What have you read lately?

[Parasaurolophus]

March haul:

Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Assassin: It was fun to return to Sharpe after so long (the last novel, set fairly early in the series, was published in 2007, although I read it around 2015 or 2016). Not a whole lot happens--it's set during the Occupation of Paris--but it made for a nice last hurrah. As always with Cornwell, the pace is good, the action exhilarating. Someday soon I'm gonna re-read all of the Sharpes (there are 25 of them!), and that'll be lovely.

Waubeshig Rice - Moon of the Crusted Snow: Something mysterious and apocalyptic happens, and an Anishinaabe reserve in northern Ontario is cut off from the rest of the world and has to survive the winter. It's pretty good, although the pacing feels rushed and the writing isn't quite all there (it's perfectly competent, but the characters and events are insufficiently developed). My main complaint is that the (fictional) reserve is set in relative proximity (i.e. within a few hours' drive) to two fictional cities in northern Ontario. I understand why the reserve is fictional--Rice doesn't want any real Indigenous people to feel like they're being depicted--but asking readers to re-arrange Canada's geography like that is too big an ask. If you want a distant but nearest city, you really have to pick either Thunder Bay or Sudbury (or Timmins, although I wouldn't call that a city); you can't just plop one down in the middle of the northern bush. Your audience knows that there's nothing else there.

[paultuttle]

The second Bridgerton novel, in preparation for watching Season 2 on Netflix.

[apl68]

The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim.  One rainy spring in the 1920s four British ladies of differing ages and temperaments chip in to take advantage of a fantastic deal on an Italian castle and light out for a month in sunny Italy.  Vague memories of a long-ago viewing of a movie adaptation of this prompted me to order it from Dover Publications.  It seemed appropriate to wait until it was actually April to read it.  Excellent timing, as the wisteria, which features prominently in some of the novel's descriptive passages, and on the cover of this edition, is going full blast locally.  I saw a lot of feral wisteria growing along the roads during my drive home from visiting family last weekend.

Every year I see half a dozen or more new books with look-alike covers of languid beach scenes cross my desk on the way from cataloging to circulation in the space of just a couple of weeks.  They all feature women protagonists who retreat from the cares and traumas of everyday life to spend an extended time in a beautiful, uncrowded seaside setting.  There they find their lives changing for the better.  This is obviously one of popular fiction's more perennially popular fantasies.  Being a guy, I can't really understand the attraction, much as I, like anybody, appreciate a few days off work in a different setting now and then.  Anyway, reading Enchanted April confirms my suspicion that this is probably the ancestor of all those books with beach covers.  It doesn't take place on an actual beach, but it is in a lovely setting by the seaside. 

It's a pleasant and enjoyable read.  The descriptions of settings and characters are finely crafted.  I can see how this is considered a popular classic.  It's no doubt a far better book than any number of spiritual successors being ground out year in and year out by the publishing industry sausage machine.  And yet...it's a book about how a small group of rich folks with time on their hands take off to a fabulous vacation spot, with foreign servants to wait on them hand and foot.  The "poorest" of them has an annual "dress allowance" that would work out to $10-15,000 in today's values.  As annoying as I find current jargon like "check your privilege," it's hard to escape the sense that there's a lot of unchecked privilege going on here.

I was also saddened by the way one character's decision to shove her Christian religious practice, and with it her extensive charitable work with the needy back home, firmly into the background of her life is presented as a triumph of personal growth.  So rich people coming to decide that they no longer owe anything to the less fortunate is a good thing?  Granted, the character was unhappy and could have used an attitude adjustment.  But deciding that from now on you're just going to devote yourself and your resources to pleasing yourself and romancing your husband, and to no longer worry about acknowledging that maybe there are more important things out there to be concerned about and devote your wealth to addressing, feels ultimately tragic.  It reminds me of something that somebody once said about how "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."

[mamselle]

The more spiritual take on the "trip to a beach" motif might be Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 'Gift from the Sea,' on her meditations as a woman whose time in life led to different understandings of her place in the world and in the lives of those about her, with each stage of her life, as she looked back on it, symbolized by a different shell.

It has a better sense of balance than what you described--she becomes aware of her need to pull back from some things, but it's neither for the point of romancing her husband (the pilot) nor for foreswearing all self-giving activities, although some do come under scrutiny for her ability to be effective in them.

The issue of understanding women who needed to escape as being opaque to a single male is interesting--if one is constantly expected (as most women of the days we're discussing were) to be homemaker, nurse, cook, childcaregiver (or organizer and manager thereof), socialite, and--sometimes--breadwinner as well, that short visit might be the only time off they had.

While it's clear that guys had constant demands on them as well, they were encouraged/?enabled to get assistance and, in the upper classes, had fewer physical demands of their work placed upon them; even women of a certain level of wealth still had a lot of work to do every day ('Downton Abbey,' for example, falls short here, I think...much as it's gorgeously written, cast, filmed, and set, the two Crowley daughters would have been taking lessons, expected to create needleworked objects and possibly painted or written work as well--not for sale, but to show off their accomplishments...we don't see much of that in the show, nor the expectation that they would learn nursing until the war hits. They probably wouldn't have had quite as much time when they were younger to be so catty as the show implies...).

