What have you read lately?

[apl68]

That biography of the Alcotts sounds very interesting.

Poor Bronson Alcott.  On top of everything else, his name got to be a gag in the movie Clueless.

[smallcleanrat]

Reading the sequel to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Little Men.

Premise: Jo and her husband run a sort of boarding school for boys (and a couple of girls; orphans and other "problem" children) including their own offspring. Lots of emphasis on teaching children moral behavior through example and compassion; style can get overly sentimental and...I don't know...treacly?

Still enjoyable.

Each chapter is more of a slice-of-life story rather than part of a larger narrative.

The most entertaining parts are the stories of the kids at play: the games they dream up, the rules they invent, unanticipated consequences, the propensity towards destruction and violence.

Example 1: One of the boys convinces his twin sister and Jo's toddler son to make a sacrifice by fire of a favorite possession to some invisible entity he invented.

One of the things they burn is a toy town:
...the children arranged the doomed village, laid a line of coals along the main street, and then sat down to watch the conflagration...at last one ambitious little cottage blazed up...and in a few minutes the whole town was burning merrily. The wooden population stood and stared at the destruction like blockheads, as they were, till they also caught and blazed away without a cry. It took some time to reduce the town to ashes, and the lookers-on enjoyed the spectacle, immensely, cheering as each house fell...and actually casting one wretched little churn-shaped lady, who had escaped to the suburbs, into the very heart of the fire.

Jo's toddler, Teddy, tosses a doll onto the fire:
Of course she did not like it, and expressed her anguish and resentment in a way that terrified her infant destroyer...she did not blaze, but did what was worse, she squirmed. First one leg curled up, then the other, in a very awful and lifelike manner; next she flung her arms over her head as if in great agony; her head itself turned on her shoulders, her glass eyes fell out, and with a final writhe of her whole body, she sank down a blackened mass on the ruins of the town. This unexpected demonstration startled every one and frightened Teddy half out of his little wits. He looked, then screamed and fled toward the house, roaring "Marmar" at the top of his voice.

Example 2: describing how the two girls in the house "play" with Teddy

Poor Teddy was a frequent victim, and was often rescued from real danger, for the excited ladies were apt to forget that he was not of the same stuff of their longsuffering dolls. Once he was shut into the closet for a dungeon, and forgotten by the girls, who ran off to some out-of-door game. Another time he was half drowned in the bath-tub, playing be a "cunning little whale." And, worst of all, he was cut down just in time after being hung up for a robber.

This passage really stuck out. When kids lie or swear or fight, it's made out as a big deal. But these girls nearly hang a toddler to death and it's just a few sentences embedded in a chapter devoted to describing how the kids like to play.

You'd think the adults would make the girls leave the little boy alone...

[downer]

I enjoyed Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, short listed for the Booker Prize. She lives in the UK but the book is set in contemporary India, and expores women's identity.

I'm half way through The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years: 1922-1968 by William Fever. At 700 pages, it goes into a lot of detail. Yet it doesn't explain much about Freud's view of his own art. It does make clear Freud had sex with a lot of women, at least when he was not living in remote locations focusing on his art.

[fleabite]

apl68: The novel March, by Geraldine Brooks, is a novelization of the story of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember enjoying it. If I recall correctly, it focuses on Bronson's experiences during the Civil War, and the family's life during his absence. Perhaps it might interest you.

[fourhats]

After reading the biography, it became clear: Bronson had nothing to do with the war. It was Louisa who served in a hospital, and became very ill for the rest of her life because of it. The treatment eventually killed her. But Bronson stayed home, and Louisa pretty much supported the family for the rest of her life.

[hmaria1609]

Smallcleanrat, Last year I read Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys in an omnibus edition published by Library of America, copyright 2005. (I borrowed a copy from the library) The original illustrations by May Alcott were included in the text.

[apl68]

Seasoned Timber, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  She was a regional novelist with a focus on New England.  I grew up seeing short stories and articles by her, but had never read one of her novels.  I happened to run across Seasoned Timber not long ago. 

It's about a headmaster at a school in small-town Vermont in the 1930s.  It's a well-regarded, though not elite, institution with a long history and a very small endowment.  Naturally the protagonist has to spend a lot of time worrying about money.  He's also experiencing something of a mid-life crisis.  A major donor dies and leaves the school a potentially transformative legacy--but it comes with strings that the headmaster can't in good conscience accept.  How does he persuade the rest of the school's stakeholders not to sell out?

