20th c. violence Together they attend a performance of a musical version of The Time Machine composed by another half-sibling.

The third section takes us to Venice where Tim is presenting a paper advocating an adoption of a neo-Latinate language for the European Union. As he addresses the conference, Tom who is scheduled to undergo an operation to remove a prostate tumor, collapses with an appendectomy. In this chapter, Burgess adopts the Spenserian stanza -- mostly, I think, to underline the ancient, decayed aspect of the Venetian state.

In the fourth section, Tim takes on the persona of the ailing Tom to facilitate an exhibition in Strasbourg that Tom had arranged of European intellectual leaders. One, in particular, inflames an extreme Islamist attack.

Michael Byrne, in the fifth section, rears his ancient existence and summons all his prodigy to a reading of his last will and testament at Claridge's on December 25. Mayhem ensues.

Byrne is a wild ride through 20th century European cultural history -- gossipy, informative and intellectually insightful.

Great review of Byrne Jane. I would expect nothing less than a wild ride from Anthony Burgess. On to the to buy list it goes.

Enjoyed your review. The poem looks maybe too clever for my tastes.

Sounds interesting, Jane (and I, too, would expect a wild ride from Burgess)

Sounds like vintage Burgess. In an odd twist, I saw another of his books the next day and thinking of your review, bought it, although I haven't read him in years, so thanks for the encouragement.

Thanks all for visiting and the kind words.

7. The Culprit by Rich McKee

An erudite, Florida-weird, romantic satire. Widowed professor Sean McDuff disgusted with the meddling of Florida politicians in the higher education system, diagnosed with a fatal disease, decides to make his final statement by car-bombing a (politically appointed) Board of Trustees meeting at his state college campus in south-west Florida. But a favorite student appears at the meeting and he....

Read the book. It's a quick roller coaster ride through the contemporary Florida scene.

8. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

While I enjoyed reading this novel -- I loved the characters -- I found some of the language and ideas a bit pretentious and precious. I also thought the ending was rather a cop-out -- an easy way to solve the difficult class-conflict situation that was emerging.

I so agree with you about the ending of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I found the beginning to be hard going, was then charmed and finally utterly disappointed by the ending. It was a cop out and what was it saying? That she didn't deserve what was happening to her?

I couldn't get through The Elegance of the Hedgehog, although I tried for about 30 pages or so. The characters and the author annoyed me too much. Maybe I should have kept at it, RG, to the charming part?

It actually is a book worth the initial slog. But skip the last chapter.

I'm highly unlikely to go back to it, but that's good to know.

Rebecca and RG -- After all the hype about the book, I was rather disappointed. I doubt it's one I'm going to keep.

A theatre weekend at the Asolo -- saw the opening night production of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris and the closing afternoon show of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles. Both productions were extremely well done despite a couple of minor odd characterizations in The Heidi Chronicles.

Clybourne Park focuses on the owners and neighbors of the Chicago house into which the family of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is about to move in 1959 in Act I, and on the new owners and neighbors who plan to tear it down and build a larger home in 2009. It explores the sense of place, the inevitability of change, and the continuing tensions of war, race and class over the last 50 years in America -- a funny, harrowing and challenging play.

Wasserstein's play has become a period piece, but it's my period (from 1965-1989), and I thoroughly enjoyed the dance through the feminist movement of the 70's and 80's. The weakest section of the play is Heidi's "breakdown" before a group of her HS alumnae by whom she has been invited to give a speech. While her unhappiness may be believable, the situation of a Columbia professor, author and art historian falling apart in a public-speaking situation just doesn't fly. But most of the play is witty and well-observed, and I thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia trip -- great music too.

Jane, that was just the same thoughts that I had when I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog What a cop out!

Personally, I think "cop out" was putting it mildly. The ending of that book really pissed me off. And here I'd finally started to really warm to it after a less-than-promising beginning, too. Bah!

>Jane, do you read the Greek mysteries by Anne Zouroudi? I have a copy (2 copies actually) of the latest The Doctor of Thessaly, if you are interested.

Lois -- I have not read Zouroudi's books, but if you want to send one my way, I'll give it a try. Thanks --

#52 "read the book" - ok, thinking about it...

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Ok, I know this book has become a media sensation (currently #1 on the NYT non-fiction best-seller list -- though currently only 43 LT members own it), and it's essentially a self-help book (a genre I never read), I nevertheless decided to read it.

I do teach a Women and Literature course, and I have a 20s something daughter and a 30s something daughter-in-law facing the career-motherhood dilemma (I sent each of them a copy of the book). And I'm a rock-ribbed feminist practically from the time I was born.

As I'm sure everyone is aware, Sandberg is the COO of Facebook, the mother of two children and VERY rich. She's also charismatic and photogenic and lucky and, by most accounts, nice (too nice according to her boss, Mark Zuckerberg).

Given my long and deep feminist reading and background, there's not much new here. But she articulates, with clarity and ease, the importance of involved participation in the workforce, egalitarian partnership in parenting and living, and the hurdles in career advancement -- which she describes as a jungle-gym rather than a ladder.

As a woman in sight of retirement, this book is not particularly relevant to my current circumstances. However, I find that much of Sandberg's advice about navigating a career, taking care of oneself and one's family, and interacting with colleagues, both senior and junior, is spot-on, in retrospect.

I'll recommend it to all of my students -- both male and female, and I'm happy I sent it my daughters.

I haven't read Sandberg's book, but one of the criticisms I've read of it (besides the fact that most women aren't at a level to take advantage of some of the options Sandberg can) is that she places the responsibility for advancement nearly entirely on women standing up for themselves as opposed to allowing any role for societal, economic, or corporate cultural constraints. Did you find any of this to be true?

Actually I think she advocates for lots of societal, economic and corporate changes, but she thinks the best way for them to happen is for women to get into leadership positions -- so they can effect the changes. Obviously most of us don't have Sandberg's advantages, but I think her advice is spot-on for any young person entering into any professional career. And I totally appreciate and applaud her reclaiming of feminism (though she admits that when she was in college she and her classmates didn't consider themselves feminists).

>65 janeajones: Oh, glad to have your review of this book, Jane. I caught some of the interviews and thought I might buy it for one or all of my three (in the age range of your children). I've also read and watched some of the subsequent commentary. I'm, of course, concerned with the working women who don't have a voice in our society and some of the criticism from feminists of the book is that Sandberg is in a powerful position where she might use her voice to advocate for others less fortunate than herself, and she failed to.

Still, it sounds like there's enough there to help, as you say, someone going into a professional field. I think my oldest might find it interesting.

(I admit wincing when I heard she was a Lawrence Summers protegée)

Thanks for your comments, Jane. I will probably read it myself so I can form my own opinions, but of course I'm up for all women being feminists!

It's an easy and quick read -- most useful, I think, for entering and mid-level professionals who are finding their way through the shoals of bureaucracy. Sandberg is upbeat and encouraging, but not very deep.

Nice review of Lean In, Jane. That book was the topic of at least a couple of conversations that involved several of my work partners, who are new or soon-to-be mothers and are planning to read it soon.

68 - wincing with you. and booing very loudly.