That week away might have been their only breather--and if the children came with them, it wasn't much of one, at that.

Going back further, one thinks of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who rose at 4 AM to have time to write before putting the bread to rise and starting breakfast for the children, and for her husband, who was one of the early instructors of Cincinnati's Union Theological Seminary. After his death, she was the sole breadwinner, and managed the household and her writing career, until the latter let her afford more help.

M.

[hmaria1609]

A few titles I've read so far from the library:
Queens of Jerusalem by Katherine Pangonis (NF)
The royal women who shaped 12th century Jerusalem and the surrounding environs
The Tsarina's Daughter by Ellen Alpsten
Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great and Katherine I, tells her story about her rise to the imperial Russian throne. This novel is a good follow up to Tsarina.
The Last Grand Duchess by Bryn Turnbull
The story of Olga, eldest daughter of Nicholas II and Alexandra. The novel covers the years 1913-18.
After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (NF)
Paris was a popular city for Russia's royals and aristocrats prior to WW1. Following the Revolution, many Russians made their way to Paris and their struggles to adjust.

[apl68]

The more spiritual take on the "trip to a beach" motif might be Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 'Gift from the Sea,' on her meditations as a woman whose time in life led to different understandings of her place in the world and in the lives of those about her, with each stage of her life, as she looked back on it, symbolized by a different shell.

It has a better sense of balance than what you described--she becomes aware of her need to pull back from some things, but it's neither for the point of romancing her husband (the pilot) nor for foreswearing all self-giving activities, although some do come under scrutiny for her ability to be effective in them.

The issue of understanding women who needed to escape as being opaque to a single male is interesting--if one is constantly expected (as most women of the days we're discussing were) to be homemaker, nurse, cook, childcaregiver (or organizer and manager thereof), socialite, and--sometimes--breadwinner as well, that short visit might be the only time off they had.

While it's clear that guys had constant demands on them as well, they were encouraged/?enabled to get assistance and, in the upper classes, had fewer physical demands of their work placed upon them; even women of a certain level of wealth still had a lot of work to do every day ('Downton Abbey,' for example, falls short here, I think...much as it's gorgeously written, cast, filmed, and set, the two Crowley daughters would have been taking lessons, expected to create needleworked objects and possibly painted or written work as well--not for sale, but to show off their accomplishments...we don't see much of that in the show, nor the expectation that they would learn nursing until the war hits. They probably wouldn't have had quite as much time when they were younger to be so catty as the show implies...).

That week away might have been their only breather--and if the children came with them, it wasn't much of one, at that.

Going back further, one thinks of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who rose at 4 AM to have time to write before putting the bread to rise and starting breakfast for the children, and for her husband, who was one of the early instructors of Cincinnati's Union Theological Seminary. After his death, she was the sole breadwinner, and managed the household and her writing career, until the latter let her afford more help.

M.

That's the thing, though--one never gets the impression that the protagonists of Enchanted April are particularly heavily burdened by these sorts of expectations.  They're all childless, two are single, none appears to have had the sort of career that Anne Morrow Lindbergh or Harriet Beecher Stowe had.  They were all unhappy with their current lives back home, and they each had their reasons.  But their issues come across largely as "First World" problems.  I can readily understand how harried mothers would delight in the thought of being able to get away from it all for a month.  Yet these protagonists seem to have about as much experience of motherhood as I do.

It's not that the protagonists are unsympathetic.  Being childless was itself a burden and a social disadvantage for a woman in that time and place.  One of the characters is an elderly widow who has somehow come to be alone and withdrawn and kind of sour, and needs a chance to come out of her shell.  Another is a young woman who lost the only man she ever felt attracted to during World War I, and yet is beset by unwanted male attention due to her combination of good family and spectacular good looks.  Her sections of the book contain a good deal of thoughtful treatment of the difficulties that a highly conventionally attractive woman faces from male attention that she did not seek and does not really understand (I don't really understand, speaking from the other side of it, how and why that attraction can be so compelling either.  I just know that it's something that must be sternly repressed in oneself whenever one feels it, for the sake of avoiding causing trouble for others and for oneself). 

Broadly speaking, the story seems to be about characters learning to come out of their respective shells and enjoy life more.  Which is fine as far as it goes.  It just feels like the characters ultimately remain too "me" focused.  And honestly, I kind of get the impression that that's part of the attraction of the genre.  Not that it's unique in that respect among escapist genres of popular fiction. 

Gift From the Sea sounds like it might be a good deal more worthwhile in its insights.  We happen to have it at our library.  I'll have to make some time to check it out!

Incidentally, not long after I posted that review yesterday, a new book with a telltale seaside cover image crossed my desk.  The season may be about to start....

[Juvenal]

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.

