Category: Books

Tidy Tidbits: Recent Reading, etc.

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FEELING GRATEFUL

The Chief Penguin and I were extremely fortunate, lucky, actually.  We endured an anxious 48 hours in New York as Hurricane Irma moved closer and closer to our coast and to the possibility of obliterating our stretch of paradise.  But as Irma shifted eastward and the winds changed direction, we were the beneficiaries of good fortune.  We returned home earlier this week, and yes, there were big trees uprooted and a fair amount of debris, but our house was intact and dry.  We heaved a big sigh of relief while sympathizing with many of our friends nearby who lost power for 5, 6, 7, 8 or even 9 days.  And we feel for the many thousands of people in the Keys and Puerto Rico who were not so fortunate.

 MOMA

Before we left Manhattan, we walked the High Line and paid a visit to the Museum of Modern Art for lunch in their café (good food at a very reasonable price) and a tour around the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective.  It turns out we were there just before the exhibit closed.  Quite a range of works from paintings with objects like metal fans or a stuffed bird affixed to the canvas, to colorful textiles, and even a vat of brownish bubbling mud.  To read more about Rauschenberg’s work, here’s an exhibit review from the New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

CURRENT READING

 Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home by Amy Dickinson

Many of the memoirs I’ve read in the past year or so have dealt with the act of dying.  While Ms. Dickinson has had more than her share of hardship and disappointment, she has a basically positive attitude about life and this book ends on an up note.  I especially enjoyed her account of growing up in a teeny tiny burg in upstate New York (not all that far from where I grew up) and what it was like to choose to return there to live permanently as a middle-aged adult.  Not something I would have chosen for myself.

From finding love post 50 to navigating the shoals of gaining acceptance from her newly acquired stepdaughters, it is a heartfelt, candid book.  Dickinson also writes the “Ask Amy” syndicated advice column carried in many newspapers. (~JW Farrington)

What Happened by Hillary Clinton

I am a Hillary fan (not that I think she ran a perfect campaign) and was one of her supporters.  I got her new book immediately, have begun it, and am about a quarter of the way into it.  Two immediate observations.  One, she comes across as warm and flexible and human in a way that she has never been before in her public life.  Two, she shares her regrets, personal mistakes, and apologizes for her loss in the election.  She doesn’t take all the blame, but she says she’s sorry in a way I can’t ever imagine a male politician doing.  I can’t envision any man writing this kind of soul-baring prose.

But, it is a very long book and she is wordy and so determined to be comprehensive that I get bogged down periodically and have to set aside the flow of words.  Even though she lost, her candidacy was an historic first, a fact that may have gotten lost recently.  She provides a very good chapter on what the challenges and obstacles are for female politicians in general.  Some of those also apply to women scaling the corporate ladder.  I will persevere on the book.  (~JW Farrington)

ON THE HIGH LINE

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

 

Tidy Tidbits: Screens & Pages

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LIGHT FARE

With hurricane Irma on our minds and the strange anticipation of not knowing what its track will be—will we just get rain or will we be wiped out—it’s time for some diversion.  Here are two recommended films, one fun, the other sobering, and two books, both easy on the brain.

BIG SCREEN

Dunkirk

Watching this film is an emotionally battering experience.  It’s excellent, but challenging.  Told mostly from the perspective of an individual unnamed soldier, it lacks a traditional narrative arc.  Instead, the film focuses on three fields of battle, the beach or mole where 300,000 British troops are hemmed in and trapped, the air following three fighter pilots, and the sea with endless scenes of watery graves, fires, and a desperate struggle to survive.  There is one story line that epitomizes what made Dunkirk especially memorable and that is the father and son, ordinary citizens, who were among the volunteers who took their personal boats and bravely rescued soldiers from the sea.

The Big Sick

The title of this film was almost enough to put me off seeing it, but it got such rave reviews, we did go.  It’s a very good film.  Kumail, an aspiring stand-up comedian, who happens to be Pakistani, meets and falls in love with an American woman.  Meanwhile his mother keeps inviting potential Muslim wife candidates to drop by at family dinners.  When Emily ends up in the hospital, Kumail must interact with her skeptical parents. I don’t care for stand-up comedy and found the first fifteen minutes of the film not to my liking, but then got into it.  It’s funny, believable, and complex all at the same time.