Leonardo's Judas by Leo Perutz

I was not enchanted or enthralled with this book. The basic story line follows Joachim Behaim, a German merchant, who travels to Milan to conduct business and collect a debt from a notorious money-lender, Bocetta. While there he becomes enamoured of a fetching young woman named Niccola -- until he is torn by the revelation that she is Bocetta's daughter. Meanwhile, Leonardo da Vinci continues to stare at his unfinished mural of The Last Supper while he is searching the streets and taverns for a model for Judas Iscariot, the disciple who loved and betrayed Jesus. Finally I found Perutz's characters to be under-developed, and his allegory unconvincing.

Hmm. I was inspired to buy this book by Barry's review a few weeks ago. When I read it, I hope I have his reaction and not yours, but I'm grateful for your perspective!

Barry's review was my inspiration too -- maybe I read the book at the wrong time, but I just generally felt impatient to finish it.

Oops!

I'm still going to read it, Barry!

Just catching up on your thread. I had mostly ignored Lean In, but I saw her on TV the other day and finally noticed it. I'm often behind that way.

I'm also 100 pages in to The Elegance of the Hedgehog and thinking of chucking it--it really is pretentious. It's been suggested that one has to understand French culture to appreciate it. Hmmmm. Not a compliment to French culture.

Chuck it Joyce before you get to the end, because the ending is really disappointing. Pretentious describes the book quite accurately I think, but there are quite a few readers on these threads that really enjoyed it, as did my fellow book club members.

Pretentious describes the book quite accurately I think,

You know what describes it even better? Boring. I'm actually almost finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog, so I probably will finish it. It's been a quick read at least.

I didn't get past the first 25 or 50 pages of it! And I like a lot of French literature!

"Adagio for Glass Harmonica" by Mozart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE_MZzvigd4

"The Last Transit of Venus" for Glass Harmonica by William Zeitler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LP8QFR9Qvc

11. The Glass Harmonica by Dorothee Kocks

Kocks subtitled her historical novel, set in the early 19th century, "A Sensualist's Tale." Chiara ("rhymes with tiara"), a young musically gifted Corsican woman, is sent by the village priest and her parents to Napoleon's Paris to become a servant to a wealthy, dying opium addict. One night she disguises herself as a young man and attends a masked ball open to the public. The aristocratic Marguerite takes a fancy to her and offers her patronage; Henry, a young American traveller/entrepreneur falls in love with her. She is introduced to the new instrument, the glass harmonica, that has become a sensation and promptly learns to play it -- reverberating with its electric, sensual energy. -- It all sounds a bit preposterous, but Kocks makes it work, bringing the reader into the tantalizing Napoleonic era with its freewheeling experimentation, trade in exotic goods, and intellectual questioning.

When Chiara arrives with Henry back in Portsmouth, NH and his Puritanical family, there are bumps in the road -- both in their path to marriage and, to some degree, in the writing. The complexity of relationships is not Kocks' forte, but she's marvellous in her descriptions of early American life, the beginnings of riverboat travel and entertainment (including its bawdy contraband), and the clashes of ideas, classes, and social mores that colored the growth of American traditions.

I don't think this novel is great literature, but it's great fun, and I found it vastly entertaining.

*Benjamin Franklin invented the kind of glass harmonica played by Chiara and pictured and heard in the previous post.

Wow! That is so interesting! and thanks for the pics.

78 -
My family is French and we love literature but everyone pretty much hated that book. It is what you make of it, I suppose. I have not read it myself due to all the bad reviews. I refuse to waste my time on it.

#85 - Good to hear! I was concerned about the state of the French nation. You're right--it is what you make of it. I should have known better--I could relate to the bad reviews and the good reviews didn't sell it, and I think I should have known to stay away based on that. However, when a friend puts it in your hand and highly recommends it . . . she usually has better taste is all I can say! Anyway, thanks for reassuring me that all is not lost in France . . .

oh great. now I HAVE to read it.

Wow -- haven't seen so much controversy about Elegance of the Hedgehog anywhere else.

#88 - just go read the reader reviews -- lots of love and hate there--whether you read the reviews here, at Goodreads, or Amazon. My favourite review is from Trivialchemy over at GoodReads. After a rambling introduction, he says "Well, this book is that guy. He follows you around at a party boring you with his pent-up discussion questions from a survey course on philosophy that his professor didn't care enough to work out of him." Yep, that pretty much says it for me.

Sometimes those love-hate books can be the most interesting books...

Hi, Jane, thanks for the review of the Glass Harmonica book. The early 19th century was an interesting period in New England what with Transcendentalism, the various communes springing up, the Industrial Revolution...etc.

Just catching up here, Jane - enjoying your reviews and particularly the poetry.

Thanks, Linda and Lois -- I've been pretty much absent here the last month -- finishing up the semester, recovering and babysitting grandson with too much of a cold/flu to go to daycare. Hope to catch up pretty soon.

12. The New World: An Epic Poem by Frederick Turner

Turner set a grand goal for himself in The New World: An Epic Poem -- in his words, "to demonstrate that a viable human future, a possible history, however imperfect, does lie beyond our present horizon of apparent cultural exhaustion and nuclear holocaust."

It's a curious world he conjures for a time 400 years in the future (what he deems the epic interval -- though a leap into the future rather than a look at the past as in traditional epic poems). His world seems to be an amalgam of post-fossil fuel high-tech, medieval warfare, 19th-century farming life, 20th-century commerce, ancient religion with its blood sacrifices, and Celtic pirates. It's an insular American future, focused specifically on the Northeast -- what is now New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The society is divided into 4 major groups. The Riots, supposedly violent matriarchies driven by psychedelic drugs have enslaved the Burbs, descendants of the suburban middle class (though the existence of these societies is merely asserted, never illustrated). The Mad Counties are religious fundamentalists who practice a kind of 17th c. Protestantism and follow a Cromwellian militancy in their own religious jihad. And the Free Counties embrace a kind of Jeffersonian agrarianism coupled with a class society based on the Vedic caste system. The Kashitrya are the political leaders and warriors, the Brahmins the priests, the Vaisyas the princes of commerce, and the Shudra the farmers. Any citizen in the Free Counties may declare a change in his caste/bur rarely will do so after his thirtieth year,/it being hard to adapt to a new code of manners,/values and skills."

The narrative focuses on the attempt of a Mad Counties alliance to defeat the Free Counties and subject them to their brand of religious fundamentalism. The Mad Counties alliance is led by a Mordred-like traitor from the Free Counties. The tale is rather a wild ride with some provocative philosophical digressions, but I think it really gets mired in its own pretensions. The characters are stereotypes at best and the action is pretty cliched. The poetry doesn't sing, except when Turner turns to nature metaphors:

But as a spider, whose web lies in the path
of an officious housemaid's duster, though starved and frail,
remakes every day a web whose beauty and symmetry
diminish each time and decay; till at last a few
tattered and ghastly strands, anchored in a knot,
a hideous shred, hang from the beam: still,
drawing out of herself the torn silk of her existence
the simmer yet renew her work of weaving;
or as the tree whose first buds were broken
in March by a frost, and fall, cased in a jewel
of ice, and whose second budding, still a brave show,
is stricken and snapped by hard winds in April,
nevertheless will put forth a third, stunted
and sickly vesture, easy prey for the beetles
and flies that riot in carnival May; so James
lifts up his head once more....

Perhaps, Turner should have stuck to the "free verse existentialist imagist lyric poem" that he dismisses as irrelevant in the introduction to his poem.

