Tag Archives: summer reading

Summer Reading: “Vertigo” & “Army without Banners”

The summer began on Memorial Day.  We sat at a picnic table wearing a vintage Chairman Mao cap (Chinese Revolution chic?), a Don’t Fall Run t-shirt, and yellow denim capris (the latter a “fashion-don’t”).  We were swilling iced tea and making a summer reading list.   I hope to read comedies and satires after devoting the spring to Greek tragedies! 

Here are two short books I recommend for summer reading, each under 200 pages. 

Vertigo, by Boileau-Narcejac.  This taut, elegantly-written French thriller, translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury, inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Vertigo.  The narrator, Flavieres, is a cop-turned-lawyer, who left the police after an episode of vertigo on a roof.  Another cop ran past him and continued to chase the crook. He fell off the roof and died. 

So Flavieres has a double history of trauma and vertigo.  And then his friend Gevigne hires him as a detective to follow his wife, Madeleine, who is, according to Gevigne, descending into madness.

What ensues is the stuff of hard-boiled noir.  Flavieres falls in love with beautiful, delicate Madeleine, who takes a lot of long walks. He is always crouching behind tombstones and barrels while she explores cemeteries or writes letters outside an inn. When she attempts suicide by jumping in the river, he saves her from drowning, and they develop a close friendship.  Later, after the famous bell-tower scene, he has a breakdown:  he is so obsessed with Madeleine that  he imagines her everywhere. 

.I wish I were a less literal person.  My familiarity with the Hitchcock film hindered my enjoyment of the mystery.  At a certain point, I began to superimpose  Hitchcock’s images on  he  narrative.  The actor Jimmy Stewart, aka Scottie, is as obsessive as Flavieres, but lacks his repulsive personality: it’s disconcerting to conflate two characters, one of whom is a movie star.  The sensitive, if extremely buxom Kim Novak also superseded delicate Madeleine in my imagination.  But in some ways, Kim Novak is perfect as the pseudo-Madeleine. In this film her acting is even stronger than Stewart’s.

If possible, read the book before you see the film, or at least before you’ve seen it half a dozen times. But here’s a Caveat: it is more disturbing than the film.

Ann Stafford, who co-authored a comic novel about working in a department store, Business As Usual, is also the author of an autobiographical book, Army without Banners. This slight book is billed as a novel, but reads like a collection of sketches. Set in London from October 1940 to December 1941, it is based on Stafford’s experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver during the Blitz in London.

The narrator, Mildred Gibson is busy doing volunteer work in the cozy village where she lives alone while her husband and son are away fighting the war.  But then her cousin Daphne writes asking her to come to London and volunteer with her as an ambulance driver.

That is the kind of letter we’d all dread, isn’t it?  Mildred is reluctant, but stoically volunteers.  She describes being ankle-deep in glass after a bombing; working to save two elderly sisters whose bombed house has lost a wall and a stairway; and the bombed and homeless lining up at the shelters. But it is not nonstop action: she describes long, dull hours at the ambulance station when there is nothing to do but knit or nap.

Jessica Hammett says in her introduction, “During the war it was agreed by many that it was easier to cope and control emotions if you were a part of a community.”  This is the case with Mildred and her fellow volunteers.

I recommend this poignant, uneven little book as a history of women volunteers in the Blitz. I am hanging onto my copy, not for the style, but because the later chapters are quite moving.

Summer Reading:  Veronica Raimo’s “Lost on Me,” Anthony Quayle’s “Eight Hours from England,” & Shannon Bowring’s “The Road to Dalton”

In this unexpectedly cool weather, I spend a portion of each day reading outdoors. It’s pleasant to bundle up in a cardigan and flop into a lawn chair: I’ve abandoned writing about books. Here is a catch-up post on three novels I’ve enjoyed.

Lost on Me, by Veronica Raimo, translated from Italian by Leah Janecko

Every sentence in Veronica Raimi’s charming coming-of-age novel, Lost on Me, is pitch-perfect.

I loved country life, and my dream was to have a farm, which conflicted with my other dream of becoming a rock star.

The narrator, Vero, blends humor and gentle hyperbole in vignettes about daily life. She has a bemused attitude toward her childhood and family relationships as she connects her history to her career as a writer. 

Raised by hypochondriac parents with strange hobbies, Vero and her older brother grow up to be writers. Their father builds walls in their apartment, so the rooms get smaller and smaller.  This is not a source of contention, yet their mother often escapes to her shrinking room with migraines where she listens to Radio 3.

While their father builds walls, their mother is melodramatic. She reminds me of Mrs. Glass in Franny and Zooey, wanting everything to be normal, but having no idea how to achieve this in her family of brilliant eccentrics, especially after Seymour’s suicide.  As an adult, Vero gets almost daily calls from her mother claiming her brother is dead (he hasn’t returned her calls). Her mother’s hysterics are comical, but at the same time there is an underlying panic, a fear of death. She does not worry about Vero. Her son is at the center of her thoughts.

