SassyLassy Fending off Fuzziness

New Year, New Pantone Colour

image from The Gaze

From the Pantone Color Institute:

Pantone Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and oters. It's a velvety gentle peach tone whose all embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.

In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.

Pantone, how could you?

This is your 25th birthday year - time to strike out as a fully fledged adult, inspired to action by last year's Viva Magenta, or to thought by 2013's beautiful Emerald Green.

Instead, you suggest a tentative adolescent with Peach Fuzz. Meant to be "warm and comforting", the pinky orange shade shouts "Bland". How does that do anything for us? Are we that afraid?

Even Architectural Digest seemed to be having problems with the colour:



The Nordroom also employed vegetation as a balance:



Pantone UK took the look back to the '80s with this:



suggesting this unfortunate fashion trend from the same decade:



image from Forbes

LT is really about reading, so time to turn to that.

2023 was a strange and uneven reading year. It started and ended well, with some mush in between, probably due to travelling, then drought, fires, and floods at home, which all count as distractions. Those periods will probably be obvious in the list below!
October may have been the strangest month of all: a book a day for the first three days, and then nothing for the rest of the month.

Chronologically by category:

The Victorian Tavern unfortunately I only read a little for this
The Bostonians by Henry James
Middlemarch by George Eliot reread number 6?

In Translation
Nada by Jean Patrick Manchette
Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom - a standout
The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen
Ivory Pearl by Jean Patrick Manchette
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Plague by Albert Camus

Other Fiction - this is where the mush comes in
Spadework by Timothy Findley
Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
The Kapillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat
Florida by Lauren Groff
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
Get 'Em Young, Treat 'Em Tough, Tell 'Em Nothing by Robin McLean
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
A Siege of Bitterns by Steve Burrows
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Machine without Horses by Helen Humphreys
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker waiting for the third part of this trilogy
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
The Hamlet by William Faulkner
The Town by William Faulkner still have to read the third volume
Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan about the only book I have ever consciously abandoned, more than half way through
The Comedians by Graham Greene
The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
Spook Street by Mick Herron
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
You Must Remember This by Joyce Carol Oates
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Flatland by Edwin Abbott
Up at the Villa by W Somerset Maugham
The Master of Petersburg by J M Coetzee
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
Highland River by Neil Gunn
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

NonFiction
Ginkgo: The Tree that Time Forgot by Peter Crane
Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit
From Stone Orchard by Timothy Findley
A New Leaf by Merilyn Simonds
The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood
The August Gales: The Tragic Loss of Fishing Schooners in the North Atlantic 1926 and 1927 by Gerald Hallowell
The White Fleet: A History of the Portuguese Handliners by J P Andrieux
The Amur River: Between Russia and China by Colin Thubron

A spot to mark suggestions I find in others' threads:

NonFiction:
Phoebe Anna Traquair by Elizabeth Cumming -deanne fitzpatrick inspiration session
Grass Soup by Zhang Xianliang - labfs39
Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell - wanderingstar

How about the reading year ahead?

As the thread title suggests, I'd like to minimize the fluff reads this year to only when absolutely necessary. Who knows what the weather or travel or even my RL book club will bring this year to interrupt that idea?

I'm really looking forward to Reading Globally's "Around the World in 12 Months", as well as its quarterly themes.

I'd like to continue reading Nobel Prize winners, started as a category in 2023, and sprinkled through the list in >4 SassyLassy: above.

Nineteenth century fiction has always been a favourite of mine. It barely made a dent in 2024, more like a scratch. I'm going to try to get back to that.

The Greenhouse thread on LT is also one I will be following.

Most of all, I would like longer uninterrupted stretches in which to do all this!

Peach fuzz. Hmm

You read a great collection of books last year. Wish you a great 2024.

Welcome back, Sassy. Fun and interesting posts, as always. I can't wait to see where your reading takes you this year.

>2 SassyLassy: You are so funny! And the photos—egad!

>6 SassyLassy: Most of all, I would like longer uninterrupted stretches in which to do all this! Yes, me too.

I was really disappointed in the pantone color this year also.

I have Compartment No. 6 on my kindle and will read it this year. I am trying to read more women authors in translation this year, so this fits perfectly.

Looking forward to following your 2024 reading!

Wishing you a peachy new year, Sassy!

Not thrilled with the Peach Fuzz, although I thought the dining room decor was lovely.

Oh Pantone, Pantone. If their color is Peach Fuzz, why the photo of the fluffy flower instead of a nice ripe peach? I will never understand marketing decisions.

Anyway, happy unfuzzy New Year!

I like the color, I find the name... entertaining as usual. But then it is Pantone. I'd wish you a peachy year with or without fuzz but aren't peaches with no fuzz called nectarines? That does not trip off the tongue that easily :)

Happy new year :)

I will probably join you for some 19th century literature - so I will keep an eye on what you pick to read. You may want to take a peek into the Monthly Author Reads group - we are starting the year with Elizabeth Gaskell, then checking with George Bernard Shaw (whose early works are in the 19th) and ending the quarter with Sir Walter Scott.

Peach fuzz? Oh I do hope fashion isn't going to take an 80s turn off the back of this. Plus I just think hairy faces with that name.

Hope you have a good reading year. Look forward to following along as always.

>14 AlisonY: agreed. I predict next year’s will be beige.

>13 AnnieMod: Thanks for the note on the Monthly Author Reads. I'll definitely jump in there, and luckily have an Elizabeth Gaskell waiting in my Victorian TBR pile.

Nectarine does sound slightly more exotic, so possibly more interesting.
It appears nectarines can be grown in a wider variety of climates than peaches: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343266636_Comparative_analysis_of_peach...
Then there are apricots!

>14 AlisonY: How about this from 2023?

image from Getty and Forbesmagazine

>15 kjuliff: I have to completely reject the idea that beige is even a colour!

First book of the year - Wilkie Collins is always a favourite of mine.



The Dead Alive by Wilkie Collins
first published serially and concurrently in New York Fireside Companion December 29 1873 - January 19 1874, The Canadian Monthly January to February 1874, and Home Journal (England) December 27 1873 to February 14 1874
finished reading January 2, 2024

Philip Lefrank, a self described "'junior' barrister in good practice", was in failing health in London. He set out for a farm in the US owned by relatives. It looked like it would be a dull time, which was just what his health required. Just after his arrival, however, the farm manager disappeared. Shortly after the farmer's two sons were accused of murder and imprisoned. A female cousin, also resident on the farm, insisted on their innocence. All the makings were there for a classic Collins novel.

The Dead Alive didn't make the mark, in the US or England. It's a simple novel, more like a novella, written when Collins was on tour in the US. Americans felt the dialogue was all wrong, concluding it was because Lefrank's relatives were all English themselves. English reviewers felt the plot fell flat. The novel was never published separately there, instead being included in The Frozen Deep and Other Stories.

Where did it go wrong? Collins's novels always address an injustice. In this case it was the American judicial system which could hand down a capital conviction on entirely circumstantial evidence. Underlying this, is an implied criticism of an American tendency to rush to judgement en masse, without further investigation.

The plot here was based on a real case. While on tour, Collins was given a pamphlet written by a former Lieutenant Governor of Vermont and lawyer for the defense in an 1819 trial where two brothers were tried for the murder of the farm manager. He wrote it up right away as The Dead Alive. It occurs to me that this might be the reason for its lack of success. Collins's forte was plot development and the creation of some of nineteenth century fiction's best villains. Here, by contrast, he was working with established facts, on the road, and in a rush. Plot and character development suffered accordingly.

What makes this story still apt today is its republication in 2005 by the Center for Wrongful Convictions. In her introduction, Anna E Clark says Today, The Dead Alive stands as a compelling legal sensation thriller, an important transatlantic commentary on American life, and a testament to Collins's perceptive eye for the spectacle and strangeness of the everyday world. That might be overstating the case somewhat, but it doesn't take away from its interest for Collins completists.

---------
This editions is from the wonderful Broadview Press. In common with all Broadview books, it has reviews from the initial publication, original advertising, and original illustrations from the serials. For this particular novel, there are also the transcripts of the pamphlet given to Collins, and an 1820 sermon preached on the original case by Lemuel Haynes, the first ordained black American minister, who deemed the subject "...peculiarly interesting to those among us who have lately been remarkably emancipated from bondage, slavery, and death." There are also excerpts from de Tocqueville and Dickens on their observations of American life.

>17 SassyLassy: very interesting. Did you enjoy it? I’m using Broadview press for my Chaucer books and those editions are terrific. (Recommended by Joyce/Nickelini)

Happy New Year, and here's to great reading adventures. As always, I'll look forward to see what you get up to. Cheers!

>16 SassyLassy: I reject the idea that beige is even a word

>17 SassyLassy: what rating did you give it?

>17 SassyLassy: I did enjoy it, but I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Collins. It was my tenth book of his, so I think I was looking at it more in the context of his other work. This one seemed too predictable, probably because it was based on that real life case.

I haven't used Broadview for anything other than Victorians, and always recommend it for them, but if the Chaucer edition is half as good, it should be excellent.
Broadview is actually a Canadian press, which may be why nickelini and I both chose it.

>19 rocketjk: Here's hoping those adventures are well, adventuresome!

>21 kjuliff: I don't give ratings to books, as I find that these change with time. The other thing is that there is no defined scale against which to measure what one reads - there is too much subjectivity involved. I could rate against my other reading, but that's not much use to anyone else.

>22 SassyLassy: Yes I understand. It’s very subjective. I suppose I really only wanted to know if you recommended it, and you’ve answered that question now above.

>17 SassyLassy: I didn't know about this one

>24 baswood: Me neither until I searched the Broadview Press site looking for more books by Collins. I had heard of The Frozen Deep, but had never seen a copy.