Good for you for getting through that! How on earth did you find it?

Fascinating review of The New World: An Epic Poem. Despite your mixed feelings about it I think I'll look for it next week.

Rebecca -- I kind of troll for long narrative poems on Amazon as I have students read one of their choice in my Intro. to Poetry class. It really wasn't difficult to get through -- just a bit perplexing and curious.

Darryl -- I'll be really interested to see if you can find a copy in a bookstore -- and what you think of it. There has been a bit of lit crit published that focuses on the Expansive Poetry movement that Turner seems to belong to along with Dana Gioia and others. Turner is a former editor of The Kenyon Review.

The New World: An Epic Poem, Frederick Turner sounds too much like dystopia. If I wanted to read an epic poem set in the future I think I would want more from it than regurgitated bits of history cobbled together from our past. Uninspiring.

I tend to agree with you, Barry, and I kept having moments like -- Oh that's from Parzival, reminiscent of the Bhagavad Gita, like Samson in the temple -- not a whole lot of original ideas here.

Really need to catch up on the reviews here.


13. The Glass Harmonica by Louise Marley

This novel has the same title as Dorothee Kocks' historical novel (hence the link to the author rather than the title here), and half of it is set in the same historical period -- the other half is set in the near future, giving the book an angle of the fantastic. The historical portion, set in 1760s London, focuses on a young Irish orphan named Eilish Eam, who barely survives, earning a few pennies from passers-by, by playing folk tunes on water-filled glasses. One of the passers-by is Benjamin Franklin who is struck by the girl's musical talent and decides that she could assist him with his newest invention -- the glass harmonica. The futuristic portion, set in America in 2018, focuses on Erin Rushton, a musical prodigy whose performances on the glass harmonica have set the artistic world abuzz.

The book's chapters alternate between the two time periods, and the two protagonists have a psychic connection to each other that plays out in life and death circumstances. Personally, I found Eilish's story fuller and developed with more interesting details and personalities than Erin's world. But Marley does have some intriguing speculations on how issues such as gentrification and economic gap between rich and poor play out with developing technology and bureaucracy.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel, and I was happy to get more information about Franklin's role in the development of the glass harmonica.

14. The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin and


15. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

Finishing the semester's grading, I just fell into the gentle arms of fantasy and fairytales for a week or two. I read a tale or two from Donoghue's collection as I fell asleep at night and picked up LeGuin's novel from my daughter's bookshelf when I was babysitting my grandson and needed something to read while he napped.

I have no idea why I hadn't read LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy years ago, but A Wizard of Earthsea is the first novel in the series. I think I'd classify it as YA as far as the complexity of the tale and readability are concerned (it doesn't measure up to her much more sophisticated Left Hand of Darkness). It's the tale of Sparrowhawk, an overly proud young adept at magic, who is schooled in the skills of wizardry, and has to learn to keep the universe in balance. It's obviously a model for the Harry Potter series, but not nearly so long. Generally a good read, but I don't feel a burning need to pick up the other books in the series.

Donoghue's collection consists of 13 retold Irish folk and fairytales with a very definite feminist twist. I approve. They were entertaining and intriguing.

So how many books are in your "for the end of semester" pile? Ha! That wonderful time when you get to choose reading just for sheer pleasure!

101> Probably way too many -- but I just found out I have to write a critical essay that I promised for an anthology a couple of years ago and has just found a publisher. So, sheer pleasure reading will disappear for a few weeks.

16. The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

The title of The Lola Quartet references a musical group in an arts-oriented high school in the small town of Sebastian, Florida. The novel opens in 2009 about 10 years after the quartet has graduated and gone their separate ways, only to be inextricably linked back in Sebastian.

The novel unfolds as a mystery through flashbacks and investigations with a murky Florida-noir atmosphere. Sebastian is a real place in east-central Florida, but the novel seems to put it much closer to the Everglades with invasive boas and iguanas arising out of the swamps. But the drugs, the real estate foreclosures, and the danger hanging over a general apathy ring true. I was riveted, but never truly moved.

17. The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg

Some adepts can see people's auras, Kasper Krone hears people's musical keys.

reviewus interruptus -- more to come....

Kasper, a celebrity clown, who owns a Stradivarius, but is drowning in debt and back taxes, is drawn into complex situation involving the kidnapping of children with extra sensory powers, an earthquake in Copenhagen, and his own pending extradition to a prison in Spain for tax evasion. The twisted plot is complex and sometimes difficult to follow, but fascinating and threaded with philosophical disquisitions on music (many of which were beyond me -- I have rather a tin ear).

Intriguing characters people the novel -- from KlaraMaria, a nine-year old who manages to present an entirely quiet aura to Kasper, to Franz Fieber, a paraplegic taxi driver who has lost his legs in a racing car accident, to Stina, Kasper's enigmatic lost love who rose out of the sea, to Kain, a real estate magnate and developer of spas and sanatoriums. Kasper uses his aural gifts and circus skills to ferret out the secrets.

I found The Quiet Girl a wonderful tease and thoroughly enjoyable read.

Nice review of The Glass Harmonica, Jane. I'll add it to my wish list.

I've read another of Emily St. John Mandel's books (Last Night in Montreal) and found it odd. I'm not sure what I think about it. I'll have to give her another shot and will look for The Lola Quartet. Not sure it will be soon, though.

True by Riikka Pulkkinen, trans. by Lola M. Rogers

True is a novel of 3 generations of an artistic and intellectual Finnish family -- Elsa, an eminent child psychologist, married to Martti, an artist; Eleeonora, her daughter, a surgeon; and Anna, who is caring for her grandmother, dying of cancer.

True is a novel that explores an individual and her family coming to terms with the indignities and dignity of illness and impending mortality.

True is Eeva's story -- the story of a liberated young woman in the 1960s, a university student with a nanny position, who falls in love with the father of the child she is caring for.

True uncovers family secrets and probes the nature of memories and their impact on how relationships develop.

True is a beautifully written, remarkable debut novel from Rikka Pulkkinen -- definitely a writer to keep an eye on.

And it is wonderfully evocative of the Finnish landscape.

It's all true then. Jane are you sure you don't freelance as a blurb writer for the back covers of paperbacks. Interesting: one to watch out for.

Barry -- do you think I could earn some cash doing that -- to supplement my pension???

well, the blurbs sold me - it's going on my list!

Merrikay -- I think you'd enjoy this one.

19. The Dig by John Preston

It's 1939 on the eve of Britain entering World War II and the German blitz. Off in Suffolk, a widow, Mrs. Pretty, has finally decided to excavate the mounds on the estate -- she and her husband had often discussed the prospect, and with war looming, she felt time was short. On the advice of the local museum director, she hires Basil Brown, an amateur archaeologist and soil expert, to unearth the mounds.

The rest is history -- and the stuff of this gently understated historical novel. Mrs. Pretty and her young son Robert live at Sutton Hoo House, and the mound that Basil Brown begins to excavate will be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon ship burial reveals incredible artifacts that undermine theories about the Dark Ages and reveal the sophistication of 7th-8th century societies.

The story is alternately narrated by three voices -- Basil Brown, Edith Pretty and Peggy Piggott, a recent university graduate who has just married her tutor, Stuart Piggott, and is invited into the dig because she is small and light and will not disturb the remains. Of course, it is Peggy who discovers the first really valuable artifact from the ship burial.