Vero’s  mother is a larger-than-life figure. She nags them about how to write successfully.“My mother is convinced my brother and I have never become successful writers because we use too many swear words.  She sees our vice as an act of self-sabotage, but in it she also sees the last glimmers of our youthful rebellion toward her.”

The author, Veronica Raimo, won the Strega Giovani Prize for Lost on Me and has also won the Strega Prize.

Eight Hours from England, by Anthony Quayle. Anthony Quale was an English actor known for his roles in Lawrence of Arabia and The Guns of Navarrone.  He also acted on the stage and was the director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre for eight years. 

Who knew he was a writer?

Eight Hours from England is an autobiographical novel set in the Balkans during World War II; it focuses on intelligence work rather than battles. The narrator, Major John Overton, is sent to Albania to run a special operation as a liaison between two factions in Albania, the Partisans (Communists who fight the Germans) and the Ballists (pro-German: they believe life under the Germans would be better than Communist rule).  John  cannot persuade the Albanian factions to compromise, because their feuds are too long and complicated.

John Quayle

In this beautifully-written novel, there are sharply-observed descriptions of the mountains contrasted with the men’s exhausting hikes in battered footwear; a wry observation of their weariness of eating goat meat; and the uncomfortable realization that they must huddle together, lice, fleas, and all, to keep warm in a cave where they must hide.

The dialogue is excellent: there’s something a bit movie-esque about it, perhaps because of Quayle’s background. I enjoyed and recommend this novel, the second I’ve read in the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics series of Second World War novels.

The Road to Dalton, by Shannon Bowring (Europa). This moving debut novel, set in a small town in Maine in 1990, is very light for Europa, but becomes more complex as the novel continues. Dowring sketches the closely intertwined lives of four families in Dalton. Richard, a doctor who took over his father’s clinic, has lived in the same town all his life and no longer enjoys his work. His wife, Trudy, director of the Dalton Public Library, is in love with Bev, the director of an old age home, but neither can be open about her sexuality, because not only would they be pariahs but so would their families.

The drama of daily life spins out of control when Bridget, the depressed mother of a colicky baby, commits suicide. Her husband, Nate, a police officer who is Bev’s son, was madly in love with Bridget and had no clue about her state of mind. He rapidly descends into self-destructive drinking, while Bev quits her job to take care of the baby.

Bridget’s suicide is a cloud over the whole town. Her mother, who lives in the rich house in town and liked lording it over others, is so shattered she barely leaves the house. And others are uncomfortable: they think suicide is for people with cancer.

Bowring’s quiet, present-tense prose has an underlying vigor that keeps you reading. She breaks up paragraphs with lyrical fragments that turn bits of prose into poetry. This is a fast-paced, perfect summer book, and, I might add, most probably a women’s book.

A light read for a summer’s day.

Reading Gear & Book Series:  What You’ll Need This Summer

This looks uncomfortable! A woman reading in the woods, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for LIFE Magazine, 1959

They tell you that you don’t need gear. They think they know, but they do not. “You’ve got a book.  What else do you need?”

Yes, you need the book. That is minimum gear.  You also need bookmarks, stickies, and a pencil. Some readers use popsicle sticks as bookmarks and highlight passages with lipstick. That’s their choice.  The rest of us need gear.

If you’re going camping, or reading outdoors, you’ve got to have gear.  Because any minute a herd of deer may trample on your campsite or enter your suburban yard WITHOUT PERMISSION and you have to clap your hands or feebly yell to drive them away and you may drop your book in the mud.  And a mosquito might choose to bite you. You need your Calamine lotion Nature is serious stuff.

GUYS AND GALS, THIS IS A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME READING OFFER.  YOU NEVER KNOW:  I MAY DECIDE TO DELETE THIS INFORMATIVE POST TOMORROW!

SUMMER READING GEAR!!!

Lawn chair, camp stool, or hammock.  Be comfortable.  It’s the first rule of living outdoors (which is basically what you’ll be doing).  A picnic table will never do. You need support for your back, and your butt will get sore from the wooden bench.  So head to the hardware store and buy the most comfortable chair and/or hammock you can afford.  There are old-fashioned lawn chairs, camp stools, plastic Adirondack chairs, plastic upright chairs, outdoor living room furniture, and outdoor chair cushions.  I fancy an outdoor chair cushion. 

Books.  You may think you need only one book for a day outdoors, but you are wrong.  What if you’re stuck in the woods and George Eliot’s Romola doesn’t suit? No, you need at least two books, possibly three.  Perhaps a classic, a mystery, and one of the award-winning books of the year.  At least three choices.