>22 SassyLassy: What would you recommend as an introduction to Collins? You’ve reminded me that this is one of the gaps in my reading I’d quite like to fill.

>26 rachbxl: Armadale could be a good one. It features one of my favourite, possibly my favourite Victorian villainess Lydia Gwilt (adding the ess there like a good Victorian, otherwise I would leave it gender neutral).
The Moonstone was my first Collins, given to me by my grandmother, who also loved Victorians. It is also fun.

Neither of these has as strong a social message as some of Collins's other works, but the treatment of women does get some attention.

>27 SassyLassy: Making a note of that…

>27 SassyLassy: Noted! Thanks.

How are you making out with the latest storm? It was almost a non-event here. About 5" of snow fell last night, then it switched over to rain, but very little wind. Then it was a warm, sunny day. About half the 18" of snow melted, but not nearly all, which would have caused a lot of flooding.

>30 labfs39: It had amazing wind behind it, but the power stayed on and the snow was slight, so survived. Really high tides and some flooding. Another one tomorrow.

Read in the "Canadian Classic" month for my book club.



The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy translated from the French by Alan Brown (1980)
first published as Bonheur d'occasion in 1945
finished reading January 6, 2024

Québec's Quiet Revolution (La Révolution tranquille) was still a good dozen years in the future when Gabrielle Roy wrote The Tin Flute. It was a massive social movement which threw off the yoke of the Catholic Church, and the economic, cultural, and political dominance of the anglophone minority establishment. Many of the francophones who led and who supported the movement would have come from homes where that was the way things were; often accepted without question.

World War II began to change the status quo. This is where Roy's novel begins. Set in Saint Henri, among the tanneries, factories, and railways of one of Montréal's worst slums, it tells the story of the LaCasse family, a not untypical family for the time. Florentine, the eldest child at nineteen, worked at a lunch counter at a five and dime store. She was determined she would never lead the life her mother had. Rose-Anna, her mother, was pregnant with her twelfth child. Azarius, her father, was about to be fired from his current job as a taxi driver. Although full of ideas and schemes, he was never able to get anything off the ground, pulling his family further and further into poverty.

May 1, the traditional moving day in Montréal was approaching quickly , and cheaper accommodation had to be found for the family. Each year's move was to smaller and dingier quarters despite the increase in family size. Although Rose-Anna subscribed to the idea that her children should go to school, it was not always possible. While the older ones had completed an expected number of grades, the younger ones often couldn't attend school due to illness, or lack of basics such as waterproof shoes in which to get there.

The war had brought new demands for labour, new opportunities, but also new demands for housing and higher prices. The family was surviving on Florentine's wages, so her brother made the decision to enlist for the monthly stipend it would bring. The war was a matter of contention in their community, however. Presented by the authorities as a war for the King and the British Empire, it had little relevance for a population which still identified with France, even almost two hundred years after the conquest. The fallout from the Conscription Crisis of 1917 still lingered in people's minds, and they were not eager to help out.

Some, however, saw opportunity on the domestic front in the war. Such a one was Jean Lévesque. Florentine naively envisioned herself in love with Jean, who saw her as just another conquest, while at the same time being inexplicably drawn to her.

He knew now that Florentine's house reminded him of the thing he most dreaded: poverty, that implacable smell of poor clothing, the poverty you could recognize with your eyes shut. He realized that Florentine personified this kind of wretched life against which his whole being was in revolt. And in the same moment he understood the feeling that drew him toward her: she was his own poverty, his solitude, his sad childhood, his lonely youth. She was all that he had hated, all that he had left behind him, but also everything that remained intimately linked to him, the most profound part of his nature and the powerful spur of his destiny.

He had to reject her. Emmanuel Létourneau, his old friend, did fall in love with Florentine, who in turn spurned him until she needed him.

This is a surprising book for the time in its frankness. A first novel, it became a classic in French speaking Canada, and on translation into English, a pan Canadian classic. It is now a Penguin Modern Classic. Roy won the Governor - General's Award with it, but as an indication of just one thing wrong with the two solitudes, she did not win it until it had been translated into English. At the time of its publication there was no award for fiction in French. She won again in translation in 1957. An award for French fiction was first given out in 1959, and she won again, in French in 1977. She has also won France's Prix Femina, and Québec's Prix David.

>32 SassyLassy: I've never even heard of this book (or author). Thanks for a wonderful review!

Photograph of Gabrielle Roy and Children of St Henri, 29 August, 1945, by Conrad Poirier
image from Wikimedia Commons

>32 SassyLassy: Gabrielle Roy sounds like an interesting author. I'm going to keep her name in my tickler file. Despite Maine being the home to so many Quebecois, like my grandfather whose family moved here when he was six, it is hard to find much French Canadian literature (in French or English) in the local libraries. It stymies me.

>32 SassyLassy: I have that book. Ought to read it.

>32 SassyLassy: Interesting! I had never heard if this author either.

>32 SassyLassy: captivating review. This is all new to me.

Stopping by to say hi and to drop a star here. You're off to a good start. And it seems that (according to this Post >6 SassyLassy:), we're more or less on the same track this year. I look forward to your comments.

>32 SassyLassy: Interesting review. I had to look up Québec's Quiet Revolution and the Conscription Crisis but that makes it even more intriguing. I like these kinds of "social" novels.

Belated happy new year SassyLassy! It’s grat to follow your thread again this year.

>32 SassyLassy: I read this book a few years ago, but unfortunately did not write any review. I remember I really liked it. I have not read anything by Gabrielle Roy again, because it’s actually fairly difficult to find books from her in France. I remember reading somewhere she was a sort of feminine Canadian Zola. It is a bit of an anachronism and I am not sure I was entirely convinced by that comparison after reading Bonheur d’occasion/The Tin Flute. She is just a great writer on her own!

>34 SassyLassy: Love the picture!

>32 SassyLassy: The Tin Flute has been on my Wishlist forever. It is on the 1001 list. I've just never come across it. Your review convinces me that I might have to finally break down and order it from Ammie.
ETA Done!

>32 SassyLassy: Nice review!

>32 SassyLassy: Thank you for drawing my attention to this book, which I would never have come across otherwise. I have an audio version put out by a Canadian library and supported by donation. It’s read by volunteers and so far is coming across well.

I’ve had a hard time finding a good read lately, so it looks like my difficult streak may have been broken. In any case thank you for a delightful review.

>32 SassyLassy: I read this as a teenager and still have my paperback copy, which would probably crumble to dust if I tried to reread it. I am nevertheless tempted.

Thanks all

It made for an excellent discussion at the book club. One of the things that quickly emerged was the difference in attitude to the book based on translator. Some had read the early translation from 1947 by Hannah Josephson, an odd choice of translator. The few who did not like the book were in this camp, saying they found the prose overblown, verging on histrionic in places. This would be the translation in the New Canadian Library paperback series.

Those who read the Alan Brown translation from 1980, had a different experience, and were positive. I think perhaps some of the differences could be accounted for by what was acceptable in novels to a more prudish English speaking audience in 1947, whereas by 1980, all that Roy was trying to get across in Florentine's life could be stated more openly.

None of us was able to find a local copy in French in time, so that even the Francophones read it in English. I don't see it on Project Gutenberg either. It can be purchased new in French through amazon.ca though. Looking at the extract, the Brown translation seems to capture it well.

The other interesting thing was the differences in perception between those who grew up in Canada, and those who grew up elsewhere, predominantly the US. These readers seemed at times almost surprised by the discussion of the relevance to Québec politics, having read it more as straightforward urban realism.

I always enjoy my book club, as its offers so many different points of view for discussion.

>35 labfs39: Interesting about not finding francophone literature in Maine. I haunt quite a few second hand bookstores in Vermont whenever I'm there, and am always surprised at how much Canadian fiction is to be found, by anglophones or francophones. Northern Vermont is certainly full of names from the north.

>36 dianeham: and >44 RidgewayGirl: How did you wind up with this book?

>39 Trifolia: I noticed that same page thing too when reading your thread!

>40 raton-liseur: That does seem a stretch to be a female Zola. It's amazing what the publicists come up with, but as you say, she's just a great writer on her own - no comparisons needed.
I love old photographs.

>43 kjuliff: That sounds l ike an interesting project.

>32 SassyLassy: Thanks for that, I hadn’t heard about it, and I’ve been looking to read some more French authors from Canada, ‘female Zola’ label notwithstanding. ABE Books came up with plenty of used copies in France.

Hi SassyLassy! I read The Tin Flute way back in 2012 and thought it was okay (It's on the 1001-books list). I'm sure any political overtones went right over my head.

>46 thorold: Have you read Anne Hébert? I've only read The First Garden, but remember it fondly. The main character is an actress, rehearsing the role of Winnie in Becket's Happy Days! And there's other plot stuff happening too.

>45 SassyLassy: I was trying to figure out how I ended up with it. I bought a used copy right after I had read 2 books by Timothy Findley. Maybe I was reading Canadian authors or came across a reference to her.

>32 SassyLassy: Enjoyed your review of a book and author unknown to me.

>1 SassyLassy: That colour really suits me but I don't wear it often.

>4 SassyLassy: Yay, a Middlemarch rereader, I think my next read is my 4th.

Some good 2023 reading despite the distractions Sassy.

>32 SassyLassy: Although Gabrielle Roy lived in Paris for sometime, and won an award there, she seems to have faded from view. Apart from three or four "names", Canadian fiction seems largely unknown in the rest or the world. Maybe you can find an old copy in French?

>50 Caroline_McElwee: That colour really suits me but I don't wear it often. Wear it more often, I say! I always like it when people wear colour, and not neutrals. (Perhaps my reaction was based in part knowing that it would look terrible on me)

Have you read My Life in Middlemarch? That was part of the plan, but it didn't happen. Maybe this year, as it is on the TBR Victorian shelf.