The characters in the novel are all historical figures -- and the author is the nephew of Peggy Piggot. It's a story of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary find -- but the ordinariness of their lives is at least as important as the extraordinary find. Mrs. Pretty frets about her young son, Robert. Basil Brown misses his wife, May, and worries about securing the site of the dig. Peggy is as bewildered by her marriage as she is enthralled by her finds at the dig. None of the characters are deeply developed -- but they don't need to be. Preston gives the reader enough hints as to their characters to let anyone with an imagination to figure out who they are.

One of aspects I appreciated the most was the enthralling descriptions of some of the pieces that were uncovered in the dig. A lovely snapshot of a bygone era and a truly historic event.

So -- that's it for the May reads -- and now I have to go off and write a critical essay on Ana Menendez.

Jane, The Dig sounds interesting. I do enjoy historical fiction, and may need to look that one up.

Touchstone: Ana Menendez

Robert

Jane, did you have any problems with sorting out the fact from the fiction in The Dig, John Preston or did it not bother you.

Thanks all for visiting.

Barry -- basically it didn't bother me. I figured most of the personal reflections were fictionalized, and from what I have read of the dig, the facts seemed pretty accurate -- though I must admit I'm no expert on Sutton Hoo. The novel certainly squares with the account in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo

Reading about this discovery yesterday reminded me of The Dig - what a nice coincidence that you have been reading it!

117> that's pretty amazing -- I'd love to know more about the culture that created these boats.

Yes, incredible isn't it?

Rereads of:

and
20.In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd and 21.Adios, Happy Homeland! by Ana Menéndez

for a critical essay I'm writing. Both remain reads.

I've never read Ana Menendez, but will look for her.

Rebecca -- she has a particular point of view and is quite lyrical. I'm not a huge short story reader, but these collections quite captivated me.

120 Just read your review of In Cuba.....German Shepherd and thought yes, as you said, it would be interesting to see what the author might write about the next generation and their experiences. Wonder who might have done that already.

22. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

Like Delta Wedding, The Optimist's Daughter evokes a highly detailed sense of time and space during a momentous, but ordinary, life event; in this case, a funeral in a small Mississippi town in the 1950s. Judge McKelva has died in New Orleans after a cataract operation (no simple procedure as it is today -- at that time a cataract patient had to remain immobilized for days, if not weeks, while the eye healed), and his young wife, Fay, and widowed daughter, Laurel, are left to bring the body home to Mount Salus and arrange the funeral.

As indicated by the title, this is Laurel's story -- her coming to terms with losing the last surviving member of her family and the re-storying of her past. The novel has three major segues signalled by the book's divisions into four parts. The first moves from the death of Judge McKelva into the very public viewing of a prominent citizen in the front parlor of his home. Welty brilliantly sketches the town's citizens from the bevy of Laurel's "bridesmaids" to Miss Adele, the local kindergarten teacher, to Major Bullock, the self-important old family friend, who needs to feel that he is running the show. When Fay's family unexpectedly arrives, the genteel Southern ritual shifts into near-comic mode.

After the burial, Fay decamps with her family for a few days, and Laurel is left with her closest friends and finally only herself. The novel's mode shifts from dialogue and conversation into internal monologue -- from a hectic public scene into quiet contemplation. As Laurel retrieves her mother's papers and reads her journals, she journeys back into her childhood and finally into her brief marriage that ended with the death of her husband in WWII.

Finally as Laurel is preparing to leave to return to her home in Chicago, Fay reappears. "Laurel is not late, not yet, in leaving, but Fay had come early, and in time." There is a final confrontation between the two women and a final confrontation within Laurel's own understanding.

The book is beautifully and economically written -- it carried me away throughout a summer night.

The Optimist's Daughter sounds like one for my ever growing TBR.

I love Eudora Welty and I'm so glad to that you have read her because I often fear that she has fallen out of favor with the "academy."

Thea -- I love her too. I wish she had written more novels. Her stories are wonderful, but I'm more a novel reader than a story reader. I'm not sure I really qualify for or identify with the "academy" ;-)

Ha! No, I wasn't pointing a finger! It just seems as though she's fallen off the syllabus a bit, of course that could mean that she's prime for being rediscovered one day.

Awesome review of Welty. I'm catching up, and enjoyed your reviews of The Dig, True, The Quiet Girl and The Lola Quartet, but mostly I'm very curious about Ana Menendez. Hope you are able to enjoy working on that essay.

Hoping Welty does make a comeback. I just read my first last fall and found another one recently, which is on my summer reading list. Nice review and it seems Virago at least believes in her.

and
23. Loving Che and 24. The Last War by Ana Menéndez

Between the publications of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (2001) and Adios, Happy Homeland (2011), Menéndez published two novels, lived in Istanbul, ended her marriage, lived in Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar, and worked as a journalist. Loving Che (2003) and The Last War (2009), the former set in Florida and Cuba, the latter in Istanbul during the Iraq War, continue to explore the themes of the play between illusion and reality mediated by imagination and storytelling and the need to find one’s true self.

Loving Che is narrated by a young Cuban-American woman who returns to Cuba after having received a packet of photos and letters from a woman claiming to be her mother, who may or may not have been the lover of Che Guevara. The narrator's mother had sent her, as an infant, to Miami with her grandfather as he fled the country. The narrator goes to Havana to search for her mother; the center section of the novel consists of the mother's letters which chronicle the love affair in a fairly steamy fashion. More interesting to me were the bookends in which the narrator chronicles her quest throughout the city of Havana and finally back home to Florida.

In The Last War, Flash, a photojournalist, is stranded in Istanbul awaiting a visa that will allow her to enter Iraq to join her war-correspondent husband, Brando. While there, she receives an anonymous letter claiming that her husband has been unfaithful (as Menéndez did about her war-correspondent husband, Dexter Filkins). The novel examines the unravelling of a marriage, but it also focuses on the personalities and motives of those who follow wars to bring images and stories to the rest of the world. As Flash wanders through Istanbul, she flashes back to other fronts in Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to connect her present self to her past experiences.

In an interview Menéndez has stated, “For me, leaving is the way we learn about identity and place. Travel far and long enough and you realize there is no such thing as a fixed ‘identity’ – though this is often so difficult a realization that we cling to the outlines of who we thought we were.”

25. Mermaids on the Moon by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

I think I would label this one chick-lit crossed with Florida-weird. France's mother, Grendy, has gone missing claiming she needs time for herself, so France travels to Mermaid Springs (obviously based on Weeki Wachi) to wait for her return and and watch over her nephew, Theo. Grendy, a mermaid alum, is a member of a troupe of alums, who refer to themselves as merhags, who are rehearsing a new show. With Grendy's disappearance, France is recruited to replace her in the show. Old secrets are revealed, family wounds opened, and new insights gained. Amusing if you're interested in the background workings of roadside attractions.

I'm intrigued by Menéndez and these four novels. Thanks for post #131.

As of the Mermaids & Weeki Wachi...I've never been to Weeke Wachi, but how strange that the mermaid bit made it out of the fifties...

Enjoyed your reviews of Loving Che and The last War and an interesting quote by Ana Menendez. I can understand that working as a journalist in theatres of war would probably make you think about fixed identities.

