SassyLassy Falls Back

In Canada, the semiannual slogan as the clocks change is Spring Forward, Fall Back. My reading is taking a decided fall back, in quantity at any rate, so this seemed like an appropriate subject line.

Here is something more positive, fall sailing.

Fun:



The Clearwater on the Hudson River, and what's more fun for sailors:



A regatta at Kingston Ontario

Catchup sometime

I agree with your last post on your previous thread (Somehow, the garden related groups on LT don't seem to discuss books on the topic... discouraging). I started the Gardens & Books-group which was meant to discuss both garden-fiction and non-fiction, but somehow, most members talk abot the garden and omit the rest. I'm happy for them, but that's not what I had intended. Btw, I have ordered a copy of What are Gardens for? along with a copy of The Pursuit of Paradise by Jane Brown and I'm really looking forward to reading these.

Reading Globally's third quarter is on Mexico and Central America.



32. Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement by Graham Greene
first published 1984
finished reading September 1, 2014

In 1976, Graham Greene was seventy-two years old and living quietly in Antibes. Out of the blue came a telegram from a Senor V, informing Greene that General Omar Torrijos of Panama was inviting him for a visit--- he had only to select an airline and pick up a prepaid first class ticket. This may sound like the beginning of a Greene novel, as the author knew neither Senor V nor the General, and had never been to Panama, but it was indeed fact.

Greene accepted, thinking of the trip "...as only a rather comic adventure, inspired by an invitation from a complete stranger". In what may have been even more to the point, he went on to say "Fear can be easily experienced, but fun is hard to come by in old age, so I already felt a sense of gratitude to General Omar Torrijos.

The day after arriving in Panama, Greene and a friend were driven by Sergeant Chuchu, the General's security man, to a small house where

Two men presently joined us. They wore dressing gowns and underpants, one had bare feet and one was in bedroom slippers, and I was doubtful which to address as General. They were both men in their forties, but one was plump with a youthful and untroubled face which I felt would last a lifetime, the other was lean and good-looking with a forelock of hair which fell over his forehead and giveaway eyes (he was the one with bare feet). At this encounter what the eyes gave away was a sense of caution, even of suspicion, as though he felt that he might be encountering a new species in the human race. I decided correctly that this was the General.

Out of this unpromising beginning arose a friendship that was to last until August 1981, when the General was killed in a plane crash. At the time of the crash, Greene had been getting ready for a fifth visit to see Torrijos.

Getting to Know the General is the story of those four visits, compiled by Greene from his diaries. Much of the time Torrijos was involved with negotiations with the US about the Panama Canal and Panamanian sovereignty. In what could be a Peter Sellers skit, Torrijos gave Greene a Panamanian diplomatic passport and flew him to Washington as part of the mission accompanying the General when he and President Carter signed the Canal Treaty. Torrijos also took Gabriel Garcia Marquez on this mission.

On each visit to Panama, people wandered in and out of the picture. In this way, Greene encountered the Ortega brothers, various Sandanistas, and political exiles from all over South and Central America. He was flown to Cuba and met Garcia Marquez once more, spending an evening with him and Fidel Castro. During much of the time on his visits, the General was occupied with political life, so Greene and Chuchu would travel not only around Panama, but also to Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The multilingual Chuchu emerges as a true Greene character. He had been a professor of Marxist philosophy, who fled to France after a right wing coup, only to return to Panama when that regime was deposed in turn. His Marxist credentials by then were perhaps suspect, but since he had studied mathematics while in France, he was made a professor of mathematics, who happened to be a poet in his spare time.

Greene's book gives the reader glimpses of US-Panamanian politics, life in Panama, the turbulent world of Central America, food and drink, and travel. Its subtitle though is The Story of an Involvement and it is the story of the unlikely warm and personal relationship that developed between Greene and Torrijos that is the focus of the book. Greene was fascinated by the younger man, a person whom he felt knew he had not long to live; a person driven to win back his country from the US and to establish "...a Central America which would be Socialist and not Marxist, independent of the United States and yet not a menace to her."

Castro had told Torrijos years before to be patient, but Greene says Torrijos knew he could not wait. Greene did admire the General's loyalty to older guides, men like Tito and Castro. Perhaps he hoped to fill the same role.

Why did the General initiate the first meeting? Greene says he never did find out. That seemed to please him.

Interesting book, Sassy. I had no idea Graham Greene led such an interesting life even into old age.

>1 SassyLassy: Such a beautiful picture!

>4 SassyLassy: That's quite a story. I have not read any Greene yet - it's on my list of authors to get to.

Love the picture at the top of your thread. We were out on my son-in-law's boat on Casco Bay on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and the sailboats were out in force.

Graham Greene's book sounds good. I will check it out.

>4 SassyLassy: Fascinating story, and what an unusual experience for Greene. I've just started The Power and the Glory, based on your recommendation; it's my first Greene, at least in the past 25 years!

>4 SassyLassy: Sounds like another one for the pile!

Re the Walter Scott discussion on the previous thread it is the 200th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, Waverley, this year., the original manuscript of which is currently on display at the NLS (National Library of Scotland). They also hosted a talk on the Heart of Midlothian and the problem with getting people to read Scott. The speaker, who was a Scott expert, has produced a much shortened version of the novel to promote Scott to readers but I got the feeling that he was ambivalent about the project - he wanted people to read Scott but knew he was producing Scott-lite, the only hope being that it would work as a gateway book to the hard stuff. (The BBC have also been producing radio dramas of some of Scott's work which were enjoyable in their own right).
It's strange how little read he is now - he was the the superstar of literature in his time, his work was popular all over Europe (Tolstoy later credited him as a major influence) and America; there were dozens of operas based on his work, sequels by other writers, etc.
His relationship with Scotland is constantly debated - he was a passionate Scot but also a great believer in the Union. The idea of clans and tartans is his doing, he made the whole thing up for the visit of the King (which he also arranged). The fact that Scotland is now awash with tartan tat and in love with its own tartan myth isn't his fault, he used it as a fulcrum to help change the image of 19th century Scotland positively.

This is the Heart of Midlothian:

It marks the site of the Old Tolbooth. For luck you now spit on it (originally it was to show disdain).

This is the Scott Monument - the biggest memorial to any writer in the world. (For the record it's 200ft tall and you can go up it to see panoramic views of Edinburgh.

Interestingly, in the notes to The Captain's Daughter by Pushkin, which I finished yesterday but haven't had time to review, there is a reference to The Heart of Midlothian and Pushkin basing a scene on something that happened in the Scott work. This would have totally passed me by if I hadn't read your review of it just last week!

I never did catch up with your previous thread, but loved the reviews I did read. Fascinating about Graham Greene.

Fascinating review of the Graham Greene book. It all sounds most unlikely.

I have wanted to read Rob Roy for quite a while. I meant to ask you whether you would read that or The Heart of Midlothian first?

>14 NanaCC: I think I would go with Rob Roy first, as it is a better known story and doesn't require any background. Have fun.

>10 Jargoneer: Thanks for the great pictures. I climbed to the top of the Scott Monument as a child and still have the certificate to prove it!
Discouraging about Scott lite. I hope to read some more of the "real" Scott soon.

>8 rebeccanyc: >9 Oandthegang: >12 dchaikin: and >13 baswood: Greene always seemed to be doing unlikely things, part of his ?charm? Rebecca, I hope you are enjoying The Power and the Glory. I think it is one of his best.

Very hurried responses here as I am leaving on the annual book buying excursion to Vermont and parts east. The chariot driver is outside and anxious to get on the road. No electronic devices, so " see" you all in two weeks.

Thinking of Scotland all day today and hoping I can find some coverage in upstate NY tonight.

Have a wonderful trip! I would love to know your favorite bookstores in VT, etc. for future reference.

I too was caught up in the enthusiasm and idealism of the YES vote. Rather disheartened, even though I am not Scottish.

>15 SassyLassy: Oh, traveling so close! We must plan to meet next year during your annual excursion....

Back again. I will have to spend the weekend catching up on everyone's threads.

Driving along both sides of Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River was a study in news reporting contrasts. It was referendum day in Scotland when I started my drive along the northern shoreline. Canadian radio devoted a good part of morning programming to events in Scotland, followed by updates in the afternoon on voter turnout and just about anything connected to the referendum. I lost contact with Canadian radio somewhere in upper New York State after crossing the bridge into the US in late afternoon. That evening, anxious to get some information, I frantically flipped through the meagre offerings on the motel TV. CNN acknowledged the event, with no results. BBC World promised results when all would be known, with no updates until then. I had been expecting poll by poll reporting! Crushed, I went to bed and dreamt about it all night. Seeing Alex Salmond's face on TV the next morning, before the sound came on, told the whole story. The entire endeavour had faded from the US news cycle by 10am.

>16 labfs39: It appears Vermont has the second highest per capita number of book stores in the US. Oddly Montana has the highest number. Maybe it has something to do with low populations and isolation. Thirty-seven of Vermont's thirty-eight book stores in 2013 were independents. There used to be an online list somewhere, but I can't find it anymore. I'll give you my favourites in a PM.

>17 avaland: Would absolutely love to!

Welcome back!

