Category: Books

Tidy Tidbits: 2/27/22

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COZY CRIME SERIES 

Hope Street (BritBox)

Finn & Leila (gizmostory.com)

Hope Street is set in a small town on the coast of Northern Ireland where everyone seems to know everyone else and their business.  Finn O’Hare heads up the Port Devine police department with his colleagues, Marlene and Callum.  When Detective Constable Leila Hussain arrives as the first Muslim officer, she causes a stir and initially meets with mistrust and suspicion.  

There are crimes to be solved, even the occasional murder, but this series is as much about the family affairs (wives and kids) and quarrels that consume the townsfolk.  Finn’s mother, Concepta, is a busybody who wants to know all, while Barry Pettigrew, taxi driver and retired police officer keeps his hand in too.  There are open secrets and real secrets.  Season 1 has 10 episodes, but it is not known if there will be a Season 2.   For me, it’s great treadmill fare—engaging enough to hold my interest and keep me moving!

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Lady Bird Johnson:  Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig

Lady Bird Johnson (paintboxgarden.com)

I thought Hiding in Plain Sight might be a biography of Lady Bird’s entire life, but actually, it’s focused on her years as First Lady during the Johnson presidency.  During that tumultuous time, she recorded her thoughts daily. The result is a comprehensive source document covering her feelings and activities, LBJ’s concerns and moods, and the stresses of the Vietnam War and the battle for civil rights.  

Swieg masterfully details hows how carefully and skillfully Lady Bird crafted her image.  Following the elegant and popular Jackie Kennedy was initially challenging.  Lady Bird was a talented businesswoman before coming to the White House, yet this was a time when women were expected to be deferential and on the margins of serious dealings.  

Lady Bird made beautification her cause, but within it she worked tirelessly to raise broader awareness about the environment, urban blight, and poverty.  Always appearing feminine, she was a powerful voice in her husband’s ear on a wide range of issues.  She also traveled the U. S. solo giving speeches and campaigning for him and for her causes. Lady Bird Johnson was the most active First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.

This is fascinating reading (am about halfway into it), and I’ve come to appreciate the much greater role she played than many of us realized.  I lived through this period on the cusp of adulthood so, it’s informative to see events from a deeper perspective.   Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Tidy Tidbits: Inside Diversions

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WATCHING—COMEDY, ADVENTURE, CRIME

Don’t Look Up (Netflix)

DiCaprio stocking up for a special dinner. (thewrap.com)

Don’t Look Up is both a funny film and a sobering one.  When a comet is on the horizon that will destroy the earth, the hapless president dithers and does little.  The scientists who have plotted its course are ignored and ridiculed.  The film is both a spoof and a satire targeting politicians, egocentric celebrities, and huckster entrepreneurs hawking worthless devices.  But despite its comic moments, it is a doomsday story.  

There’s an all-star cast with Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead scientist, Meryl Streep marvelously inept as the U.S. president, and Mark Rylance almost unbelievable as the tech giant, along with Jennifer Lawrence and Cate Blanchett.  It’s definitely a change of pace from some other recent film offerings.

Around the World in 80 Days (PBS Masterpiece)

Phileas Fogg and his companions (hollywoodreporter.com)

I saw the original film of Jules Verne’s adventure tale when I was about 8 years old.  It was one of the first movies I saw in the theater and going to see it was special.  

This new version of Around the World in 80 Days has a more diverse cast with a young woman, Miss Fix, as the accompanying reporter, and a Black man playing Passepartout, Phileas Fogg’s so-called valet.  They are an oddly mismatched lot with diverging aims, but they end up depending on one another for their wellbeing as they encounter riots, marauders, and collapsed bridges.

We are about halfway through the series and enjoying it.  David Tennant with his serious mien and upright, almost stiff bearing, makes the perfect Phileas.  There are 8 episodes in all.

The Commander (Amazon Prime)

Commander Clare Blake (hollywoodsoapbox.com)

This British crime drama is older (set in early 2000’s) and the technical quality is not that great, but it is diverting and suspenseful entertainment.  The series was developed by Lynda La Plante, author of crime novels and creator of Prime Suspect. Each case unfolds over two episodes and there are four seasons in all.

