Category: Books

The Power of Reading: Book List #2

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WHY WE SHOULD READ.  I love the Wall Street Journal (for a host of reasons),  but their tight firewall only allows subscribers to access the full text of an article.  So I’m going to quote from the lead essay in the November 26-27 Review section.  It’s by Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club, and is entitled, “The Need to Read.”  I think it’s excellent.

“Books are uniquely suited to helping us change our relationship to the rhythms and habits of daily life in this world of endless connectivity.  We can’t interrupt books; we can only interrupt ourselves while reading them.  They are the expression of an individual or group of individuals, not of a hive mind or collective consciousness.  They speak to us, thoughtfully, one at a time.  They demand our attention.  And they demand that we briefly put aside our own beliefs and prejudices and listen to someone else’s.  You can rant against a book, scribble in the margin or even chuck it out the window.  Still, you won’t change the words on the page.”

And after providing examples of books that have influenced him or changed his mind or made him wiser from Stuart Little to The Odyssey to Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea to Reading Lolita in Tehran, Mr. Schwalbe salutes the power of reading:

“Books remain one of the strongest bulwarks we have against tyranny—but only as long as people are free to read all different kinds of books, and only as long as they actually do so.  The right to read whatever you want whenever you want is one of the fundamental rights that helps us preserve all the other rights.  It’s a right we need to guard with unwavering diligence.  But it’s also a right we can guard with pleasure.  Reading isn’t just a strike against narrowness, mind control and domination:  It’s one of the world’s great joys.”

In these somewhat unsettled times, his words resonate with me.

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BOOK LIST FROM MY BLOG

And here, in time for your holiday shopping should you choose, is the list of books I’ve mentioned in the blog since June.

Buruma, Ian                          Their Promised Land (biography, July)

Belfer, Lauren                       And After the Fire (novel, June)

Brower, Kate A.                    First Women:…First Ladies (biography, June)

Gyasi, Yaa                              Homegoing (novel, June)

Lewis, Sinclair                      Main Street (novel, June)

Purnell, Sonia                       Clementine (biography, June)

Cambor, Kathleen                In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden (novel, July)

Church, Elizabeth J.             The Atomic Weight of Love (novel, July)

Cooper, Anderson                The Rainbow Comes & Goes (nonfiction, July)

Delinsky, Barbara                 Blueprints (novel, July)

Doiron, Paul                          The Poacher’s Son (mystery, July)

McCoy, Sarah                       The Mapmaker’s Children (novel, July)

Simonson, Helen                 The Summer Before the War (novel, July)  

Smith, Dominic                   The Last Painting of Sara de Vos (novel, July)

Cleave, Chris                        Everyone Brave is Forgiven (novel, July)

Haigh, Jennifer                    Heat & Light (novel, Aug.)

Matar, Hisham                    In the Country of Men (novel, Aug.)

McCann, Colum                  Dancer (novel, Aug.) 

George, Elizabeth               Believing the Lie (mystery, Aug.)

Thompson, Victoria           Murder in Chelsea (mystery, Aug.)

Cleve, Chris                          Everyone Brave is Forgiven (novel, Aug.)  

Erdrich, Louise                    LaRose (novel, Aug.)

Donati, Sara                         The Gilded Hour (novel, Sept.)

Sweeney, Cynthia                The Nest (novel, Sept.)

Haruf, Kent                           Our Souls at Night (novel, Sept.)

Carr, David                           Night of the Gun (memoir, Oct.)

Harrod-Eagles, C.               Orchestrated Death (mystery, Oct.)

Hadley, Tessa                       The Past (novel, Oct.)

Goodwin, Daisy                    Victoria (novel, Nov.)

 

Note:  Photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

 

 

 

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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ROYALS—WATCHING AND READING

qe2  I read so much about the Netflix series, The Crown, while I was in London, I couldn’t wait to start watching it once I returned home.  And now, I’m enthralled!  It is so well done, elaborate, lavish even, and the family dynamics (exiled Duke of Windsor, Prince Philip’s role in their marriage once she’s queen) and back stories are fascinating.  Claire Foy as Elizabeth is mesmerizing too.young-victoria

I also just read Victoria by Daisy Goodwin.  It was for sale in the UK in paperback and just was published here in the U.S.  I believe that Goodwin wrote the script for the upcoming “Masterpiece” TV series before she wrote the novel.  In any case, the two are linked.  The novel is about Victoria’s first years as queen.  She was only 18 when she ascended to the throne and had been protected and managed by her mother, her mother’s special friend, John Conroy, and her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland.  They were all seeking power and influence over her.  Victoria, if this account is to be believed and questions have been raised, became reliant on, and perhaps even developed a tendresse for her prime minister, Lord Melbourne.  Whether all true or not, it’s an absorbing and enjoyable read.  And one realize politics always exists whether in the foreground or background!

OTHER RECENT READING

The Past by Tessa Hadley

This novel has been much touted.  Initially I wasn’t sure I liked it.  The writing was lovely, full of imagery related to the English countryside, but there didn’t seem to be much of a focus.  And I wasn’t fond of Alice, the first of the four siblings to be introduced. She seemed too diffuse and scatterbrained.  She and her sisters, Harriet, the eldest who never married, and Fran, mother of two young children, plus their brother Roland are to spend three weeks at a summer cottage that belonged to their grandparents.  They are gathering partly to decide whether or not to sell the cottage.

Roland arrives last with his third wife, the Argentinian Pilar, who is different and definitely an outsider.  The other sisters both want and don’t want to like her and her very difference gives her status.  Roland brings his 16-year old daughter Molly, and Alice has included Kasim, the son of her former boyfriend, who is in his early 20’s.