Well, it seems to have been an entire month since I was last here and two months since I finished this next book, so I had best jump right in. Getting acquainted with Willa Cather was one of this year's reading goals.



33. The Professor's House by Willa Cather
first published 1925
finished reading September 3, 2014

How do we gradually slip away from simple uncluttered lives into a more and more complex existence, full of busyness and things, but one in many ways less rewarding and challenging than that lived by our younger selves? Often the individual changes are incremental and unnoticed, yet layered one of top of another their weight can overwhelm. Then one day we wake up and wonder how it all happened. Is it possible to go back, to regain some modicum of our better selves?

This was the dilemma facing Professor Godfrey St Peter. The professor was highly respected in his field of Spanish American studies, a published author. He worked in his much admired garden in the French style in the summers, or travelled for research. His two married daughters did him credit and his wife kept the family engaged socially.

These social ambitions, however, were the source of his current difficulty. His wife had decided they needed a house more reflective of their standing in the community. When Godfrey won the Oxford prize for history, his wife had a house built for them: one with separate bedrooms and bathrooms, separate closets, all the latest in plumbing and electricity.

Now Godfrey was faced with moving from his cramped attic study in the old house. He had shared this study twice a year for the past twenty years with Mrs St Peter's seamstress for three weeks each time. Her dressmaker's forms and patterns were there year round. He had endured cold winters and stuffy summers. Still, it had been good enough to allow him to write his award winning eight volume Spanish Adventurers in North America. He loved this room for the peace it gave him. Now, something in him rebelled. He would keep his awkward study, even if it meant continuing to rent the rest of the now unoccupied house just to have it.

The family was horrified. They did not understand. "...don't you think it's a foolish extravagance to go on paying the rent of an entire house, in order to spend a few hours a day in one very uncomfortable room of it?" His landlord was annoyed, and worried about insurance. The sewing lady thought it a great and unusual joke. St Peter dug in and kept renting the old place just to use that attic.

Juxtaposed against St Peter's story is that of Tom Outland, the best student the professor had ever known. "Just when the morning brightness of the world was wearing off for him, along came Outland and brought him a kind of second youth." Tom had made an important discovery which unknown to him would later become highly lucrative. He then died in battle in World War I, leaving the rights to the professor's daughter Rosamund. Tom would never suffer age, routine and committees. "He had escaped all that. He had made something new in the world--- and the rewards, the meaningless conventional gestures, he left to others"

This is a melancholy book, filled with loneliness and reflection. St Peter is aware of the costs both of continuing on the way things had been going, or of reclaiming that better self. Cather's skilled writing avoids slipping into the maudlin, giving the novel and the reader the strength to believe that individual redemption is possible, while recognizing the price to be paid.

Sassy, I read my first book by Willa Cather, One of Ours, for the Virago Great War Theme. Her writing is lovely, and I've put a few on my wishlist as a result.

Very nice review.

ETA: I love the photos at the top of your thread.

I really have to get to Willa Cather someday. I think I read My Antonia back in high school, but I have no memory of it.

>21 SassyLassy: This is my favorite Cather, although I also love Death Comes for the Archbishop. Great review!

I haven't read The Professor's House since HS -- must go back to revisit it. Lovely review of it and the Graham Greene -- which sounds fascinating.

I'm intrigued by The Professor's House, a title new to me. I read and despised My Antonia in college and have not tried Willa Cather since. Perhaps I should give her another go, and try very hard to block images of my college professor droning on about her as I read.

Lovely review of The Professor's House

Your review of The Professor's House intrigues me and I'll add it to my wishlist. It somehow reminds me of Stoner by John Williams. I wonder how these will compare. I've never read any books by Willa Cather, but this one is probably a good one to start with?

The references to reading Willa Cather as course material make me thankful I was introduced to her during those years. I don't think I would have understood a bit about what this book was saying. I may even have sympathized with completely the wrong character! Surely all those people who teach novels suffered through the same thing themselves. It makes you wonder why things never seem to improve. The only English course I ever took that "stuck" was Victorian Literature, and I'm sure that was because I had read the course content and loved it long before I contemplated taking the course.

Thanks for the Cather suggestions. While I had heard of Death Comes to the Archbishop as the title is one that sticks in the mind, although it always makes me think of Archbishop Romero, I had not heard of One of Ours. I will look for both, as well as the My Antonia

>26 labfs39: What you are saying is all too familiar (see above), but I think you would like The Professor's House.

>28 Trifolia: Stoner is on my TBR and you just moved it up, especially since I actually know where it is. I read Williams's Butcher's Crossing in January and was impressed.

From my subscription to And Other Stories



34. An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell by Deborah Levy
first published 1990, revised edition published 2014
finished reading September 3, 2014

Deborah Levy published her well received prose work Swimming Home in 2011. It must have been the success of that work that prompted this revised release of her 1990 work, An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell, a dialogue between Suburban Man and the angel come to earth to lead him back to sentient life.

i have come
to save you
from the suburbs of hell

to rub my skin
against
the regularity of your habits

to bend your thoughts
like a spoon

to find your memories
lost in software
...

She mocks him and tempts him

i don't want provençal dinners from your freezer
i want delirium from under the lake

He refuses, too worn down by his mundane life:

Forgive me.
Courage not there.
Sucked by wear and tear
Of 9 to 5 & blocked drains
Eyes are closing.

and the ultimate insult:

I would
Rather watch
TV.

Part II has the man from the suburbs reconsidering, tempted. His angel is moving on though, tired of the world, pitying it and herself. They bicker. "You are suburbia's satisfied son", while he responds in part

Your discontent
Has shattered
My double glazing
Twice

There are some good lines here, some humour, but all in all this was not a work that has stayed with me two months later. It's the same feeling I got watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? What is the point of eavesdropping on personal quarrels?

# 29 - I have Augustus on my TBR-pile, because I was very impressed with Williams' writing. I may get to Butcher's Crossing, but I'm not a western-fan (not at this moment anyway) so I'm not in a rush. Tempted though.

>29 SassyLassy: I have Augustus too; in fact, I didn't realize until I bought the NYRB edition recently and entered it into LT that I already owned it in an earlier edition. Oops. And I have Butcher's Crossing too, which I meant to move up on the TBR after reading your review, Sassy, earlier this year.

I had the strangest experience with a lover of Stoner. I was at Powell's bookshop, either with fellow LTers or on a later trip with the Girl Scouts and was approached by a youngish man who began telling me how important this book has been to him and to his relationship with his father. Although I love good book chat and recommendations, this felt a little intense, so I sidled down the aisle while nodding noncommittally. He followed and strongly urged me to try it. I don't think he was trying to be creepy, but he really loves this book. Once free, I glanced at the book, but decided not to purchase at the time. Now I can't think of the title without thinking of that intense young man!

Interesting review of the Deborah Levy "book". I read Swimming Home earlier this year and am not surprised to hear that she's written something like An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell. Swimming Home was odd to me because it had an experimental feel, but the story was rather expected in some ways. Knowing that she's written something like An Amorous Discourse makes me reassess Swimming Home, focusing on the experimental nature rather than the straight forward aspects.

>33 labfs39: How very creepy! That would definitely put me off.

>33 labfs39: Stoner is moving further up my TBR and I will be wondering about that intense young man.

>34 japaul22: That's interesting about Deborah Levy. I haven't read Swimming Home or Black Vodka, probably only because I haven't stumbled across one or both of them, so this discourse was my first introduction to her. I probably wouldn't have read her again, but you've interested me in trying at least one more, and looking at it with that experimental nature in mind.

>29 SassyLassy: It's awful when that happens! I don't have my TBR on LT and have to upbraid myself for it when I come home with a new copy of something that's been sitting on my dedicated shelves for years. There should be a prohibition against changing covers! I suppose the worse thing is to pass up a book you've been looking for, thinking you have it, only to get home and realize you don't.

Another book from And Other Stories. I'm beginning to think they should stick to works in translation, all of which I've liked.



35.A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal
first published 2013
finished reading September 6, 2014

Teenage angst has never interested me, even when my age would have put me in that demographic. The thought of living through such an indulgence and then intentionally going back to revisit it is horrifying. That, however, is exactly what the protagonist of A Map of Tulsa did.

Having actually make it out of town and completed first year university, Jim Praley went back to Tulsa for the summer; Tulsa, a place where "...the silence of the suburban front yards washed up right to the roots of the skyscrapers." Jim did not have a summer job that year. His plan was to read for the summer and stay at his parents' house. However, only one day after returning home, he met Adrienne Booker, of Booker Petroleum, a high school dropout.

The pair spent the summer like sexually advanced thirteen year olds, going to parties and hanging out in Adrienne's painting studio and her penthouse apartment. Jim had a slight insight: "Maybe the thing Adrienne and I really had in common was our selfishness." At the end of the summer, Jim went back to university. His parents decided to retire and move to Galveston. Goodbye Tulsa.

Five years later Jim was working part time for a literary magazine in New York -- " Now here was a wide-awake city". Contact with Adrienne had petered out. Then one day came news that she had been involved in a serious accident. Jim instantly dropped everything and returned to Tulsa. The old gang gathered round, feeding off each other's emotions as they did in high school. Jim may not have grown up on his return, but his reflections on that visit give him a certain level of maturity. Nevertheless, by the end of the novel, he still seems very much a teenager, reluctant to move on to life and reality.