Amanda Burton plays Clare Blake, a high-ranking female commander in London overseeing a group of detectives.  The cases, usually involving murder, are gruesome and challenging. As a woman, Clare faces disrespect and outright hostility from some of the male officers on her team.  She makes some foolish errors of judgement in the early cases but learns from them and becomes smarter. 

Fans of Downton Abbey will be surprised to see a younger Hugh Bonneville as James Lampton, convicted for murder, and just released from prison.  

READING—WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Leaving Coy’s Hill by Katherine A. Sherbrooke

Lucy Stone (bostonathenaeum.org)

When the first history of the 19th century women’s rights movement was written by some of the principals, Lucy Stone got short shrift.  Consequently, for some time her contributions were overlooked.  Thirty years after her death, her daughter wrote a biography and recently, several others have been published.

Katherine Sherbrooke’s novel, Leaving Coy’s Hill, employs the device of Stone looking back over her life and telling her story to a much younger colleague.  Lucy Stone grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, the daughter of a staunch abolitionist father.  Early on, she vowed never to wed and to devote herself to the anti-slavery cause.  Working as a teacher, she saved enough money to go to college at Oberlin, one of the few institutions open to women.  After college, she began traveling around the states giving speeches against slavery.  It was hard life of little pay, spare accommodations, and no companions.  But Stone was a gifted orator and driven to succeed.  

Fortuitously, she became friends with Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Although their approaches differed, the three championed women’s rights—the right to vote and changes to the laws governing marriage and property.  Stanton was already married with many children when she became active, Anthony never married, and ultimately, Lucy Stone did.  

Sherbrooke’s novel details Stone’s career successes and imagines the conflicts and challenges she faced in her marriage to Henry Blackwell, brother of doctors Elizabeth and Emily.  

Lucy attempts to balance love and a child with demanding career objectives, still an issue today.  I thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel, and it fleshed out for me additional aspects of the women’s rights movement.  Recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

Tidy Tidbits: Motherhood on Page & Screen

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READING

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

O’Farrell (irishtimes.com)

In Hamnet, O’Farrell has created the world of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, at the time of the bubonic plague.  While 11-year-old Hamnet is present in the early chapters, he haunts the remainder of the novel after his death.  In many ways, the novel is a story of motherhood, marriage, and grief with a focus on the mother.  Agnes, Hamnet’s mother, is a creature of the woods, a skilled herbalist, yet unconventional and socially inept.  She chafes under her mother-in-law’s strictures, misses her husband whom she sent to London to get him away from his abusive father, and mightily grieves for her son, seeking and seeing him everywhere.  

The descriptions of the environs are so graphic one can easily picture town life in Stratford and life on the farm where Agnes grew up.  O’Farrell lists, annotates, categorizes, and catalogs the implements of home life and the branches, leaves and blossoms in the wood; at times, the writing is staccato-like.  It’s a beautifully written book about a horrible pandemic—timely and richly deserving of its several literary awards.  Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)

WATCHING

The Lost Daughter (Netflix)

Colman as Leda (polygon.com)

I am not familiar with the novel by Elena Ferrante that inspired The Lost Daughter, but I’m a big admirer of Oliva Colman and would see her in almost anything.  Here, she is a comparative literature professor on a beach vacation in Greece.  Leda is alone and prepared to work, but she becomes fixated on watching a young mother, Nina, and Elena, her little girl, romp and play on the shore.  Leda exchanges brief pleasantries with Nina and her aunt and interacts with Lyle, the apartment caretaker, and Will, an engaging college student.  In flashbacks, she begins reflecting on her own experiences decades ago as an ambitious academic with two young daughters and a busy husband.  As she said to Nina earlier, “motherhood is a crushing responsibility.”

When Nina’s daughter goes missing, the extended family and friends fan out to search for her.  Leda finds Elena with her doll.  What happens afterward is puzzling and strange with an even stranger, more mystifying ending.  I wondered whether Leda was truly unbalanced and what state we find her in in the last scene.  