Though the book's rather longer than I felt it needed to be, it has plenty of local color, and some interesting characterizations.  The author much admires Vermonters and Vermont character.  New England's fortune in having a kind chronicler like Fisher stands in stark contrast to the way noted Midwestern authors like Sherwood Anderson and Edgar Lee Masters performed such vicious hatchet jobs on their communities (And in the process pandered their way into winning plaudits from the East Coast literary establishment).  The protagonist is also a compelling portrayal of a midlife crisis that does not lead to self-destruction.

Reading about the tribulations of an under-resourced school made me think about the colleges on the "Dire Financial Straits" thread.  Though the school in the story is not a college, it is very much the sort of small institution that's in so much trouble now.  It probably also gives insight into how colleges of the time were run--the institution is very small by today's standards, everything is run on a shoestring, there aren't a lot of frills, and there's scarcely any administrative infrastructure (The headmaster runs the school in between teaching classes).  I can just see the school prospering and expanding in the postwar era, and now experiencing an economic and demographic crunch of the sort that has struck Vermont schools and colleges in general.

[fourhats]

Interesting, APL! I have a full set of her books, and was once asked by a special collections library director if I'd be interested in writing her biography.

She came in (posthumously) for a hard time over the past few years, by Native American and other readers for remarks or affiliations she made early in her life. I'm not sure how fair the criticism was, though.

As I child, I loved her book Understood Betsy, and reread it just a year or two ago.

[apl68]

Interesting, APL! I have a full set of her books, and was once asked by a special collections library director if I'd be interested in writing her biography.

She came in (posthumously) for a hard time over the past few years, by Native American and other readers for remarks or affiliations she made early in her life. I'm not sure how fair the criticism was, though.

As I child, I loved her book Understood Betsy, and reread it just a year or two ago.

She seems to be a significant enough author that she could use a good bio.

From what little I know about it, Understood Betsy sounds like the kind of book my mother would really have loved.

I hadn't heard about Fisher's reputation having had a hard time in recent years.  It would be ironic, given that combating prejudice was a major theme of hers, as in Seasoned Timber.  In today's climate, though, no author who didn't start writing within the last few decades is safe.  The American Library Association unpersoned Laura Ingalls Wilder just a couple of years ago.

[fourhats]

It had to do with a brief and tangential connection to a Vermont eugenics movement. She was never really part of it, and dropped the association, but they've renamed the book award that had been named for her.

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2019/05/03/dorothy-canfield-fisher-book-award-to-be-renamed

Interestingly, she spoke or read (I think) five languages, was on the board of the Book-of-the-Month Club, where she championed the work of Richard Wright. She was pretty interesting.

[ergative]

I, too, loved Understood Betsy as a child, and read it over and over again. I also just recently read The Homemaker, and also enjoyed it very much. I'm so pleased to discover that she is so well known on these fora!

[spork]

I am more than halfway through The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War -- a Tragedy in Three Acts, by Scott Anderson. I'm a fan of political history, and this book is well-researched.

[hmaria1609]

From the library:
Tsarina by Ellen Alpstein
Novel about Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great. She rose from obscurity in the Baltic countryside to be Tsaritsa/Empress of Russia. I knew about Catherine's story from reading the biography Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie years ago.

Fallen Angel by Tracy Borman
Final installment and #3 in the "Frances Gorges" trilogy. In 1614, Frances and her husband Thomas are back at the royal court after a period of time away. King James has a new favorite, George Villiers, the future Duke of Buckingham. Readers follow Frances through the final years of James I's reign and young Prince Charles finding his place. A solid finish to the trilogy!

[ab_grp]

Now we're reading How Green was my Valley (Llewellyn), which husband previously read.

Finally finished this one, though I found out after I posted that husband hadn't actually read it but had heard it was one of the best books ever written? I'm not sure I would say that, but I really liked some of the descriptions and characters.   It's not the happiest of tales, focusing mostly on the coal mines and unions in Wales, and it reminds me of Trinity (Uris), though that book came later.  The feel of the writing is similar, as are the class struggles.  There were some tragedies that hit a bit too close to home at the moment, so I'm glad to be done with it for now.  I also didn't think it wrapped up very cleanly.  It seemed as though there was a lot of potential laid out, and then everything suddenly ended without much closure.  But, it really had some good turns of phrase.  Definitely a bit of a downer.  Although, husband pointed out that it's not called "How Green *is* my Valley".  True enough!

Now we're reading another of the newer sci fi books I got him for his birthday: Red Rising (Pierce Brown).  We just started, but it sounds interesting (Amazon blurb below) and is the first of a series.  I fell asleep during the first chapter so will have to catch up on the reading.

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power.  He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Just read Sweet Thursday for the umpteenth time.  I tried Cannery Row, but just wasn't feeling it, so I went back to My Family and Other Animals. Love the imagery.