Tote Bag/First Aid Kit.  A national magazine sent me a free totebag for renewing my subscription. I have many totebags, but can always use one more!  Everyone needs ONE TOTEBAG dedicated to the survival kit.  It should contain:  Kleenex, Zyrtec (allergy pills), bookmarks, stickies, Band-Aids, Calamine lotion, Neosporin, sanitizer, wipes, sun screen, energy bars, water bottle, hat, cardigan (if it gets cold, which it will not), bug repellent, deer repellent, flashlight, an apple, and a cookie (or a madeleine to inspire you to read Remembrance of Things Past (which I hear is funny in French!).

Notebook.  Some readers like to take notes. And so one needs a reading notebook.  Notebooks can be cheap or expensive:  you can buy spirals or composition notebooks for 50 cents at office supply stores, or Moleskines and similar hardcover or softcover notebooks for $10 and up at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other stores online.  I like some of the brands more than others, but IT’S ALL PAPER!

Pens.  Some like ballpoints, others like fountain pens, others prefer Bics.  Bics and cheap pens used to be great, but the quality has gone down, and they seem to run out of ink after a couple of hours.  Personally I prefer inexpensive ballpoints.  Newspapers and various websites run reviews of pens and notebooks at least once a year, if you want to pick an extpert’s brain.

Iced tea.  Wherever you go this summer, you will need iced tea.  If you’re on the road, you can pop into a convenience store and buy a bottle, but it’s easy to make at home.  Stick five or ten teabags (you can get special iced tea bags with specific directions on the box) in boiling hot water for five minutes.  Pour tea into an icy pitcher and drink.  Sugar and lemon optional.  N.B.  You’ll need a jug if you’re taking this on the road.

And remember to bring snacks!

THREE RECOMMENDED SUMMER BOOK SERIES!

Are you committed to reading a series this summer? Here are three recommendations.

Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence quintet. This semi-autobiographical five-volume series tells the story of Martha Quest, a heroine every liberal woman identifies with. Lessing takes us through Martha’s rebellious adolescence on an African farm, through two marriages and secretarial work in a nearby town during World War II, nightly Communist meetings and activism in the Black community, and finally a move to England at age 30.

This last novel, The Four-Gated City, differs from the others in that it is part realistic, part experimental. Martha becomes a factotum secretary/editor/housekeeper for her leftist employer, Mark, who lives with three generations of his family in a large London house. Martha and Mark discuss and chart politics in his study, try to create a safe living space for his mentally ill/psychic wife, Linda, and deal with the impact of Mark’s brother’s defection to Russia: his Jewish wife commits suicide, and their fragile son retreats into himself and is almost too rebellious even for a progressive school.

Not only are Mark and Martha children of violence, born in the World War I era, but Mark’s children of the ’60s have grown up in the shadow of World War II, and their emotional psychology is also shaped by violence. The book ends on a surreal note, after an unidentified accident destroys parts of the world. This unputdownable, intelligent novel is well worth reading, still very pertinent, even better than The Golden Notebook.

Arnold Bennett’s Clayhanger trilogy. Arnold Bennett is a neglected 20th-century writer, best-know for his classic, The Old Wives’ Tale. The Clayhanger trilogy is also stunning, set in the Five Towns in the Midlands, the story of a dissatisfied man. The protagonists are Edwin Clayhanger, a young man who longs to be an architect but gets stuck running the family pottery business, and artistic Hilda Lessways, who eventually marries Edwin, but still has feelings for her ex-husband, who had gone to prison. Bennett is a consummate storyteller and we especially feel for vulnerable Edwin. Hilda can look after herself, but she is a strong woman character, capable of dealing with what comes her way.

Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, a Golden Age Detective Novel series. My favorite is Five Red Herrings, because I like the Scottish setting, but Gaudy Night and Murder Must Advertise are more entertaining and brilliant. These mystery classics are readable and entertaining. Tuck one of these in your totebag and you’ll never be sorry.

The Great Summer Read of 2024: E. Nesbit’s “The Wonderful Garden”

The most delightful novel I’ve recently read is  E. Nesbit’s The Wonderful Garden (1911), one of her later children’s books.  I use the phrase “children’s book” loosely, since this little-known book is so whimsical that the humor might fly over the heads of its intended audience.  

In this charming novel, there is not only a wonderful walled garden difficult of access (there is a “secret passage”), but a quaint, faded book, The Language of Flowers, often consulted by  the three C.’s, Caroline, Charlotte, and Charles. They also discover two ancient hidden books of magic which have a profound effect on their Great-Uncle Charles’s research on the history of magic.

The thing is, Nesbit is very tongue-in-cheek here.  When the three C.’s leave their vegetarian aunt and uncle to spend the rest of the summer with Great-Uncle Charles, they choose bouquets via research in The Language of Flowers as gifts for Aunt Emmeline. 

