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1 January 2005

• Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame and Around the World with Auntie Mame are on my favorites page.

Books read: 2

4 January 2005

• I've had a lovely Everyman's edition of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair for several years, just sitting on my bookshelf unread, looking reproachfully at me. Finally, I decided to take it down and read it, thus filling an enormous gap in my Victorian-era reading. I fear that I can now only be disappointed in Thackeray's other books (though I intend to read them anyway), because I can't imagine anything better than Vanity Fair.
  
  The plot does sprawl a little, but the characters are so wonderfully realized that it doesn't matter (and sprawling plots are a feature I'm used to in Victorian novels anyway). The best thing about the characters is how three-dimensional they are, and how Thackeray never lets you see them in black or white; in this "novel without a hero" (the book's subtitle), the worst characters have good points, and the best have deep flaws. The virtuous Amelia dangerously romanticizes her loved one, while the wicked Becky Sharp is perhaps the novel's most appealing (and certainly most famous) character, in spite of her immorality (though at the same time, Thackeray never lets you lose sight of her essential wickedness).
  
  Thackeray is going right on to my ever-increasing list of Victorian Writers I Love -- Barry Lyndon, here I come!

Books read: 1

5 January 2005

• Petty Treason is the second book (following Point of Honour) in Madeleine E. Robins's delightful series of alternate history Regency detective novels featuring Miss Sarah Tolerance, a Fallen Woman who has become an agent of inquiry (read: private investigator) rather than follow the usual path to prostitution. In Petty Treason, she's hired to look into the death of the Chevalier d'Aubigny, a French émigré beaten to death in bed; along the way, the mystery develops implications that touch the Royal Family itself.
  
  Miss Tolerance is a very intriguing character: resourceful, determined, intelligent, and good with a sword (there's an excellent duel near the end of the book). She's a pleasure to read about, and so is the slightly tweaked version of Regency London Robins has created, where Queen Charlotte rules as regent for mad King George III (rather than the Prince of Wales). I also like the book's style, because Robins hasn't chosen to try to recreate the style of an author of the period; she simply uses an elegant, formal language which matches her protagonist's style precisely.

Books read: 1

6 January 2005

• I'm of two minds about Kage Baker's In the Garden of Iden. On one hand, the premise is interesting: physically enhanced, immortal operatives travelling through time in order to collect animals and plants otherwise bound for extinction, employed by the Company which has used time travel to take control of everything. I'm not tremendously convinced by the book's time travel theory, which is that history cannot be changed, but that that rule only applies to recorded history; that doesn't make a lot of sense to me (what's so sacred about recorded history?), but since this is the first of a series, I'm willing to trust that Baker perhaps explains further in future novels. The beginning of the book, in which we meet our heroine, Mendoza, rescued from the Spanish Inquisition to be turned into an operative of the company, is certainly intriguing and had me reading with a great deal of interest.
  
  However, once Mendoza travels back to Tudor England, the book bogs down into an uninteresting story of the doomed romance between Mendoza and an Englishman who turns out to be a rabid Protestant, not a good thing during the reign of the very Catholic Queen Mary. Given that Mendoza up until that point has had nothing but contempt for the mortals she comes into contact with, it's awfully hard to believe in her almost instantaneous passion for Nicholas. Plus, although the period detail is well-done, I thought at one point that the novel had plunged into alternate history when it was stated as a fact that Mary had Edward VI (her predecessor on the throne) poisoned and had attempted to do the same to Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I); not a theory I've ever encountered before, and a highly unlikely one, which really bounced me out of the narrative.
  
  It seems from reading reviews that the later books in the series improve in these areas, so at some point, I might try the next one. But then again, I might not.

Books read: 1

7 January 2005

• We watched the Patrick Stewart version of A Christmas Carol today (which was very good -- well-acted and faithful to the book, though a trifle slow in places), and I was inspired to go reread the book (by Charles Dickens, duh). Really, I have little to say about it: surely everyone knows the plot, and I find that it continues to stand up as an excellent short read, with Dickens's trademark humor and engaging characters.

