Category: Books

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

JWF 2 Comments

VIEWING

Dr. Thorne.  This adaptation of Trollope’s novel on Amazon Prime was written and produced by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame.  It’s a short series, only 4 episodes, but each one is introduced and closed by Mr. Fellowes.  Formally dressed sitting in a chair in what appears to be a library, his remarks are engaging and informative and delivered with a twinkle.  Mr. Fellowes is a talented man, witness the wild success of Downton, and recently his latest novel, Belgravia, was issued in hardcover, but first  serialized a la Charles Dickens on a downloadable app.  Pushing the envelope, as they say.

I don’t think Dr. Thorne is great television, but it was diverting and fun to watch while being on the treadmill.

READING

The Rainbow Comes and Goes:  A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.  I had eyed this book in the store and was pleased when my friend Sue sent it on for me to read.  Gloria Vanderbilt is a famous name, but I didn’t know much of anything about her life, particularly her early life.  In this book, the sharing of a year-long e-mail correspondence between her and her son, she unloads about her lovelorn and tumultuous childhood and her rootless adulthood before her successful marriage to Wyatt Cooper.  You learn much more about her than you do about him, although he shares his feelings about the premature deaths of his father and his brother and about his coming out as gay to his mother.  What is remarkable about this book is that mother (at 91) and son (48) were able to have this frank discussion and to make themselves vulnerable in this way.

LOADED UP

As I get ready to be in Maine, I’m pondering which paper books to take as well as loading up my Kindle.  I will have far more books at hand than I will ever get to, but I relish having choices and never want to be without enough reading material.  You’d think there weren’t any bookstores in Maine!  Actually, there are branches of Sherman’s, an independent regional store, in Portland, Boothbay Harbor, and Damariscotta.

Anyway, here are a few of the titles I have waiting on my Kindle, all novels plus two mysteries and none looking to be too heavy.  Perfect for summer!

Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh.  A new novel about fracking by this talented author set in a small Pennsylvania town.  She also wrote Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, both excellent.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith.  A 17th century Dutch painting is the focus of this novel spanning several decades by native Australian Smith, who now lives in Texas.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave.  He’s the author of one of my all-time favorite best books, Little Bee.  This is his new novel set during WWII.

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson.  She wrote the very popular novel, Mr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand, about intercultural relationships.  This one is set in 1914.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.  An early Inspector Gamache mystery, as always set in Three Pines, Quebec.

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd.  This is the 7th in the Bess Crawford mystery series written by a mother-son team.

Tidy Tidbits: Of Books and Burgers

JWF 7 Comments

SUMMER READING

I generally ignore the Parade magazine that comes with our local Sunday paper.  Last week, though, the “Summer Reading Issue” note in the top corner piqued my curiosity.  Parade asked Ann Patchett to come up with a list of the 75 best books of the past 75 years in celebration of the magazine’s anniversary.  Patchett is an author I respect and whose novels I’ve enjoyed.   I admire her for being the force behind the launch of an independent bookstore in Nashville.  She and her staff devised the list and the titles are arranged by decade from the 1940’s to the present.  Liking lists, I went through it and discovered that I’ve only read about a third of them.  Here’s a link to the list and her rationale for several of the choices.

WHAT I’M READING

Their Promised Land:  My Grandparents in Love and War by Ian Buruma.

As you know, I’m a fan of memoirs.  This one was given to me by my friend Patricia.  I had set it aside for a bit and finally decided I need to give it a go.  It’s a charming and complex love story and a peek into personal and societal emotions and actions during the two world wars.  Buruma’s grandparents, Bernard and Win Schlesinger, were very English, yet the generation before them, his great grandparents were German Jews who immigrated to Britain.  Win and Bernard were not actively practicing Jews, yet he faced discrimination when he sought positions as a doctor at various London hospitals (“the old 45,” the family called such prejudice).

During a very long engagement and while separated during the wars, they wrote numerous letters to each other.  Their correspondence is a starting point for Buruma’s personal reflections and his affectionate, yet candid, interpretation of their lives.  My own paternal grandparents, although living quite a different life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were roughly the same age as his and this added to my interest in the Schlesingers’ story.