Their reasoning is hysterically funny.

Caroline chooses balm, which means sympathy, because “those geography places you’re going can’t really be as nice as Uncle Charles’s.”

Charles’s bouquet was of convolvulus.  “It means dead hope,” he explained; “but it’s very pretty, too.”  He suddenly presented a tiny red cactus in a pot.  “I bought it for you,” he said;  “it means, ‘Thou leavest not.’”

Caroline, “who was almost hidden behind a huge bouquet of ivy and marigolds”:

“The ivy means friendship,” said Caroline, “and the marigolds don’t count.  I only put them in because they are so goldy-bright.  But if they must count, they mean cruelty – Fate’s, you know, because you’re not coming.  And there’s a purple pansy in among it somewhere, which means, ‘I think of you.’”

 Even if you are a Nesbit fan, you might have missed The Wonderful Garden. It was difficult for my mother to find when I was a child, and difficult for me to find a few years ago, too.  The paperback edition pictured at the top is published by Read Books Ltd. The hardcover was published by Ernest Been Limited, London, and was the one I had as a child. Both editions have the original illustrations by H. R. Millar.

You may also be familiar with  Nesbit from A. S. Byatt’s Booker-shortlisted novel, The Children’s Book, based loosely on the lives of Nesbit and her family, complete with gorgeous fairy tales by Nesbit’s fictional counterpart. 

There are three biographies of Nesbit, the latest being The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit, by Eleanor Fitzsimons. The other two are also good, one by Doris Langley Moore, the other by Noel Streatfeild. 

Nesbit was a radical; she socialized with Kipling, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and many well-known writers who had radical politics. In addition to being a poet, novelist, ghost story writer, and a children’s fantasy writer, Nesbit was a socialist and a founder of the Fabian Society. 

And she was very unconventional in her married life..  Like many Victorian women writers, she supported her family:  her husband,  Hubert Bland, who was vivacious, popular, and a stylish dresser, their children, and Hubert’s mistress and her children by Bland.

Unfortunately, Nesbit’s adult books lack the charm and spontaneity of her other work. Her adult novel, The Lark, is the best by far of her adult books, and was reissued a few years ago with an introduction by Penelope Lively. It would pair nicely with The Wonderful Garden, because it is also about gardens.

Let me leave you with this witty passage from The Wonderful Garden.

If you are Jack Delamere, the Boy Detective who can find out all secrets by himself, pretending to be a French count, a young lady from the provinces, or a Lincolnshire labourer with a cold in his head, and in those disguises pass unrecognized by his nearest relations and by those coiners and smugglers to whom in his ordinary clothes he is only too familiar – if you can so alter your voice that your old school-fellows believe you to be, when dressed for the part, an Italian organ grinder or a performing bear.

I am sorry, but this sentence is too much for me.  I give it up.

. 

Musings on Summer Days & Six Summer Reading Suggestions

The twentieth century was cooler, metaphorically as well as literally.  It used to cool off at night.

But my mother loved her air conditioning:  “Don’t cool the outdoors” was her favorite imperative as people ran in and out.

We found many ways to escape the heat, since we didn’t like AC. We drank lemon Coke at Woolworths, or went to Things and Things and Things for frozen yogurt.  Sometimes we perched on the steps of the limestone buildings on the Pentacrest on the tree-lined campus.  The limestone was cool to the touch on hot days.  On the hottest days, we went to McBride Hall, which had a natural history museum, glass cases of stuffed wild animals lining the halls on three floors. Or we headed to the River Room at the Union, where we could sit all day without buying anything.

  And so as we head into a hot July, let me stop my musings, pray for  cool days, and  celebrate summer with some good escape books.  Here are some suggestions:


1.  I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith.  “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink” is the first sentence of this charming English novel.  The observant narrator, Cassandra Mortmain, writes a lively diary of family life in a run-down castle:  her famous father, author of a Joycean masterpiece,  is either blocked or lazy; her stepmother, Topaz, a former model, communes with nature in the nude;  romantic Rose, the older sister,  longs for romance but knows no men; and the younger brother Thomas is still at school.   Naturally, comic romance drives the plot.  N.B. You can read about Cassandra’s Midsummer’s Eve rites in Chapter XII (p. 199 in the St. Martin’s paperback edition).
                      

2.  The Portable Greek Reader, edited by W. H. Auden.  This anthology of ancient Greek literature, philosophy and history includes excerpts from Hesiod, Homer, Plato, the Greek tragedians, Aristophanes, Thucydides, all of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, but I keep it mainly for Auden’s introduction, which I reread.  I’m surprised by how many of these selections I read in Greek in my youth.  Auden does make a few odd choices, though.  Why include Plato’s little-read Timaeus in its entirety?  But it was fun to reread excerpts from Hesiod, and to rediscover Pindar. 