Those years when we were apart... were the sweetest. Because they had the most potential.

Edited for spelling error

Think I'll skip that one! Thanks for reading it so I don't have to!

What Rebecca said! Thanks though for introducing me to And Other Stories Publishing. I'm going to prowl their website.

Sounds like the book had potential. Maybe nostalgia, even an undesirable nostalgia, was a key element. Too bad this one didn't work.

I see And Other Stories titles occasionally in my favorite bookstore. I had mixed feelings about he only one I've read, Open Door by Iosi Havilio, but have one other on the TBR, Captain of the Steppe by Oleg Pavlov.

Oh those awful teenage years, not a place I want to go back to either

I think A Map of Tulsa sounds intriguing. I like books set in places that aren't usually chosen as settings, and Tulsa fits that bill. And I like coming of age stories, especially whiney or self-indulgent ones. What does that say about me?

I picked up a copy of Stoner at a charity book sale last month. Regarding your encounter with the intense young man; aren't you glad he wasn't holding a copy of The Fountainhead?

>43 RidgewayGirl: Ha, ha! At least I've read The Fountainhead, I would know what to expect. With Stoner, I'm worried!

# 33 - Lisa, would it help if I told you that Stoner is one of my favourites and one of the three books I gave 5 stars within the last 5 years? (sorry for the hijack, SassyLassy)

Hmm, that definitely helps. Thanks, Monica!

>41 rebeccanyc: I think you would like Captain of the Steppe. It is somewhat quirky, but has a very Russian feel to it. I didn't read Open Door, but did read Paradises and like you, had mixed feelings.

>39 labfs39: I hope you find something you like. I like the premise of new authors in translation, and feel they don't necessarily have to publish American or English authors, as they are more readily available elsewhere. Are you familiar with the Readers International catalogue: http://www.readersinternational.org/ They used to have subscriptions too, but I think you have to order individually now. My early South American acquisitions came through them.

>43 RidgewayGirl: Interestingly, there is one passage where Tulsa sounded almost interesting, but then the next day I heard Bill Hader from SNL on the radio, describing how he grew up in Tulsa. He said when he left to go to college, it actually made the local paper. That sounded a bit too much like the kind of place where everyone knew too much about everyone else. I do like the idea of settings that aren't frequently used though. Maybe there's another Tulsa novel out there.

>40 dchaikin: Nostalgia was a key element, but it was tempered by the realization of the futility of what he was nostalgic for. It can work really well, but it didn't quite work here. It did have potential as you say.

>45 Trifolia: No hijack at all. I love it when conversations wander off in different directions. It makes the people here seem more real. Stoner is moving up, once I get through all my overdue reviews!

>42 baswood: The voice of reason.

36. Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel
first published 2003
finished reading September 21, 2014

After the last two reading endeavours and while preparing for vacation, I needed something with no expectations, something that would empty the mind and let me start afresh with whatever book would follow next. Death of a Nationalist was a pleasant surprise for these purposes.

A member of the Guardia Civil was murdered in a Madrid alleyway in 1939, as Franco was consolidating his grip on Spain following the Civil War. Was the murderer a communist, a disenchanted nationalist, or someone with motivations that were nonpolitical? The only clue was a child's school notebook found by the body.

This book is part of the Soho Crime series, novels from authors around the world. Like Death of a Red Heroine, read earlier this year, Death of a Nationalist had a strong sense of place and time. While neither book was a gripping whodunnit, both set their protagonists squarely within the realities of their political environments, giving the reader insights not usually found in this genre. The next time I have need of such a book, I will return to this series.

>47 SassyLassy: Thanks for the recommendation of Captain of the Steppe and for the link to the Readers International web site.

I'll pick up almost anything I run into put out by Soho Crime. They do a good job at publishing books from a wide variety of locations. Some of the series they publish are not very good stories with exotic settings, but they have also introduced me to wonderful works in translation that are almost unknown in the English-speaking world.

Sounds like a kind of crime novel i could read. I'll try to keep the series in mind.

>50 RidgewayGirl: I guess I'll have to take a look at Soho Crime . . . Do you have any particular recommendations of some of the works in translation?

Just realized I've skipped a book here, but I'll go back to it later.
This was the first book bought on my book buying holiday.



38. Encounters with Chinese Writers by Annie Dillard
first published 1984
finished reading September 23, 2014

In 1982, Annie Dillard and five other Americans visited China as part of a writers' exchange. They visited the usual centres for foreigners: Beijing, Xian, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai. Four months later, Dillard was part of a US-China writers' conference held in Los Angeles. Some weeks later, she entertained some of the Chinese participants at her home in Connecticut. These brief encounters form the basis of her book.

Lacking any background knowledge about China, she offers interesting glimpses into her visit there, conducted under the heavily controlled circumstances that were common at the time. She describes the meeting rooms perfectly: Against each wall, are enormous overstuffed chairs and couches, square, matching, with lace antimacassars and doilies..." I wondered if in 1982 the obligatory portraits still hung in those rooms, no mention was made. There was the ritual of introductions by hierarchy, of tea, of meetings lasting for hours.

The Chinese appear to have know more about literature written in English that the Americans knew about Chinese literature. The Chinese ask "Whose literature should we translate for China?" The Americans have no suggestions to offer that they feel would not offend on some level. Dillard cannot see reading contemporary western literature without the requisite understanding of context, but then realizes that is precisely the dilemma facing a westerner starting to read literature from China. The meeting winds down:

... our vapid politeness, our blithe egocentrism, our bottomless ignorance and our misplaced astonishments... have driven them, during the last hour, to an unrestrained series of yawns.

The Chinese visitors to Los Angeles provide the opportunity for Dillard to see her own country through a completely fresh lens. An older man, the playwright Chen Baichen, disappears on a group tour to Disneyland. The American hosts panic, as Chen does not speak English. Cooler heads prevail.

Some people think that Chen Baichen, having been through two world wars, occupation, liberation, famine, the anti-rightist campaign, and the Cultural Revolution, can probably handle Disneyland. In fact, we learn later, he has calmly made his way to the park's exit and is waiting on a bench.

The Chinese are candid in their remarks about American food, music and dress, They struggle with the idea of differing public opinions rather than one stated unanimous goal. Zhang Jie upbraids Allen Ginsburg for his perceived lack of self-control:

"Mr Ginsburg!... You should not think only of yourself! You must live and work so as to fulfill your obligations! Have your goals firmly in your mind. You should not take drugs! Think of your responsibility to society. As for myself, my goals are always clear. My mind is never confused!"
Ginsburg smiles his intelligent, vulnerable smile, and tilts his head like the Cheshire cat.
"My mind," he says, with the tiniest shrug, "is always confused."

This was an entertaining book of anecdotes. Some were published previously in Harvard Magazine and Radcliffe Quarterly. Some were delivered by Dillard at Harvard commencement exercises. What I failed to understand was how and why Dillard was chosen for these two exchanges. None of her anecdotes go beyond the insight any reasonably educated American, albeit one without a knowledge of twentieth century Chinese history and literature, could similarly have recounted. While these stories may have served to satisfy some casual American curiosity about the China of the early 1980s, they don't offer anything new. I don't mean to take anything away from Dillard's excellent abilities as a writer, however, in this case, the thing that bothers me most is that somewhere out there, someone better suited to such exchanges missed out on a wonderful opportunity.

Oddly, a comment by rebecca nyc which should appear at >52 rebeccanyc:, has just disappeared.

>50 RidgewayGirl:, rebecca was asking for suggestions for Soho Crime in translation, which was a question I was going to ask you too.

rebecca, I think you would enjoy them in they way you enjoyed Camilleri, although they may be a bit more slow.

Interesting review of Encounters with Chinese Writers.

It is clear to me regularly that the Chinese can choose from so much western literature translated into Chinese, both classic and modern, as well as so many recordings of mainly classical music, while western interest in Chinese culture is no match. Besides, western publishers often focus on authors who are critical of the Chinese political system, while ignoring mainstream literary authors.

"The Portraits" could still have been up, there and then, 1982 was really quite early. I still sometimes see them, rarely all four of them, but occasionally one does.

The chairs are still there. What I would be interested to know is whether they were still using spittoons in 1982.

>53 SassyLassy: Sounded intriguing until I got to the end of your review!

>54 SassyLassy: I still see >52 rebeccanyc:; weird that you didn't (or don't).

Interesting reading about Encounters with Chinese Writers. You would think that at least one or two of the exchange writers would have some knowledge of Chinese Literature.

>> 57 You would think that at least one or two of the exchange writers would have some knowledge of Chinese Literature.

Why? That would not necessarily be the case in 1982. Chinese classical literature is not so voluminous, and not much would have been translated by 1982. China had been practically closed down for the best part of the Twentieth Century, with very little cultural exchange between 1937 - 1978.

They could have included Chinese Americans...but that would have been poltically complex.

Still, how interesting. This type of scenario can never happen again.

