“>Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweetby Jamie Ford. It’s a good story… it has the evacuation and interment of Northwest Japanese Americans as a backdrop. It has nice layers of family– father and son, mother and son, grown son and his son, best friends, etc. But the writing isn’t as tight as it could be which leaves a lot of loose thoughts dangling out there. It needed a good edit. In the author’s note in the back it becomes a little clearer– the story started out as a short story and then another and then was expanded into a novel-length piece. Which accounts for the uneven beats in it. A chapter here and there was neatly resolved with a good ending line… but not resolved at all because the conflict was picked apart again a few pages later. Frustrations about that aside, it was still a good way to kick off the new year.
“>The Happy Season by Mireille Burnard Cooper (1952) is one of those books you can still find in the stacks at our main library. They haven’t weeded it out yet to make room for another Tom Clancy copy or other schlock. It’s in the vein of Cheaper by the Dozen in that it’s just a nice memoir of a nice family. No malice or intrigue– just children having adventures that are remembered fondly into adulthood. This particular pack of children grew up in the south of France with their artist father (Eugene Burnard) and mother with, well, happy seasons spent in Switzerland.
Blessed Are the Debonair by Margaret Case Harriman (1956) is her memoir of growing up in the Algonquin Hotel (her father was manager and later owned it) and working at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. It’s another find at the library (in my dive into the 920s) and is so deliciously mid-twentieth century as to have a “Erratum” note stuck on it’s title page. Harriman name drops on every page– the Barrymores, Douglas Fairbanks, Conde Nast, Frank Crowninshield, and Dorothy Parker to drop a few myself– but she does it in a somewhat humble way so it’s not too distracting. And it’s a playful side of New York theater in the 1920-30s.
Dakota by Kathleen Norris. Gail told me to read Dakota and Cloister Walk so I am. I found Dakota in our library system. I liked it. I really liked her “Weather Reports” that popped up between longer chapters. She writes about the plains and poetry and religion and God and herself.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography and Laura’s Rememberance Book both by William Anderson. We’re going to Kansas soon and I was hoping that it might be kind of near the site of the Ingalls’ place near the Verdigris River or that we might “have” to travel near Mansfield, MO where she lived the bulk of her adult life… but no such luck on either count. Still– I’m glad I picked them up at the library. They were ridiculously quick and breezy reads over familiar territory. The bio had some nice tidbits from her later years. I would have liked to have shared a plate of gingerbread with her and asked after her sisters.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. Susan lent me this one. It was an easy, quick read. I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction or chick lit and this falls into both categories… but it was fun to read a book Susan had read. It’s unevenly paced. And a too-neatly bundled up. It made me want to knit.
[oh dear. I haven't read anything "serious" this year at all... I should work on that.]
A Year of Living Bibically by A. J. Jacobs was just as fun as his earlier book on reading the entire Encylopedia Britannica in a year’s time. Robby and I both like Jacob’s books. And his poor wife that has to contend with his year-long forays into ridiculous projects. We read his books on long trips–me reading outloud for the driving Robby. Jacob’s spiritual quest– to go from being an agnostic Jew to finding a spiritual path takes turns into various religious communities– the Amish, snake-handling Pentecostals, creationists, orthodox Judaism, etc. We were glad to take the trip with him.
The Girl from Purple Mountain by Winberg and Mai-lee Chai. The true story of a Chinese family told by a father/daughter team. The voices of each alternate. And it centers around a mystery involving the mother/grandmother.
My Several Worlds by Pearl S. Buck. My sister and I discovered Buck’s The Good Earth a few years ago. It was a great experience for both of us– the kind of book that really made an impact. We still measure books against it. At the library I ran across her thick 407 page autobiographical My Several Worlds and squealed with delight. A bit premature, that squeal…. My Several Worlds encompasses about 50 years of Buck’s life. It covers, pretty interestingly if unevenly, her early childhood in China, education, marriage to her first husband (referred to as “the man” which works in her Chinese novels… not so much in her autobiography. Pearl, dear, we can google you–.) It glosses over her “forever child” (who was put into an American institution). Her second marriage is, by her own account somewhat scandulous because they must get divorced from their spouses before they can marry– gets less print than the pair of dogs that sire countless puppies she waxes on about in the later pages. There’s a LOT of her opinions on East/West relations. I’m glad I made it through it but I wish that she’d edited it.