 

ON THE PAGE

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

This is a fast-paced coming of age story set in Manhattan at the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women.  Darby arrives there in 1952 from small town Ohio while in 1916 Rose lives there in a refurbished condo with her successful and rich boyfriend.  Darby is a Katie Gibbs “girl”, but through a strange twist of events ends up never marrying and is still living there. A journalist, Rose has had career issues.  When boyfriend Griff decamps back to his ex-wife and kids, she is stuck and becomes obsessed with the mystery surrounding Darby McLaughlin.  The period detail is great, the story fanciful with attributes of a fairy tale, but overall, it’s great escapism! (~JW Farrington)

 Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Thanks to my friend Bonnie who reads a different Anne Tyler novel every summer, I purchased this new one.  It’s a contemporary re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew and is humorous and fun.  The writing sparkles and you can’t help but be caught up in this eccentric family and its detailed rules for living.  Scientist father Louis Battista routinely forgets his lunch and expects it to be delivered to his lab, younger sister Bunny is light on brains, but attracted to Edward, her supposed Spanish tutor, while prickly, blunt-spoken Kate makes a week’s supply of meat mash for their nightly dinners.  When her father cooks up the idea that Kate should marry his foreign lab colleague, Pyotr, so he can stay in the U.S., their joint campaign tests her mettle.   This book is one in the Hogarth Shakespeare series of his plays retold by noted novelists of today.  (~JW Farrington)

Cover photo:  Sunrise over the bay ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Tidy Tidbits: End of Summer Reading

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It’s almost Labor Day and the unofficial end of summer.  If you are off for holiday over the weekend or just home with some free hours, here are a couple of lighter books plus an engaging biography of a neglected writer who deserves more attention.

What have you been reading this summer?  I’d love to know!

BON BON FOR THE BEACH

Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams

I have been noticing Williams’ novels on bookstore shelves, but this is the first one I’ve read. It’s a historical novel and a romance, but that doesn’t completely describe it. It also has a frothy element as its two main characters, Annabelle and Pepper, are rich and beautiful women who could have any man they wanted. The stories of these two alternate with most of the novel focusing on Annabelle in 1930’s France and Germany and her involvement with two men, Stefan, a German resister, and Johann, a high-ranking Nazi general. Annabelle and Pepper meet in 1966 in Florida when a pregnant Pepper sells Annabelle her 1936 Mercedes roadster and Annabelle takes her under her wing, sort of. It’s a delightful romp in the high life, mostly, and perfect escapism. (~JW Farrington)

SPIES IN PAKISTAN

Bloodmoney by David Ignatius

I occasionally read Mr. Ignatius’ columns in the Washington Post and decided to read this spy novel on the recommendation of my good friend Margaret.  I didn’t find it as fast-paced as many reviews indicated, but I was fascinated by the tradecraft of spies—surveillance detection routes, for example—and the disguises, duplicity, and double-dealing required by operators on both sides.  I became more engrossed the deeper into his version of Pakistan I got.  (~ JW Farrington)

 

FORGOTTEN FENIMORE   

Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux

As a relative of James Fenimore Cooper, Constance Fenimore Woolson gained entrée to select company and, initially, received more attention for her work than she might have otherwise.  Later praised as the finest woman writer of her time, Woolson wrote a wide range of short stories and several novels.  She traveled widely and often lived for several months in different climes, everywhere from Florida and Florence to England and Egypt.  She became acquainted with Henry James, and although both were somewhat solitary souls dedicated to their writing, they enjoyed a close friendship.   At one point they even lived in the same building in Florence one floor apart.

Woolson’s work, however, didn’t fall neatly into one movement or another; she wasn’t strictly a regionalist nor was she a student of social mores.  She came between Sara Orne Jewett and Edith Wharton in time and hence, after much success, but uncategorizable, she was mostly forgotten after her early death.  The fact that her death was most likely by her own doing didn’t help.  I knew about Woolson from my reading of James’ biographies and was pleased to learn more about this vibrant, independent woman.  (~ JW Farrington)

Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson

Readers owe a debt of gratitude to Anne Boyd Rioux for her engaging literary biography of Woolson and for resurrecting a representative sample of her short stories.  Having read the biography with its detailed discussion of Woolson’s work, it is a treat to discover her.  I have now read a few of the stories here and so far liked the most the title story, “Miss Grief,”  about a successful young male writer and a middle-aged poor woman writer who wants to be published.  It has both some humor as well as pathos.

