Category: Books

Round-up: Books & Film

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Books

My recent reading has ranged from the very serious to the quite serious to the more frivolous.

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor. Sound depressing, but it wasn’t. Yes, Ms. Fechtor did suffer a brain aneurysm at the tender age of 28, but her optimistic spirit and determination along with time in the kitchen saw her through a 2-year recovery period. There are medical details here, but also wonderful passages about the role of food and the emotional as well as physical sustenance good cooking can provide. She is a PhD candidate at Harvard as well as author of the Sweet Amandine food blog.

Consequence by Eric Fair. This is a memoir by a former soldier and contractor who was posted to Iraq and served as an interrogator. It is a disturbing, unsettling read, but one I couldn’t abandon. Mr. Fair grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., was active in the First Presbyterian Church there, and after college became a police officer before serving in the Iraq War.

With its spare, unemotional style, it’s almost as if Mr. Fair is writing about someone other than himself. He made a series of poor choices from high school onward and while stating that he made them and acknowledging that some of them were unwise, he doesn’t seem to own them. And he did things at Abu Graib that he feels guilty about and that haunt him, but he has not reached any closure. It probably took some courage to write this book (neither the military nor his contractor company come off very well), but I found it hard to applaud him for doing so.

Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George. Hard to believe, but this is the 19th Inspector Lynley mystery. Inspector Barbara Havers is the primary mover with Lynley in a more supporting role as she and Nkata delve into the murder of a noted feminist author and the convoluted relationships she had with her personal assistant and her publisher. Not her best, but still entertaining.

The Restaurant Critic’s Wife by Elizabeth LaBan. This is a novel about food and restaurants, but even more so about the trials of being a stay-at-home mother of two young children constrained by a husband’s demands that she remain inconspicuous and invisible. Craig LaBan is the longtime restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and originally from New Orleans like Sam Soto in the book. For my Philly foodie friends, this lighthearted fare will have you guessing which restaurants are being reviewed!

Film Fare

Eye in the Sky. There are several female actors whose films I would see no matter what and they include Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. In this film, Helen Mirren is the British colonel in charge of a missile strike on some key terrorist leaders who are holed up in a house in a residential area outside Nairobi. She, working with the general played by Alan Rickman, must evaluate how great are the odds of injury or death to nearby civilians (including a young girl) and get all the stakeholders to agree to the timing of the strike. The stakeholders are scattered from England to Nevada and both British and U.S. leaders and politicians are involved or need to be consulted. A sobering and suspenseful look at how warfare by drone is carried out.

Love & Friendship. This one’s for Jane Austen fans of which I’m one. Based on her short novel, Lady Susan, it’s not a great film, but an enjoyable one. There are lots of characters, the principal ones introduced with name, title and relationship in the opening scenes, which makes for a somewhat slow beginning. The pace picks up once Lady Susan, schemer extraordinaire, is installed at her sister-in-law’s country estate, and begins to weave her web to ensnare Sir James Martin for her daughter Frederica and Sir Reginald deCourcy for herself. But, complications ensue, her true colors start to emerge, and what ultimately results is a complete turnabout.

 

Tidy Tidbits: Asolo & Morland

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BACKSTAGE AT ASOLO

We had the opportunity to take a backstage tour at the Asolo Repertory Theater’s Mertz Theater earlier this week and it was fascinating.  There was a tech rehearsal in progress (just what it sounds like, all the technical aspects of the production—lighting, sound, projection, etc.—run through), and we got a peek at the set for the upcoming musical, Josephine as well as having the chance to walk around on stage and in the wings.  We also toured the costume shop (could have spent the rest of the morning here!) and Cook Theater which is the home of the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training (what a mouthful, that is).

This three-year graduate program is one of the top ten in the U.S. and accepts only 12 students each year.  As part of their training, in addition to a season of plays at Asolo, they get six weeks of theater in London, the chance to make presentations in New York, and earn their MFA degree and an Equity card.  Impressive!  I really knew nothing about this program and wonder how many people in the area are similarly uninformed.  Next year, we’ll be sure to go to some of these student productions.  Kudos to Sarasota and to our tour host, Scott Guin.