Books read: 1

8 January 2005

• Okay, I think I'm off early Jennifer Crusie for good. I've read three more -- Getting Rid of Bradley, Strange Bedpersons, What the Lady Wants -- and wasn't very impressed by any of them. They just don't have the complexity of characters, relationships, and stories that her later books do. Oh, well. I think she'll have a new one out this summer, and after a while I can reread Bet Me or Faking It, both far, far more interesting books than any of these.

Books read: 3

9 January 2005

• Tony Lord's Designing with Roses is a lovely book from a noted British gardening writer and photographer. It begins with a useful section on the history of roses before going on to discuss different types of gardens and ways of using roses in gardens. The photographs are generally excellent (and most were taken by Lord), nicely lit and beautifully composed, and the text, although perhaps a bit dry, is intelligent and well-written. The appendices include a list of recommended roses and an extensive bibliography.

Books read: 1

10 January 2005

• Anna Quindlen's Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City is a short but charming look at literary, historical, and present-day London. As she strolls through London's streets, she evokes authors from Thackeray and Dickens to John Galsworthy and Elizabeth Bowen (thereby adding a lot of books to my to-be-read list). Really, my only issue with Imagined London is that I wish it were longer - I'd be happy to spend more time in the company of Quindlen and her beloved city.
  
  
• William Makepeace Thackeray's Barry Lyndon is a classically "unreliable narrator". He's an Irish rogue who joins the British army after an unhappy love affair and then goes on to fame and fortune as a fashionable gambler. As in Vanity Fair, Thackeray is interested in representing his characters accurately and realistically, and his portrayal of the dissolute, amoral Barry, a rake who thinks he's a prince among men, is masterful.

Books read: 2

11 January 2005

• No sport is more about statistics than baseball is, with its long lists of batting averages, ERAs, on-base percentages, and many other well-known and obscure numbers. However, this isn't a modern phenomenon, and in The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics, baseball writer Alan Schwarz sets out to tell the story of baseball and statistics, from Henry Chadwick, who invented the modern box score back in the mid-19th century, through modern figures like Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau and Bill James, perhaps the best-known of today's statistics gurus. You might think that a book about statistics would be dry, but it's not in the least; Schwarz's focus on the people behind the creation of baseball statistics keeps it moving along nicely, providing personal stories along with the numbers. This is an essential book for any baseball fan who is interested in the history of the game.

Books read: 1

12 January 2005

• Upon rereading all of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels last month, I decided that it was high time I read a biography of their author, Dorothy L. Sayers. I chose Barbara Reynolds's biography, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, because it had gotten good reviews and because I knew that Reynolds was a friend of Sayers (whose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy Reynolds completed after Sayers died). After reading Reynolds's book, I think that Reynolds's closeness to Sayers was both a help and a hindrance to the biography.
  
  Reynolds's narrative of Sayers's life is well-researched, working and quoting from many of Sayers's lively letters (I must track some of those down soon too). Her analyses of Sayers's work are thoughtful; I was particularly interested in the chapters about Sayers's religious writings, as I haven't read any of them. Presumably as a result of her friendship with Sayers, Reynolds is hesitant to criticize and is perhaps too defensive of Sayers at times; however, overall, Reynolds gives a vivid and perceptive portrait of Sayers's intense personality. I'd like to read other biographies of Sayers to see how they compare, but I'd certainly recommend this one.

Books read: 1

13 January 2005

• I've finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Nancy Mitford's Wigs on the Green, by far the most difficult to obtain of her eight novels. It contains a thinly disguised portrait of Nancy's sister Unity (a passionate Nazi sympathizer) and of the British Union of Fascists, which was headed up by her sister Diana's husband Sir Oswald Mosley; the publication in the book caused a rift in the family, particularly after Unity's attempted suicide when Germany and Great Britain went to war, and Nancy chose not to have it reprinted in her lifetime. My copy was published a couple of years after she died, oddly packaged in a double edition with her earlier novel, Highland Fling, and marketed (according to the front cover) as two of her "most wickedly witty and enchantingly romantic novels".
  