Read for Reading Globally's "Around the world in 12 months". I'm starting in Norway.



White Shadow by Roy Jacobsen translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw (2016)
first published as Hvitt Hav in 2015
finished reading January 10, 2024

Probably most of us like to think of ourselves as fairly self sufficient. This is a delusion. Ingrid Barrøy was self sufficient. Last visited in The Unseen, White Shadow has Ingrid, now an adult, back on her beloved Barrøy, determined to restore the neglected homestead.

Her access to the island was in her rowboat, rowed by her. Once there, there was no power, so lamps and fires must be tended, after first collecting firewood. Water was pumped. Fish must be caught in the gill nets made in the past by Ingrid and her family. It must then be gutted and salted, for personal use and for sale. Ingrid purchased a pregnant ewe for the island, and spun the fleece to knit into clothing. Down was collected from the island birds. There was little time to stop and think, and sometimes her senses were dulled by fatigue and hunger.

Sudden illness, accident, fire: it was a dangerous life at the best of times. This time Ingrid was alone. Her island was in the North Atlantic, off the coast of German occupied Norway, on the sea routes of many nations, friendly and otherwise.

One day, on her shoreline rounds, she found bits of coarse brown cloth washed up on shore. A sort of wood shaving material was often with what appeared to be clothing scraps. The scavenger birds were busy. Later, she found bodies, victims of a sunken warship. One man had crawled ashore, and she found him hidden and near death in an outbuilding. He did not speak Norwegian; she did not speak his language.

The man survived. However, when Ingrid reported the bodies to the German authorities on the main island, she failed to mention him. Inevitably the Germans came to search her island. Then they came again.

Ingrid found herself back on the main island. It would take her months to recall how and why that happened, as memory after painful memory surfaced, and had to be fitted into the puzzle.

White Shadow sometimes seemed to be trying to pack in too much. Jacobsen writes in a spare detached way in The Unseen, and at the start of this book. It then seemed to speed up and jump around with the discovery of the drowned men. I wondered at first if this was due to having two translators, but this same pair did a fine job with The Unseen. Perhaps Jacobsen was trying to project the unease Ingrid felt, as the jumpiness ceased after the Germans actually appeared.

The town on the main island was filled with refugees from fighting in Finnmark, and with displaced Norwegians from further north. Jacobsen shows their plight well, along with their interactions with the Germans. However, once the war ended, it seemed as if the storyline did too, and the characters dispersed quickly.

I liked this book better than I've made it seem. I have the third volume in what was initially a trilogy in the TBR mountain, and I'm looking forward to it. I was also happy to hear there will be a fourth book, so all is well. If you've read The Unseen, I would recommend White Shadow.

The Rigel under attack. Image from Wikipedia

The sunken ship in White Shadow was the Norwegian vessel MS Rigel. The Germans had requisitioned it. It was sunk by the British on November 27, 1944, with the loss of more than 2,571 people, mostly Russian POWs being transported by the Germans. 267 people survived. The attackers said they had believed it was a troopship.

__________
Edited to insert space.

I'm squinting past all the reviews of Jacobsen's books because I have the first sitting on my "read me next, please" shelf. The info on the Rigel is shocking. Can't wait to see how it ties into the novels when I get there.

>52 SassyLassy: You've got me interested in this quartet. Incidentally, The Unseen is free on audible in the US.

>55 RidgewayGirl: Now you have me interested.

I have been catching up on your thread and enjoying your reviews. A very interesting point on how your experience of a book can depend so much on the translation that you first encounter. I've heard similar things about reading translations from Russian (particularly the prevalence of Garnett).

>52 SassyLassy: i don’t think I’ve heard of Jacobson before this year. Now he’s everywhere in CR. Terrific review.

>52 SassyLassy: So interesting to read you review of this book, especially in the light of the review I posted a few days ago for the same book. It's fun to see that we have approached our reviews differently, and I love how you wrote your summary, making so much space for the day-to-day life and so few for what happens after the Rigel sunk.

I read the book in French, and felt the style was very different from the first book in the series, so reading about your experience makes me think that it comes from the author, not the translation.

I did enjoy this book as well, and I really enjoyed the third one that I read straight after.

>53 SassyLassy: Thanks for the photo. I had not realized the Rigel was an actual boat and that Roy Jacobsen relied so closely on a true story.

>58 dchaikin: serendipity... or an international conspiracy to increase your amount of books to be read?

>59 raton-liseur: I’m going with the international conspiracy…and trying to come to peace and acceptance…

I just finished another book by Russell Banks, The Magic Kingdom, which is not about Disney world as you might expect from the title. Instead it's about a Shaker community in central Florida in the early 20th century. (In the book, the 7000 acres on which the Shakers lived and farmed is ultimately sold to Disney.) I googled and there really was a Shaker community in central Florida at that time, but I coulodn't tie down the actual location, or its proximity to the current Disney World. I enjoyed the book. In tone and style it's similar to Cloudsplitter his other work of historical fiction. And I read that although he died in 2023, he has another book coming out soon, this spring I think. I'm wondering if it's one he completed before his death, or one someone else pulled together from a work in progress.

The Tin Flute sounds like a great addition to my 20th century classics reading. Great review!

>51 SassyLassy: I read her The Road to Middlemarch which I loved. I'm wondering if they are the same with a slightly different title, only yours is coming up in touchstones. That has happened with US/UK editions before and they have a publication date only a year apart Sassy.

>54 labfs39: I have to "squint past" reviews in various threads too. Then I don't even read them until I have posted my own. I'm sure you will enjoy Jacobsen's books.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I think that's a book where the narrator will make all the difference.

>57 rv1988: Translation is a never ending topic of interest for me. You mention Constance Garnett - those were the translations I first read for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I have since read others of the same books. I tend to think the translation I prefer is the one which suits the subject matter best, so, lyrical description - Garnett: tension and drama - P and V usually.

>58 dchaikin: >60 dchaikin: Thanks, I see you are creeping toward his work! Peace maybe - acceptance is a whole different matter!

>61 arubabookwoman: Thanks so much for reminding me that I still haven't read Cloudsplitter. It's in a box in the basement somewhere and needs to be unpacked. I'll have to go with that before The Magic Kingdom. It still hasn't really sunk in that he's dead. I certainly hope he managed to complete the new book, and that someone else didn't finish it.

>62 mabith: Hi and welcome back. I've missed you on the Needlearts thread. I think you would like The Tin Flute.

>63 Caroline_McElwee: You're probably right about the title shift. It can be a real trap when you see the alternate edition with its different title and cover. It's good to hear you loved it. I will have to get to it sooner rather than later.

>59 raton-liseur: It's fun to see that we have approached our reviews differently, and I love how you wrote your summary, making so much space for the day-to-day life and so few for what happens after the Rigel sunk.

There's a couple of reasons for that. The easiest is that the aftermath of the sinking would involve too much in the way of spoilers.

The more complex reason is a belief that being able to "do" for yourself is a really important part of life. There are so many basic skills disappearing and being relegated to museums. I'm not suggesting we should all be able to do what was once skilled work, things like coopering and blacksmithing, but I do think we should have an awareness of how more basic things are done, and of the world around us. Too many people have no idea about something as basic as food and how it gets to them. I once had a professor who said "some people think every four legged bovine is a cow", and that summed up a lot. So, when a character like Ingrid is able to put so much knowledge and skill into her work, I feel positively toward her right away.

I think this feeling goes back a long way. I was a five year old when my paternal great aunts discovered I didn't know how to knit. These Cambridge educated women sat me down immediately and corrected that! I have always had this sense that I should know how to do all kinds of useful things "just in case".

One of my favourite obituaries was of an eminent judge. His legal career was barely mentioned, but much time was devoted to his music making, wood stacking, and rhubarb jam making abilities, which said far more about him than the CV style of obituary ever would.

>65 SassyLassy: Are you from Nova Scotia originally, Sassy? I wonder how much of our self-reliant mindset comes from this area of the world? What you are describing is much like what I grew up with as well: stoic self-reliance and jack of all trades mindset.

I always thought self-reliance was a kind of small town or rural thing. My Florida suburban childhood inspired the absolute opposite.

>65 SassyLassy: I'd already made half a mental note of the Jacobsen books thanks to your reviews and those of raton-liseur...but with this post I'm sold! I too was brought up with this mindset, mainly thanks to my Grandma (your knitting story rings a bell), and although I left it behind for numerous years ("progress") I've come back to it as I've got older, and it's something I'm trying to pass on to my daughter. I like Ingrid already.

>65 SassyLassy: It's a life philosophy I agree with, despite feeling that I do not myself enough of those skills. This makes an interesting connection between you and the book or the you and the character. As I read it so recently, this gives me another perspective and another reason to enjoy this short novel.

>32 SassyLassy:

I read only Rue Deschambault by her, also excellent. The same heavy, constricted atmosphere as is conveyed by Mavis Gallant--you'd never think modern Québec could spring from those origins.

I wasn't familiar with Roy Jacobsen either. White Shadow (and the rest of the trilogy) sounds interesting. The cover you posted reminded me a bit of another Scandinavian shipwreck-framed book, Carsten Jensen's We the Drowned:


All this talk about the art of translation here and on bragan's thread makes me want to read some of the books in my pile by translators talking about what they do—thinking of Kate Briggs's This Little Art and Jhumpa Lahiri's Translating Myself and Others. Has anyone else read them?

>71 lisapeet: I'm in love with that cover art. It's fantastic! Do you know who did the art?

>71 lisapeet:, >72 Julie_in_the_Library: I love that cover, and I love that book as well.
Coincidentally, one of the translators into French for We the Drowned is the translator of the Barroy trilogy (White shadows being the second in the series), although it's not the same original language.