                         
3.  Margery Allingham’s Flowers for the Judge.  Allingham is one of the greatest Golden Age Detective Novel writers, and I love this one because it is set in a publishing house.  Amateur sleuth Albert Campion, who is rather like Peter Wimsey, is called in when one of the directors is murdered.  The suspect couldn’t possibly have done it. He’s simply too naive.  But then who…?

                      
4.  The Murder of My Aunt, by Richard Hull. In this slight but entertaining Golden Age mystery, published in the British Library Crime Classics series, the crazed narrator, grumpy Edwin Powell, decides to murder his controlling aunt.

                        
5.  The Shivering Sands, by Victoria Holt. In this mediocre 1969 novel, which I read when I was revisiting ’60s Gothics, Caroline investigates the disappearance of her sister, an archaeologist, by taking a job at the estate where she was last seen.  A bit formulaic, and certainly not to be read for style – but the last suspenseful 100 pages are truly Gothic!

                               
6.  Darling Girl, by Liz Michaelski. I read an enthusiastic review of this modern retelling of Peter Pan.  I wish I were enjoying it more. The story is sinister, but it could do with some stylistic dazzle.  The basic plot: Holly Darling, the granddaughter of Wendy Darling – who knew Peter Pan – is a scientist and the CEO of a cosmetics company, with a complicated personal history. She was driving the car when she had an accident that killed her husband and one of her twin sons.  The surviving son has a rare blood condition.  And then her daughter, who has been in a coma for years, disappears.  Even if I don’t finish this, I assure you the daughter’s disappearance will be connected with Peter Pan.

Happy July 4 Weekend Reading!

Summer Charm:  “Mrs. Gaskell and Me” and “The Thin Man”

Every summer I  hunker down with a classic like The Tale of Genji, Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil, or Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander.  It is an automatic affectation for me to pick up a weighty classic, while others pretend to read slim books with pink covers.   I have found that a classic from your Not Urgent List is best perused in the psychedelic heat while sipping an Arnold Palmer with a little umbrella in it.

Bu this year is different.  I do not have a reading list.  I have wept over scenes of protesters and police kneeling together on the news; and every time I cough I wonder, Is it the virus? 

And so I have not committed to a magnum opus–yet.

But let me tell you briefly about two charming books.

Nell Stevens’s Mrs. Gaskell and Me, published in the U.S. as The Victorian and the Romantic:  A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship across Time, is a splendid biblio-memoir. It is partly a historical novel about Elizabeth Gaskell, written in the second person; partly a memoir of Stevens’ Ph.D. research on Gaskell. In the novel, Gaskell struggles with accusations of immorality and libel in  her biography of Charlotte Bronte, which she later has to censor; longs to escape from her narrow-minded husband, a minister, in Manchester; and travels to Rome with her daughters, where she forms a romantic friendship with Charles Eliot Norton, an American writer and scholar.

Stevens’s book is not all fiction, or at least seems not to be.  Stevens interweaves a memoir of her own reading of Mrs. Gaskell , which an affair with a moody, selfish writer she met in an MFA program in Boston often impedes. Stevens is more frail than Gaskell, but we all have been obsessed with that moody guy in grad school, haven’t we?   Much of the book is enchantingly lyrical, and it is blessedly short.

I am a great fan of Dashiell Hammett’s noir screwball comedy, The Thin Man.  I agree with Dorothy Parker, who said:  “All I can say i say is that anyone who doesn’t read him misses much of modern America.” 

In The Thin Man, Nick and Nora, the most charming couple in a 20th-century American mystery, are enjoying their stay in a luxurious New York hotel, spending their time at speakeasies, parties, restaurants, and Radio City Music Hall.  The trouble starts on the first page when Dorothy Wynant shows up at a speakeasy and asks Nick, a former detective, if he can help her find her father, who was once his client.

And then a string of murders follows, and Dorothy’s mother, Mimi, finds the first body.  But since Nick knows Mimi is crazy and lies about everything, he does not take her story seriously. Not surprisingly,  the ex-cons, among them Studsy Burke, owner of The Pigiron Cub, are more honest than the upper-class neurotics and avaricious businessmen who demand  Nick’s help. 

You may have seen the excellent movie The Thin Man, with William Powell and Myrna Loy. .  And of course he wrote The Maltese Falcon . 

I hope your summer reading is going well!

Covid-19 Summer Reading: Books for Local Trips

It’s summer!  Long, leisurely hot days divided between the lush outdoors and the domestic indoors. This is the summer of Covid-19, so  we will not camp on the shores of Lake Superior, travel to Pompeii, or explore a national park. But we will still have a shopping bag with books by the kitchen door, so we can riffle through it and grab a book for outside.  The odd thing is that my taste hasn’t changed much:   I spent a summer lugging around The Complete Jane Austen (Modern Library) when I was so young I could barely carry it.   Nowadays, I prefer to carry an individual copy.

