Category: Books

Tidy Tidbits: Culture Notes

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ON STAGE

The Sound of Music

You’ve probably seen at least one stage production of The Sound of Music or the movie starring Julie Andrews, but did you pay attention to the year and the context?  I don’t think I did until we saw the superb performance at the Asolo Theater.  This is a darker, more nuanced play and one that brings to the fore the rising Nazi presence in Austria in 1938.  The actors are great, especially Captain Von Trapp’s seven rambunctious children, the Mother Superior with a big voice that commands attention, and the always in motion, all arms and legs Maria.  Equally effective is the staging, particularly the last scene when the entire family performs in a competition.  If you live nearby, go see it!

ON THE PAGE

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves

Fans of Shetland and Vera, TV mystery series seen on PBS, will recognize Cleeves’ name as the author of the works upon which they are based.  I’ve not read any of these mystery novels, but decided to try the first work in a new series.  The Long Call introduces Matthew Venn, a gay detective married to the manager of a community arts center.  When a troubled man is found dead on the beach and a disabled young woman goes missing, all the leading suspects have ties to the arts center.  

What drew Simon Walden, the dead man, to Barnstaple, and how was he connected to the mentally challenged teenage girl he regularly sat next to on the local bus?  Venn is a complex and fascinating character who grew up in the Brethren faith, but later rejected it.  In working to solve this case, he must re-visit individuals from his past.  I found this mystery intriguing enough to read to the finish and will probably look for the next one in the series.  

ON THE SMALL SCREEN

Unbelievable (Netflix)

On the subject of crime, I’m currently watching Unbelievable, a graphic account of the investigation into a series of rapes that occurred mostly in Colorado.  Based on real events, it’s about two female detectives from different cities who come together to find a serial rapist.  Several victims are portrayed including Marie, a troubled young woman, who under persistent questioning from two male detectives recants her initial account of the rape.  Difficult and disturbing to watch, it is, nonetheless, a painstaking exploration of how rape crimes are handled or mishandled.

ON THE WAY HOME

Appleton Museum of Art

On our way back south from St. Augustine last week, we stopped in the town of Ocala and paid a visit to the Appleton Museum of Art. This small gem of a museum has a voluminous collection of Christmas decorations and figurines which they bring out each December. But, what was of most interest to several of us, was their featured exhibit of paintings from the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania. Entitled Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens, it showcases 65 paintings of early French Impressionistic work along with pieces done by American artists several decades later. It is a lovely exhibit and one worth lingering over. The museum also has European and Asian pieces in their permanent collection.

It was almost noon when we finished our tour. We drove into the center of town, admired Ocala’s town square with its brightly decorated Christmas tree, and then had a most satisfying lunch at Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille. From the standard chicken Caesar salad to New Orleans style shrimp creole and the like, there is something for every taste. Service was lightning quick!

Note: Text and photos ©JWFarrington.

Tidy Tidbits: Page & Screen

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RECENT READING

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Crawdad (dailyherald.com)

From the online comments I’ve read over the past six months, people either loved or hated this novel.  I put off reading it until now, mostly because my local book group was going to discuss it and I wanted it to be fresh in my mind.  I’m in the positive camp.  I loved this novel!  That is not to say that I found it completely convincing, but I did find it compelling.

Kya is just seven when her older siblings leave home and then her father does not return after being gone for several weeks.  Her mother left them some time before so Kya goes to live in a shack in the nearby marsh.  Hiding out from the school authorities, she survives isolated and alone until she reaches adolescence.  In Tate, a teenager a few years older than she, she has her first friend and advocate who even teaches her to read.  Tate goes off to college, abandons her for awhile, and another local young man, Chase Andrews, is attracted to her beauty and her strange wildness.  When Andrews is found dead and foul play is suspected, the police’s first thought is of Kya, referred to by the townspeople as Marsh Girl.  The intertwined strands of Kya’s childhood and coming-of-age and the murder investigation play out against each other, in chapters shifting back and forth in time.  

A zoologist who spent many years studying wildlife in Africa, Owens would seem to be an unlikely novelist.  Yet, she writes in a lyrical manner and her descriptions of the marsh and the nature around it are almost poetic.  Despite the dire events, there is much joy in this novel, and even an ending that seems, if not contrived, perhaps too neat.  What might almost term this story a fairy tale.  But a very absorbing and captivating one!