Well with the exception of a few brief remarks on others' threads, I've unavoidably been off LT for the past ten days or so. Time to get back to business.

>66 labfs39: I'm from Scotland originally. My parents moved to Nova Scotia when I was nine. Double self reliance between that background and living here. I have lived elsewhere over the years, including back in Scotland, but always seem to come back here.

>67 dchaikin: There's a great term around here - "cityots", used to describe some of the head scratching things done by city people: blindly following Google directions when it is obvious they won't work out, expecting full service everything even though they come here to "get away from it all", and then the more egregious examples of trying to impose their will on the environment - build out into the ocean anyone?
It can take a lot of self reliance to navigate some urban situations too though!

>68 rachbxl: I think you will really like Ingrid. She's like a tough version of the grandmother in The Summer Book.

>70 LolaWalser: Rue Deschambault noted. I love Québec politics and social history.
At the book club meeting, there was a great discussion of The Quiet Revolution in relation to The Tin Flute. However, the group is about half American, and it was interesting to see that they didn't know what in the world we were discussing, even after being here in some cases for 20+ years.

>71 lisapeet: >72 Julie_in_the_Library: >75 raton-liseur: I loved We the Drowned and that is a great cover. The same person, Joe McLaren did both it and the Jacobsen books.

>71 lisapeet: I haven't read the books by translators you mention, but they're something else to add to the great "someday" list.

Back to books. This was read for the Monthly Author Reads January, where Elizabeth Gaskell was the featured author.

Another country, another century, but more urban realism:



Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
first published anonymously in 1848
finished reading January 19, 2024
TBR since August 23, 2015

Mary Barton combines two of the Victorian readers' favourite themes: social commentary and melodrama.

Gaskell starts by introducing the reader to the Bartons, a working class family in economic times good enough for them to be enjoying a holiday outing with friends, and then an evening back at their house. She then jumps right into her story, for later that evening, John Barton's wife and unborn child died in childbirth. John and his thirteen year old daughter Mary were left on their own. John became a Trades' Union chair and a Chartist, while continuing to work.

Three years passed, and it was time for Mary to find work. Factory work was deemed unsuitable. Mary's Aunt Esther had gone that route, bought fancy clothes, and run off with an officer, never to be seen since. John Barton wasn't having that happen to his Mary. Going into domestic service was an option Mary rejected, because of the loss of freedom it entailed. Finally, she apprenticed to a respectable dressmaker and milliner. This decision process allows Gaskell to portray the lives young working class women could expect. At Miss Simmonds's place

... where Mary was to work for two years without any renumeration, on consideration of being taught the business; and where afterwards she was to dine and have tea, with a small quarterly salary... a very small one, divisible into a minute weekly pittance. In summer she was to be there by six, bringing her day's meals during the first two years; in winter she was not to come till after breakfast. Her time for returning home at night must always depend on the quantity of work Miss Simmonds had to do.

It was 1839 in Manchester, and things were about to change drastically. One evening, one of the largest mills in the city caught fire. The Carsons' mill was destroyed and all hands were thrown out of work. The well insured owners thought this an excellent time to replace their aging machinery and build anew. The existing slack market meant full warehouses, so the owners would be able to enjoy some leisure time while the new mill was under construction.

The weekly drain of wages given for labour, useless in the present state of the market, was stopped. Gaskell tells of a winter of cold, hunger, and disease in the homes of these workers. Poverty and death forced many into more squalid housing, creating a seemingly endless downward spiral. Meanwhile, other mills were also laying off workers in the slow market. John Barton went to London with a group of fellow Chartists to present a petition to Parliament in support of the movement. Their petition was rejected. Barton returned to Manchester a changed man.

This is where the novel shifts focus somewhat, as Gaskell brings in Mary's story. Mary had a suitor, eminently acceptable to all involved. Mary, however, had her sights set on young Ben Carson, the mill owner's only son. Carson had been flirting with Mary, little realizing that she took him seriously, and actually thought she could rise to be his wife.

A murder and trial alter the whole pace and tone of the novel here. Gaskell's social commentary is still there, in her presentation of a trial for a capital offence with only circumstantial evidence. The tension created for Mary between the identity of the accused and her knowledge of the true murderer's identity carries this second half. It's a melodramatic plot line, but by Victorian standards Gaskell keeps it from getting out of hand, as it echoed some real events.

Elizabeth Gaskell lived in Manchester. Frederich Engels also lived in Manchester in the era of this novel, and it was that city's condition he described in The Condition of the Working Class in England. Although there is no evidence Gaskell had read this work, as a minister's wife, she knew her city and its problems well. The supporting characters are well drawn, and showed the reading classes that working class people had interests too, and were not merely cogs in the machine.

Mary Barton was Gaskell's first novel, published anonymously. Her detailed portrayal of everyday life led reviewers to deduce her gender, but they attributed her identity to the wrong person, so Barton had to reveal authorship. Initial criticism focussed on Gaskell's deliberate use of Lancashire dialect, prompting her husband to append two lectures on it to later editions. There was also criticism from some middle class readers, suggesting Gaskell had been too hard on the owners, whom they felt acted like benevolent patriarchs. Overall though, it received much praise for realism, and launched Gaskell on her career as a novel writer.

>77 SassyLassy: Great review! I’m tempted to read this but will check if the audio version is good. So often when northern English accents are used they are used badly. I have friends in the Manchester area. Great city whose history illustrates the way the Industrial Revolution impoverished the working class - both economically and spiritually.

>77 SassyLassy: great review. Not sure I could face Gaskell again. I had issues with North and South. But she had a unique insight.

>77 SassyLassy: I have Mary Barton on my long to read list. Having read North and South and your review of Mary Barton I know I will enjoy it when I get to it. It obviously 'would not do' to be too hard on the mill owners.

>78 kjuliff: I'm a big fan of those big Industrial Revolution cities for some reason, and Manchester is one of them.

>79 dchaikin: I had the same feeling about reading another Gaskell so soon after our group read of North and South, but this one hooked me in right from the start.

>80 baswood: "Would not do" indeed! Initially Gaskell was going to title the book John Barton, as it was his story and that of the people he represented which had the most resonance for her, but her publishers suggested otherwise.
Looking forward to your thoughts on it when you get there.

Well in an effort to attempt a modicum of order in my books, and encourage myself to read more from my TBR, I'm going to try what some others have done and shame myself by listing books coming into the house this year, versus books read from my TBR pile.

For purposes of this list, my official definition of a TBR book is one that has been around longer than one year from the date I finish reading it.

Books from the TBR:
January
The Dead Alive finished January 2, 2024, TBR since April 14, 2022
Mary Barton finished January 19, 2024, TBR since August 23, 2015

Books Somehow Finding Their Way into the House:
January 2
Lublin by Manya Wilkinson
January 11
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
January 24
Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan
Bambi by Felix Salten
Foe by J M Coetzee
Disgrace by J M Coetzee

January was obviously not a good start, although I did read two books in the house for less than a year, and a library book as well.

Oops - edited to add yet another book that came snuck in.

Made it through February without any additions (I think), but March brought the Princeton University Press sale - Oh Dear

March 5
The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century by Bruce Dickson

>82 SassyLassy: fun! I’m more forgiving. If i buy a book, it’s immediately on my tbr. So if I buy and immediately read a book, that one checked off. 🙂 But library books don’t count…

Glad to see you are still regularly reading classics. My life is a bit chaotic now, and I find it hard to concentrate and truly enjoy classics at the moment.

>83 dchaikin: I debated the idea of the past year's books being on the pile, but decided they had barely had time to settle in, so not really in a pile! You're absolutely right - library books don't count.

>84 edwinbcn: Good to see you back here. I've been following your move and new life with interest.
I find classics can sometimes help in chaos, as there's something comforting about the format, but I can see how new ones would be difficult if there isn't the required time and solitude - maybe rereads? I hope you can get back to them soon.

>76 SassyLassy:

Should have noted, Rue Deschambault deals with the francophones in Manitoba, but yes, most of Roy's work is situated in Québec.

>82 SassyLassy: "Books Somehow Finding Their Way into the House" made me giggle in recognition. Those pesky books!

>82 SassyLassy: Books Somehow Finding Their Way into the House — Yes, nobody knows where they come from, but they keep appearing. I think there may be an element of spontaneous generation involved…

Have fun with Lucky Per!

My copy of Bonheur d’occasion arrived the other day, but it may be trapped on the TBR for a while. I seem to have gone down a Mitteleuropa rabbit-hole.

I vaguely remember enjoying Mary Barton a long time ago, but I don’t remember much of the story. I think I must have read it after David Lodge’s pastiche of nineteenth-century industrial novels in Nice work made me wonder about how the real thing worked.

>77 SassyLassy: >79 dchaikin: I really liked Mary Barton, the first book by Gaskell I read, but I too had issues with North and South, and stalled about 60% read. At this point I don't think I'll be picking it up again, but you never know.

>82 SassyLassy: I bought Lucky Per last year with the intent of reading a new-to-me Nobelist. I haven't gotten to it yet, but hope to soon. I've read Foe and Disgrace, but haven't heard of the others on your list (unless Bambi is what the Disney film was "based on." Will be checking them out.

>86 LolaWalser: Might make an interesting contrast to The Stone Angel then, which I read fairly recently.

>88 thorold: >89 arubabookwoman: Lucky Per is going okay now, once I got over the size of it! I am reading other things along with it, but hope to finish it this month.

>88 thorold: Mitteleuropa seems more like a quagmire at times than a rabbit-hole, but I've been enjoying your reviews!

>89 arubabookwoman: Bambi is indeed what the Disney film was based upon. It was the subtitle A Life in the Woods and the fact that it is an older book (1923) that made me thing it might be an interesting read. The Coetzee books are for when I get stuck on "What's next?", sort of like rocketjk's "in between" reading.