Bemused by the fact that it won a Hugo for best science fiction novel of the year.  Yes, it takes place in an alternative universe, but it's really a murder mystery.  But alternative histories are a staple of science fiction, so I guess the award was merited.  Funny in places, and speckled with Yiddish words, most of which you can figure out the meaning of--or, maybe if you have had some exposure to bits of Yiddish before.  Hard to avoid in the NYC Metro area--although the story takes place in Sitka, Alaska, now a Jewish metropolis, uneasily co-existing with Native Americans (there is a half-Native, half-Jewish policemen, a pal of the main character).  A (fictional) Orthodox group runs the sort of things the Mafia is reputed to do elsewhen.  Science fiction!  Oy!

[Puget]

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.

Bemused by the fact that it won a Hugo for best science fiction novel of the year.  Yes, it takes place in an alternative universe, but it's really a murder mystery.  But alternative histories are a staple of science fiction, so I guess the award was merited.  Funny in places, and speckled with Yiddish words, most of which you can figure out the meaning of--or, maybe if you have had some exposure to bits of Yiddish before.  Hard to avoid in the NYC Metro area--although the story takes place in Sitka, Alaska, now a Jewish metropolis, uneasily co-existing with Native Americans (there is a half-Native, half-Jewish policemen, a pal of the main character).  A (fictional) Orthodox group runs the sort of things the Mafia is reputed to do elsewhen.  Science fiction!  Oy!

This is one of my favorite books! The audio book is also really excellent.

[FishProf]

I just slogged through The Gulag Archipelago  by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  It was a fascinating read but whenever I got to thinking "OK I get it, post Revolution Russia/USSR was a nightmare", it got worse.  Lather.  Rinse. Repeat.

MrsFishProf read it in high school.  We come from very different worlds in that regard.

[mamselle]

I read it long ago, recall I began to feel numbed by the pile-up of horror,  which was itself an uncomfortable feeling.

It was odd to see what Solzhenitsyn did after reaching the US (Gorbachev, too, for that matter). It seemed to me as if they turned their backs on their past--maybe it numbed them, too.

M.

[apl68]

The only Solzhenitsyn I've ever read was The Cancer Ward.  It's a kind of sweeping portrayal of postwar Soviet society through the staff and patients in a hospital.  It's quite detailed and fascinating in that respect.  I've read other works, fiction and non-fiction, about the Gulag.  Reading Russian history is rather like learning that that horrible bully who makes life miserable for all his neighbors has himself had an unremittingly miserable life of family abuse and bad neighbors.

[apl68]

I checked out and read Gift From the Sea over the weekend.  Thank you for the recommendation, mamselle!  Definitely more food for thought there than in The Enchanted April.

[mamselle]

Glad you enjoyed it. I'm probably due for a re-read, I feel myself approaching a new sea-shell lately...

Rather like a hermit crab, maybe...

M.

[apl68]

The Citadel, by A.J. Cronin.  One of my tasks at work is to sort through donated and weeded items to get rid of those that are not good candidates for resale or recycling.  Now and then one of the doomed junk books catches my fancy.  I give it the chance to have one last read before being euthanized.  According to the indicia, this 1951 copy was a thirty-eighth hardcover printing of the original 1937 novel.  I also recall spotting a paperback copy many years ago--this was where I first heard of the title.  Wikipedia says that it was adapted to the screen, translated into many languages, and reportedly even still available in bookstores in Nazi Germany throughout the war.  Obviously this was once a hugely popular work.

It's the story of an idealistic Scottish doctor in the 1920s and 1930s, who starts out as a lowly medical assistant in a Welsh mining town and works his way up in the profession.  At every turn he finds himself challenged by a corrupt medical profession, in which senior doctors make a good living off of junior assistants, physicians devote more time to rich hypochondriacs than to needier patients, there's little interest in improving public health overall, older doctors harm their patients by failing to keep up with medical advances, and some physicians aren't all that well trained or qualified to start with.  The protagonist's background and career follow the author's to the point where one has to suspect a good deal of roman a clef.  This fictionalized expose must have made a lot of doctors mad back in the day.  Cronin's advocacy is credited by some with doing much to help make possible the British National Health Service.

It's a fair example of literary craftsmanship.  It's certainly readable, and has some vivid characters.  It could have done with fewer melodramatic incidents, and fuller development of those that were kept.  My main interest in reading these older novels is their portrayal of a now bygone world.  Anybody who is interested in the medical profession during the interwar era, or in British society more generally during the period, might find this of interest.

In the course of the story the protagonist's wife undergoes a Christian religious conversion.  Toward the end there are strong hints that he is doing so as well.  This too was autobiographical--Cronin became a fashionable educated agnostic in his youth, then reconsidered when exposed to the faith of the lower-class people he worked with.  It was not too uncommon to see such themes appear in bestselling fiction as late as the 1950s.  Today it could never happen.  Any publisher or bookseller who saw a work with this sort of more or less orthodox religious theme--even one playing as small a role in the book as it does here--would promptly relegate it to the appropriate segregated specialist imprint or shelving section, just as is done with westerns, sci-fi, and 57 varieties of porn.  Different times.

[mamselle]

So--did you keep it?

M.