Hmm, the ones I've liked best have been Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto, Honeymoon to Nowhere by Akimitsu Takagi (they have a few others by this author) and Janwillem van der Wetering's police procedurals set in Amsterdam. They've also published several Australian authors, including Patricia Carlon.

Thanks for the recommendations, Kay.

>59 dchaikin: Politically complex indeed! Apparently Maxine Hong Kingston was discussed with the group in China. It seemed the Chinese didn't think she was a disciplined enough writer. In the words of one who had read The Woman Warrior:

We think it is only so-so. We think it presents a mishmash. It puts together things from China without making distinctions: superstitions, peasant culture, classical literature, things from very different provinces and dynasties. It presents a distorted view; it is a mishmash."

Then the speaker added in a polite attempt at conciliation:"But perhaps in America it is all new, all new and unknown to the readers, and so they like to learn."

>60 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for the recommendations. I think I'll try Amsterdam.

An author I discovered last year through Club Read:



37. The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
first published 2009
finished reading September 22, 2014

The Man in the Wooden Hat is the second book in Jane Gardam's trilogy about a decades long love triangle. Each novel skilfully tells the story of one of the participants, filling in bits that another participant missed, and so giving the reader more insight into each character than a doorstopper sort of novel would have allowed. Old Filth, the first instalment, told the story of Edward Feathers, a brilliant judge. In this second instalment, the focus is on Betty, his wife.

Betty was born in Tientsin and brought up in Shanghai. Despite this seemingly exotic life, her parents raised her in the same fashion they would have at home in Scotland. Life changed drastically in World War II though, when Betty and her parents were interned by the Japanese in Shanghai. Her parents didn't survive. Orphaned by the end of the war, Betty went to Oxford and then a stint at Betchley Park. Now she had washed up in the British colony of Shanghai where she would marry Feathers.

Gardam once again does a superb job of depicting the British educated moneyed class, the product of a particular time, people Betty's friend called the "Empire Club", while astutely warning of its coming demise. Gardam's eye for detail and ear for nuance in speech, allow her to portray Betty as a woman who manages her role as the perfect wife for her husband's station, while keeping this outward paragon compelling to the reader through her interior life.

Like Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat is also a novel about age, about life after public life. Edward and Betty retired to Dorset just before Hong Kong reverted to China, or as they would have put it, was handed over to China.

And so they settled. The curtains of lights and fireworks and the clamour and glamour and luxury and squalor of Hong Kong were over for them. The sun rose and set less noticeably, but more birds sang....

Memory changed for both Edward and Elisabeth. There were fewer people to keep it alive. Christmas cards dwindled. Instead, Betty began in October to write letters to the best of those left. Not many... Just as she had rearranged herself into a copy of her dead mother on her marriage, now she began to work on being the wife of a distinguished old man.

Even in old age however, there is a dignity in these characters, a determination to follow form, to keep the quiet courtesies between husband and wife, to maintain personal dignity. While each recognized the complexities of their history together, the never discussed them.

Betty and Edward were among the last of their class, the children of colonizers. As Elisabeth said "All our parents suffered for an ideology. They believed it was good for us to be sent Home, while they went on with ruling the Empire. We were all damaged, even though we became endurers." Even while not sharing many of their beliefs, it's difficult not to have a grudging admiration for them, and a wholehearted admiration for Gardam.

Excellent review of The Man in the Wooden Hat. Jane Gardam went on my list of favourite authors after reading this series.

I've never read any Gardam, and not sure I would like her, but I guess I should try.

I wonder whether this might be the impetus for me to start them. Much as I liked it, I don't want to reread The Burgess Boys, and this series might be a good excuse.

Robert

>64 VivienneR:, You were definitely one of the Club Read people who got me reading Gardam. I am saving the third volume for the depths of winter.

>65 rebeccanyc: I felt the same way, but at the same time, Old Filth, the first book, sounded intriguing. I didn't anticipate liking the books as much as I did, as they are not my usual fare. There was a certain familiarity about the characters and their manner of speaking that Gardam reproduced so well, so that may be why I liked her writing so much. I sometimes find the same thing in William Boyd's writing. It doesn't necessarily mean I like the characters themselves, just these authors' ways of approaching them.

>66 Mr.Durick: Mr D, At first you had me thinking of The Fabulous Baker Boys* but then I just looked up The Burgess Boys and you may just have sent me off in another direction. I have not yet read any Elizabeth Strout.

Out of order again, but book 39 was borrowed and I will have to go to the library to do it justice.



40 and 41. Little Women including Good Wives as Part II, by Louisa May Alcott
first published 1868
finished reading September 29th and October 4, 2014

Little Women was first published in 1868 and has not been out of print since. This is all the more remarkable as it was a first attempt at writing for a youthful audience by a woman who desperately wanted to get her family out of debt. Her previous efforts in that direction had largely consisted of a series of "... lurid romances, thrillers, and blood-and-thunder adventure tales for the more seedy papers and dime novel series" Those had been written under the pseudonym A M Barnard.

Little Women introduced the reading public to the four March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. We first meet them just before Christmas, discussing what they would really like to receive, and so giving us an immediate insight into their respective characters. However, the American Civil War was raging, and Marmee, their mother, has proposed "... not having any presents this Christmas... because it's going to be a hard winter for every one and ... we ought not to spend money for pleasure when our men are suffering so in the army." In a departure from the more evangelical or saccharine books of her day, Alcott allowed the girls to protest and grumble, even though they do acquiesce. This was perhaps the source of her success; her characters were real life people rather than paragons of unrealistic behaviour. The reading public adopted them immediately. Since Mr March was away fighting for the Union side, the book risked leaning too heavily toward the feminine, but Alcott avoided this by having Jo be a decidedly contrarian figure to the prevailing notions of a young girl, and by introducing Laurie, the boy next door, as Jo's willing accomplice.

I read Little Women two or three times as a child. Each time I was inspired by Jo. My friends and I discussed the merits of the various children and we all decided which character we most resembled: an interesting method of childhood literary analysis. Reading the book again as an adult, I was struck by what I had missed as a child. Little Women presents a miniature domestic history of this time in New England. The war meant shortages of food and clothing. Many women were widowed, others were called away to nurse at army hospitals. Childhood diseases took their toll. There was much on the positive side too. There is the rhythm of the seasons, with all their associated chores and celebrations. The March girls and Laurie went to school and did their assigned tasks, but they also wrote and acted plays together, skated and sledded, visited and were visited in turn across the whole spectrum of ages.

Little Women ends "So grouped, the curtain falls upon Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Whether it ever rises again, depends upon the reception given to the first act of the domestic drama, called 'Little Women'." The reception was so successful that readers clamoured for a sequel, writing to both Alcott and her publisher. Alcott complained "...publishers won't let authors finish up as they like but insist on having people married off in a wholesale manner which much afflicts me."She immediately started on Part II, originally published in the same volume as Little Women, but subsequently published separately as Good Wives.

Reading Part II now, it didn't seem as if it has stood the test of time as well as Part I. Three of the sisters marry, one dies. The death was handled well, never descending into truly maudlin territory, despite the generations of girls who wept over it. The treatment of the marriages is telling. One is utterly conventional and that sister basically fades from sight, even though she lives very close to the rest of the family. One sister goes off to Europe on what seems very much like a husband hunting expedition, chaperoned of course, and returns successfully married. The third has a more unconventional marriage. This last was not the marriage Alcott's readers had hoped for, as they had anticipated a completely different husband. Once more there was mail.

Alcott would go on to write two more books about the Marches: Little Men and Jo's Boys, as well as other works. She stopped writing her less savoury works, for fear of being discovered as their author. Little Women remained her signature work.

________________________________

The Oxford University Press edition I read is based on the original 1868 edition. It includes Parts I and II. Later editions tarted up the characters a bit, smoothing out what were felt to be unflattering images or slang. This edition had an excellent introduction by Valerie Alderson, along with extensive notes. My only quibble would be with some of the equivalents she makes in her notes for readers in the UK, where this edition was published. Considering myself "bilingual" in the English spoken on both sides of the Atlantic, I would never equate hot biscuits with scones, muffins with sweet cakes, cookies with UK style biscuits, or jelly (the kind that gets spread on bread) with jam. Maybe that says more about our respective connections to food than to language! That aside, Alderson's introduction did make me want to find out more about the social history of the era in Alcott's part of the world.

What a great and informative review of Little Women. I've never read, but loved your review and maybe I will read it some time.

Vivienne had put Old Filth on my wishlist. Your review of The Man in the Wooden Hat has pushed it back into my mind. I think I would enjoy this series.

I love your review of Little Women. I haven't read it in a very very long time, but I always enjoy it when I do.

A few years ago, I read a book by Geraldine Brooks called March. It is a civil war story with the absent father of the March family as the main character. I enjoyed that one quite a bit, and it might interest those who have enjoyed Little Women.

I haven't read Little Women in close to 50 years, so I definitely enjoyed your perspective as an adult reading it. Jo was my favorite too.

I started and abandoned Little Women about 10 years ago. Maybe I should give it another trry.

I adored Little Women and have often thought of rereading it as an adult. I was one of the reader's outraged at who Jo ended up married to.