>81 SassyLassy: >89 arubabookwoman: Interesting about North and South. Maybe after the success of Mary Barton Gaskell thought she should try being a weighty writer, and it just doesn't work for some.

This book was read for my book club:



The History of Bees by Maja Lunde translated from the Norwegian by Diane Oatley (2015)
first published 2015 as Bienes historie
finished reading January 28, 2024

I had two thoughts when I started reading this novel. The first was "Oh no, I don't like futurist dystopias." The second was "People in other countries write perfectly ordinary novels too. Just because it has been translated doesn't mean it is great literature."

The History of Bees takes place over almost two hundred and fifty years, and across three continents, so there's lots of juggling going on with three story lines told in an interspersed fashion.

It starts in Sichuan Province in 2098. Hectare after hectare of pear trees must be painstakingly hand pollinated by agricultural workers, for there are no more flying insects or birds to do nature's work. It seemed nothing had really changed since the 1960s. There was a sameness here to the life of peasants back then, with their work brigades, education sessions, political structure, and child rearing practices. This made Lunde's future much more believable, but perhaps less dystopian than Lunde maybe anticipated.

Skip back to Hertfordshire in 1851, where William Savage has taken to his bed with melancholy. His hopes for a career in the world of natural history have been dashed like Lydgate's by the need to care for a family. Like the drone I sacrificed myself for procreation. William's daughter Charlotte is the only one who believes in her father anymore. It is she who will design a successful beehive based on his failed idea. This was the least successful story line for me.

In between these two threads is the story of George in 2007 Ohio. George was a honey producer who believed in interfering with his hives as little as possible; no pesticide sprays here. However, the uncertain economy forced him into more commercial endeavours and practises. Colony Collapse Disorder destroyed his livelihood. I felt sympathy for George.

Colony Collapse Disorder seemed like an apt metaphor for the life of each of these three families, as each in turn fell apart. It seems unlikely, but Lunde does manage to connect their stories in the end.

It wasn't the stories that held me, however, but rather Lunde's projection of what happens after the decline of the pollinators: first a decline in feed production; leading to a decline in meat, dairy, and biofuel production; followed by an increase in fossil fuel consumption; to be followed naturally by more climate change, in this case global warming.

___________________

The Chinese story reminded me of Ma Jian's The Dark Road, a truly grim novel of the future. It also prompted me to dig out Mao's War against Nature and start reading it, for Lunde's 2098 China seemed to follow all too easily from there.

Doesn’t sound ordinary. Imperfect maybe. Enjoyed your review, anyway.

I'm an Elizabeth Gaskell devotee, so pleased to see anyone reading her. I've really loved all of her novels, and find so many bits in them that feel impossibly modern, even in Ruth, her fallen woman novel. If anyone is looking for a good audio version of her Wives and Daughters, there's an excellent version read by Prunella Scales.

>91 SassyLassy: I went back and checked my review of History of Bees from a few years back. Seems I really enjoyed it, although I can't remember a huge amount about it.

>92 dchaikin: Imperfect is perhaps a better word. I was probably being hard on her. It would be difficult to make the transition from writing for children to writing for adults. Each has its own different respective pitfalls and challenges. I wouldn't try either!

>93 mabith: I'll have to look for Ruth, previously unknown to me. I do love the various Victorian treatments of "Fallen Women".

>94 AlisonY: I remember reading reviews of this awhile ago, and thinking it sounded interesting, so was happy to read it when it turned up for the book club. It was one of those great discussions where people were split on it, so lots to get us all going.

_____________

A friend just told me about a Princeton University Press 75% off selected titles sale. So much for good resolutions for the new year!

A friend just told me about a Princeton University Press 75% off selected titles sale. So much for good resolutions for the new year!

Argh! I could still spend hundreds of dollars and not get everything that sounds interesting! But I don't think I can pass this one up.

>95 SassyLassy: >96 markon: Which books are you interested in (from the sale)?

>97 labfs39: I've limited myself to two, though I could easily have ordered far more - poetry, essays by Isaac Basheivis Singer, conversations with Amos Oz, a book on how the Sahara became a desert and how scientists figured this out, After one hundred winters. . .

I got a copy of The original Bambi (I've never read the book, and the illustrations look wonderful) and The Nevada test site by Emmet Gowin, which is aerial photographs he took of the nuclear test site in 1996 & 97. He's the only photographer that the US has given sustained access to this location.

Edited to add, I broke down and bought a third: When the Sahara was green.

>98 markon: I bought that Singer essay book last year but I haven't started it yet. I'm looking forward to it, though.

>98 markon: >99 rocketjk: I wanted the Singer book too: Old Truths and New Clichés, but it was already out of stock other than in download format

>97 labfs39: What did I get? The books on offer were all nonfiction, but that was absolutely no impediment!

The Party and the People - Chinese politics in the 21st century - I know there are lots of books about this, but this particular one looked better grounded and researched

Victorian Pain - a study of how Victorians regarded pain: affliction, punishment...? - it goes with my other books on these fascinating people

The Natural History of Edward Lear - Lear doesn't get enough credit these days for his knowledge and drawings of the natural world

How Plants Work - more natural world. I already know this, but this is subtitled "Form, Diversity, Survival" so that looked interesting

Rarities of These Lands - more beautiful things, this time from the age of Dutch trade and exploration

Moscow Monumental - how the streetscape of Moscow was changed during the Stalin era

The House of Government - a building where many of the major players lived during the great upheavals in Russia, and their fates

Canada Post is punishing me for my choices!

>100 SassyLassy: For the US, I was able to filter by Literature -> Poetry and Fiction and thus New Impressions of Africa it on its way to me.

>100 SassyLassy: Nicely done!

Just peeking in....what an interesting list!

>77 SassyLassy: Great review. I really enjoyed North and South (not a popular view here, I see!) but I have yet to read Mary Barton. I shall now.

> "Just because it has been translated doesn't mean it is great literature." - Oh yes, absolutely. A good reminder.

And, oh dear, the Princeton University Press doesn't ship to where I am, but it does ship to India and I'm going to have a bunch of books delivered to friends to pick up later this year. Thanks for the heads up!

Just noticed that Michael Crummey has a new novel out and also a collection of new poems. Yes, of course, I sent for them!

Well it's been over a month, so time to get past the Knut Hamsun roadblock.



Pan by Knut Hamsun translated from the Norwegian by Terence Cave (2023)
first published 1894 as Pan
finished reading January 28, 2024

What is it about Knut Hamsun's books that stops me dead in my tracks everytime I want to write about one of them? Two years ago I read Wayfarers (1927), my introduction to him. No review followed, although the book made a real impression. Last year it was Hunger (1890). It made an even stronger impression, but again, no review. This brings me to Pan, my 2024 read. The plot here doesn't convey the same sense of economic deprivation and wasted lives as the other two did, but still, it would never be considered upbeat.

Twenty-eight year old Lieutenant Thomas Glahn went to northern Norway in the summer of 1855 on furlough. Although he easily could have lived in the village, he chose to live in a hut in the mountains. There were interactions with the people of the village, usually followed by spells of self imposed isolation, which he spent hunting with his dog Aesop.

All this is recounted by Glahn himself, who says he is writing this memoir of that summer two years ago strictly for his own amusement. Like Pan in his forest, Glahn was living in a world of great natural beauty, but like Pan's world, there was always an undercurrent of sexual tension as the natural world began its own rites of spring. As Tore Rem says in the introduction, In the Nordland spring, the forest is filled with pheromones, and Glahn's hut is their epicentre.

Glahn found himself willing partners, each unsuitable in her own way. As he wrote his memoir though, looking back he seemed to select one, Edvarda, as a sentimental favourite, with no evidence that it was so at the time. His behaviour toward her and others was erratic, boorish, and uncontrolled. Alone, he tended to immerse himself in the natural world, imparting feeling and purpose to it. The two alternating strands result in the kind of frenetic activity, often with a sinister undertone, leaving the reader to lurch along with Glahn until he brings it all to a sudden end.

At the end of Glahn's narrative, is another piece by Hamsun, here titled "Glahn's Death, A Document from 1861". This was actually a short story Hamsun had written and published the year before he wrote Pan. The title is sometimes a subtitle for the later work. Once again there is a first person narrative, this time by an unidentified writer. This writer states clearly about Glahn "I hate him". He recounts how and where Glahn died, judging him harshly as he writes, and like Glahn before him, excusing his own behaviour. It's an odd somewhat jarring addition to Pan. Either piece could stand on its own; together the reader has to consider Glahn more carefully. In this way, it works.

>106 SassyLassy: I understand how some books seem to defy review. Personally I'm glad you persevered with this one as it is not a book I am likely to stumble across, but one that I am interested in nonetheless.

>106 SassyLassy: Thanks for this review. Yes I found Hamsun a difficult writer to review, though I hope to read and review Hunger. I did review Mysteries a while ago, and I now I’m putting Pan on my tbr. It sounds fascinating. Hanson is an incredibly interesting writer and from what I’ve read, perhaps the first post-modernist.

From way back:

>I loved We the Drowned and that is a great cover. The same person, Joe McLaren did both it and the Jacobsen books.
OK, at least I have a decent eye still.

And I love your Princeton University Press haul. Speaking of Edward Lear, have you read Jenny Uglow's Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense? It's long but very good, and, as they say, a handsome volume.

>106 SassyLassy:

Early Hamsun is wonderful. Pan I adore.

>106 SassyLassy: Nice review; interesting book.

>106 SassyLassy: Fabulous review of Pan - I'm glad you overcame your block. I'd not heard of this title, so enjoyed learning about it. I'm getting the impression that Hamsun's go-to style is bleakness.