Great reviews! I also read Loving Che and enjoyed it. I don't remember having read anything like it before, the mix. That is a great quote from Menendez about identity. The Last War sounds pretty interesting.

Interesting reviews!

Thanks for the introduction to Ana Menendez, Jane. I had not been familiar with her, but will now be looking for The Last War.

Thanks all for stopping by.

Dan -- I think you'd enjoy Menendez. I haven't been to Weeki Wachee either, but my mother took my daughter when she was little, and she was enchanted. It still seems to be hanging on -- I should go sometime. I rather prefer the old roadside attractions to the big theme parks (though I like Busch Gardens). There's a YA book about Weeki Wachee in earlier days called Swim to Me by Betsy Carter.

Merrikay -- if you enjoyed Loving Che, you'd probably like The Last War as well. I actually preferred it to Loving Che.

Thanks Jane. Going on the wish list.

I also enjoyed your reviews of the Menéndez novels, Jane. I'll keep an eye out for them.

138 Holy moly! Just found The Last War at the Cortez, CO Public Library for $1! I cannot believe my luck!

Nice snag, Merrikay!

26. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

I was a bit skeptical of all the hype, but Wolf Hall is as good as everyone claims it to be. A wonderfully imagined portrait of the Machiavellian Thomas Cromwell that grants him his share of humanity. While I think Mantel's depiction of Anne Boleyn is a bit cold, it certainly fits into the world of Henry VIII's court that she has created. Needless to say, the sequel is on its way.

27. One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty

I've been reading one book by Eudora Welty per summer for the past few years. I've been rationing them out, because there aren't many, and I prefer to savor each, rather than greedily devouring them quickly. Her writing is so lovely and evocative and redolent of summer days. But I broke down this summer and took One Writer's Beginnings with me on vacation after having finished The Optimist's Daughter.

The book is a set of three memoir episodes that began as a series of lectures at Harvard in 1983 to inaugurate the William E. Massey lecture series. "Listening" recounts Welty's memories of her early childhood in Jackson, MS; "Learning to See" takes the Welty family and her audience on the road to West Virginia and Ohio where Eudora and her family travelled in the summers to visit her parents' families; and in "Finding a Voice," Welty ponders some of her early writing influences. While the third section is interesting, it is in the first two that Welty's storytelling gifts shine. She lets us breathe the air of the post WWI decades of small town and country life in America.

The idea of driving thousands of miles in a 1917 Model T with two children in the back seat absolutely boggles my mind.

Edward and I rode with our legs straight out in front of over some suitcases. The rest of the suitcases rode just outside the doors, trapped on the running boards. Cars weren't made with trunks. The tools were kept under the back seat and were heard from in syncopation with the bumps, we'd jump out of the car so Daddy could get them out and jack up the car to patch and vulcanize a tire, or haul out the tow rope or the tire chains. If it rained so hard we couldn't see the road in from of us, we waited it out, snapped in behind the rain curtains and playing "Twenty Questions."

28. The Paradise Engine by Rebecca Campbell

I was in a Canadian bookstore in Stratford, ON, and felt I should buy at least one Canadian book while there. So I went to the Canadian author section and chose The Paradise Engine by Rebecca Campbell.

In her first novel, set in British Columbia, Campbell interweaves the stories of Anthea, a contemporary graduate student working on the restoration of an old opera house, and Liam, a third-rate tenor performing on the Vaudeville circuits of the 1920s and 1930s. Both become peripherally involved with mystical cult figures trying to draw followers into their orbits, and the lives of each seem to dwindle away as the novel progresses and ends.

While there are fascinating glimpses of lives in Western Canada now and, even more so, nearly a hundred years ago, the novel seems to tell tales of dissolution and decay. I was involved in the reading of the novel, but I think Campbell did not entirely resolve the issues that confront many first-time novelists. Promise is there, but not completely fulfilled in this novel.

reread of:


The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

A baroque, feminist re-visioning of classic fairy tales set in northern wintry climes and done in classic Carter style. Not quite up to Nights at the Circus, but delicious in its own right.

>143 janeajones: I am so glad you liked Wolf Hall. That and Bring Up the Bodies are two of my favorites from the past couple of years.

Glad to see you back, Jane, and enjoying catching up with your reading.

Wolf Hall was the first Mantel I read, and I loved it, and so I started reading much of her other work and found her a really fascinating writer because she tries so many different styles and subjects. I think A Place of Greater Safety, about the French Revolution and Danton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins, is even better than Wolf Hall, and I loved some of her non-historical fiction too.

I though I had One Writer's Beginnings on the TBR because I thought a friend gave it to me for a birthday present decades ago, but LT doesn't seem to think I have it. Will have to look through the shelves.

I recently read The Bloody Chamber for the first time, and was intrigued enough to think I'll take a look at the Carter you prefer, Nights at the Circus.

A Place of Greater Safety was the first Mantel I read and I have been reading her ever since. Unlike Eudora Welty, there's lots to read.

Interesting to read about your thoughts on Welty. I discovered her through a short story in an anthology last year and then read a book last fall and just finished another last week. Like you, I think she is wonderful and will be rationing her out over the next few summers.

Tomorrow I'll be in that Stratford bookstore. Odd how those connections work. I haven't heard of Rebecca Campbell, but I always find something there, although usually not Canadian.

Enjoy Bring up the Bodies. I think it was even better that Wolf Hall.

Mantel will certainly be on my reading list for some time to come. I had never heard of her before she won the Booker for Wolf Hall -- given the length of her books, however, she'll probably have to wait for summers and my looming retirement.

149> Are you going to the Shakespeare Festival?? We saw Mary Stuart -- it was fabulous! Also saw a very well done production of Major Barbara at the Shaw Festival. We had never been to either before -- but I'm sure it won't be the last time we visit (though it is a hike from Florida).

If anyone is interested, we've added some photos to our Literary Sojourns collection. As we wended our way home from Canada, we stopped at the birthplace of L. Frank Baum, the grave of Mark Twain in Elmira, NY; the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown,NY; the James Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA; and Pearl Buck's home in Perkasie, PA: https://literarysojourns.shutterfly.com/

Not every Mantel book is long. Some of my favorites are much shorter than the historical novels: The Giant, O'Brien, A Change of Climate, Vacant Possession (but you have to read the less good Every Day Is Mother's Day first, unfortunately). There are others I liked a lot too, including her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, and Beyond Black, and also Fludd, and none of them is long.

Very cool to do a literary tour and I enjoyed the beginning of your photos, especially seeing what L. Frank Baum looked like, and all that Oz memorabilia, and I'll have to come back to look at the rest when I have more time.

>150 janeajones: Mary Stuart is the one I would really like to see, but we're going to Othello as that's what my Shakespeare group did this winter. We will all meet up in the fall and talk about our various independent sojourns to see it and decide what we'll read over the winter. Since Mary Stuart is on for a while, and encouraged by your comments, maybe I can get back later in the season. It's only about two and a half hours from here.

That's quite a trip you took. I had no idea that Cooperstown had anything other than baseball. I can see using your literary sojourns for various route plans!