GRILLING

This is the 4th of July weekend.  I hope you are celebrating somewhere with hamburgers or hot dogs and perhaps a parade.  Throughout my growing up, my folks belonged to the local yacht club—some members had sailboats (not yachts), but for us, it was really just a swim club.  Almost every warm summer evening, we’d pack up the picnic basket and head to the lake for a swim and then meat (often hamburgers) done on the grill.  Upstate NY has a limited supply of perfect days so you have to take advantage of them.  Watching the sun set over the lake was also required and lovely, provided you remembered your sweater.  It took me a long time to break that habit when I moved to warmer, humid Philadelphia.  I had to re-learn it—never leave home without a jacket—when I lived in cool, foggy San Francisco.  GCF grill

Over the years, the Chief Penguin and I have had a sporadic relationship with grilling.  Very early on, we owned one of those small hibachi grills which fit on our apartment balcony.  Later we graduated to a Weber grill with a cover and then in San Francisco we indulged in a modest gas grill.  That gas grill got very little use, I confess, as the C.P. said it produced a wimpy amount of heat.

Now, after a year of long discussion with our grilling neighbor and a lot of dithering around, we’re the proud owners of a charcoal kettle grill—not the fancy, very expensive green egg, but a black one that, nonetheless, will reach temperatures up to 600 degrees.  My master griller (and this is definitely a masculine role) is enthusiastic about this new project and has acquired the essential equipment (gloves, racks and trays, and best of all, a wireless thermometer) as well as several new cookbooks.  He is now checking off his list of “must-trys.”  Everything from pizza to lamb chops to shrimp to steak and a whole roast chicken.  And, of course, hamburgers!

Header photo:  reallytimes.com

 

Moments in June

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SUMMER RED

June in upstate New York means fresh locally grown strawberries.  We lived in a city, a small one that is still the county seat, but it was really more of a small town—surrounded by farm land.  My mother never let me forget that when I returned home one time, perhaps from college, I commented on how rural the area was.  In years to come, she’d kid me about “rural” Auburn.

Auburn is also only a few miles from Owasco Lake.  Owasco is one of the smaller Finger Lakes, but yet, it is 11 miles long, cold and deep (177 feet deep at its maximum).  You hoped by the 4th of July that not only would the sweet corn by ripe for picking, but that the lake would be warm enough to swim.  Warm enough here meant something a tad above frigid.

The region was dotted with farm stands and everyone had his personal favorite.  Come June, my father would frequently stop at one on his way home from work .  He’d arrive, through the front door, smiling and proudly bearing the first quarts of local berries.  Dessert would be strawberry shortcake, and that was my mother’s sign to quickly whip up a batch of biscuits.  In our house, shortcake meant biscuits, none of those wimpy, sweet patty shells for this family, but freshly baked, sometimes still warm, flaky biscuits.

One of us girls, or “you girls,” as my mother would say, would be assigned the task of hulling the berries.  At dessert time the biscuits were split down the middle, perhaps a pat of butter added, and then the berries, sliced and slightly crushed, would be ladled on top.  The combo of the sweet berries juicy on the pastry was the essence of early summer.  On rare occasions a dollop of vanilla ice cream added a bit of indulgence.

Now we can buy strawberries all year round and live not far from Florida’s commercial strawberry fields.  Strawberries are no longer special, but my memory of the first strawberry shortcake of the season is.

NOVEL OF THE WEEK

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.  How do you tell the story of the subjugation of blacks in 18th and 19th century Ghana midst centuries of tribal warfare?  How do you trace the history of slavery in America from Africa to the American South to the present day?  Born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Ms. Gyasi has created a rich and memorable novel that only broadly sketches the big picture and instead focuses on the six succeeding generations of two half-sisters both born in Ghana.

One branch of the family stays in Ghana for many years before coming to the U.S.; the other is enslaved on Southern plantations through the Civil War and then becomes part of the Great Migration to Harlem.  Each chapter in this novel is about a different individual at a certain point in time; each is an imperfect human, seeking to craft a life.  Gyasi is sympathetic, never judgmental, and the result is that frailty, love, hate, conviction, and strength are interwoven throughout.  This is a remarkable first novel!  For more about how she approached writing it, here’s her conversation with Slate.

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RAINBOW COLORS

This weekend is the annual date for several large Gay Pride parades—New York and San Francisco to name two.  In 1978, I attended the American Library Association conference in San Francisco.  This was not the first ALA I had attended, but it was the first time I visited that city.  ALA’s summer conference was typically over the last weekend in June and so it overlapped with SF’s Gay Pride parade on Sunday.  Going to and from meetings at various conference hotels, it was almost impossible to avoid crossing Market Street and encountering the parade.  Sheltered and probably somewhat naïve, I was stunned, transfixed, and a bit shocked by this boisterous and colorful display of costumes and flesh.  It was my first experience of that aspect of gay culture.