It’s a novel of shifting relationships, more than action, full of undercurrents and nuanced encounters.  These now middle-aged adults engage and assess and disagree with one another all the while observing or not the attraction between Molly and Kasim. And ignoring to some extent what the children, Arthur and Ivey, are hatching.  In three sections, the first and last are the present and the middle section is The Past.  It focuses on Jill, the adult siblings’ mother, long since deceased, and is to me that which links everything together.  I liked this section best and it made it possible for me to re-appreciate the first part and to really enjoy what Hadley does in the closing section.  img_0062

Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

I have been working my way through Harrod-Eagles’ Morland Dynasty series, but have just discovered her police detective series.  Where the Morland series is measured, detail-laden prose steeped in English history from the 12th century on (there are 30+ volumes), this first Bill Slider mystery is contemporary, fun, and romantic, all at the same time.  Middle-aged Slider is on the cusp of burnout when he is assigned the case of the murder of young violinist Anne-Marie Austen.  Her death haunts him personally more than most cases although he soon discovers that she was unlikable and had few friends.

Slider is well-drawn and appealing while his partner and friend Atherton, O’Flaherty, the desk sergeant, and Joanna, Anne-Marie’s colleague and Slider’s love interest, are also well fleshed out characters.  Harrod-Eagles here writes with a verve and feeling which outshines her other series.  I’m looking forward to Bill Slider’s future adventures.

Note: Queen Victoria photo–www.yareah.com

Loafing in London

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We arrived yesterday morning in London and powered through the day with lots of walking, one nap, and a respectable early bedtime.  Today we increased our step count exploring Knightsbridge (think Harrod’s Food Hall) and spending time in both Hyde Park and Green Park.  The rose garden was mostly over except for one or two last blooms.img_1194 img_1206img_1219

 

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The Latter Days by Judith Freeman
Continuing my reading of memoirs by writers and reporters, I read this one by novelist Judith Freeman. She was brought up in the Mormon faith, but strained against its strictures and rules from an early age. Certainly by her teen years, she was rebelling internally, being given talks by one of the church elders, and subjected to little chats with her mother who admonished her to behave more like her older sister, Marcia.

Somewhat surprisingly, Freeman married a local boy at seventeen, got pregnant very soon thereafter and surrendered any thought of college for herself. Later she and her husband moved from Utah to Minnesota and grew even farther away from the church.

Freeman’s memoir is straightforward and plain as she recounts a childhood starved of warmth and thin on material goods. I found some of the early chapters slow, but appreciated more her later discussion of the turquoise notebook she found from her high school years and how she was eventually able to quench her thirst for learning and channel her desire to become a writer. She has written several novels based on her Mormonism.

All photos copyright JWFarrington

Manhattan Moments: Addicts & Immigrants

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As I’ve walked around the West Village, I’ve been struck by the variety of wrought iron railing and fence designs.  Some examples here plus notes on David Carr’s memoir and the Tenement Museum.

 

RECENT READING
The Night of the Gun by David Carr
At the Aspen Ideas Festival several years ago, I saw Andrew Rossi’s film, Page One, a documentary about the New York Times. Then I experienced seeing and hearing journalist David Carr on a panel following the screening. Mr. Carr was featured prominently in the film and was both articulate and a character. My curiosity piqued, I added his 2008 memoir to my to-be-read list. The book lingered on a wish list until finally I loaded it onto my Kindle and decided its time had come.
Sadly, Mr. Carr collapsed at work in February 2015 and died. His memoir is raw, graphic, sometimes tedious, and ultimately hopeful. A risk taker and addicted to crack cocaine, he, nonetheless, managed to hold down good professional jobs by day while hanging out with some of the less savory elements of society by night. In and out of detox facilities and arrested numerous times, mistreating one girlfriend after another, he was ultimately saved by being needed to care for his twin daughters.

Unlike the standard recovery memoir, this one takes the form of the author going to interview the people he hurt in the past to hear their account of events and how it tallied with his memory. Not an easy book to read, but I felt I learned a lot about David Carr and appreciated even more what he was able to accomplish.

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IMMIGRANT FAMILIES

Thanks to a great recommendation from my friend Patricia, we visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in the Bowery. It was a lovely morning and so we walked the mile and a half, passing through less polished neighborhoods and lots of grafittied buildings. The museum purchased 87 Orchard Street, a 5-story tenement built in 1863, in 1989 and soon thereafter began offering tours of selected apartments.

Parts of the building are unrestored to preserve for visitors something closely akin to the residents’ experience. Other apartments have been restored to look like and be furnished like they were when real people lived in them. The building had 22 apartments and a German beer saloon on the ground level and was occupied by residents from the 1860’s until 1935. In that year, new legislation mandated changes to meet stricter building codes that the owner opted not to implement.
We did the “Hard Times” tour led by the very knowledgeable Rachel Wetter which introduced us to two apartments; one inhabited by the German Jewish Gumpertz family in the 1870’s and 80’s, and the other by the Italian Catholic Baldizzi family who resided there from about 1924 until 1935. The apartments were small and early on without electricity, running water or indoor toilets. Mr. Gumpertz was a shoemaker who disappeared one day and never returned to his family. His wife became a dressmaker for a time. Mr. Baldizzi was a carpenter. One day his daughter who spend some of her childhood years in that apartment just showed up at the museum. She subsequently gave the museum artifacts to add to “their” apartment.

There are several other tours offered each day and we plan to return. And next year, new stories of Puerto Rican and Chinese immigrants will be featured.

[All photos copyright JWFarrington]

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