>73 RidgewayGirl: me too about Jo's marriage! And I reread it about 4 years ago and felt that even more so. Also, when I read it as an adult I was surprised at the religious sentiment throughout the book. I didn't remember it from my childhood readings.

>68 SassyLassy: Excellent review of Alcott. It's been a very long time since I read the series but I remember bawling over Beth. Like many I was upset at who Jo married. The series inspired me to try Pilgrim's Progress but as a pre-teen it was way above my head.

>67 SassyLassy: Glad you enjoyed Gardam. I liked the format of having each book portray a different point of view of what was essentially the same story, providing details that help understanding the others. Like a jigsaw puzzle.

That so many of us have read Little Women attests to why it hasn't been out of print since first publication in 1868. It's always good to revisit these kind of books. I think I often get more out of a reread after a long gap in time, than I do out of a new book that is only so-so.

>69 dchaikin: Thanks dan. You might enjoy the aspect of looking at an earlier time with your children. That's a great collection of children's books you have.

>70 NanaCC: I'm sure you would like the Jane Gardam books. Thanks for the recommendation for March; I will definitely follow up. I read Brooks' Year of Wonders some time ago and liked it, but I haven't seen anything by her since.

>71 rebeccanyc:, >73 RidgewayGirl:, >74 japaul22:, >75 VivienneR: Funny how we all picked Jo. Reading as an adult, I felt that Jo made the right choice, as did Amy. I had always liked the Professor when reading the book as a child, but couldn't see him as a person anyone would actually know. I've certainly changed my mind on that account.

>74 japaul22: What upset you about Jo's choice on your reread?

>75 VivienneR: I received Pilgrim's Progress as a birthday present when I was ten (along with a set of six Jane Austen novels). Luckily it was beautifully illustrated, so that encouraged me to keep following the adventures. I did read it, and went back to it on many occasions reading other books. I haven't read it in some time, although I still have it. When I read The Heart of Mid-Lothian earlier this year, it was referenced often, as it is in so much literature from the nineteenth century, but the introduction said that Scott considered it a "mawkish" piece of writing, fit only for people who couldn't read more challenging works. Strong words! It might be interesting to read it again now, to see how he arrived at that conclusion.

That sort of fits in with >74 japaul22:'s comment on the religious sentiment. I had been apprehensive about that before I reread it, but found it to be quite a bit less than other authors of the time; one of the reasons the book became so popular.

>72 edwinbcn: I think I would have been more surprised if you hadn't abandoned it!

Another look at another childhood classic:



42. Cinderella told by C S Evans with illustrations by Arthur Rackham
This edition first published 1919
Read October 5, 2014

Years ago I had a beautiful edition of Cinderella. I went over it again and again, poring over the wonderful illustrations. Somewhere along the line, the book disappeared. I've never found another copy of that particular edition.

What I did find this fall was a reissue of the 1919 edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham. While these aren't his glorious full colour pictures, the black and white silhouette images give a different feel to the story, a sense of movement, and a darker feeling around the evil stepmother, stepsisters and various vermin.

Why reread Cinderella, and more especially, why write about it? After all, everybody knows the story. I thought I did too, but I had forgotten one important character. That stepmother with her two ugly daughters came from somewhere --- Cinderella had a father! Cue the "Of course" lightening bolt.

This put a whole new spin on the tale. Who was this Baron, originally married to Ella's real mother? We are told about his relationship with Ella

...he hardly spoke to her or to anybody else. Every morning after breakfast he would go away to his library, and sit there reading, with a big pair of horn spectacles on his nose, or writing with a quill pen that made a funny, scratchy noise.

We are not told much else about him. Then Ella's mother died and she was sent away to school.

Two years later her father came to fetch her home, telling her of his new family and her new relations. In this way, Ella became Cinderella.

Things went on in this way for more than two years, and during all that time Cinderella seldom spoke to her father. There was no doubt that he knew how his little daughter was being treated, but he gave no sign that he knew, or that he tried to prevent it. The fact is, he was so much afraid of his new wife that he dared not say a word. He shut himself up in his library more and more, and Cinderella heard from her stepsisters that he was engaged in writing a book.

Then came the ball and the Prince's search for a bride. We all know the rest of the story. There is no mention made of the Baron's reaction to his daughter's good fortune. Nothing more is heard of him. Now, whenever a mention is made of this story, I will always wonder, "What was the Baron's story and why was he so ineffectual?"

Cinderella running home from the second ball:


It appears others are interested in this version of the story. How about a case for your iphone 4S with Rackham's silhouettes? (from Zazzle)



The best quote: Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. C S Lewis

>78 SassyLassy: How bizarre! Having Ella sent off to school sounds very Edwardian. And the Baron with his horn rimmed glasses closeted in the Library. There must be a tale to tell in how the stepmother managed to meet and bag such a reclusive man. I take it this is not a version in which the stepsisters cut chunks off their own feet in order to try to fit into the slipper. Must reread my copy and see what it has to say about the father. What sort of pictures did your old copy have?

>79 SassyLassy: I've always preferred Rackham's colour illustrations to the silhouettes, but the one you've posted above is lovely. I will have to re-examine his work. I had some book illustrated by him when I was young, and I always found the black and white pictures either uninteresting or alarming. Let's face it, his colour pictures could be pretty alarming too. I still see Arthur Rackham trees when I'm out walking.

I think we should keep reading, and listening to, fairy tales. Lucky those Edwardian grown ups who, it seems, could happily do so, and hence the flowering of great illustration.

(Great phone case. Almost worth getting a phone for.)

Yes. Fairytales. I would like to read the classic versions someday. I was hoping my kids would give me an excuse to go through them, but their interests have been elsewhere.

Thinking of little women - and the crap* my daughter is reading with encouragement from school. I'm always wondering how to get this ten year who can't stand any recommendations interested in better books.

*i exaggerate

>80 Oandthegang: Had forgotten about those versions where the stepsisters mutilate themselves. This version didn't have that. It does tell us that one sister had red stockings, while the other wore size 9 shoes, and that both wriggled and struggled to get into the slipper, till finally the unfortunate who had to help everyone try on the shoe told them it was hopeless.

I hadn't thought much about how the father and stepmother met. I think I always assumed it was one of those arrangements of convenience, conducted with as much speed as propriety demands and not thought of again.

My old copy was green, taller than the average children's book. Cinderella was blonde, there were lots of roses in bloom, and the costumes were amazing, even Cinderella's rags. The pumpkin carriage was amazing. The whole thing was spread across two pages.

I didn't like silhouettes either as a child. Perhaps it is part of the resistance of moving from picture books to books without illustrations; silhouettes seem like a poor compromise.

>81 dchaikin: I'm always wondering how to get this ten year who can't stand any recommendations interested in better books.
Maybe something along the lines of "it's too old for you, you wouldn't understand". Hiding works well too. There were books in our house which were supposedly hidden out of sight of children, and I always found those interesting. That was how I discovered D H Lawrence and Nabokov (also how I learned to read books so that they looked as if nobody had read them!). Granted, there were large bits I didn't understand.

I suspect the books your daughter is reading with encouragement from school may not be exciting or interesting enough for her, and that she can read at a better level than schools generally encourage.

I have used the spelling for Chinese names and places that the author uses in his book.



43. Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
first published 2011
finished reading October 8, 2014

Most reviews of Midnight in Peking have been tepid. I would concur with these with one exception. I felt the book depicted the genuine arrogance of the imperial powers. This was probably unconscious on the part of the author, but it offer one small glimpse of the conduct of these powers in a weakened country.

Nineteen year old Pamela Werner's murdered and badly mutilated body was found at the base of the Fox Tower in Peking in January 1937. At that time, China was immersed in a civil war, warlords were still powerful, the Japanese occupied northern China and were about to occupy vast parts of the rest of the country, Peking had lost its status as national capital, and the economy was in free fall. All this makes the claim implicit in French's subtitle, "How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China", completely ludicrous. "Old China", if it did indeed still exist after the death of the Empress Dowager Cixi back in 1908, had other things to worry about than the death of Pamela Werner.

Pamela's murder did cause a sensation in the Legation Quarter though, the area where the British, the Europeans and the Americans lived and conducted their daily routines. It was an exceptionally comfortable existence for them; French calls it a sanctuary. Pamela and her widowed father lived just outside the quarter. Werner was a respected Sinologist who had lived in Peking since the 1880s. He was fluent in the Chinese language and preferred to live in the old Tartar City. This alone was reason for many inside the Legation Quarter to dislike him.

Had Pamela been murdered in the Legation Quarter, British authorities would have investigated. The administrative problems caused by the murder arose from the fact that she was a British subject who had been murdered in Chinese territory, where normally Chinese authorities would investigate. Since the victim in this case was a foreigner, an envoy could work with the local detectives, but he would not have any powers. Detective Chief Inspector Dennis from Tientsin was appointed to work with Colonel Han of the Peking Bureau of Public Safety.

The initial automatic assumption on the part of the envoy and residents of the Legation Quarter was that Pamela had been murdered by a Chinese person. Han felt that was unlikely as that would indicate a crime of opportunity. Three things mitigated against it: the mutilation of the body, the fact that Pamela had not been murdered where she was found, and the fact that she was still wearing an exceptionally expensive watch. Pamela's father believed the murderer was a member of the foreign community and that he was being shielded by its authorities. As the case dragged on, he himself was among the suspects.