JOSEPHINE

Josephine Baker was an American singer and dancer who became famous in Paris as a star performer at the Folies-Bergere during the 1930’s and 40’s.  A poor black woman from St. Louis, she was not welcomed or wanted in the white nightclub scene.  This is preview week for Josephine and we were there on the second night.  The production is an ambitious one for Asolo and both demanding and challenging for the technical team as well as the actors.  We enjoyed the show, as they say, but overall feel it will benefit from some more tweaking and tightening up as the week unfolds.  Less than two minutes into the opening scene, the fire alarm went off (probably due to stage smoke) and everyone, audience and actors, had to exit the theater for about 10 minutes.  I imagine this had an effect on the actors.

Despite everything I would recommend seeing it and wish that I could see it again in several weeks.  See it for the intricate sets and creative use of projection (newsreels, e.g.), see it for the stunningly gorgeous costumes and headdresses, see it for the four guys who have a heck of a lot of fun dancing, see it for Prince Gustaf of Sweden and the swan bed, see it to hear Deborah Cox as a multi-faceted Josephine.  Other standout performances were Lynette DuPree as the brassy, but savvy Bricktop, and Tori Bates, the simply amazing 11-year old who plays young Josephine and practically steals the show with her vigorous tapping and big voice.

 

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INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES THRIVING

“These are heady days for independent booksellers, whose ranks have grown to 1,712 bookstores operating in 2,227 locations in 2015, compared with 1,410 bookstores in 1,660 locations in 2010, according to the American Booksellers Association.  Even Amazon.com Inc. has opened a bookstore in Seattle and has a second planned for La Jolla, Calif.”  One bookstore featured in this Wall Street Journal article has reduced the size of the stock on its shelves, but added a print-on-demand device, Espresso Book Machine, which provides access to hundreds of thousands of titles.  (April 20, 2016, “How Tech is Bringing Readers Back into Bookstores,” by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg).

NOT QUITE BEACH FARE

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is a prolific British novelist fascinated by history.  Over the past decade or so I’ve been reading my way systematically through her Morland Dynasty series.  Set mostly in Yorkshire, the first book, The Founding (published in 1980), opens in 1434 with a marriage that launches the dynasty and covers the period of the War of the Roses.  Each novel builds on the previous one and together they constitute a detailed lesson in British history—wars, social issues, governments and politicians, food and dress, all intertwined with the lives of successive generations of Morlands and their home at Morland Place.  The writing is straightforward and her characters are quite engaging, but sometimes the plots tend toward the formulaic.

To her credit, Harrod-Eagles has done extensive research and often you feel like you are part of the time being evoked.  I found the novels that dealt with the women’s suffrage movement especially absorbing.  Other times, I got bogged down in the specifics of yet another military battle.

I’ve now almost completed Book 33, The Dancing Years, set in 1919, which juxtaposes the club high life of the rich with the harsh realities of unemployment for others.  The series was popular from its inception and the scope kept being expanded partly because Harrod-Eagles covered shorter intervals of time in each book.  I read it was to continue up to WWII, but Book 35, the latest one, is set in 1931 so we’ll see.  She has also written a mystery series, several contemporary novels, and, most recently, a separate WWI series.

Header photo:  Mertz Theater (www.asolorep.org)

Book Notes: Strout & Winspear

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BOOK GROUPS

I have been a participant in a book group of some sort almost forever.  In my 20’s, I was part of a group that was made up of English professors and two librarians, me being one of the latter.  All members were female.  I can’t recall the titles we discussed, but I do know I felt intimidated by the intellectual heft of this assemblage.  Over time I came to realize that this feeling was due somewhat to the competitive egos of these women each one trying to outdo the other with her insights.

In my 30’s, a colleague and I co-founded a lunchtime book group with the possibly risque Fear of Flying by Erica Jong as our first title.  Still going strong, the group  is democratically run with everyone taking a turn selecting a book and leading the discussion.  Subsequently, I’ve been a member of two women’s book groups on the west coast, one with a paid facilitator and the other more casual where the members choose the book by consensus.  Having a paid leader was quite a different experience; she presented the options for what we might read and had some definite ideas about each work.  She was a skillful facilitator and her unique lens made for lively discussions.

In my last job, I convened and facilitated a book group for museum members which focused on books related to science and the natural world.  While there were a few regulars, different people showed up each time, making each meeting its own event with little in the way of a cohesive group.  One particularly noteworthy book was the graphic biography of Marie and Pierre Curie, Radioactive by Lauren Redniss.   This group expanded my own reading of science-related works—who would have thought it?

Today I follow the selections of my San Francisco book group virtually (and even occasionally read the book) as well as participate in a group here in Florida.  I like the discipline of reading a book for discussion, particularly if it is one that I wouldn’t otherwise have read.  I enjoy the give and take of a group and am keen to hear others’ perspectives—it enriches and expands the reading experience!