When we visit family, we have to travel half away across the country, and since I hate to fly any more, I convinced my husband that we should drive, and we break up the trip by visiting authors' houses and museums -- and try to catch any plays that might be available during the summer months. We've also been known to stop at wineries along the way. We've found meandering our way to our destination is fun and often surprising -- especially since we no longer have squabbling children in the back seat demanding to know when we are going to get there ;-

Cooperstown is definitely a baseball town, but the Fenimore Museum is a gem, and they had a great exhibit of Wyeth family paintings. Lake Otsego (which they call Glimmerglass) is lovely, and for opera fans there is a Glimmerglass Opera Festival.

I'm sure Othello will be wonderful -- it just didn't fit into our schedule, but if you get a chance to see Mary Stuart, grab it.

Rebecca -- Mantel is definitely now on my permanent radar.

What a wonderful idea for your trips! Thanks for sharing those awesome pictures. Yes I'm interested!

I'm jealous of your cross-country drive and museum visits, Jane. I'm so glad you got to visit Cooperstown. It is a day trip for us and does indeed have much to offer. I especially love the American Indian exhibits at the Fenimore. The Farmer's Museum and Hyde Hall are also worth visiting. Last week we saw Passions at the Glimmerglass Opera. It was our first visit to the festival, but won't be our last, as it is a wonderful venue.

Unfortunately for me, the only time I went to Cooperstown was with an 8-year-old boy (and his family), so the only place we went was the baseball museum! I did buy William Cooper's Town after that trip, but have yet to read it.

Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton is set in the town of Templeton, which is actually Cooperstown -- complete with Lake Glimmerglass and a monster called Glimmie. Not great literature, but entertaining if you're in the mood for some upstate NY atmosphere.

Great collection of photos, Jane! I especially liked the ones taken at the James Michener Museum and the Pearl Buck House; my parents have lived in Bucks County, PA for nearly 40 years, but I have not visited either site yet.

The Michener Museum is a great example of much better use being made of a fortress that used to be a prison!

>160 janeajones: Ah; I did not know that!

Not sure why but when I was 21 and living in Colon,. Panama, with my Army husband of the time, I read all of Pearl Buck and John D. McDonald. interesting combo.

That is an interesting combo. When I was 21 and living in Baltimore with my actor husband, I read all of Hawthorne and tons of Victorian porn -- maybe I thought the one cancelled out the other.

Popping in to catch up, Jane. And there is a lot to catch up on (and always interesting and varied choices). I'm glad you enjoyed The Quiet Girl, I did also. I read One Writer's Beginnings in the 90s, and enjoyed it more than I thought I would at the time. I like your approach to Welty - one book a summer. Hmm. perhaps I will apply that to a few authors.

And as mentioned elsewhere (rebecca's thread, I think), I am an Angela Carter fan. It seems several people have read some Carter recently. She was unusual in her time.

I read One Writer's Beginnings last year, and also enjoyed it, so I'm glad to see others also reading it. I would really like to read more of Welty's fiction.

30. Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel

Another masterful historical novel -- while I enjoyed this sequel to Wolf Hall, I missed the rich tapestry of the earlier novel with characters and scenes from all strata of society. I found this book, full of its court intrigues, colder. Cromwell has become a less sympathetic character, and none of the English nobles are particularly likeable. But Mantel has a brilliant eye for detail and makes the Tudor court come vividly alive.

>166 janeajones: I loved Bring Up the Bodies but agree with your assessment. It covered such a short period of time compared to Wolf Hall. The intrigue and conniving to discredit Anne Boleyn seemed to make the story gallop to the end.

I particularly missed Hans Holbein in Bringing Up the Bodies

Self Portrait:


Thomas Cromwell:


Henry VIII:


Sir Thomas More:


Anne Boleyn:


Jane Seymour:


Edward VI (Prince of Wales):

Wow! Thanks for the portraits, Jane.

I have got Bring up the Bodies to read; enjoyed the portraits.

Thomas Cromwell doesn't look anything like the picture I had in my head.

Very lawyerly...

31. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer

This is an era I'm quite familiar with -- at least on the literary side -- so there was a lot of familiar information here to me. I should mention that my husband, who is NOT a medievalist, read the book before I did and found it absolutely fascinating.

I skimmed through some of it and picked up and set it down as I was preoccupied with starting classes the last couple of weeks.

First of all -- it's very accurate. If you are interested in how people lived in the 14th century, this book will give you great insight into such various matters as clothing, hygiene, medicine, the workings of the legal system, food, and entertainment. Mortimer doesn't focus on the nobility, as so many historical novels do, but covers the range from the villeins (the laborers tied to estates) to the aristocracy -- and everyone in between.

The 14th c. was a crucial turning point for Britain and Europe -- it was the century in which the plague took its greatest toll. The estimated population of England in 1300 was 5 million; in 1400, it was 2.5 million. According to Mortimer, it was not until the 1630s that the population would again reach 5 million. Obviously the effects upon society and the social order were seismic. Mortimer's discussion of these effects were what I found most interesting about the book.

The writing style is chatty and informal -- popular social history. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the period or the literature that came from it -- Chaucer, the Gawain poet, Langland and Gower.

Nice review of The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, Jane. I bought it a couple of years ago on the recommendation of one of the members of the 75 Books group, so I'll try to get to it in the next year or two.

The Time Traveler's Guide sounds interesting. I will check it out.

Agreeing that the Time Traveler's guide sounds interesting.

32. Winter King: Henry VII and the dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn

I had just finished reading Wolf Hall when I came across this book on a remainder table in front of a Stratford bookstore. It occurred to me that I really didn't know very much about Henry VII other than that he had defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field and had sired Henry VIII, so I picked it up.

I have to agree with Hillary Mantel's blurb on the front of the book: "Compelling...Fascinating...I feel I've been waiting to read this book a long time."

Winter King actually has much in common with Wolf Hall in its depictions of the machinations of Henry VII's court and counselors. The first part of his 24-year (1485-1509) reign was absorbed by neutralizing threats against his claim to the throne by a variety Plantagenet claimants who were much more clearly in line to the throne and by the flamboyant Pretender, Perkin Warbeck. During the latter part of his reign, he was obsessed with gaining wealth using nefarious claims against and fines of the aristocrats and merchant princes of London, so that when he died, the English royal treasury was the wealthiest in all of Europe. Winter King as history is not as character-driven as Mantel's novels, but there are some touching portraits of Elizabeth of York, Henry's beloved queen, and the young Catherine of Aragon, ensnared in the web of diplomacy between her father, Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry.

Although it's meticulously researched and documented, the book does not read as dry history. Penn is an excellent stylist who makes the period come alive and offers another, earlier perspective into the Tudor Court. Highly recommended.

Adding Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England to my wish list.

Thanks for that review Jane. Winter King: Henry VII and the dawn of Tudor England is a must read for me. I have just got to get through Trevor Royle's The Wars of the Roses first.

Barry -- I should read that too, but I think I'm on to Adam Nicolson's Quarrel with the King next.

Well, I just added both Winter King and Time Traveller's Guide to my wishlist. These are great recommendations.

I'm catching up a bit and really enjoyed your pictures from your July road trip. I was looking through them last night while trying to get my son to sleep (still an issue although he is almost 7) anyway, not asleep he walked out of his room and sat with me and we looked through the pictures together. So, we have two reasons to go to Cooperstown now.

I am now very tempted to employ that 1-click Amazon feature for Winter King, but thankfully the library has it. Thanks for the review, Jane!