The inquest into Pamela's death attracted journalists from English speaking newspapers from as far away as New York and London. The initial attention diminished as it dragged on into June, when the final statement was given:

The evidence is inconclusive as regards the identity of the murderer. Verdict: Murder by a person or persons unknown.

Despite Werner's pleas, the investigation would not be continued.

Werner continued his own investigation, employing Chinese detectives and keeping the British Foreign Office, the British foreign secretary and the undersecretary of state informed of all the evidence he collected, in the hope the investigation would be reopened. His contacts and knowledge allowed him to investigate the seamier side of foreign life in Peking. Despite receiving several warnings from consular officials to leave the matter alone, he slowly built a credible case. During World War II, Werner was imprisoned with other foreigners at a Japanese internment camp. Among the other prisoners was the man he believed to be Pamela's killer, a man whom the American OSS was investigating for collaboration with the Japanese.

French spends some time detailing Werner's investigation, using his letters to the British authorities which French found in the National Archive at Kew. The murder case was never reopened. Werner and the man he suspected and openly accused both survived the internment camp and returned to Peking. Werner's suspect died there. Werner himself returned to England in 1951, a place he had not seen since 1917. He died soon thereafter.

Mine was one of the tepid (at best) reviews, but I agree with you that this book demonstrated the (continuing) arrogance of the (ex)-imperial powers. And I agree with you about the idiocy of the subtitle.

I dreaded reading this as it was for my book club, but found it to be a very thoughtful first novel.



44.Above All Things by Tanis Rideout
first published 2012
finished reading October 13, 2012

Nothing boosts an explorer or adventurer's mystique more than vanishing without a trace. Think of Henry Hudson, John Franklin, Joshua Slocum or Roald Amundsen. Some are forgotten over time, remembered only in geographic place names and history books, others become mythical.

Tanis Rideout's Above All Things is the fictionalized tale of George Mallory, a famous man in his time, but one whose fame was later supplanted by Edmund Hillary, the man who definitively succeeded in accomplishing what Mallory had attempted three times: reaching the summit of Mount Everest.

Mallory made his three attempts on Everest in the early 1920s. Rideout presents a thoughtful picture of Mallory's generation and country. Like so many of his age, he had fought in World War I. The end of the war and victory brought a sense of unease, of disquiet, rather than a sense of jubilation. Mallory's generation was suffering mentally and often physically from not only four years of war, but also, for those like Mallory who emerged relatively well physically, from guilt. Great Britain was wondering for the first time whether the "great" still applied. The expedition to Everest was one way to get the country behind a cause again. The head of the Royal Geographic Society, the sponsor of the expedition, went so far as to say it would be like reaching a third pole, Britain having lost out on the races to the North and South Poles.

This isn't only the story of George Mallory though. It is also the tale of his wife Ruth, back home in Cambridge with their three young children. Rideout emphasizes this divide structurally. The couple's story is told in alternating chapters, Ruth's in the intimate first person, George's in the more authoritative third person. We see only one day in Ruth's life, while we see George's entire expedition.

The reader, along with Ruth, wonders how this divide will ever be joined. Ruth and Mallory individually contemplate his return to a domestic world: Ruth with anxiety, George with dread. The world of Cambridge was small indeed. Should George fail, it would be suffocating. Should he succeed, there would be endless dinners, lectures and speeches, and the accompanying loss of privacy. Ruth's chapters anticipate both outcomes as she goes about her day in town, preparing for a dinner party that evening. Despite the domestic minutiae of her day, Ruth in many ways is as strong a character as George.

George's chapters detail the enormity of the scope of the expedition. The team had been carefully selected from successful climbers, making rivalries inevitable. Training included intermittent psychological tests to assess mental fitness as higher altitudes. Teams were chosen each day by the team leader: one to advance up the mountain, one to set up a forward camp, and one to remain behind at base camp. This lent a certain arbitrariness as to who would make the final ascent, increasing the tension and competition.

The team included a younger man, Sandy Irvine. He had been part of a successful expedition on Spitsbergen earlier in the year. Irvine had delayed his final year at Oxford to take part in the Everest expedition. His youth was just one more reminder to the veterans of how their world was changing. There were those who resisted change. The idea of climbing with the aid of oxygen had recently been introduced. This was the subject of some discussion, many feeling that to use it wasn't quite done --- it would be a form of cheating. Sherpas were employed by the team, but their suggestions were usually ignored. Specialized cold weather clothing had not yet been developed. The men wore layers of ordinary clothes.

On the last day of the climb, with the weather rapidly deteriorating, Mallory and Irvine set out for the summit, with oxygen. Rideout skilfully leaves the reader to determine whether they actually reached it or not. Whatever the outcome, they did not return. Mallory's body was found in 1999. Irvine's has never been discovered.

The cover for Above All Things in the post above is the one on the book distributed in Canada.

Americans get a completely different idea of the book with this cover:



Ruth becomes quite proper for the UK market, although the hat and face don't quite work for the era:

At least Above all Things sounds interesting, if only for the period detail. It has received plenty of good reviews on LT.

It was definitely an interesting book. Once I get through to the New Year, I will find a copy of the relatively new (2012) non-fiction Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest. I don't know much about it, but the author, Wade Davis is always fascinating, so it will be good to get the historical perspective.

When Mallory and Irvine made their final climb, they were carrying a camera, which has never been found. Apparently Kodak says that if it is ever found, there is a good chance the film can be developed. Should there be photos of either man at the summit, that would change things completely for them and for Hillary. For now, it's just another tease in the mystery.

Edited to add missing word; now it should make more sense!

You caught my imagination with Above All Things. Also excellent review of Midnight in Peking, but that one i don't want to read.

>88 SassyLassy: As I was reading your review I was trying to remember the name of a book which at least one person had been raving to me about, and I believe it must have been Into The Silence, which, if I've got it right, - and if I have been given an accurate picture of it - talks about the link between the Great War and the great period of adventure and discovery which followed it.

I love the varying covers. One can't help but look at some of them and wonder what were they thinking?

I usually prefer to read nonfiction about exploration, but you make this novel sound interesting, especially with bringing Ruth into it. As far as the covers go, I "wonder what they were thinking" (>90 Oandthegang:) about all of them! But it was fun to see them.

One of the best days of the year, December 22nd is the day when light starts returning and the days get longer. Only one winter storm so far, but with the temperature a highly unseasonable 7C, the waters over the bay will stay warm and create great storms once normal winter temperatures return.

Here are some loose thoughts on the play featuring one of the most famous storms in literature.



45. King Lear by William Shakespeare
finished by group October 28, 2014

King Lear was the 2014 selection of my Shakespeare Reading Group. As in other years, we read and discussed the play together over the winter, then went to see it independently at Canada's Stratford Festival this past summer. Then we met to discuss our thoughts on the play and its interpretation in October.

This year I also saw the National Theatre's filmed live version of King Lear, featuring a modern setting which contrasted starkly with Stratford's traditional production. On the whole, I preferred the National Theatre's version, as it demonstrated better just how contemporary the play remains. Unfortunately, the weakest performances in both productions were by those in the role of Cordelia. Considering the strength of her character, this was a disappointment.

It struck me that this must be a wonderful play for set designers and directors. Both versions had truly convincing storms accompanying the spiral of madness and mayhem, but created them quite differently. These same storms though made me thankful for the time devoted to the reading, as the speeches were only audible intermittently.

Fittingly, it was Lear who shone in both performances. The National Theatre's Simon Russell Beale is an older actor than Stratford's Colm Feore, which helped impart gravitas to his initial appearance, but both did an excellent job of the final act.

Kate Fleetwood as Goneril and Simon Russell Beale as Lear from the National Theatre website



Sarah Farb as Cordelia and Colm Feore as Lear from the Stratford Festival website



Our group is incredibly fortunate to have an exceptional leader, who keeps us all on track while pushing us just the right amount. This winter's reading will be Hamlet.

Edited because apparently I can't add 1 to 44.

>92 SassyLassy: One of the best days of the year, December 22nd is the day when light starts returning and the days get longer.

Oh, how I agree with this! My sweetie's birthday is December 21, and I always joke that I get the best birthday present on his birthday because the days start getting longer.

And how cool that you have a Shakespeare reading group! I would love something like that.

I had listened to Macbeth: A Novel by A.J. Hartley, narrated by Alan Cumming recently. It pushed me to read the play, which I had never done. I enjoyed both so much that I went ahead and bought Hartley's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, narrated by Richard Armitage. I will also read Shakespeare's play at the same time. Deborah (Cariola) had given both of the novels great reviews.

As Rebecca said, a Shakespeare reading group would be very cool indeed.

Back in the 1990s, Oxford University Press published an Oxford in Asia series. That was how I first heard of this book. I couldn't afford it at the time and then spent years looking for it in used book stores. Sadly, Oxford in Asia books aren't often seen in my part of the world. Then, this past summer, I went to a recently opened "fine and rare book" store, just outside Toronto. There it was, in a first edition. The lesson is, buy it when you first discover it.