  In the book, the BUF becomes the Union Jack Movement, and its supporters, the Blackshirts, become the Union Jackshirts, wearing shirts made out of Britain's flag in order to emphasize their brand of national socialism. Eugenia Malmains (a thinly veiled Unity) is a passionate supporter of the Union Jackshirts and their leader ("the Captain", who never appears in the book but is clearly meant to be Mosley, who was called "the Leader"), and the climax of the book is a pageant put on by Eugenia and her friends in support of the party, which degenerates into a brawl between the Union Jackshirts and the Pacifists of the local village.
  
  Mitford's satire is pointed, skewering the BUF and its supporters at every opportunity. Along with the satire, though, she provides a more pleasing plot and characters than in her earlier novels, which tended to suffer from a lack of sympathetic characters and a lack of overarching story. She hadn't yet gained the polished style and engaging characters of the novels that followed after Wigs on the Green (beginning with The Pursuit of Love), but you can see that she was getting there. It's a shame that Wigs on the Green isn't more available, as it provides both an interesting social document of its time and a vital piece of Mitford's development as a writer.

Books read: 1

16 January 2005

• Before talking about Gregory Maguire's Wicked, I should probably say that I'm a longtime lover of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, having read all fourteen of them (plus some of those written by others) many, many times since I discovered them in elementary school. This is not the first time I've read Wicked; I read it soon after it was published, and I unequivocally hated what Maguire had done to my beloved Oz.
  
  Since then, it's gotten rave reviews everywhere, and finally I decided that I must have been missing something, that I must not have read it with an open mind, and that I should reread it, hoping to appreciate it more. And you know what? I still didn't like it. Although this time, I was actually able to admire the way in which Maguire reworks Baum's fairytale land into his own politically torn country (there are multiple references to characters and places from Oz books other than the first one, too, so it's clear that he did his research), I was still unengaged by the characters - or at least, in the way they develop.
  
  The book is divided into five sections, each dealing with a period in the life of Elphaba, the little green girl who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West. Years pass between sections, so that just when I was beginning to be engaged with the action of one section, it would stop abruptly and go on to the next. Characters who are heavily featured in a particular section are suddenly pushed to the background, where you frequently hear little of them later on in the book.
  
  For instance, Glinda, Elphaba's college roommate, is a main character of the section dealing with Elphaba's university life, and a lot of that section is from her point of view. Yet once that section is over, she is mentioned or present in the narrative only a few times. How did her character change over that time? Who knows, because Maguire doesn't tell us. Yes, the focus of the book is on Elphaba, but even with her, significant periods of her life are left out, and it's tough to follow her emotional development. I had a hard time even believing the last section, which tells what happens when Dorothy comes to Oz; Elphaba's reactions just didn't ring true to me.
  
  Third time may be the charm, but I don't think I'll be reading Wicked a third time.

Books read: 1

19 January 2005

• Gillian Bradshaw's Byzantine trilogy (The Beacon at Alexandria, The Bearkeeper's Daughter, and Imperial Purple) is on my favorites page.

Books read: 3

20 January 2005

• The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England is a collection of short biographies of the monarchs of England since 1066, edited by Antonia Fraser. Each dynasty, from William the Conqueror's Normans through today's Windsor, is covered by one of eight period specialists, and there are family trees galore, along with brief essays on the royal coats of arms. It's well-written and beautifully illustrated, and should serve as a good introduction to British history (from a somewhat restricted viewpoint) to those new to the subject; those who already know something about British history may find it too sweeping an overview with not enough detail (as I did).