Our book group had a very lively discussion with almost everyone having enjoyed the book. There were doubters as to whether Kya could really have survived alone and also if it was credible that she became such a successful author of nature guides. And several found the courtroom scenes hurried and almost as if one were reading a different novel entirely. For many of us, the twist at the end was a big surprise, but I think it’s fair to say that folks would recommend this novel to others. (~JWFarrington)

BIG SCREEN

Harriet

Harriet Tubman was one extraordinary woman. A slave who walked a hundred miles from Maryland to Pennsylvania to gain her freedom, leaving her husband, siblings and parents behind, she became one of the greatest conductors on the Underground Railroad. This film recounts her journey to freedom, her trip home to bring her husband north, and the countless trips she made to lead slaves from Maryland eventually to the Canadian border. It is a story of grit, determination, leadership, and the willingness to bear undue hardship.

The Chief Penguin and I visited her home in Auburn, N. Y. and its associated museum several years ago. Auburn is the town I grew up in and you didn’t live here without knowing about Tubman or about William Henry Seward, secretary of state and another Auburn resident, who sold her the land for her house. If you should get to the Finger Lakes region, in what is really upstate N.Y., the house and museum are worth a visit. In the meantime, see the film and learn more about this remarkable woman. She deserves to be honored on our twenty dollar bill!

SMALL SCREEN

The Crown (Netflix)

Olivia Colman & Tobias Menzies (time.com)

The Crown is back with Season 3, and it’s excellent! We have just watched the first three episodes and are totally engaged. Olivia Colman as Elizabeth is superb and Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip is excellent. The tone of this season so far seems more somber than Season 2, and the producers have made use of more archival footage of events. In episode 2, Helena Bonham Carter plays an exuberant, sometimes out-of-control Princess Margaret. I felt this episode conveyed very well her frustration at being number two, while also documenting the real, but often buried, affection between the two sisters.

Poldark (PBS)

Demelza and Ross (express.com)

The final season of Poldark and the final episode have aired and we will have to survive our Sunday nights without the brooding handsomeness of Aidan Turner (Poldark), the dogged patience and determination of Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), and their nemesis, George Warleggan, crazed yet perhaps in the end more human than we expected. It was a memorable last season with plenty of action along with tying up loose ends for Dwight and Caroline and Drake and Morwenna. I will miss these characters! The reassuring thing is that I can always go back and re-watch the series on PBS Passport.

Note: Text ©JWFarrington. Header photo of Harriet Tubman courtesy of history.com

Tidy Tidbits: Cheese & More

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PROVISIONING—Cheese and More

I grew up eating good cheese, not expensive cheese, but good New York State sharp cheddar.  In our household, there was no such thing as American cheese, a misnomer if there ever was one.  In that era in upstate New York, Black Diamond cheddar from Canada was the height of sophistication and an occasional rectangular log of it was a treat. Others in our extended family loved cheese also.  Our Midwest cousins always arrived bearing Hickory Farms’ Lebanon bologna and a hunk of nutty Ohio Swiss.  Yum! As an adult as my horizons broadened beyond the Finger Lakes, I was introduced to other cheeses; everywhere the Chief Penguin and I traveled we sampled cheese, from Gorgonzola in Italy, to Emmental in Zurich, Manchego in Spain and, of course, Roquefort in France.

Today the Chief Penguin and I delight in all the cheeses and comestibles on offer at Artisan Cheese Company in Sarasota.  Owner Louise Converse (aka Cheese Louise) has a carefully cultivated and curated cheese case with a wide variety of cow, goat and sheep cheeses from small producers across the U.S. and abroad.  My favorites in their case include a clothbound cheddar from England, a just ripe Camembert, caramelly aged Beemster Gouda, Bayley Hazen Blue from Vermont, and the store’s own pimento cheese.  

Recently, Louise managed, through good connections, to snag some Rogue River Blue.  This cheese made in Oregon beat out more than 3,000 other cheeses and was named the best cheese on the planet in the World Cheese Awards!  We bought a piece and it is delectable and simply seductive.  Creamy, not overly salty, it begs you to keep eating more.  

But Artisan Cheese offers more than just cheese.  There are distinctive crackers, very good scones, wines that are both thoughtfully chosen and moderately priced, along with prepared foods.  Not up for cooking dinner?  Try their mac and cheese, tomato pie, or one of their several soups.  The store supports an apprentice program for young women in partnership with Girls Inc.; many of these food delights are their products.  Along with all the cheeses and other treats, Louise has added tea towels as well as a selection of china and bamboo plates and mugs.  These are distinctive wares that are not run of the mill.  I have to admit I surrendered to temptation and bought several of these items—of course, for gifts!

RECENT READING:  A Sensitive Novel

Upstate by James Wood

An Englishman by birth, Wood is the fiction critic for The New Yorker and also a Harvard professor and novelist.  I’d not read any of his earlier novels, but was attracted to this one by both the title and the setting in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., a town I frequented regularly some years ago.  It’s a short novel with short chapters and is both delicate and exquisite.  