46. Shanghai '37 by Vicki Baum, translated from the German by Basil Creighton
first published 1939
finished reading October 29, 2014

Vicki Baum called herself "a first class writer of the second rank". She has also been described as the first "popular" novelist, presumably in the best seller sense, although to me, many nineteenth century writers could fit that description.

Shanghai '37, also known as Shanghai Hotel, was just one novel in what came to be known as her hotel series. It is the fictionalized treatment of the 1937 accidental bombing of the Cathay Hotel, a mecca for wealthy westerners and anyone else who could afford it. Shanghai in the 1930s was one of the most exciting, but also one of the most dangerous and desperate places on earth. If time travel is ever invented, that will be the first place I go.

Baum takes nine people for her portrait of Shanghai in microcosm. She tells us about the bombing right away, and that these nine people will be killed by it. Her novel is the story of how they all came to be there. Her sketches offer us a broad outline of the history of the time, not just in China, but also in Europe, Japan, and to a lesser extent, the US. We have Jelena Trubova, who started life in a White Russian family that fled to Turkey after the Revolution. Jelena morphed through several personae in her struggle to survive. By the time she got to Shanghai, she was Helen Russell, one of the richest women in Europe, married to a cocaine addicted alcoholic. She and her husband could be seen "wherever drunken gentlemen in evening dress raised no comment'".

Yushio Murata was a European educated Japanese man, who had served on the Manchurian front. He had now been sent to Shanghai as a correspondent. In many ways, his portrait was the most sensitively done, that of a man torn between old and new Japan, between Japanese and western ways, and unable to fit in anywhere.

Frank Taylor and Ruth Anderson were two hapless Americans. After some dubious financial escapades in the US, Frank decided to try in luck in Shanghai, where fortunes were being made all the time. Easier said than done. Ruth was his naive fiancée, just arrived in Shanghai for their wedding, unaware that Frank was deeply involved in an affair.

Dr Emanuel Hain had fled Nazi Germany, making his way to Paris and then to Shanghai, as so many did once European ports closed to Jewish refugees. Shanghai allowed stateless people passage to other destinations. It also allowed doctors to practise without taking Chinese examinations. Hain had been accompanied to Shanghai by Kurt Planke, a family connection fleeing German police and Parisian poverty.

While these characters may now seem like caricatures, Baum was writing in 1939, when the twentieth century European turmoil and upheaval were fresh, and the looming war very real. The situations she describes would have been new to many readers, particularly in the US. The character I did find to be too much of a stereotype was B G Chang. Baum has him transform himself from a riverboat person into one of the wealthiest men in Shanghai, walking a fine line between Communists and Nationalists, with the encroaching Japanese thrown in for good effect. Chang's son, Yutsing Chang, opposed all his father's work, failing to see the accomplishment and seeing only the corruption.

Lastly, there was Lung Yen, a formerly comfortable peasant who had lost his lands through poor harvests and was forced to make his way to the city, gradually sinking to the job of coolie, the position where Chang had started his climb. More realistically, there is no hope for Lung.

Baum details each of these nine lives separately in the first part of her book. In Part II, The City, she brings them all together in Shanghai. Some meet each other, others remain on the periphery. Baum is a skilful enough writer not to rely on coincidence for plot, resulting in a convincing story, which is just that, a story, albeit a good read.

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Vicki Baum knew about life in 1930s Europe all too well. She was born in Austria in 1888. As an adult, she lived in various German cities, settling in Berlin in 1926. She published her first novel in 1920, but it wasn't until 1929, with the publication of Menschen im Hotel that she became famous. This was the first of her hotel novels. She was invited to the US in 1931 when Irving Thalberg turned the novel into the 1932 film Grand Hotel with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. The film won the 1933 Best Film Oscar.

Baum returned to Germany, but was realistic enough to see that as a Jew, life there would become increasingly difficult for her. She and her family emigrated to the US, becoming part of the Hollywood group of German émigres. The story of Emanuel Hain in Shanghai '37 details the restrictions she would have had to face in Germany. In 1939, the world of concentration camps was still to come for most, and had not yet entered the public consciousness. Her books were banned in Germany in 1935, but she became very successful elsewhere. Her popularity later faded, but there is some interest once again in her books, with the increase in interest in interwar Germany, and the acceptance of strong female characters with all their flaws.

The bombing that day in Shanghai in August 1937 killed almost two thousand people and injured thousands more. The Cathay Hotel, on which this story is based and the Palace Hotel were both hit accidentally by Chinese pilots who were heading for Japanese targets in the harbour. Other accidental targets included the Great World Entertainment Centre. Part of Baum's novel takes place in the penthouse of the hotel, where her character B G Chang lived. This appears to be partially based on Sir Vidal Sassoon, who had the penthouse apartment of the Cathay Hotel. The hotel was famous for its Art Deco decoration. It is now the Fairmount Peace Hotel.

The hotel is the one with the green top.

I am sure many of us here in Club Read would welcome the chance to belong to a Shakespeare reading group.

Excellent review of Shanghai '37 and a nice little story to go with it. I had not heard of Vicki Baum and her hotel books.

All sorts of interesting things going on here since I last visited!

I reread Cinderella earlier this year, and my story had the hacked off step sister's feet, but didn't say much about the father. However, I noted that he was aware of how she was being mistreated and I wondered how he could let that go on. Definitely an interesting silence in that story that needs further attention and exploration!

You may be able to find out more information on your dear lost copy of Cinderella by searching Pinterest. Try not just Cinderella but also "vintage fairy tales" or "vintage children's books". It's amazing what images you can find there.

That's definitely a fascinating story!

>96 baswood: It is a great group, I must admit, and I just randomly lucked into it.

>97 Nickelini: Great idea, thanks. I try to avoid Pinterest normally as before I know it, hours have past, but any sacrifice in the name of research!

>98 rebeccanyc: It made me interested in finding more of her books, ten of which were made into films, but even more, it made me interested in finding out more about Baum herself.

Still cherishing a forlorn hope that I will get through this year's reading on this thread and finish at least one more book.

Reading this book was inspired by steven's review of it.



47. Fear: A Novel of World War I by Gabriel Chevallier, translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie
first published in 1930 as La Peur
finished reading November 14, 2014

There are many kinds of fear. There is the one felt by adolescents; the fear of being left out, of missing out. We yearn to find out what is happening. Gabriel Chevallier's alter ego Jean Dartemont had just such a fear. He tells us that was why he went to war. "I went against all my convictions, but still of my own free will -- not to fight but out of curiosity: to see." Dartemont goes on to tell us that by the time he signed up, "The war was already a few months old and I was beginning to fear that it might end before I got there... since this was would be the most remarkable spectacle of the age --- I would not want to miss it."

France had no recent history of war in that beautiful summer of 1914. Apart from some elderly veterans, it was an unknown. Those who flocked to sign up did not know what was involved. There was fear in the hearts of the women who watched and wept at this rush to battle, but the menfolk didn't yet understand why.

As so often happens in war, Dartemont's unit spent a long period in training, then time behind the lines, so it wasn't until mid 1915 that his battalion actually saw the enormity of war.

We had just marched over the crest of a hill, and suddenly there before us lay the front line, roaring with all its mouths of fire, blazing like some infernal factory where monstrous crucibles melted human flesh into a bloody lava. We shuddered at the thought that we were nothing but more coal to be shovelled into this furnace, that there were soldiers down there fighting against the storm of steel, the red hurricane that burned the sky and shook the earth to its foundations.... And so that nothing was missing from this macabre carnival, so that there was something to highlight the tragedy by its contrast, we saw rockets rising gracefully, like flowers of light, fading at the summit of this inferno and dropping down, dying, trailing stars. We were mesmerized by this spectacle, whose poignant meaning only the old hands knew. This was my first sight of the front line, my first sight of hell unleashed.

Chevallier gives his protagonist time to think about this sight, time to absorb the sight of soldiers returning from the front "...all of them stained with blood and dirt...", before putting him into a fighting unit in September 1915. "The war had stopped being a game."

Fear was no longer an abstract concept. Sheer naked terror invaded Dartemont's soul, after he and those with him were hit by a salvo of fire.

Panic booted us in the arse. Like tigers we leaped over the shells' smoking craters, rimmed with the wounded, and we leaped over the cries of our brothers, cries that came from the guts and strike at the guts, we leaped over pity, honour, shame, we eliminated all feeling, all that makes us human, according to moralists -- imposters who are not enduring an artillery bombardment and yet exalt courage! We were cowards and we knew it and we could be nothing else. The body was in charge and fear gave the orders.

This is the strength of Chevallier's book. He had the courage to admit to this animal fear, to defy the jingoism that turned soldiers into heroes, willingly sacrificing their lives for others. It is a cry against war, against the utter senselessness of having a few generals and politicians decide the fate of tens of millions. Chevallier wasn't afraid to speak out against war, or to reveal its ugly repercussions: "...profiteers, arms dealers, the black market, denunciations, betrayals, firing squads, torture; not to mention famine, tuberculosis, typhus, terror, sadism."