>107 labfs39: I understand how some books seem to defy review. Thanks for that. I always feel like some kind of wimp for not diving in and taking on the challenge.
This is a new translation, and you may actually stumble upon it somewhere. It seems Hamsun's books are appearing more often on shelves.

>108 kjuliff: I haven't read Mysteries, and will look for it. As to being a post modernist, in the introduction, Tore Rem says of Hamsun's writing ... it is more helpful here to invoke the wider sea-change in psychological and cognitive investigation that was already underway in the late nineteenth century. Prominent among these new conceptions is the sense in which the human mind is 'unconscious' of much of its functioning... and also defective in interpreting the responses of others. The introduction goes on to say that Hamsun himself spoke often in letters of shifting mental states, in today's parlance "the shifting dynamics of affective or cognitive states". That's certain evident in Hunger and in Pan, not so much in Wayfarers, the only book of his I have read.
I'd say while Hamsun does have some of the ideas of postmodernism, he was writing well before the usual time frame of the period.

>109 lisapeet: It is a good haul indeed now that they have all arrived.
I have a few books on Edward Lear, but not that one. I like Jenny Uglow's writing, and the book you mention sounds wonderful, so yet another book to seek out. Yikes!

>110 LolaWalser: I can see me going back to it again, the natural world is wonderful and the contrast with Glahn's psyche intriguing.

>111 avaland: >112 AlisonY: Thanks. Yes, I would say Hamsun is bleak, but there's a sort of dichotomy between his characters and the world around them. The characters live bleak lives in a world that can be stark and harsh, but at other times his descriptions of it are lyrical. As they say in Newfoundland of their surroundings, "a terrible beauty".

I was taught Hamsun was a modernist, not post. I think of him as more melancholy than bleak, if that makes sense. His language is too beautiful to associate with the latter, somehow. Said a character in Doctor Who, "Sadness is happiness for deep people." :)

>114 LolaWalser: I see Hamsun as post-modern. Certainly his early works were before his time. Sadly he went off-beam later in life. It’s worth reading The Nazi novelist you should read.

Isaac Bashevis Singer famously called Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun the father of modern literature. I'd take this further and say that he's the father of postmodern literature as well. With 1890's Hunger, Hamsun unleashed the first in a series of novels that anticipated everything from the terrifying absurdities of Kafka to the desiccated ennui of the existentialists and even Charles Bukowski's autobiographical explorations.

Maybe we need a literary scholar to chime in, because as I understand it, postmodernism isn't especially distinguished by anticipating anything. Wouldn't that sort of thing be rather what we call avant-garde? As for Hamsun, he may be better known, but he wasn't the only one ushering modernist techniques and themes--in Scandinavia Ibsen, Strindberg, Herman Bang, Keyserling were also very popular.

>106 SassyLassy: Fascinating review. I wonder what it is like as a writer to write about a character you loathe. Is it a process of externalising some inner torment? Or drawing from things outside and bringing them within you, which creates revulsion?

>116 LolaWalser: Ha I expect you are right. I checked out the Knut Hamsun Centre to see how the locals catagorised his work and came upon a term unfamiliar to me - “proto-modernism”.But perhaps it’s unnecessary to label his writing style. Whatever we call it, it seems to many to be ahead of its time, avant-garde.

>114 LolaWalser: Nice distinction between "melancholy" and "bleak". It certainly works for me in Pan, where the melancholy is almost self indulgent and enjoyable on Glahn's part. Bleak came out more in the other two Hamsun novels I read, based on the desperate living circumstances of the characters, who had little choice but to leave everything behind. Maybe today they would be called "economic migrants", but that is a term I really don't like, as it suggests a certain opportunism, whereas even though there is no actual war, there is still that impetus to leave to survive.

>117 rv1988: I wonder what it is like as a writer to write about a character you loathe.
I suspect in Hamsun's case it "is a process of externalising some inner torment".
I think revulsion might require a more drawn out book. The writing would certainly be difficult, but on the other hand the characters created could be some of the most memorable in fiction.
You've set me a good challenge to think of such a book. Right now the closest one that comes to mind is The Golovlyov Family.

>118 kjuliff:

proto-modernism

That makes sense, although, given Hamsun's remarkable span (1859-1952), he can certainly be said to have graduated from being proto to being It!

>119 SassyLassy:

I know it's a tic to recommend movies when people talk about books, but the Danish film of Hunger (Sult, 1966) conveys something of the counter-intuitive exuberance in hungry, naked existence. The giddiness of fall, before splattering on asphalt--or drifting away at the last moment, like a leaf? The end is ambiguous.

Coming in late, but i really enjoyed your review of Pan. I’ve never heard of it. Maybe Hamsun was having a little fun. I’m also intrigued by combining the two stories.

>120 LolaWalser: Never worry about film recommendations here - all are welcome. This one sounds like one to search for.

>121 dchaikin: I have never heard of it either until I stumbled across it in a real life books store. This translation was only done last year, so that may have something to do with it.
Combining the two stories seemed somewhat jarring at first, until you realize that both narrators share similar personality traits. I also liked hearing what happened to Glahn, although there was room for some "Maybe, maybe not" there.

Most of January's reading was fairly sombre, so I was looking for a change. It didn't necessarily happen.

A little heavy on the quotes, but it's difficult to convey le Carré without them.



Silverview by John le Carré
first published 2021
finished reading February 3, 2024

It's probably a safe bet that not many run of the mill spies have lovely homes in the English countryside for weekends and future retirement. Those who employ and deploy those spies though are a different matter. It is these people who populate this novel.

Take Stewart Proctor, with his house in the Berkshire hills.

With Stewart, unless you were crass, you didn't ask what he did. Or why, at fifty-five, after spending a quarter of a century at the Foreign Office in London, or in a succession of diplomatic outposts, he wasn't an ambassador somewhere, or a permanent under-secretary of something, or Sir Stewart.
But you knew.

Then there was Deborah Avon, dying in her secluded East Anglia home Silverview. She was an Arabist, "a distinguished academic in harness to the government". Her mismatched husband was a bit of a conundrum; highly skilled linguist, conman, opportunist, or maybe all three?

Admittedly, not everyone had fared so well. Philip and Joan had actually worked in the field. Now they lived in a tacky suburban bungalow in a Somerset village.

Was this really the golden couple Proctor remembered from twenty-five years ago? Stroke-smitten Philip bowed over a stick, and Joan a horsy woman in elastic topped slacks and a t-shirt with a wide angle shot of Old Vienna across her expansive bosom? But Proctor could remember when she was the improbably beautiful Director of Levantine Operations, while husband Philip smoked his pipe and ran the Service's Eastern Europe network from an outstation next to Lambeth Palace.

Thirty-three year old Julian Lawndsley had no connection to these people. Having made enough money in the City to leave and come to East Anglia and open a bookshop, the Republic of Literature, he seemed at first somewhat uninvolved in his new community.

At times, Silverview reads almost like a caper, but this is John le Carré writing, so there are serious questions here too, the most crucial being what and who is real. This is le Carré's final published book; not the final one he wrote, but one completed earlier and withheld by him. Nick Cornwell, le Carré's son, asked himself after his father's death why this was so. He felt it was because the author did not want to be suspected of showing any disloyalty to the Service by showing it in a less than positive light. The novel he felt shows a Service fragmented: filled with its own political factions, not always kind to those it should cherish, not always very effective or alert, and ultimately not sure, any more, that it can justify itself. He believed his father was wondering whether it was all worth the cost.

That's something definitely worth considering.

>123 SassyLassy: Interesting review. I wonder if the son was justified in publishing the book when his father clearly didn’t want this.

>124 kjuliff: Cornwell says that le Carré asked him to promise to finish any manuscripts he might find after his death. He didn't find any, but did find this completed one, so published it. It didn't seem as if it had been a matter of his father not wanting it published, rather that he still maintained relationships with people in the Service, and felt he owed it something. Cornwell felt he did not want to appear to be criticizing it.
I think the fact that the manuscript was complete and edited suggests publication was intended.

How did you make out in the storm, Sassy?

>126 labfs39: It changed to heavy rain here, three days of it. I have never seen the garden so flooded, even after spring thaws, despite the trenching I dug out last year. Trees stayed upright this time though, so that's a plus. There are mosses growing everywhere. I wish I had a guide to the different kinds.
The road in front is deteriorating dramatically. The snowplow digs it up each winter, then the rains fill it in, then pieces come loose. However, there is only one house past mine, so I don't see much hope of it being repaired, even though it is not a private road.
No power outage though, so that was good. Hope yours is back soon.

>127 SassyLassy: We got power back this afternoon and the furnace seems to be working normally, so that's good. I'm worried about flooding here too. The lakes are already full and the ground saturated, now two feet of snow is going to melt in just a couple of days (it's supposed to be in the high 50s tomorrow). It's insane.

>125 SassyLassy: Thanks for the clarification which makes sense. I hadn’t realised that the book was left edited and ready for publication. I’m putting it on my list.

Interested to read your review of Silverview. I have a couple of friends in England who I meet on Zoom occasionally. They worked in the spying industry in London, but never talk about it. I will ask them next time we meet if they have read Silverview.

>130 baswood: I’ll ask mine too. I wonder if they know yours.

>130 baswood: That will be interesting.

_______________________

Out of touch for the next two weeks.

Well I was really out of touch. After 14 hours without power the day before I left, I tried signing on to gmail on another device the day I left (April 13) and was blocked, no matter that the user name and password were correct.
Spent the two week trip without email; not a problem as I have done this many times before.

However, back at home and on my own device, gmail is still completely blocking me. Can't face changing my account name, which I have had for 14 years, but there probably isn't an alternative.

The good news is that the book buying on the trip was excellent. Not having email will no doubt increase my time for reading it all!

>133 SassyLassy: Glad you had a good trip. Are you going to share the contents of your book haul?