Books read: 1

21 January 2005

• Patrick Dennis's Genius is a hilarious social satire, taking on American expatriates in Mexico City, movie making, and even Dennis's own profession through the story of Leander Starr, genius director. As in Auntie Mame, Dennis is the narrator who is unwillingly drawn into the madcap plots of Starr, who is desperately trying to reenter the movie business with a new film, which he draws Dennis into writing for him. The plot hangs together better than some of Dennis's other novels, and the satire is scathing, but the book really rests on the character of Starr: maddening, selfish, unscrupulous, yet utterly engaging and likable. Like Dennis, the reader is drawn into an almost unwilling sympathy and admiration for him and a compelling interest in following the course of his story.

Books read: 1

24 January 2005

• Anya Seton's Katherine has long been one of my favorite historical novels, so I thought that it was past time to try one of her other books. I happened upon a copy of Green Darkness in my local used book store and figured that it would do as well as any to start out with. Sadly, I don't think it lives up to Katherine.
  
  Partly, it's the narrative structure that didn't work for me. Green Darkness starts in the 1960's, with recently married Richard and Celia Marsdon. When Celia starts having visions and then lapses into catatonia after a fight with Richard, the narrative shifts back to Tudor England, where Celia is reliving her past life (and Richard's). There's enough information in the first part about Celia's past life that much of the suspense is gone, and so much time is spent in the past that once we return to the present, it's hard to care about characters we haven't seen in hundreds of pages. Also, I didn't find the characters as compelling or richly drawn as in Katherine. On the plus side, the historical details are convincingly done; Seton obviously did her research. I'd probably read Green Darkness again at some point, but I hope to find that others of her books are closer to being as good as Katherine.

Books read: 1

25 January 2005

• L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and The Road to Oz) are on my favorites page.

Books read: 5

26 January 2005

• Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy is famous (or infamous) for the sticky-sweet virtue of its title character. I hadn't read it in a long time and was surprised to find that little Cedric, the boy who discovers that he's the grandson of an earl, isn't nearly as bad as I remembered him. Yes, he's virtuous, but in a modest, rather sweet way, and although I'd still far rather read The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy does have touches of humor and interesting characters which make it worth reading.
  
  
• The American Rose Society Encyclopedia of Roses, by Charles and Brigid Quest-Ritson is a huge, gorgeous, and vastly useful compendium of roses. It covers more than 2000 of the world's best and most popular roses, from old garden roses through hybrid teas and floribundas to modern shrub roses (such as David Austin's English roses and Meilland's Romanticas); each rose has an entry to itself, with basic information such as type, color, size, and breeder, a short but discerning description, and almost always a photograph. Scattered throughout the encyclopedia are longer sidebars on particularly famous roses, as well as on some important breeders, nurseries, and gardens. At the end are a few pages of practical advice on growing and caring for roses.
  
  The book's only fault is that it has no indices: yes, the roses are listed alphabetically and can be found that way, but at the least, indices by color and type would have been useful for those looking for a particular type of rose. However, The American Rose Society Encyclopedia of Roses will still be taking a place of honor on my gardening bookshelf, as one of the two or three best rose books I own.

Books read: 2

27 January 2005

• L. Frank Baum's The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, and Tik-Tok of Oz are on my favorites page.
  
  
• Barbara Wilde's Growing Roses Organically is a practical guide to growing roses without resorting to chemicals to control diseases and pests. Above all, she emphasizes the proper selection of roses which are resistant to disease and provides a short but thorough list of recommendations. The book is nicely photographed and clearly written, and I look forward to implementing some of Wilde's advice this year in my rose-filled garden.

Books read: 4

28 January 2005

• When L. Frank Baum became tired of writing Oz books, he tried to finish the series with The Emerald City of Oz, which ended with Glinda the Good magically making Oz invisible to the outside world. The Sea Fairies and Sky Island were Baum's next two books, intended to begin a new series, about the little girl Trot and her sailor friend, Cap'n Bill. I find them just as inventive and charming as the Oz books are, and two characters from the Oz books actually appear in Sky Island -- Button-Bright, the little boy who's always getting lost, and Polychrome, the Rainbow's daughter, who both originally appeared in The Road to Oz. In spite of this, the sales of Sky Island and The Sea Fairies weren't very good; Baum's readers demanded more Oz, and so he abandoned the new series and returned to Oz. Baum did bring back Trot and Cap'n Bill, though, who journey to Oz themselves in The Scarecrow of Oz (below).
  