Books get so tattered on the go that I recommend cheap books to stuff in your purse or book bag. But as you see I  break my rule with the first book on the list, which happens to  be new, but is very short and light.  

A LONG ESSAY.  I loved Coffee by Dinah Lenney, a charming little book in the Object Lessons series, published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic. Lenney, a writer and former actress,  is a coffee connoisseur.  She is so authoritative on the art of making coffee that she  “was suddenly having trouble letting anyone else make the coffee.” In this gorgeous essay, she describes her own experiences with coffee, that of her friends and family, compares the coffee culture in the U.S. to the more casual cups of coffee in France.  She also interviews experts on the history of coffee and the new artisan coffees. A perfect gift book!

THE CHEAPEST OF THE CHEAP.  Summer is a good time to catch up with the classics, but you don’t want to compromise your nice copies when you’re on the go.  Opt for the Wordsworth editions!  Though the covers  are rather strange and inappropriate–and I prefer the ’70s blue cover of The Professor to the 2012 black cover of Mary Barton— they are cheap and sturdy–under $5. You can pack them with your lunch and they’ll still survive.

BEAUTIFUL INEXPENSIVE  BOOKS.  Everyone adores Elizabeth Gaskell’s short novel Cranford, and Pride and Prejudice is the favorite of many Janeites.   A used copy of theattractive Vintage edition iof Cranford starts at  $4.50, and the colorful Modern Library paperback  of P&P is $8 new.

OLD FAVORITES.  On the left is Mary Wilkins Freeman’s stunning collection of stories (which I wrote about here), on the right are two mysteries,and you can’t go wrong with Simenon and Michael Innes. Be cheap!  Support used books!

Any suggestions for summer to-go books?  And do you prefer any particular publishers for outdoors reading?

Reading in the Heat: Ten Books with Exotic Settings

When it’s 90 before noon you might get claustrophobic in the air-conditioned house.

But if you get up early enough, you can sit outdoors, or at least on the porch, with a good book and a glass of iced tea.   You’ll feel like a character in a hot Southern novel, perhaps by Eudora Welty or William Faulkner (both were from Mississippi).

Personally, I like books with exotic settings when it gets this hot.  Here’s a List of Ten Favorites–and you might want to include Welty and Faulkner.

1.  Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet.  In this exotic tetralogy, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea, the prose is moody and lush.   Over the course of the four books, Durrell’s narrator, Darley, reiterates a series of events in the lives of his lover Justine and a group of friends in Alexandria, Egypt.  Other characters, particularly Balthazar and Clea (Mountolive is the hero of the prequel), contribute their viewpoints, so that a clearer picture is revealed.Published from 1957 to 1960, these books are elegant but occasionally too flowery.   Still, they are classics and I love them!

2.  W. Somerset Maugham is one of my favorite middlebrow writers.  If you want to lose yourself in perfectly-wrought fiction, try his Collected Stories (Everyman’s Library).  I spent a week completely immersed in these addictive, tightly-plotted exotic stories, but since it’s been a while, let me quote the jacket copy: “In the adventures of his alter ego Ashenden, a writer who (like Maugham himself) turned secret agent in World War I, as well as in stories set in such far-flung locales as South Pacific islands and colonial outposts in Southeast Asia, Maugham brings his characters vividly to life, and their humanity is more convincing for the author’s merciless exposure of their flaws and failures.”

3.  Fans of Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War will enjoy her tightly-plotted novel The Rain Forest, published in 1974, set on an island in the Indian Ocean. If you are a fan of Graham Greene or W. Somerset Maugham, you will not be able to put it down.  This hypnotic story of an expatriate couple living on a jasmine-scented island ruled by the British is a trenchant examination of colonialism and culture clash.  You can read the rest of my blog post here.

4.  Do you crave light novels in the heat?  I highly recommend, both to women and men,  This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart.  Set in Corfu, this Gothic is a homage to The Tempest.  The narrator, Lucy,  an unemployed actress, joins her sister Phyllida on vacation in a luxurious villa in Corfu.  It’s gorgeous, but strange things are going on:  the maid’s son drowns on a boat trip with an English photographer;  someone shoots at a dolphin while Lucy is swimming near it in the sea; a moody composer, Max, who lives in a villa up the hill, is secretive and surly; and Max’s father, a retired actor who  believes Corfu is the setting of The Tempest, gallantly tries to hide a drinking problem.  And, believe me, there is much quoting of Shakespeare, even when crimes are investigated.