Welcome back, Sassy! What a hassle with gmail. Have you tried customer service?

Please do share your book haul. Inquiring minds... :-)

>134 RidgewayGirl: >135 labfs39:

One of my goals was to limit the books to authors or editions that were generally unavailable here, and by and large I succeeded. I went to both new and secondhand book stores.

Unfortunately BA saw fit to separate me from my luggage, and we weren't reunited until day 13 of 16, so I was unexpectedly limited by what I could carry by hand. That said, when it was weighed for the return flight, I could have had another 10kg worth at least. I won't be as restrained next time!

What I did wind up with:

China
Twenty Snobs and Mao by Colette Modiano
- this looks delightful, being her story of taking twenty entitled wealthy Europeans to China in 1969. It was quite an eye opener for them, starting off with the four day flight from Paris in an old Tupolev, via Moscow, Omsk, and Irkutsk to Beijing, or Peking as the translator calls it.
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun.
- Lu was one of the most influential writers in China and in the PRC during the twentieth century, both before and after his death in 1936.

Scotland
Abbotsford: The Place I Have Created introduction by James Wolffe
- a guide to Scott's home in his words
Guy Mannering by Walter Scott
- I finally got to visit Abbotsford on this trip, and felt I should pick up another of his novels, this one less available in Canada
Fergus Lamont by Robin Jenkins
- this is a classic of 20th C Scottish fiction
- purchased in a well known Glasgow second hand store that is positively sinking under the weight of all its books, only remotely organised (Voltaire and Rousseau)
- if anyone has been there, the current iteration of the cat is still there
A Love of Innocence by Robin Jenkins
- another Jenkins novel to add to the collection
- I was staying for a week in the village where Jenkins had lived the latter part of his life, and bought this edition in the small town where he taught school for awhile
- Agnes Finnie: The Witch of the Potterrow Port by Mary Craig
- nonfiction about the trial and execution of a woman in 1644

The World of Plants
The Book of Wild Flowers: Reflections on Favourite Plants by Christopher Stocks
- bought mostly for the illustrations, but also for some of the lore of these UK wildflowers
Rhododendron Dissected by David Purvis
- a book seen at Benmore Gardens which I will order now that I am home (too large to carry)

Books by Favourite Authors editions not seen in these parts
The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins
Three Elegies for Kosovo by Ismail Kadare
- what would a book buying trip be without a Kadare?
Cassandra by Christa Wolf
- Wolf is an author almost impossible to find in Canada, except for the odd large urban second hand store

Last Minute Book
The Life of Stuff: Possessions, Obsessions and the Mess We Leave Behind by Susannah Walker
- seems a somewhat silly purchase as efforts are being made to divest, but the subject is always intriguing
- I thought I had seen it reviewed here on CR, but it must have been elsewhere

All in all, a good dozen to add to the collection; a baker's dozen if you count the one to be ordered.

------------------------

>135 labfs39: No luck from Google online. Right now I am practising magical thinking by putting off phoning Google in Toronto, in the comforting belief they will be able to help me, while actually I don't hold out any hope for help from them.

Saw this in The Herald (Glasgow) for April 24, 1924:

to be sung to the tune of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina"

Don't cry for me Dostoyevsky
the truth is I never read you
All through your chapters
Your epic fiction
You kept on writing
I kept my distance.

>136 SassyLassy: what would a book buying trip be without a Kadare?

Lol, for you, a given. Nice haul! Twenty Snobs and Mao is such a great title.
I can be a pack mule when it comes to carrying books onboard. Did you have a good trip despite the baggage mishap?

>137 SassyLassy: I love it! Athough I have read Dostoyevsky, I could sing this about many authors that I "should" have read.

>Glad you are back! Enjoyed your list and the poem in >137 SassyLassy:

Time for one of my sporadic resurrections of this thread.



The World according to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell
first published 2023
finished reading February 14, 2024

Nobody wrote like Joan Didion. Eve Babitz had some inspired social/cultural pieces, but there was always a madcap sense to her writing. Molly Ivins knew her politics inside and out, but didn’t venture beyond her country’s borders. Didion combined politics, culture and the social scene in everything she wrote. It’s no wonder she stands alone.

This is why she has so many admirers. I am one, but it would never ever occur to me that I could write like that. Evelyn McDonnell is one too. However, she doesn’t stop there. She wants desperately to be Joan Didion. Recounting Didion’s life in The World According to Joan Didion, she is unable to resist comparing herself, putting herself in Didion’s footsteps psychologically and physically, travelling to many of the spots where Didion had written, and imagining herself doing the same thing. At times it’s almost creepy.

I was born less than two years before Quintana Roo Dunne. Didion is my inspiration but her daughter is my peer. We attended Ivy League schools at the same time, worked in New York publishing for overlapping years. We could easily have been at the same concerts, shows, openings, bars. My parents also liked to throw parties and drink. We both had working mothers of a similar age: strong, intelligent, kind, and beautiful women who sometimes seemed very far away from us, even if they were in the same room.

Where was the editor? This could describe a whole demographic subset.

McDonnell explains to the reader how, like Didion typing Hemingway’s sentences over and over to absorb structure, she has done that with Didion. She does, however, do a good job of relating Didion’s absolute discipline and dedication to her writing, going all the way back to her high school years. This single mindedness might appear ruthless at times, especially when it got in the way of relationships, but it is necessary if you are going to write like Didion. The old joke about “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” came to mind; in this scenario the answer would be “write, write, write”.

Didion didn’t stop there. There was a persona that went with the writing, and McDonnell discusses how that came to be as well. There is sometimes a flippancy, as yet again she imagines herself in a conversation or at a lunch, but there is no question she knows her subject and the writing. There are more in depth books on Didion out there, but McDonnell’s research and structure makes her book a strong introduction to Didion’s body of work. It’s also a good addition to any Didion themed collection if you can just ignore McDonnell.

I discovered this book through one of thorold's reviews, and it stuck with me, so Thanks.



Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan translated from the Danish by Naomi Lebowitz (2010)
first published in seven instalments from 1898 - 1904
finished reading March 1, 2024

Consider Denmark. When I thought of it before reading Lucky Per, my thoughts were of a modern, forward thinking country, with lots of people engaged in art and design. If I thought about earlier times at all, it would be of the fishing fleets going out into a wider world. All that changed with Lucky Per.

Denmark occupies an awkward geographic position, sticking up into the North Sea, a sort of appendage to Europe, but lacking the benefits of that other appendage, Italy. This put nineteenth century Denmark at a significant disadvantage. There was no real traffic through it. The people were bound up in the thoughts and habits of life little changed since the Reformation. New ideas were all happening in Germany, and those with drive and imagination were going there.

Peter Andreas Sidenius was born into a line of pastors that could be traced back to the Reformation. Early on, he realized that was not the path for him. Who he might be, however, was unclear to him. He avoided home and family as much as he could. School frustrated him, religion disgusted him, his family were ashamed of him.

Per did show an aptitude for mechanical things though; a curiosity about how things worked, and how they could be improved. He imagined a system of waterways and canals to irrigate the fields, and to allow the passage of water craft through Denmark rather than going around. He thought this would improve the lives of those living along the new routes, allowing some of the wealth concentrated in the larger centres to penetrate into the interior, and allowing those in the interior to link with other European ports directly.

The optimistic young man took his ideas to Copenhagen and a technical school. At first it seemed as if this would be another in a long line of nineteenth century novels about a young man on the make, carefully apeing those who have arrived where he would like to be; think Balzac, Dickens and others. However, there is also a bit of Hardy here, for what followed was a true object lesson in how stagnation of ideas, and a rigid bureacracy combined with a rigid class system, can prevent even the best ideas from taking hold.Per was rebuffed at every turn.

Later, he did find support, financial and philosophical, from an assimilated Jewish family, the Salomons. Among their circle, Per learned about music and art, about enjoying life and all it has to offer; a remarkable contrast to his Jutland upbringing. Here Pontoppidan creates a foil to Per: the eldest Salomon daughter Jakobe, one of the best drawn characters in the book.

There was a restlessness about Per, however, that drove him to seek ever more new ideas and experiences. Other dreamers have this too. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The drive to discover oneself can take many twists and turns. How life turned out eventually for Per is the surprise of the novel.

Pontoppidan won the Nobel Prize for Literature jointly with his fellow Dane Karl Gjellerup in 1917. Pontoppidan’s citation read in part “ for his authentic descriptions of present day life in Denmark.” In some ways his early life provided the material for Per. The novel is no rural pastoral though. Rather, it reflects the drive for modernism, with its concern with the more forward ideas of his time, but at the same time, the old Denmark is not left completely behind. Reading Lucky Per, the ideas of Kirkegaard and Nietzsche, current at the time of writing, come through, but so does the hold of the established Lutheran church fighting skirmish by skirmish. However, this is no dry book. Pontoppidan easily establishes a bond between his characters and the reader, so that what and who Lucky Per is keeps the reader going. Why it had not been translated into English for almost one hundred years is a mystery.

>141 SassyLassy: Great review - I checked it out for an Audio version but it’s available only in Danish.

You might be interested in watching some Danish films seeing as you enjoyed the book. There’s a great sub-titled one called The Hunt. Also A War and A Highjacking.
Anything by director Thomas Vinterberg.

>141 SassyLassy: I bought that book after reading Thorold's review too. I just need to stop reading so many (mostly) stupid library books, and get to it and other books I own.

Oh dear, I do seem to be causing trouble :-)

Glad you enjoyed Lucky Per, anyway, SassyLassy

Great reviews!

>137 SassyLassy: What fun!

>142 kjuliff: Danish films are somewhat difficult to find here. However, the Danish series Borgen is one of my all time favourites. Will try to check out your recommendations.