It took Chevallier five years to write this book, from 1925 to 1930. It is a memoir that reads like a novel, but it is more than that. At times a polemic, at times a personal narrative, it always reads with an immediacy that is riveting. Earlier this year I read Gert Ledig's The Stalin Front, a novel of World War II, and had the same reactions. Together these books cover two of the largest cataclysms of the twentieth century. Despite their passion, nothing has been learned; young men and now women too, still troop off to war, older men from earlier wars still lead them, still others praise "the fallen". Their fear is of uttering the truth, of speaking the ugly words: killed, mutilated, orphaned, widowed. Evidence for this lies in the suppression of Fear by the authorities in 1939, at the start of that second great twentieth century cataclysm. It was not published again until 1951.

Excellent review of Fear: a novel of world war I

Yes- it looks very interesting! on to the wish list

I'm not sure I'm up to reading Fear: A Novel of World War I, but I appreciated your review.

I am planning to continue my WWI reading, and Fear: A Novel of World War I sounds like one I should add to my list. Very nice review.

Terrific review of Fear. And two fantastic excepts.

I'm also intrigued by Vicki Baum (>95 SassyLassy:)

Thanks all.

Another late entry in my futile effort to catch up:



48. Offside by Gisela Elsner, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
first published as Abseits in 1982
finished reading November 19, 2014

In ice hockey, an offside occurs when the puck crosses into the defensive zone of the opposing team before the attacker's skates have crossed the blue line that demarcates that zone. When this happens, the puck is returned to the neutral zone for a face-off.

Gisela Elsner may have known nothing of this, but offside is an apt title for her novel. Lilo Besslein, the main protagonist, is constantly getting ahead of herself in her skirmishes with her parents, her husband, and even her lover. Each time this happens, she must go back for a new face-off.

Lilo lived in the post war planned suburb of Lerchenau. By the 1980s, the time frame of this novel, the suburb had become reasonably desirable, while still maintaining the sterility of 1960s housing estates. She lived there in a seventy square metre apartment with her husband Ernst, a man married to convention, but too tight fisted to achieve even acceptable standards of dress and decor in an appealing way, something which Lilo would not forgive.

The reader first meets Lilo and Ernst on the day their first child is born. The new parents somehow feel defeated by this event. Nothing works out. Once discharged from the maternity hospital with her antidepressants, Lilo begins a slide that will take her into multiple addictions.

There is nothing happy in this novel, yet Elsner somehow manages a savage humour when writing of suburban despair and tedium; a degree of levity that sustains the reader for awhile. Ultimately though, this was like a cross between darkest Doris Lessing and a John Cassavettes film. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie with its interminable rides comes to mind. One of Lilo's displacement escapes was putting on her eye makeup. Even as a teenager who loved the stuff, I don't think I've ever read one and a half continuous pages describing this process. Lilo however repeats the ritual again and again in preparation for her next offside, for Lilo can never play the game in a relatively straightforward manner, the way everyone else in her suburb did.

When the novel reached its inevitable expected climax, I felt a huge sense of relief to have actually finished the book. At the same time, I felt shortchanged, for Elsner is an excellent writer. I would have been thrilled to discover her had the material been different.

I've been out of town the last two days, having gone to see the wonderful Nutcracker by the National Ballet of Canada in a beautiful version. Here is the Sugar Plum Fairy (Sonia Rodriguez) in her Fabergé egg. The children filling the theatre loved the performance, but seemed completely entranced during the final pas de deux, when only the soaring music could be heard.



Photo by Bruce Zinger

Being out of town is my excuse for not posting my final reviews, so here are some brief notes



39. The Master by Colm Toibin
finished reading September 25, 2014

I never did get around to reviewing this as it was a book I read at a cottage and I couldn't find a copy at my local library.

It was an excellent book though, a fictional biography of Henry James, full of background material on many of his masterpieces. Toibin captured James's voice wonderfully, making me want to read more of and about the man himself. I also have notes on various characters to follow up on: Constance Fenimore Woolson, Hendrik Anderson, and Burgess Noakes at Lamb House. Here's a quote from the book:

The English have no spiritual life, only a material one. The only subject here is class... There is no yearning in England, no crying out for truth.

He goes on to exempt Dickens, Eliot, Trollope and Thackeray from this broadside.

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49. Stoner by John Williams
first published 1965
finished reading November 22, 2014

I first read John Williams back in January of this year with Butcher's Crossing. Stoner is the melancholy tale of an English professor, the world of university politics, mental illness and the perhaps inevitable tale of what happens when students and professors have an affair. It was an excellent pairing with Willa Cather's The Professor's House, read earlier this year, as another new author for me, for the contrast between the two professors at roughly the same time in American life.

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A few more to come later

A powerful burst of several great books, towards the end, Sassy. Nice coda to the reading year. If that's the result of being out of town, be out of it more....

Three of the last four are on my TBR pile, but I won't come to them that soon.

Happy New Year!

>109 edwinbcn: And Gelukkig Nieuwjaar to you edwin!

Absolutely the last books of the year:



50. Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
first published 1871
finished reading November 30, 2014

This was Thomas Hardy's second novel, but his first published one. Apparently his publishers didn't think the first one, The Poor Man and the Lady, was worth publishing. There are places in Desperate Remedies where the reader can understand the reasons for the fate of his first novel, but then there are the places where Hardy's future genius shines through. At times reminiscent of sensation novels such as Lady Audley's Secret, at times of Wilkie Collins, Hardy is here obviously trying to find his way. Despite this, the themes for which he would become famous are evident: the treatment of women in nineteenth century England, especially those of the lower classes and his corresponding concerns with the class system. His capture of dialogue and vernacular is also here, along with his real love and knowledge of his countryside. Aeneas Manston, the villain, is skilfully drawn, slowly sinking into depravity, while Miss Aldclyffe would do Wilkie Collins justice. A great tale if Victoriana is one of your interests, as well as a possible surprise for lovers of Hardy.

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51. The Maid by Kimberly Cutter
first published 2012
finished reading December 7, 2014

Don't bother. This is a terrible book which I read for my book club. It was so terrible, that although I am usually the only voice of dissent in a sea of positive voices, only one person liked it. Using modern terminology, Cutter treats Joan of Arc as a deranged twenty-first century person, with few redeeming graces, while setting her squarely in the fifteenth century. The superimposition did not work. There is absolutely no indication here that there was a belief at that time that God and the saints did speak to people and that it did not indicate madness. The only thing I learned from this book was the possible historical origin of Bluebeard.

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52. Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
first published 1931
finished reading December 22, 2014

My second Willa Cather, which I read for Willa Cather Reading Week in the Viragos group. I had read The Professor's House in September and thought is was wonderful. This was a very different book. Set in seventeenth century Québec City, it tells episodically the story of Cécile Auclair, a young girl in charge of her widowed father's house. It does offer an excellent portrait of that place and time. Voltaire famously dismissed North America as quelques arpents de neige. That sentiment is here in the treatment of the fledgling colony by its French masters, but Cather also captures the immensity of the unknown continent for those perched on its edge and the irrevocable separation for the colonists from the rest of the world each fall as the last ships leave the port before winter sets in. A good enough book if seventeenth century French Canada interests you, but otherwise I was unable to see where the interest lay, as the plot never really developed, and was fairly predictable. Disappointing after my initial engagement with Cather, but not enough to stop me from reading more of her work.

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53. A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré
first published 2008
finished reading December 31, 2014

I always start a spy or sleuth book on Boxing Day. This one had been in the house for some time, but I was prompted to read it now by seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman's wonderful portrayal of Gunther Bachmann in this year's film interpretation. Normally I prefer books to films, but in this case I was glad I had seen the film version first. I couldn't think of a better person for the role of Bachmann and visual images from the film actually enhanced the reading, which is odd for me. The book was vintage le Carré and made me think I just might start reading him again, after a hiatus since 2001's disappointing The Constant Gardner.

Where I would like to be now that the work is done:



Photo Lloyd Smith

Happy New Year to all!

Offside sounds interesting and I'll have to look for it when I'm back in Munich. Would you consider posting it to the book's page, as there are no reviews for it posted?

Happy New Year! I decided I couldn't bear to watch the televised Queen concert before the London fireworks. I much prefer the pipers with the Edinburgh fireworks, so I rushed upstairs to the computer to catch the Edinburgh fireworks on BBC Scotland. Much better, but in the end watched fireworks going off all over the neighbourhood, which carried on for over half an hour. As it's quite flat around here with no tall buildings it was possible to see fountains of fireworks rising and falling all over the place over quite some distance. I will have to watch London and Edinburgh on catch-up.

Deleting this double post.

A Most Wanted Man started me reading le Carre again, although I don't care for most of his recent stuff that I've read. I think the Cold War was his strength, and love the Karla books, but my favorite of all is A Perfect Spy. Happy new year and looking forward to your 2015 reading.

Great end of the year, Sassy. I look forward to your 2015 reading. Happy New Year!

>113 RidgewayGirl: RG, done. Here is a brief bio of Elsner http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing/langua... which I had meant to add. It would be interesting to read her in German. I'm a believer in language dictating how we write and think, so I suspect she would be very powerful in German.

Rebecca, Nana and O, happy new year to you all. Nothing like live fireworks. There was a real storm here, so other than opening the door to let the New Year in, nothing was to be seen or heard, except wind and snow.