TimeOut New York

I really liked the book that my friend Jean was using to guide us around London.  Guess what arrived in the mail the other week.  Yes TimeOut New York, something that I must take the time to use.  And if Jean comes to visit we can use it together, that would be great.  Thank you so much Jean, what a lovely surprise.

So now I have no excuse not to make an effort to visit The Big Apple.

Christy

Persephone

I was thrilled to receive a package with a London postmark.  At first I couldn't think what it was, then I saw it was from Persephone.  Since I have not actually bought anything from them, I thought they had stopped sending them to me, so I was happily surprised.  Tore it open; which is not me I'm a knife letter opener and started thumbing through.

The photos are so great and the writing thought provoking.  One day I will go and visit the store when in London.  Along with Foyle's bookstore.

Just posted a few photos to show you what I mean.

Christy

A Few Books I've Finished Reading, Gertruda's Oath, Random Commentary, The Preacher

I enjoyed reading all these books.  A WWII biography, Dorothy Whipple's Commentary, very interesting insight into the writer and a mystery set in Sweden.

Christy

Books Written by Dorothy Whipple

Dorothy Whipple

Born in 1893, Dorothy Whipple (née Stirrup) had an intensely happy childhood in Blackburn as part of the large family of a local architect. Her close friend George Owen having been killed in the first week of the war, for three years she worked as secretary to Henry Whipple, an educational administrator who was a widower twenty-four years her senior and whom she married in 1917. Their life was mostly spent in Nottingham; here she wrote Young Anne (1927), the first of nine extremely successful novels which included Greenbanks (1932) and The Priory (1939). Almost all her books were Book Society Choices or Recommendations and two of them, They Knew Mr Knight (1934) and They were Sisters (1943), were made into films. She also wrote short stories and two volumes of memoirs. Someone at a Distance (1953) was her last novel. Returning in her last years to Blackburn, Dorothy Whipple died there in 1966.

• Young Anne (1927)
• Greenbanks (1932)
• High Wages (1932)
• They Knew Mr.Knight (1934)
• The Priory (1939)
• They Were Sisters (1943)
• Because Of The Lockwoods (1949)
• Every Good Deed (1950)
• The Other Day: An Autobiography (1950)
• Someone at a Distance (1953)
• Wednesday and Other Stories (1961)
• Tale of Very Little Tortoise (1962)
• The Smallest Tortoise of All (1964)
• Little Hedgehog (1965)
• Random Commentary: Books And Journals Kept from 1925 Onwards (1966)
• Mrs.Puss and That Kitten (1967)
• On Approval
• After Tea

 Republished by Persephone Books

• Someone at a Distance (1999)
• They Knew Mr. Knight (2000)
• The Priory (2003)
• They Were Sisters (2005)
• The Closed Door and other stories (2007)
• Someone at a Distance (2008)
• High Wages (2009)
• Greenbanks (2011)

Heartstone By C. J. Sansom

 

Heartstone is the 5th Mathew Shardlake mystery by Sansom.  Set in the summer of 1545, when Henry VIII is building up his maritime navy.  Queen Catherine Parr has an old lady servant who's son dies mysteriously and who divulged to his mother a concern for a brother and sister who he used to tutor.  They have been made Wards of Court and are now living with their father's business partner and family.

 

Shardlake is summoned by Queen Catherine to investigate the well being of the orphans. He travels with his man servant Barak to the Portsmouth area to investigate this legal case.  Many are travelling the same road as the King is building up forces in case of a French invasion.  Some of the travellers are the famous long bowmen archers and are very skilled.

Eventually they arrive at Hoyland Priory to investigate the welfare of the children.  The girl has died and there is only the boy to check on his welfare.  What has happened to his inheritance?

Great detail is gone into as to how the Wards of Court arose, how it was administered and what a money making racket it was.  Quite fascinating because it touches on the whole Bleak House, Charles Dickens characters who were Wards of Court.  An institution which went on for hundreds of years once it was established. 

The whole mystery ends with the sinking of the famous Mary Rose.

I enjoyed the history I learned about the Wards of Court.