5.   The German writer Kurt Tucholsky’s novel, Castle Gripsholm (NYRB), translated by Michael Hoffman, is the charming story of a summer vacation in Sweden. Published in 1931, it begins with a series of short letters between the author and an editor who asks him to write a short love story.  Tucholsky says he would prefer to write “a little summer story.” And so the little summer story begins. You’ll enjoy the travels of a delightfully bohemian writer and his smart secretary girlfriend.  You can read the rest of my post here.

6.  Booker Prize nominee Alice Thomas Ellis’s trilogy,  THE SUMMER HOUSE, is beautifully-written and exotic.  In these very short  novels, the same events are observed by three different women (who form a kind of unholy female trinity).  In The Clothes in the Wardrobe, we meet the bride, Margaret, a passive young woman who had a love affair in Egypt with a young man who committed a murder. And now she is engaged to a middle-aged man she doesn’t love.  In The Skeleton in the Cupboard, her mother Mrs. Monroe has doubts about the imminent wedding as Margaret’s lack of enthusiasm for her son becomes apparent.  And in The Fly in the Ointment, Lili, the Egyptian femme fatale at the center of the action, is admired, loved, and sometimes feared.  Lili, who identifies with Lilith, the mythic first wife of Adam in the Bible, is determined to help Margaret (and herself) by doing whatever it takes.

7.  Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune is, to a large extent, about the politics of water. Water is the most precious commodity on the planet, though the ruling class are never dehydrated and live in luxury.  The native Fremen in the desert must wear “stillsuits” that recycle every drop of sweat and urine while they travel or work in the spice mines.  When someone dies, the water is taken from the body to be reused, because 70% of the body is water.  Plastic dew collectors save every drop of condensation for growing plants. Dangerous sand and dust storms blow up to 700 kilometers an hour and “can eat flesh off bones and etch the bones to sliver.”  There are also giant worms.  But the planetologist, who knows exactly how much water is needed to make the planet green over the next few hundred years, teaches the people how to change.

8.  Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa.  Is Dinesen’s memoir Out of Africa, published in 1937, still appreciated, or is it dismissed as racist nowadays because she sometimes calls Africans “natives”?  Dinesen moved in 1912 to Kenya to run a coffee plantation with her syphilitic husband, and, after seeking medical treatment in Denmark for syphilis herself, returned.  After he left her in 1921,  she ran the plantation alone until 1931.  Her experiences are touching and vividly detailed: she gives medical treatment to the Africans, adopts an antelope, Lulu, and saves the life of Kamante, a young boy who becomes her chef and medical assistant.   She knows all about the cultures of the Kikuyu and the Masai, and tells lovely stories.  One of the most gorgeous memoirs of the 20th century.

9. Brad Leithauser’s new novel, The Promise of Elsewhere, is a brilliant academic satire about a professor on vacation.  Louie, the protagonist,  a professor of art history at Ann Arbor College (AAC), is distinctly unhappy with his job.  And his wife Florence, a third-grade teacher, has left him:  she and her lover were arrested for  indecent behavior, and are now, ironically, living in the Virgin Islands.  Tired of being the subject of gossip, Louie decides to spend the summer  traveling in Europe and Asia to look at his favorite architecture.   He abandons his itinerary, and the resulting madcap trip through Rome, the UK, Iceland, and Greenland made me laugh out loud.

10.  Grant Ginder’s new novel Honestly, We Meant Well is  an excellent literary beach read about a family vacation in Greece. Sue Ellen, a classicist, isn’t entirely happy that her family is accompanying her to Greece.  She’s annoyed with her philandering husband and grieving  the death of Christos, a former lover who ran the inn where they’re staying.  Her husband, Dean a writer and creative writing professor, is worried about his next novel and, unbeknownst to her, is cheating on her again.   Their  son Will, is in agony over a breakup with his boyfriend and has also plagiarized a short story. Then there’s  Eleni,  Christos’ daughter, about to sell the inn.  The novel is also a  kind of guide to Greece.  Delphi, Athens, Aegina…  Some serious issues, but overall great fun.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS WITH EXOTIC SETTINGS?

So Many Books: What I’ve Been Reading & the “Should-I-Bother” Pile

WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING?  So many books.

I’m very much enjoying a new summer novel, Honestly, We Meant Well, by Grant Ginder.  It is light, realistic, well-written, and comical, a literary novel that can double as a beach read.  Ginder is a master of fast scenes and witty dialogue in this adroit portrayal of a  family vacation in Greece.  When Sue Ellen, a classicist, accepts a gig lecturing in Greece, she isn’t entirely happy that the family is accompanying her.  She’s annoyed with her philandering husband and grieving  the death of Christos, a former lover who ran the inn where they’re staying.  Her husband, Dean a writer and creative writing professor, is worried about his next novel and, unbeknownst to her, is cheating on her again.   Their  son, Will, is in agony over a breakup with his boyfriend and has also plagiarized a short story. Then there’s  Eleni,  Christos’ daughter, about to sell the inn.  The novel is also a  kind of guide to Greece.  Delphi, Athens, Aegina…  Great fun.