Thanks for stopping by, Dan and Linda. Probably all little (and big) boys should go to Cooperstown -- I'm only sorry we never took my son there. But he's old enough to go by himself now.

182 That's my favorite feature of the get this book feature - I can find out if the library has it so easily before I one click. Saves me a ton of money. :)

I think I saw Winter King at that same Stratford table and bought it, but I squirrelled all those books away in an effort to get them out of the way of my full house for the rest of the month. Based on your review, I now have to find it!

I've missed this 1-click Amazon feature -- where/what is it?

I don't do one-click because I always want to make sure I buy enough books to get free shipping!

Jane, if you are signed in, it is just under "Add to Cart."

but really Jane, are you sure you want to know?

The Life and Times of Chaucer by John Gardner

Although John Gardner is best known as a novelist, he was also a professor of medieval literature at various universities including Oberlin, Northwestern and Bennington, a translator of medieval literature The Complete Works of the Gawain Poet, and a scholar. His biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, published in 1977, is a rich trove of information about not only the poet, but about 14th century English life and the Plantagenet courts of Edward III, Richard II, and, to a lesser extent of Henry IV.

It's a dense piece of chocolate cake for any lover of Chaucer. Gardner explores the poet's relationship with the mercantile life of London into which he was born and made his way; the scholarship and philosophy of the universities whose ideas he mined; the humanism of Petrarch's and Boccaccio's Italy where he went on diplomatic missions; his close friendship with John of Gaunt (more later), kingmaker and son of Edward III; and most importantly, his innovations and inventions of English poetry. Chaucer is undoubtedly, the father of English poetry -- in a century in which English was, after the Norman conquest, finally being recognized as the language of the land.

Gardner's biography is a biography written by a novelist. He speculates about what Chaucer must have thought and how he proceeded in the treacherous world of 14th c. England. Yet his speculations are grounded in serious scholarship and reflections in Chaucer's own writings. There is ample reference to his poetry to support Gardner's assertions about Chaucer's observations and experience.

Perhaps the most interesting personal relationship is that between Chaucer and John of Gaunt. They were close contemporaries -- both born about 1340 (John of Gaunt's birth is recorded, Chaucer's may have been a year or two later). Gaunt died in 1399, Chaucer in 1400.
As Duke of Lancashire, John of Gaunt was the wealthiest baron in England. The two would have met at court, probably in their late teens or early twenties, where Chaucer was in service to John's mother Queen Philippa. Chaucer's Book of the Duchess is an elegy for Gaunt's beloved first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. Eventually the two would become brothers-in-law -- Chaucer marrying Philippa Roet (who may have been Gaunt's mistress) and Gaunt marrying Philippa's sister, Katherine Swynford, his longtime mistress, and matriarch of the Beaufort line -- see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Swynford.

At any rate, Chaucer long enjoyed the patronage of the royal courts, serving as poet and reader for entertainments as well as diplomat and overseer of public works and customs. Gardner revels in Chaucer's broad scope. While recognizing him as a conservative royalist and survivor, loyal to any king in power, he definitely asserts that "Chaucer's position is clear and unvarying. He defends one virtue, charity: the good man's willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, to find some nobility in even the wretched and deplorable of men; and though he treats many vices, there is only one that he attacks ferociously, again and again: self-righteousness."

Excellent review of The Life and Times of Chaucer by John Gardner, which I read a couple of years ago. I agree with everything you say and would only add that Gardner's love and enthusiasm for Chaucer's works comes through to the reader. Recommended for anybody with an interest in Chaucer.

Thanks, Barry -- and I certainly second your recommendation. I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf for years and obviously started reading it once upon a time as I underlined passages and made notes in the first couple of chapters, but somehow it got set aside. I'm delighted I picked it up again.

Terrific review. I'll keep this in mind as I'm hoping to get to Chaucer one day.

Interesting to read about Chaucer and his times. What Dan said about getting to Chaucer someday!

34. Blood and Roses: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century by Helen Castor

This is another book I picked up once upon a time ago, set down, and neglected to go back to. But I am currently in quest of English history to go along with the English Lit course I'm teaching, so I persevered. And I now finally understand the rivalries among the descendants of Edward III that led to the breach between the Yorks and the Lancasters and the Wars of the Roses. But at the forefront of Blood and Roses is the Paston family of the subtitle.

William Paston, emerging from a 14th-century peasant farm family, by dint of cleverness, hardwork and a canny knowledge of the law, became the business manager for aristocratic landowners, most notably Sir John Fastolf. Much as Thomas Cromwell was to do in a later generation, Paston parlayed his way into land ownership and influence until his own family settled into the minor gentry. But their place there was continually under siege from rivals, both gentry and aristocrat, as the centers of power and influence shifted cataclysmically during the changing monarchies during the Wars of the Roses.

gotta go -- more later.

But what the Pastons are famous for are their letters. They carried on a voluminous family correspondence as the the heads of the family mainly worked in London in the law courts while their wives and younger siblings stayed in Norfolk -- the one staving off legal challenges and courting powerful influence, the others staving off house invasions and making their presence felt in local politics. When the letters were first published in the 18th century, they became a literary sensation and went through numerous editions. They remain the most thorough account of 15th century English life to date.

Castor has written a dense and gripping picture of the rise and struggle of the Pastons using quotes from the letters as well as detailed historical accounts of the background rivalries of the Plantagenet cousins to gain and maintain the English crown. For anyone who has ever been confused by the king makings and unmakings in Shakespeare's history plays, Blood and Roses will help to unravel the mess.

I have had Blood and Roses on my shelf for quite a while. You make me want to move it to a "read soon" shelf.

Jane, looks like you have found another book for me to read. I have read a collection of the Paston letters which were great and I am now tempted to get Blood and Roses: The Paston family in the Fifteenth century. I have recently read The Wars of the Roses by Trevor Royle, which does an excellent job of providing a narrative and rounding out the characters involved in those confusing times.

Colleen and Barry -- it's a good read -- a bit heavy-going at times but I found the juxtaposition between the Pastons and the Plantagenets fascinating.

Nice review of Blood and Roses, Jane. I'll add it to my wish list.

Jack Donne, c. 1595


John Donne by Isaac Oliver, c. 1616


Donne in his shroud

Wondering where these pictures will lead to.

Blood and roses sounds like a perfect audio book...going to check my library...

...doesn't exist in audio, oh well.

35. Conceit by Mary Novik

Conceit is Mary Novik's fantasia on the life and poetry of John Donne. As any English major has been taught, Donne's literary output divides itself between the erotic and satiric poetry of Jack Donne, the rake, and his later self, John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's, poet of the Holy Sonnets and renowned sermonizer.

Personally, I have always been fondest of Jack -- poet of "The Flea," "To His Mistress Going to Bed," and "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" while admiring the Dean's "Death Be Not Proud" and "Batter My Heart" ( see Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/243)

Novik's historical novel, while focusing mainly on the viewpoint of Donne's next-to-youngest daughter Pegge (Margaret), jumps in and out of the consciousnesses of Pegge; her dead mother, Ann More; her husband William, Samuel Pepys, Izaak Walton, and Donne himself. Pegge, who cared for her father as he died, proves to be far less interested in his religious concerns than his relationship with her mother and his secular poetry -- especially as it relates to her own personal relationships.