I found the nature imagery too rhapsodic for my taste in her Great Lakes story, “St. Clair Flats,” but I thought the premise of “A Florentine Experiment” with its twists and turns was intriguing and with its emphasis on dialogue definitely reflective of Henry James.  Both the biography and the story collection were published in 2016.  (~ JW Farrington)

 

Maine Musing: Music & Books

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MUSIC MEMORIES

The Chief Penguin and I went to a lovely organ concert recently. The occasion was the dedication of a new digital organ at All Saints by-the-Sea with a recital by noted local organist Sean Fleming. While listening to the swell of sound (quite marvelous really when you realize there are no pipes!), I reflected on my years in church choir, our various choir directors and organists, and what it was like to sit in the choir loft high above the congregation.

My childhood church was founded in 1811 and its first building was white frame and erected in 1817. When the congregation grew too large, the original building was moved up the street (it’s still standing and is today home to a food pantry) and a new stone Gothic edifice was built in 1869. This imposing building had a huge sanctuary with a long center aisle, balcony seating along the sides, and a choir loft and massive pipe organ in the back. It was where my family worshipped and where the Chief Penguin and I were married. Unfortunately, in 1973, the steeple fell and destroyed much of the building. Rather than trying to repair this expensive-to-heat church, the congregation built a new modern church across town.

I sang in one choir or another from first grade through high school. The church leadership valued good music and, thanks in part to that organ, was able to attract talent greater than our small town probably warranted. Frank Pethel, organist and choir director (officially titled Minister of Music), was the most memorable choir director I’ve ever known. Warm and engaging and extremely talented, he was great at coaxing eager young choristers to produce tuneful results.

Choir rehearsal was after school on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. My friend Linda and I would walk from our elementary school to the church. It seemed like a very long walk. Probably not as long as I thought and we certainly dawdled a bit on the way. In any case, smart man that he was, Frank, with his ever ready smile, would meet us on the lawn in front of the church and lead us in a fast and lively game like “Steal the Bacon.” After 15 or 20 minutes of this, we had used up enough excess energy to be ready to go inside, sit and sing.

In church, I always enjoyed watching Frank’s feet fly on the organ petals as he rose and gyrated from his seat and his hands reached and pulled out and pushed in one stop after another. His teaching made me a better singer and gave me an appreciation for sacred music. He also had a sense of humor; to make it easier for us kids to remember how to pronounce, “in excelsis…,” he said think of it as “eggshell Sis.”

Other choir directors followed Frank who was lured back home to the south and a larger church in North Carolina.  Mr. K. was an adequate choir director, but with a very serious demeanor and seemingly no sense of humor, not a favorite.

Dave Caddis was a German professor at the community college and also parttime at the church. Tall and rangy with a head of thick brown hair, he always moved briskly and was somewhat irreverent.  I was a teenager during his tenure and he seemed hip and kept our attention. I can never hear Schubert’s  “Heilig, heilig, heilig” without singing it to myself and remembering Mr. Caddis introducing it to us.

My choir days pretty much ended when I went off to college, but I’m fond of hymns and very much enjoy hearing and singing them.

MAINE LIFE

The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve

For this novel, Shreve has taken as her jumping off point a disastrous fire on the coast of Maine in 1947 that destroyed several towns. The opening chapters are a mood piece chronicling the daily life of Grace, a wife with two young children and a difficult husband, in the weeks leading up to event. All the mundane chores of running a house on a limited income, feeding a family, and minding the children, interspersed with bright chatter with next door neighbor and close friend Rosie. When the fire hits, Grace retreats with her children to the beach and they survive; her husband’s fate is unknown.

As usual, Shreve’s characters are believable and her story pulls the reader in. I read this book quickly and it engaged my emotions, but I found the ending fanciful. Perhaps Shreve thought her readers needed a happy ending to offset the devastation of the fire. (~ JW Farrington)

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).