Trish lent me Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. I’d been wanting to read it– I’ve liked some of See’s other books… but Trisha’s copy was splayed out from her having dropped it in the tub. She’d dried it but the pages were crinkly and turned over at the corners. Still– once I got passed the new thickness of the book it was a good read. Two sisters, a journey from Shanghai to America, and a web of secrets and lies that unravels and reknots up again…
Dorrit lent me The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee. It tied in nicely to the Asian theme I’ve had going now for the past few books. It’s set in Hong Kong with two stories that run parallel then intersect the early war and post war years. The ending seems a little wonky. Some of the impact that could be there is missing… but it’s a good read.
I cheated a little. I saw the movie version of Andrea Levy’s Small Island first. It was on Masterpiece Theater this spring. (And even that was because my Friend, Susan, told me to see it… before that it was languishing on my TiVo.) So I had the characters in my head (Ruth Wilson was perfectly cast as Queenie) and knew some of the twists of the plot. And then Andrea Levy wrote a new book that’s caught my eye. Our library doesn’t have the latest novel but turned up a paperback copy of Small Island. It’s a good read. Four major characters tell the story from their own points of view. They’re all well fleshed out with flaws and motives. She’s got a great hand in dialogue, too. The book jumps around from present (1948) to past and from place to place to place (Jamaica, England, India)… Read it.
We read Mr. Popper’s Penguins on the way up to the Lake this weekend. I picked it up at the library and figured it would be something we could read in the car that Jack might like, too. He did. Robby did. So did I. It’s a silly little story that’s often lauded as being a “classic”– I don’t know about that but it was a nice little story.
My sister ordered The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford after something else we’d read referenced it. She and I have both been going through a bit of a modern-royal-family phase after a recent spat of documentaries on PBS including The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. “Crawfie” was the governess employed to tend Princess “Lilibet” and her sister, Princess Margaret. It’s hardly a scandalous read. Her worst errors may have been in overstating an intimacy in her relationship with the King and Queen of England. Regardless– after her years of service (until Prince Charles was born!) the royal family shunned her upon publication of the memoir. All this was in the forward and in the back of my head from some earlier thing I’d read on the Windsors… which makes for a bittersweet reading knowing that all of the charming little details about life at Buckingham, Sandringham, and Balmoral will still result in a sad parting.
[And then came the period that held July and August where I hit the jackpot at the library-- suddenly there was a deluge of the books I've had on "hold"]
A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book has been on my radar since before the publication last year. It’s a dense book. Byatt’s prose is thick and overgrown with facts and snippets of the era. There are multiple characters– three generations overlapping each other and taking the story in turns. For a few days I inhabited a world of turn-of-the-last-century England and pined for scones and teas and cheese0and-pickle sandwiches. (The latter of which aren’t in the book but thinking about England makes me think of them.)
The end, however, is quick and thin and watery. I was so disappointed. After all that cutting through the brush and tangle of overgrown thoughts I was spilled out into a clearing that had been mowed down by bush hogs. Did Byatt get sick of her characters? Did she have someplace important to be? Was her publisher too demanding?
I still want a better ending.
Robby drove. I read Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson to him while he drove. At times we laughed so hard it probably wasn’t a good idea. Shirley– the same one that sent shivers down my spine in junior high when I first read her short story The Lottery wrote two memoirs about raising their children in a ramshackle house in the country. (Maybe that’s what I need? A ramshackle house in the country.) One section so reminded of us of Robby’s mother– and a stream of conscious conversation that it took us three times to get through it. We’re trying to track down the other book.
Trish interrupted the flow at the library with another book I’d been itching for– Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. This time I was sucked into the South and the 1960s and craved plates of fried chicken. (But not chocolate pie.) There are several characters telling the story but writer Skeeter and the maids are the ones that will linger. Well. And Skeeter’s friends that can be alarmingly familiar.