  
• L. Frank Baum's The Scarecrow of Oz is on my favorites page.
  
  
• When I recently read a biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett (by Gretchen Gerzina), I was interested to find out that she'd written adult novels as well as children's and decided to track one down. I came up with A Lady of Quality. The heroine is Clorinda Wildairs, who is first neglected and then wildly indulged in her willful and reckless childhood; when she grows up, she decides to set aside her childish ways and become a lady, but her past threatens her even in virtuous adulthood. Her metamorphosis from a child and teenager who dresses in male attire and sings risqué songs to amuse her father's friends into a paragon of virtue is utterly unconvincing; Burnett asks us to believe that Clorinda changed through an effort of will and to admire her for it, but it's just impossible. The writing is soppy and sentimental, particularly near the end of the book (wherein it seems not a page can go by without reminding us of Clorinda's perfect beauty and virtue), and the plot is uninteresting. I was mildly interested in Clorinda's self-effacing sister, Anne, but she's not nearly enough to keep the novel going.
  
  If A Lady of Quality is anything to go by, it's no wonder that Burnett's adult novels have lapsed into obscurity while her children's books remain famous - I'd rather read any of them than read A Lady of Quality a second time.

Books read: 4

29 January 2005

• Faulkner Fox's Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life: Or, How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child has been heavily touted as a must-read book for today's mothers, so I got it from the library, hoping for some words of wisdom, or at least some fellow feeling. Unfortunately, I got neither. Fox does bring up many salient points about societal pressures on wives and mothers, but all of her points seem to devolve quickly into what I can only describe as whining about the unfairness of her life. I absolutely think that the issues Fox identifies are real, important issues for American mothers, but her consistently bitter tone just turned me off, nor does she particularly offer any suggestions for dealing with these issues.
  
  Maybe Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life is someone's idea of a great book on motherhood -- it's certainly getting a lot of good reviews, so it obviously works for many other women -- but I'll take Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year any time, for an equally honest but much more engaging look at motherhood.

Books read: 1

30 January 2005

• I've enjoyed Jenny Uglow's biographies of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, so I've been looking forward to reading her new book, A Little History of British Gardening, and wasn't disappointed - it's delightful. Uglow traces British gardening from Roman times down through today, looking at gardens large and small across social classes. The book is elegantly written, well researched, and beautifully illustrated with a plethora of black-and-white illustrations accompanying the text as well as several sections of color plates. Uglow's love of gardening pervades the book, and she supplies lots of colorful examples and anecdotes. I adored the Victorian Lord Egremont, who spent lots of money on a greenhouse to grow bananas:
  
  "But when he tasted the first home-grown one, peeling it with a golden knife and impaling a sliver with a golden fork, he flung 'dish, plate, knife, fork and banana on the floor and shouted, "Oh God, it tastes just like any other damn banana!"' The offending tree was summarily destroyed and it was estimated that the single banana cost some £3000."
  
  I could quote many more delightful bits, but really you should just go and read the book yourself, if you've any interest in British history or in gardening.

Books read: 1

31 January 2005

• Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time isn't a well-known fantasy novel, but it certainly deserves to be. When Penelope stays with her aunt and uncle at Thackers farm, she slips back in time to the 16th century, when the Babington family lived at Thackers and plotted to help Mary Queen of Scots, imprisoned by Elizabeth I. Uttley evokes both Penelope's life on the farm and her experiences in Tudor England with a sure touch and lovely language, and although A Traveller in Time is quietly written, it's haunting and emotionally powerful, as Penelope is drawn further and further into the events of the past, knowing that she can't change history but becoming attached to her Elizabethan life and friends.
  
  A Traveller in Time is sadly out of print; you'll be in luck if you can find a copy, but it's certainly worth some searching.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 40
Total books read this year: 40

Last updated 29 November 2005. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.