I've only read two Mathew Sharlake mysteries, but enjoyed Dissolution more.

Christy

Loving Frank, By Nancy Horan

Loving Frank is of course is about a love affair. An illicit  love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick.

I had no idea that Frank Lloyd Wright was such a bounder.  You see books of his architecture and visit his houses, you see interviews of him on TV and you haven't a clue of what he was really like.  I think this book gives you some idea.  Frank Lloyd Wright was egotistical and self centered. But maybe those very traits produced his wonderful eye riveting architecture, but in human relationships led to a lot of broken hearts and grief.

Edward Cheney commissions Frank to build him a house in the Chicago suburbs.  Mamah, wife and mother of his two children, is somewhat bored with her life.  The youngest child who has done well for herself, who's sister lives with them and has a housekeeper too, really does not have too much to do.  She is an intellectual and is interested in philosophies of the day, including Ellen Kaye the Swedish feminist.  Edward is good, loving and to her boring.

She starts an affair with Frank, eventually they both leave their respective partners under a great cloud of scandal in 1907-1914 era and cruise to Europe where they take up residency in Italy.  Here although a free thinking Mamah has to conform to Frank's idea of the traditional wife, although not married, because Frank's wife will not give him a divorce.  She must take second fiddle to his creative time and desire, he must shine, she must support him.

Eventually they go back to Frank's hometown and he starts to build a beautiful house on the family property, Taliesen in Wisconsin.  He recruits local builders and artisans to carry out his every whim of creation.  It is a showpiece it is their house, it is beautiful.

It is at this time that Mamah starts to see Frank in his more narrow aspect of pettiness.  His buying of expensive furniture, when he hasn't even paid the local lumber store, his workers, or the grocery bills.  Frank feels it is his unalienable right to be surrounded by beauty,even luxuriousness, never mind that the local carpenter is not paid.

Frank is away on other projects and all the trades people, and that is how Frank views them "Trades People"  not an artist, creative person that he is.  Mamah has to take things in hand and start the mundane every day life of paying these huge debts.  A new side of Frank is revealed to her.

She has left everything for Frank and is willing to make a go of it, especially since here children have now been allowed to visit her.  At this point a terrible tragedy happens.  All lives of the people involved are burnt up in fire, except for Frank, who seems to come through in an asbestos suite.  To live in the house of his creative dreams with a new love.

Read the book it's quite riveting.

Christy

Dissolution, By C. J. Sansom

I read this book back in March, it was on my Inaugural World Book List from the UK.

Dissolution is a mystery set in the time of Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Catholic monasteries (1536 - 1540) The main character is Mathew Shardlake, a lawyer and hunchback, who is commissioned by Cromwell to investigate the murder of one of his agents sent to St. Donatus of Scarsea, to make an assessment of the monastery with a view to closing it down.

Mathew Shardlake with his young assistant travel the long arduous route, to be received with coldness and surrounded by suspicion.  Why is there a young girl working in the apothecary?  Who will be the next victim?

The setting of the south-east marshlands of England both lonely, isolated with creeping mists is an ideal setting for intrigue and murder at a Benedictine Cloister.

Dissolution is wonderfully rich in historical detail, also architectural detail of how a monastery would be laid out and the everyday routine of the monks.  The Latin terminology of the different rooms, their clothing and life all add to the richness of text.

I enjoyed this historical mystery and will read more of C. J. Sansom's books.

Christy

Knitting In Tuscany, by Nicky Epstein

A long while ago I said that I would include some craft books in my reviews.

Well here is a lovely knitting book by Nicky Epstein.  I personally am not a knitter but who could not resist the thought of knitting in Tuscany, one is quite green with envy just thinking about it.

The presentation is of course total eye candy, one is taken to little yarn shops in tucked away places, along with little restuarants to eat at.  Some history of yarn and knitting in Tuscany along with the little hillside towns to visit. 

You will love this book and if you're a knitter I'm sure it will give you even more practical joy.

Christy

High Wages. by Dorothy Whipple

I got this book from the library, it came all the way from the Oswego Lake Library, doesn't that conjure up some rather picturesque images in your mind.