How long have I waited to read Tracy Chevalier’s latest novel? Since I’d finished her last and googled to see what was next. Stupid frugality made me wait. I usually have her books in queue so that, when they are published in Britain, they come winging to my door via Amazon.Uk. Alas… this time I had to wait. Remarkable Creatures was worth it. It’s the weakest, in my opinion, of her novels– but still delicious. But I know more about sea fossils then I should know.
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake was perfect for my week at camp. It came down to the beach with me and was read by flashlight near the campfire (with the constant thrumming of mosquitoes and crickets as accompaniment). She spins a story of WW2 that spans homefronts on both sides of the Atlantic. The ending’s a little weird.
There’s a great book store in Harbor Springs, Michigan called Under the Stairs. (Which it is, by the way.) She has a great e-newsletter that comes out with book suggestions. The store, like her suggestions, rarely misses the mark in the books it stocks. I’ve been there, in the tiny space for the fiction shelves when the loud, rich people have come stomping in. They are sometimes still in their yacht clothes. They have canvas bags and espadrilles. They complain about the walk down the stairs and they have to push their over-sized, expensive sunglasses on the tops of their heads to see in the darker light.
The bookstore owner mentioned The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart in a recent letter. I found it in our library system and said a whooped, “Hallelujah!” when it came up so quickly on my Hold list. Yesterday (August 21) I picked it up at noon and read it while keeping an occasional eye on a UM soccer game. I read it in the car. I read it in bed. I read it this morning before church and as soon as we were home again. And now it’s, sadly, all over. One of the best little stories I’ve read. It’s fable-y and charming and dear. But it’s increased my pining for London.
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomans is another sweet tale but with a bittersweetness that lingers long after you close it. Jack Rosenblum and his wife, Sadie, come to England just before WWII from Berlin. Jack becomes obsessed with assimilation and becoming a proper, English gentleman. Sadie does everything she can to keep from forgetting the family and past they’ve left behind. Jack’s failure to get into any golf clubs sends him into the countryside of Dorset to build his own. (I started this on the first day of my new job– cracked it open in the hallway while I waited for my boss to meet me on the first day.)
I love travel memoirs. And Denis Lipman’s A Yank Back to England had the interesting premise of a Brit returning as a tourist with his foreign wife… The book covers several years of annual visits. It was little like a cup of tea that had sat too long and gone bitter.
I like the movie You’ve Got Mail. I like Meg Ryan’s character’s job of owning and operating a nook of a shop that sells children’s books. I want to shop in that shop. At one point in the movie she recommends Noel Streatfield’s books including The Ballet Shoes. I like children’s books that were written before we decided that children needed to be self-referential and savvy. (I’m a sucker for the Betsy-Tacy stories.) Streatfield’s “classic” is a frothy tale of plucky orphans, a missing uncle, a house full of wise but eccentric adults… all the makings of a nice afternoon read. It’s nice when everything can end well.
A Wedding at Auschwitz by Erich Hackl was a long slog of me making myself read it to conclusion. I don’t wonder that something was lost in the translation of it. It reads disjointedly. I was confused for far too many pages.
How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway feeds into my foreigners assimilating mild-obsession. The premise of using the (fictitious) post WW2 titular manual to tell the story of three generations of a Japanese family is strong… but it falls a little weak. Especially after Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English.
Scott Simon is an NPR contributor. He and his wife adopt two little girls from China. Baby We Were Made for Each Other tells that story and several other adoption stories.
Harriet Riesen’s Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women is a companion piece to the fantastic PBS American Experience episode of the same name. She does a good job at pulling together all the loose hairs and braiding them neatly (that’s my reference to Jo March). Louisa’s childhood is peppered with the oddball ideals of her father and his friends (including Emerson, Thoreau, etc.) and her adult life is largely burdened with working to dig out her family from under enormous debts. The genteel poverty she makes graceful and earnest in her famous books does not reflect the abject poverty she endured as a child– there are passages that will shadow my future rereadings of Little Women in particular.
Jane Borodale’s The Book of Fires is very much in the same vein as Gwendolyn Brooks’ Year of the Plague or Tracy Chevalier’s stories. It didn’t end how I thought it would. I like that.
Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian ended the year. It was a strange book about a family fleeing their way across Poland during WW2.