This is not a Hilary Mantel historical novel, steeped in details and much research, though Novik has done her research. It's a literary tour-de-force -- playing with Donne's words, poetry and the milieu of 17th c. England. While granting its probable historical shortcomings, I found it quite delightful. Recommended for those who have at least a passing interest in and knowledge of Donne's poetry and life.

Aw, that's not available new from Barny Noble. I'll have to look around for it.

Robert

I've always liked Donne, although I haven't read his poems in years, and I enjoyed your review.

Thanks, Robert and Rebecca -- I got a used copy from Amazon after having read a review here on LT -- it was originally published in Canada, not sure that the publisher has an American version.

If one is interested in Donne - should they begin here?

Conceit is available in paperback and Kindle from amazon.ca

Dan -- I'd read some of the poems first. I think an appreciation of the book relies pretty heavily on the reader being familiar with the outlines of Donne's life and at least the more famous of his poems. The Norton Anthology of English Literature has a good selection of the poetry and a good intro.

Yet another book to add to my reading list from your thread Jane

Nice review of Conceit, Jane!

Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, with his Family, painted ca. 1634-35 by Anthony van Dyck.

36. Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War by Adam Nicolson

Nicolson traces the family history of the Herberts from the court of Henry VIII through the Catastrophe of the Civil War in the 1640s. He details the power plays and court intrigues in which the Herberts indulged, but it is ultimately the Arcadian ideal that Nicolson is most interested in. Mary Sidney, sister to Sir Philip Sidney, author of Arcadia was married to Henry Herbert, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke and mother to William and Philip Herbert, successively the 3rd and 4th Earls of Pembroke.

Nicolson tries to define the Arcadian ideal as expressed both in Sidney's book and Mary's continuations and revisions of it after his death, and in the life at Wilton Castle, the Herbert estate:

This Arcadian heartland is a mysterious place for us; consciously elitist but fiercely Protestant in religion; prepared -- just -- to countenance the overthrow of kings, but courtly to a degree in manner and self-conception; political in its removal from the political world; aristocratic, community-conscious, potentially rebellious, literary, martial, playful, earnest, antiquarian, English, Italianate, and nostalgic. But this is the essence: Arcadia sees an aristocracy not as an element of a controlling establishment but as an essential organ in a healthy state, a check and balance on the centralizing power of the crown and the true source of authority and care in the lands it owns. The vision of Arcadia is not far from the desire for wholeness that the communities of the chalkland valleys wished to embody in their elaborate ancient constitutions.

Nicolson is not naive about the contradictions and disconnect from the daily life of ordinary townspeople and laborers, but he does reveal a certain nostalgia himself for an ancient pastoral England in which the rights and duties and positions of each member of society were understood and mutually dependant on the others -- reminiscent of William Blake and William Morris. Perhaps this is entirely understandable coming from the son of Nigel Nicolson and grandson of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. He and his wife Sarah Raven are Resident Donors, in partnership with the National Trust, of Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens.

The book is certainly a fascinating peek into the rise and fall of the Herbert fortunes in a turbulent period in English history.

Another great review, Jane. I really enjoy books about this time period.

Interesting view point on Adam Nicolson Jane, which had me rushing over to see if the biography of Sidney that I have on my reading shelf was written by the same man. I was a little relieved to see that it wasn't.

Great review of Quarrel with the King, Jane!

Thanks for bringing all those interesting history books to our attention.

Thanks all for stopping by. I had just about decided I needed to switch back to novels, but got a lovely arty multi-bio-critique in the mail of Emily Carr, Georgia O'Keefe and Frida Kahlo in the mail -- Places of their Own -- which I think I shall delve into.

37. Shakespeare, Richard III

I hadn't reread Richard III in years, but I decided to teach it in my humanities course this semester, and, of course, it dovetails perfectly with all the history books on the Wars of the Roses I've been reading. The first act -- oy -- trying to get all the characters straight despite all that history and a couple of lineage charts! But once into it -- a crackling tale of murder and mayhem ensues with some glorious poetry and some of the most quoted of Shakespeare's lines. This time through I was most fascinated with the interplay of the queens -- mad Margaret, seemingly haples Anne and the unfortunate Elizabeth.

This morning in the local paper, an editorial reprised one of JFK's speeches memorializing Robert Frost: "When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment." ( http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/80308LXB5kOPFEJqkw5hlA.aspx)

It seems to perfectly capture my appraisal of Richard III.

QUEEN ELIZABETH
How canst thou woo her?
KING RICHARD III
That would I learn of you,
As one that are best acquainted with her humour.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
And wilt thou learn of me?
KING RICHARD III
Madam, with all my heart.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers,
A pair of bleeding-hearts; thereon engrave
Edward and York; then haply she will weep:
Therefore present to her--as sometime Margaret
Did to thy father, steep'd in Rutland's blood,--
A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain
The purple sap from her sweet brother's body
And bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith.
If this inducement force her not to love,
Send her a story of thy noble acts;
Tell her thou madest away her uncle Clarence,
Her uncle Rivers; yea, and, for her sake,
Madest quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.

Act IV, Scene iv

This sounds like a wonderful play. I haven't read it, but I love your extract which does capture all that wonderful Wars of the Roses madness. We are doing King Lear in our Shakespeare group this winter. I voted for King John as I knew nothing about the play but thought he was an interesting character from a critical time, but his reputation seems to have done him in for that group at least. Should you be back in Stratford this summer, both will be playing.

Wonderful Kennedy quote about poetry and Frost.

They were blood thirsty times, when no one was safe.

Sassy -- it is a wonderful play -- I highly recommend it.

Barry -- indeed -- far more than I really comprehended. Richard was only 32 when he was killed at Bosworth field.

Lucky you having a Shakespeare group, Sassy. I don't feel equipped to read Shakespeare on my own.

Jane, I have seen a few of Shakespeare's plays, but I've never read one. If I wanted to pick one, which would you recommend? I have a "Complete Works of"..

Jane, you make me realize that I may be due for a reread of RIII. I'm hoping to see it here with Mark Rylance before it closes. The scene between Lady Anne and Richard is one of my favorites.

Great comments about Richard III, Jane. The JFK quote is priceless; I'll add it to my list of favorites.

Colleen -- I think it depends on what you're in the mood for. Much Ado about Nothing or Twelfth Night are delightful comedies -- so is A Midsummer's Night's Dream. I love The Tempest. If you're in the mood for tragedy, there's always Hamlet and Othello and King Lear, or a bit more exotically Antony and Cleopatra. Personally I wouldn't start with the histories, unless you're obsessed with the Wars of the Roses. If there's a production you've seen that you particularly liked, that might be a good one to start with, and I always recommend good film versions to go along with any reading. So, I'm afraid, a long answer to your short question.

Thank you for the long answer. It was helpful. :)

2013 has ended in a sputter of reading -- As I was finishing the semester, I reread Daddy Longlegs and picked up its sequel Dear Enemy by Jean Webster. The first is an early 20th c. orphan-college novel, the second about running an orphanage -- both quite delightful and revealing about early 20th c. young women's lives, theories of raising children, and idealistic romances -- escape, but fun.

My final book of the year was Selma Lagerlof's The Lowenskold Ring is a ghost story of death and revenge following the theft of a ring from the coffin of General Lowenskold -- brief, but intriguing.

I've moved into 2014 over here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163184

Love to see you there.