Alan Querry is English and a widower who lives there with his partner, Candace.  He has two grown daughters.  Helen, who is married with children, often travels to Manhattan for her work in the music industry.   Daughter Vanessa is a philosophy professor at Skidmore with a younger boyfriend named Josh.  She has suffered from mental issues in the past and Alan and Helen have been summoned by Josh to Saratoga to check up on her.  

I love Woods’ prose; each word in a sentence is carefully chosen whether it’s in a phrase describing the weather: “it was coming down fast, in the passive-aggressive way of snow, stealthy but relentless, insisting on its own white agenda, the soft monotony canceling all time, all resistance, all activity.” And, “white lengths of snow, like fluorescent stripes, were caught in the folds of their nylon coats.” 

Or an evocation of someone’s thoughts, Alan’s here, as in: 

 “He watched his two highly intelligent, grown-up daughters, as they approached and drew back from each other, like switched magnets. Helen, apparently more confident, acute, with her slightly sharp teeth, elegantly handsome, but also being disagreeable somehow, as if she were necessary medicine Vanessa just had to take; Vanessa, quieter, softer, with her long dark hair and slightly squinting eyes, but exact, precise in her every word and thought, and so, to him at least, quite as formidable as her more obviously intimidating sister.  How had he and Cathy produced them?”

This is a novel of a family ruptured by divorce, of sisters living at a distance who care while simultaneously annoying and needling each another, and of a father with a failing business who isn’t sure how best to help his older daughter nor initially certain if he desires to engage completely.  Each of the principal characters reflects on his or her individual life:  what does it take to be happy; how important is success versus family; what does an entire life amount to in the end?  It’s a beautiful novel, wise and moving!  (~JWFarrington)

Notes: Book cover courtesy of Goodreads.com; header photo from medical news.com. All other contents ©JWFarrington.

Tidy Tidbits: Judy and Crime

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BIG SCREEN

Judy

The Chief Penguin stated it succinctly:  this is a movie about pain.  And it’s exquisitely wrought pain.  You know it will not end well, but you remain fixated on those smoky dark eyes and the pouty red lips.  Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland is brilliant.  She captures all the physical twitchiness of an addict while her expressive face registers the nuances of hurt, disappointment, anger, and even occasionally, joy.  Heading to London for a series of performances, Judy hopes to revive her fading career and make some money.  Abused by the movie studio as a child, she is an emotionally needy adult who both loves and neglects her children.  

In a touching scene, she goes home with a gay couple after her show and ends up cooking scrambled eggs.  When things fall apart, her London handler, who has been warned that Judy is impossible, seems both resigned to the difficulties of managing her and yet respectful of her talent.  There are songs throughout the film, and you almost hold your breath, wondering when and knowing for certain that “Over the Rainbow” will be sung.  If you’re looking for a happy time, this is not it.  It’s a slow powerful unraveling of a life.

MYSTERIES

I’m a selective mystery reader.  There are a handful of authors whose mysteries I actively seek out.  Among this group are Deborah Crombie and more recently, Jane Harper.  

(thenovelneighbor.com)

A Bitter Feast by Deborah Crombie

Like fellow mystery writer Elizabeth George, Crombie has now written more than fifteen mysteries with the same set of characters.  In Crombie’s case, her detectives are Gemma Jones and her husband Duncan Kincaid, who both work for Scotland Yard in London.  Originally just partners, they married and are parents to Kit (Duncan’s son by his first wife) and two other children.  Both the children and their work colleagues, Melody, from a wealthy background, and Doug, who at times is clueless about the social niceties, figure in the stories.  Crombie is good at conveying the messiness of family life as well as the snits and annoyances that complicate work life.  

This mystery takes place in the Cotswolds as they are all guests of Melody’s parents.  When a celebrity chef visits the local pub to see its rising young chef and then dies in a car accident along with another local woman, questions are raised. Why was Fergus the chef in that car and how exactly did he die?  An investigation ensues.  Set within the context of the food world, this was a most enjoyable and absorbing book.  Knowing the backstory of Gemma, Duncan, Melody, and Doug from previous books, makes it all the better.  (~JWFarrington)

The Dry by Jane Harper

Jane Harper (theaustralian.com.au)

Jane Harper is an Australian writer and a recent success in the book world.  She’s the author of two crime novels and one standalone novel.  I’ve actually read all three works, but in reverse order. I began with the newest, The Lost Man, and then read Force of Nature. It’s about an outdoors team building exercise that goes awry and features federal agent, Aaron Falk.  The Dry is Harper’s first novel and it introduces Falk as he returns to his hometown after twenty years and relives painful memories. Simultaneously, he becomes involved in untangling the mystery of the violent deaths of a childhood friend, his wife, and their young son.  Filled with loose strands and twists, this is a fascinating and suspenseful book.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Text ©JWFarrington. Header photo of the real Judy Garland, gettyimages.com