RECENT READING

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  The book group here is small and only meets five times a year, but it does offer an opportunity to share reactions to a work.  My Name is Lucy Barton was my pick for April.  I thought Strout’s earlier book, Olive Kittredge, was excellent and it’s a title I’ve recommended over and over and given as a gift.

My first reading of Lucy Barton left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.  It’s a quiet book with an intriguing structure (a novel within a novel) that I didn’t fully appreciate until re-read it more slowly.  This time I was drawn in and captured by Lucy’s plaintive child-like voice and her slightly probing, but mostly unsatisfactory, conversations with her mother.  Her accounts of the abject poverty her family experienced (living for many years in a garage), her allusions to the abuse she suffered, her struggle to pass in a sophisticated Manhattan world, and her growing sense of herself as a writer and a person worth knowing, unfold during her mother’s nights at her hospital bedside and in Lucy’s reflections years after.  It’s a novel about a mother-daughter relationship weighted with love, need, and tension and about the mean-spiritedness of social class that divides and separates people.  It’s also a novel about what it means to be a writer and the story that person has to tell.

Here’s Lucy reflecting on her behavior:

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves.  I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.  I know faintly, even now, that I have embarrassed myself, and it always comes back to the feeling of childhood, that huge pieces of knowledge about the world were missing that can never be replaced.  But still—I do it for others, even as I sense that others do it for me.”

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear.  On a different note, I always look forward to the next installment in the Maisie Dobbs mystery series.  This one did not disappoint.  Maisie is given the assignment of going to Munich in 1938 in disguise as his daughter to rescue a man important to the British government.  Leon Donat is being held in Dachau and Munich is a tense and pall-laden city as Hitler tightens his grip on the country.  What happens in a Winspear novel is as much interior as it is overt action.  Maisie’s character is so well-fleshed out that her thinking and her pragmatic and philosophical approach to life ring true and provide a backdrop for the events that unfold.  For those readers who haven’t read the previous books, Winspear fills in Maisie’s history and the life-altering events that have shaped who she is now.

 

 

Tidy Times: Films & More

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ENJOYABLE CINEMA

We ended the Sarasota Film Festival on a high note with two very good films, one a feature and the other a documentary from Argentina.

The Congressman.  Starring Treat Williams with George Hamilton, this feature-length film was written by former Long Island representative, Robert Mzarek.  Set in Maine, it’s an old-fashioned film with a straightforward plot about an embattled congressman who returns to his district and simultaneously deals with embittered residents there and a contretemps brewing back in DC.  There’s an overly ambitious aide, an attractive woman, and beautiful Monhegan Island.  Mr. Mzarek was at the screening and called it a “message film” and in the style of Frank Capra.  I predict success at the box office when it goes into distribution.

Our Last Tango.  Prepared to be seduced by dance.  This documentary about a very famous dance couple is both a celebration of the tango and a dissection of a partnership.  Argentinians Maria Nieves and Juan Copes were tango dance partners for more than 40 years.  He selected her and they were both professional partners and for a short time husband and wife (married in Las Vegas during their tour of the States).  In the film, she’s now 80 and he 83 and interviews with each of them separately are interspersed between clips of their tangoing.  She is alternately sparkling about her love of the dance and philosophical about being old and alone.  He, on the other hand, is taciturn and a man of fewer words, but still loving and living for the tango.

RELEVANT THEATER

Asolo Repertory Theatre continues to delight and entertain us.  We just saw “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”  The set with its view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the dining room window brought on a touch of nostalgia for our San Francisco years.  Although the play takes place in 1967, it still seemed relevant, and I credit the cast for achieving the right balance of humor and seriousness.  I saw the movie (starring Sidney Poitier as a surprising guest) when it first came out, but had forgotten how meaty some of the dialogue is—at least in this version.  Well worth seeing.

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COMPELLING NONFICTION

I’m currently about half way through Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies:  Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  It is informative and well-researched, as you would expect, but written in a very lively fashion with bits of humor along with Traister’s observations and anecdotes about her own life experiences.  As such, it’s a very pleasurable read and I recommend it!

I should add that while I don’t know Ms. Traister, I was predisposed to like this book since I’ve known both her parents.  Her father was a colleague in Penn’s libraries and her mother I knew at Lehigh University where she was an English professor.

 

 

 

 

Header photo:  Golden rain tree  (cJW Farrington)