It’s a slowly paced film with sparse dialogue, yet the camera lingers on the physical:  limbs, breasts, and bodies. Colman is superb as 48-year old Leda while Jessie Buckley is marvelous as Leda, the young mother. The depiction of motherhood is both joyous and wrenching with greater emphasis on the demands of being a mother.  Painful to watch at points, this may be film fare for a more selective audience. (~JWFarrington)

DINING 

Whitney’s

Located on the northern end of Longboat Key, Whitney’s is a former gas station turned into a casual restaurant.  Seating includes tables on the gravel outside as well as booths and tables inside.  Open for lunch and dinner on a first come, first-served basis, it’s a welcome addition to the LBK dining options. 

A friend and I ate at a small round table outside.  Our waitress was friendly in the nicest way, and we enjoyed shrimp Louie and the mixed greens salad with tiny cubes of manchego and a choice of dressing and protein.  I opted for the salad with champagne vinaigrette and grilled shrimp.  Both dishes were excellent.  Whitney’s also serves burgers, fish tacos, crab cakes, tuna tartare, and other fish entrees.  Wine and beer are also available.  Several days a week there is live music, so you might want to plan accordingly.  

Note: Header drawing of a harried mother is from Time Magazine (time.com).

Girl surrounded by stacks of books

Reading Now & for 2022

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RECENT READING

Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout (howtoread.me)

Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Oh William!, is a winner.  Those who have read the earlier novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, will be acquainted with the main character.  Lucy is a successful writer and William is her ex-husband.  She left him some years ago after he had a string of affairs, and she then married David, who recently died.  Despite their divorce, she and William have remained in touch, partly because they are the parents of two grown daughters.  The novel is all in Lucy’s voice as she reflects on events in their marriage and the people they have both known.  

Lucy often feels she is invisible and doesn’t find it easy to relate socially.  When William invites her to travel from their homes in New York City to Maine to visit an unknown relative, she accepts.  

Lucy is a somewhat strange person, and William is not always accessible to her as she ponders and dissects both their present and their past interactions.  It’s a novel about marriage and what we might not know about our spouse or him about her, written with a delicacy and truth that shimmers on the page.   Highly recommended!

My Broken Language by Quiara Alegria Hudes

Author Hudes (imdb.com)

Quiara Alegria Hudes is a playwright (In the Heights) who grew up in the Puerto Rican barrio in North Philadelphia.  When asked what her first language was as a child, she might reply that her family communicated physically by touching, dancing, and hugging more than by words.  If with words, then Spanish was dominant and English secondary.  

It was a close-knit family with numerous cousins to play with and various aunts freely offering advice.  When her parents split up, Quiara visits her father on a farm on the Main Line and then later in his home in a more upscale Philadelphia neighborhood. She frequently moves between her Puerto Rican home and a whiter richer world.  Supported by her mother, she has the chance to go to a magnet high school and then on to Yale.  Leaving her cousins behind, she again confronts cultural differences and a divide between her ethnic upbringing and that of her more affluent classmates.  But she is persistent and successfully completes a major in music.  Some years later, she is accepted into Brown University’s creative writing program.  The head of the program is a marvelous mentor and provides Quiara a personalized list of books tailored to fill in gaps in her reading. 

The early chapters of this memoir are intense and dense with Spanish phrases and references to Puerto Rican religious and spiritual practices.  And yet, Hudes’ use of language and her colorful analogies reward the patient reader.  I found the later chapters more accessible and reveled in one on the treasures of Yale’s Sterling Library.  This is a challenging read, but worth the effort!

I received this book as part of my subscription to BookBrowse with the understanding that I would contribute questions and comments to the online discussion. It was the first time I’ve done this and meant that I read a work I might not otherwise pick up.

READING LIST FOR 2022

Here are some of the books I intend to read in the next several months.  All are novels except for King’s book of short stories and the Lady Bird Johnson biography.  

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (reading now for my book group)

The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier (bestselling French novel)

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (book group title)

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Lady Bird Johnson:  Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig

Leaving Coy’s Hill by Katherine A. Sherbrooke

The Northern Reach by W. S. Winslow

The Rent Collector by Camron Wright (book group title)