>143 arubabookwoman: I just need to stop reading so many (mostly) stupid library books, and get to it and other books I own.
I know that lament all too well! Sometimes you just need it though.
I think you will like Lucky Per.

>144 thorold: Well the size did daunt me at first when it arrived, but it wasn't an impediment at all once I got going. Thanks again.

>145 avaland: Thanks - How's the garden going?

>146 Jim53: Definitely fun, but also a real earworm!

This next book was the March selection for my book club:



Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie and John Geiger
first published 1987, this updated edition published 2017
finished reading March 12, 2024

John Franklin left England on May 19 1845 commanding two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. His mission was to find a route, a Northwest Passage, through the ice from the known shores of Baffin Island right through unknown waters to the Bering Strait on the western side of North Anerica. His two ships were last seen in July of that year by whalers in Baffin Bay.

What happened to the much heralded expedition? This was a question which would seize the Victorian mind for decades. Who Franklin was in the public mind would change over time to suit the needs of different times and parties.

In her introduction to Frozen in Time, Margaret Atwood posits three Franklins. The first is the “Ur-Franklin”. Fifty-nine years old, a man nearing the end of his career, just back from almost a decade as governor of Tasmania he was looking for something more to give him some renown, to have his name remembered. He was no one’s first choice for the mission, but rather obtained it by default.

“Interim Franklin”, neither dead or alive appeared once it was determined that the expedition was missing. To justify search missions and rewards, he had to become “gallant”, a "hero" in the press and official releases.

Finally, there was “Franklin Aloft”. Once the search parties reported back, and it became obvious to the Admiralty that Franklin had messed up royally, an effort had to be made to clear him. This was led by the media savvy grieving widow, Lady Jane Franklin, only too aware of how this would all affect her social status. As Atwood puts it, “the widow of a hero is one thing, the widow of a cannibal quite another”. His reputation was cleared enough that a plaque was mounted to him in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by none other that that leading Victorian, Tennyson, married to one of Franklin’s nieces.

The first half of Frozen in Time has no real surprises, as it goes over the background to the mission and what has been discovered since. The arrogance shown by the British Admiralty in dealing with it all was impressive yet again. The drive of the true explorers of the era also came through well.

Franklin died in June 1847 aboard HMS Erebus, trapped in ice. After three winters on the ice the 105 remaining men set out from their base on King William Island in April 1848 hoping to reach the mainland. Each had a 200 pound load to drag 400 km to reach that goal. All died, some still in the leather traces of their sledges. Why it was felt necessary to carry along all the officers’ personal effects, including their silver dinner services, is a question no one seemed to ask at the time.

There would be over 40 major expeditions in the next decade looking for Franklin and his men. Some of the information obtained was discounted by the Admiralty as they felt it came from “savages”, who had put still surviving men in an area the Admiralty didn’t believe could be the case.

The great explorer John Rae, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company engaged in the search, had met Inuit, who told of meeting about 40 European men heading south with sledges. They had also come across corpses showing signs of cannibalism. It was still unknown what happened to the ships. Unusually for the times, Rae travelled and dressed as the Inuit did, taking care to establish caches of supplies along his routes for any possible return journey. He believed what he was being told. The information was backed up with articles from the missing expedition, which Rae then purchased through barter. Despite his unsettling reports of cannibalism, something the Admiralty said no Englishman would ever do, Rae was able to claim the £10,000 reward offered. In 1854, the Admiralty officially declared all officers and men on the two ships dead.

The second half of Frozen in Time deals with the 1981-82 exhumation and study of three gravesites that had previously been identified as belonging to members of the expedition. The processes and dedication involved under Artic conditions was impressive.

The Victorians embraced science and technology. Franklin’s expedition set out with nearly 10,000 tins of meat, vegetables, and soup. Canning was a new process, one that would prove fatal in this instance. Men started sickening quite early, with symptoms of lassitude and loss of appetite. It was felt it couldn’t be scurvy, a manageable problem, but what it was could not be determined. What the scientists found was high lead levels in the remains of the three bodies exhumed, with piles of tins nearby. They determined that in an era where soldering of tins was done by hand, basically running a line down the outside of the can’s join, and around the top and bottom, some joins were imperfect. Lead was able to leach into the cans, poisoning the men. The supplier had been overwhelmed by the size of the food order, and the resulting haste had led to a loss of quality in the production. There does not appear to have been a problem with the 4,290 kg of chocolate the expedition took along.

All this inspired me to do further reading, so I dug out Searching for Franklin: The Land Arctic Searching Expedition 1855. This was entirely primary documents with connecting commentary. The original documents, including Rae’s accounts of Inuit interactions are all here, showing how successive search parties completely missed the mark. The Admiralty had lost multiple ships leading up to its turnover of the search for the ships to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1855. The ships would eventually be found in 2014 (Erebus in Queen Maud Gulf) and 2016 (Terror in Terror Bay).

All in all, a tale of missed opportunities, imperfect information, fools and heroes. It makes you wonder how our current age of science and innovation will look in a century or so.

>140 SassyLassy: Just catching on your thread and these are really wonderful, detailed reviews. I am tempted to try Lucky Per now.

>149 rv1988: Thanks - I do struggle with them.
Lucky Per would definitely be worth a try.

Winter always needs some garden inspiration.



Spirit of Place: the making of a new england garden by Bill Noble
first published 2020
finished reading March 13, 2024

The Connecticut River never fails to make me feel all is right with the world. Drive along Route 5 on the Vermont side in the early morning as the sun cuts through the morning mist, and it’s hard not to feel a sense of peace.

Bill Noble recognized this sense when he and his partner bought an old farmhouse on Bragg Hill, above the beautiful village of Norwich. It looked out over that river and the mists. Noble, a garden designer, had worked on both sides of the river. He knew this was the place for them.

Spirit of Place: the making of a new england garden explores just that sense. As Noble says, “Much of what gardening is about is the feeling of being connected to a place, fostering a sense of belonging”. If you’ve spent time working in or creating other gardens, the opportunity to do this for yourself is irresistable.

Noble’s first thought was how he was to create a garden to match the view. Gardens don’t happen overnight.. It takes time to learn what the land has to tell you, how the seasons run from year to year, where the sun, wind, and water are, and where they are needed. If it’s your garden, the way you view it from inside your home is a major consideration.

It tooks decades to make Bragg Hill the garden it is today, from the time the property was purchased in 1991 to the time Noble sat down to write his book. A one time student of medieval studies, he feels a real spirituality in the connection between humans and the environment, which manifests itself in a respect for what the environment provides.

Thought is evident throughout. Noble drew up a set of guiding principles for himself. He created maps of the property, and how the various components related to each other. He researched local plants and traditional plants.

Bit by bit, year by year, he created harmonious spaces: an old fashioned flower garden, a barn garden, a rock garden, a meadow garden, and a foliage garden. All had to be integrated with each other and into the greater surrounding landscape . The book is filled with gorgeous photographs, mostly by Noble, which show the progressions over the years.

This isn’t a book for everyone. It was definitely a book for me though from the moment I saw the cover last fall. What else but mists off the river coming through those fields?

If you're interested in a garden like Bill Noble's in >151 SassyLassy:, it is included in the Smithsonian's Archives of American Gardens.

Noble also has a website: https://billnoblegardens.com with some of his beautiful photographs.

Although the photos here are more blurry than those in the book, here's more of that mist:

I lived in and around Norwich for five or six years, but I never saw his garden. Shame, it's gorgeous. Have you ever been to Saint-Gaudens in Cornish (also on the Connecticut River)? It's a National Historic Park, home of former sculptor. They used to have a summer concert series that was lovely, not sure if they still do. Worth a peek next time you are down that way.

>153 labfs39: What a beautiful place to live - I'm envious!

Haven't been to Saint-Gaudens, but Noble does reference it in his book. Now that I know of it, I'll look for it.

If you want a road trip, Noble's garden is open on June 24th this year, tickets online.

Perhaps Ian Rankin was too caught up with completing William McIlvanney's last book to focus on this one.



A Heart full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
first published 2022
finished reading March 26, 2024

I really wish I hadn’t read this book.

Over the years, through Rebus, especially on his own, but also with Siobhan Clarke, Ian Rankin has managed to convey that lurking sense of danger and menace in Edinburgh lying beneath the tourist facade and cultural veneer of the city. The city had a personality matched by Rebus.

I had been a big fan of Rankin and Rebus (always a duo in my mind) until sometime around the introduction of Malcolm Fox as a character. He was unpleasant, as he was meant to be, but didn’t seem to add anything to the plots, and I drifted away.

Then I heard of this book. The back cover told me John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it’s not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last.

The end of Rebus? Maybe I should read it. Well I did.

It wasn’t an awful book, it was just a major disappointment, the kind you get after rereading a book you loved as a child, and now discover it was wrong in so many ways.

A Heart full of Headstones features a broken Rebus presented by a tired Rankin. The past has finally caught up with them both. Rebus is on trial for events in that past, offering an opportunity for Rankin to go over old ground as he reveals how things got to this pass.

There may be one more Rebus book after this. If there is, I will read it, but it will be more with a sense of duty to the memory of an old friend than with any sense of enjoyment.

>155 SassyLassy: Too bad that the series is petering out. Extra disappointing when a past "sure bet" fails to impress.

>155 SassyLassy: I liked Malcolm Fox when he was introduced as I thought Rankin was tired of Rebus and I like characters who are hard to like. I'm so far behind on the series that I have a few years before I get to this one.

Catching up. Where all did you take in on your holiday? Almost two weeks without your luggage - I'd have gone insane. That's ridiculous.

Looking forward to your reviews when you get to those two Robin Jenkins' books.

>155 SassyLassy: That's too bad; I share your nostalgia for old Rebus.

>152 SassyLassy:

Looks gorgeous but so... wet. Like I need to dry my hair now. :)