Fast forward twenty or more years.  The Chief Penguin and I were part of the diverse sidewalk throng enjoying New York’s Gay Pride parade and soaking up the vibe.  Advance another few years and we ended up living in San Francisco.  SF’s inclusiveness was apparent on many fronts and we were proud of our own very diverse workplace, the California Academy of Sciences.  We have seen great progress with more legal protection from gender discrimination, greater acceptance of gays, and the right to marry whomever you choose.  And yet, we had the tragedy in Orlando.

The American Library Association, an organization that has advocated for library services here and around the world since 1876 with a core value of social responsibility and the public good, is this year holding its summer conference in Orlando.  That seems very right.

 

Header photo:  2013-11-Fresh-Strawberry-Fruit-Wallpaper.jpg

Tidy Tidbits: Bach, Beethoven & Clementine

JWF 4 Comments

READING

And After the Fire by Lauren Belfer.  Belfer is one of my favorite novelists.  I had been thinking about her and wondering if she had published anything recently when I happened upon her new novel at Three Lives in New York.  This historical novel deals with music, specifically a possible missing cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the actions taken in the name of religion, be it Jewish, Catholic or other.  Going back and forth in time between New York in the present, Germany in 1945, and the Berlin of Sara Levy from 1776 to the1851, it is a tale of mystery and discovery and prejudice.

Sara Levy is a harpsichord student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann’s son, and a real person.  The gift of a musical score from Wilhelm to his favored student Sara and what becomes of it after her death is a trail that Susanna Kessler, a young foundation executive, must unravel after the sudden death of her Uncle Henry who was a soldier in WWII.  Becoming entwined in the search to validate the score are competing Bach scholars, a disillusioned minister, and Susanna’s own family.  I found this a most engaging novel and quickly raced through it.  The characters, both real and imagined, are well drawn and the book is rich with details of academic politics, foundation business, library research, and, of course, Bach’s music.

About a week after I bought the novel, I was surprised to see an article about Belfer and her husband in the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday NYT under the heading, Classical, and entitled, “A Literary Couple Grapple with Bach and His God.”  It turns out her husband is a musicologist and they both published books in May—hers this novel and his a book of scholarly essays, Bach & God.  The article is an interview with them.

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Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell.  I’m well into this fascinating book.  It’s significant and surprising that until now, other than an account of her life by her daughter Mary, there has been no other biography of this complex, strong, and accomplished woman.  She was smart and very intuitive about people, but devoted her life to Winston and to furthering his career, sometimes to the detriment of her health and certainly to the dismay of her children.  She was about the only person who could and would stand up to Winston’s forceful personality and without her, his ultimate success in government is questionable.  But she needed to escape him periodically and she would go away for several months at a time without seeing him or their five children.  In public and even with close friends, she came across as always composed and often remote, but she also had a temper and could explode over a small detail.  Theirs was a fractious and complicated marriage with more time spent apart than together, resulting in a legacy of letters and notes.

WATCHING

While I wait for the next season of my Australian series, I’m deep into U.S. politics with the absorbing and very well crafted, Madam Secretary.  Tea Leoni as Secretary Elizabeth McCloud is smart, effective, beautiful and not above the occasional use of spy craft.  With background as a CIA analyst and then a professor, she brings an unusual resume to the job.  Her husband Henry is a noted religion scholar and professor who also possesses intelligence experience.  Episodes about crises in various parts of the world and diplomatic kerfuffles echo real life events of the past few years.  Adding to the enjoyment of the series is the portrayal of the McCords’ three children, especially their older daughter Stevie, a college dropout who is learning about the harsh realities of the job scene, and Elizabeth’s lively office staff.  I thought there was only one season, but just learned that it continues on prime time TV.

LISTENING

It’s June in Sarasota and that means the Sarasota Music Festival is in full swing along with the restaurant scene’s Savor Sarasota.  Last week we went to three concerts, all enjoyable, but the best one by far was the Saturday night symphony concert.  The orchestra was comprised of summer music students and the program included a simply  marvelous performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major by Noah Bendix-Balgley.  Bendix-Balgley is a former festival student of about a decade ago and joined the faculty in 2013.  In 2014, he was named the 1st Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic.  His is a career to follow!