The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer. This quick American novel, first published in 1941, is a Golden Age Detective novel. The amateur sleuth, Hildegarde Withers, is a New York schoolteacher on vacation in L.A. When a Hollywood agent recruits her as an expert advisor for a film about Lizzie Borden, she starts finding dead bodies, beginning with the scriptwriter in the office next door. Rollicking adventures, humor, and suspense:  I do hope I can find other books in this Miss Withers series. In Otto Penzler’s introduction, he compares Miss Withers to Miss Marple. This book is in the American Mystery Classics series, chosen and introduced by Otto Penzler.

THE “SHOULD-I-BOTHER?” PILE

L.A. Woman by Eve Babitz. I loved Babitz’s self-described confessional novel, Eve’s Hollywood (my post is here), but put aside L.A. Woman.  Some of it is a little bit coarse. For instance, the narrator Sophie’s dog, Tango, has a kind of affair with her on the bathroom floor.  And a friend gives Sophie advice on how to “give head”: “Spit,” Ophelia concluded, “That’s the whole trick to giving head. Just spit.” Okay, it’s funny but… not that funny. Should I bother?

Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion. All of Georgette Heyer’s novels are elegant, witty, and very much alike. I enjoyed the first 285 pages of Cotillion, then lost the book behind a chair.   Eureka!  I vacuumed!  Heyer’s novels are billed as Regency romances, but they’re more like Regency comedies.  I  guarantee the girl will get the guy.  Should I bother?

The Magus by John Fowles.  This is always mentioned on summer reading lists. Last summer I read the first 300 pages.  It’s haunting and boring at the same time. Should I pick it up again?

What are you reading and what’s on your “Should-I-Bother” pile.

Summer Reading: In My Armor, on a Quest

It’s Memorial Day, the first real day of summer.

We are obsessed with summer reading.  What will we peruse?  Classics or light books? Some prefer the Modernists; others the Victorians;  others enjoy cute beach romances with cover art depicting Adirondack chairs. And I would too if I hadn’t already lost one of Elin Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels—at the beach!

Summer is also an ideal time for long-term projects.  You can read The Tale of Genji (did it), The Death of Virgil (spoiled my  idea of Virgil, who is portrayed in the first 30 pages as a dying man ogling a boy fan),  the worst of Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit), or Robert Harris’s  Cicero trilogy (which I’m not as crazy about as most people).

The worst of my beloved Dickens.

But this year I have a far, far tougher quest: catching up with at least three books published in the last few years.

I’m in my armor, on my horse. I’ve got some books.  Alas, the regrettably simple style of 21st literature is often colorless and dull. Blab, blab, blab: I like the classics. But this summer I’m going partially for new “pop,”  new “literary, and “new” nonfiction.  Maybe I can even read four new books.

Before I go on to trash new books,  let me recommend some brilliant new books I’ve read this year. 

  1. Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife, a brilliant feminist retelling of Beowulf.
  2. Brad Leithauser’s The Promise of Elsewhere, an academic satire in which a professor goes rogue on vacation in Europe.
  3. Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day, a novel about two couples’ complicated relationships.
  4. Pam Houston’s graceful collection of essays, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country.
  5. Vita Nostra, a pretty good SF novel by Marina and Sergey Dychenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey.

And here is a list of mediocre new books I’ve read parts of but then rejected.  This doesn’t mean they’re bad.

  1. The Heartland: An American History, by Kristin L. Hoganson. This  history of the midwest by a professor at the University of Illinois has been well-reviewed—and kudos to Hoganson for taking on the Midwest! But it seemed narrow, concentrating almost entirely on research in Illinois, which doesn’t take into consideration the differences between groups of immigrants in different states or problems endemic to different landscapes. She does make interesting parallels between the Kickapoo Indians and itinerant pioneers.  But ye gods!  She devotes an entire chapter to the breeding of livestock.  That’s where I gave up.
  2. All the Lives We Ever Lived, by Katharine Smyth. How could I not love a bibliomemoir about Virginia Woolf? But Smyth is too richy-rich for me. I tired of her father’s “varnishing the teak of the cockpit” of their yacht.  I abandoned this book after 30 pages..
  3. David Means’s Instructions for a Funeral, a collection of short stories. Too verbose for me.
  4. Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room, a historical novel about Hedy Larmarr, the actress, and a Barnes and Noble Book Club selection. Actually, I finished this, but found it formulaic.

So on with the quest for great new books!   The most-promoted new books will not necessarily be the best.