Actually one year when Rob was about eight we took a trip up to Canada, past the One Thousand Island in the St. Lawrence River.  We camped at a State Park campground on this Lake Oswego, in New York State.  It was a very nice campground, with some sites right on a sandy beach by the lake.  Quite sort after I'm sure.


High Wages set before and after the WWI  Is about a young girl Jane who works in a haberdashery, that's where people would come and buy all the things they would need and then send to the dress maker to have a costume made up.  It gives a full picture into the life of a shop girl in Lancashire then, living on the premises and being over frugally kept by the shop owner.


This was the time when ready made dresses and clothes were just becoming available.  Jane sees that this will catch on and dressmakers will be a thing of the past.  A kindly benefactress lends her the money to set up a shop of her own.


There are two love interests.  The ever faithful Wilfred and Noel, good looking and from the upper class. 


Of course the class system of that era was very strong and it comes out in all it's vagaries in this book.


I did enjoy this book, it gives you a wonderful insight into a shop girls life then, moves along at a good pace and has a satisfactory ending.


Of course you could probably tell by the grey cover and inside frontispiece that this is a Persephone Book.  I always love their face cover designs which they choose from the era of the book.


There is a forward by Jane Brockett.


Christy

M.I.A.

Yes I have been M.I.A..

 I would never not read.  It is the breath and width and soul of life.

Without ado I will just pick up on my reviews.

Christy

2011 New Year's Book Reading

I thought that I would read some of the 25 titles chosen for the Inaugural World Book Night 2011. 

The first book I'm going to try and read is:-

Dissolution by C. J. Sansom 

for no better reason than his name is Sansom.


Christy

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gaines

This book was first published in 1993 and is again part of the Boy's school reading.

Set in the sugar plantation area of Louisiana, around 1940s.  It's about the last days of Jefferson a young black man convicted of a murder he did not commit and the growing relationship with Grant Wiggins a local black school teacher.

During the trial Jefferson's defense lawyer portrays Jefferson as sub-human, no better than a hog.


"Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this."

Jefferson's godmother who raised him goes to visit Wiggins and says:


"I don't want them to kill no hog,"  she explains, " I want a man to go to that chair on his own two feet."

At first Grant doesn't want to do this, but Tante Lou, who he lives with is close friends with Emma Glenn and firmly persuades him to take this on.

He has to humiliatingly beseech the sheriffs cousin, as does Emma Glenn who has worked for the family all her life, stubbornly states what she wants and that she is owed this.

I always think of tobacco plantations when I think of the South, but Ernest Gaines grew up in the sugar plantation area of Louisiana and this is where several of his books are set.  Drawing on his childhood experience growing up there.  His books are powerful and moving.  Well worth reading, you truly breath the humid air,  feel the holding onto the tiny shred of pride that is left to them.

Several of his books have been made into films and are well worth watching.

Christy

False Dawn, by Edith Wharton

An interesting read, but it will be the last of Edith Wharton's books that I will read for a while.  This reading too was from an original book, from my library, copyright 1923.

This was possibly the only book of hers that I had a small glimpse of where it was heading, not completely.

Halston Raycie a millionaire and head of the family, lives on Long Island Sound.  There is a wife and three children, two girls Sarah Anne and Mary Adeline, fresher replicas of the lymphatic Mrs. Raycie. and a boy Lewis.

The boy Lewis is about to be sent to Europe for the Grand Tour, which all gentlemen of his era embarked upon to round off their education and turn them into men. 

The dream, the ambition, the passion of Mr. Raycie's life, was (as his son knew) to found a Family; and he had only Lewis to found it with...

With a view to this founding of a family it was Mr. Raycie's great desire that Lewis should acquire, while in Europe, some old master pieces of artwork to establish a Raycie Art Gallery.  To this effect he was given $15,000 a great deal of money back then.

"Where is our Byron - our Scott - our Shakespeare?  And in painting it is the same.  where are our Old Masters? ..."

Lewis is in love with his poor orphaned cousin Beatrice, nicknamed Treeshy.  She grew up in Italy a country he will visit.

On his European Tour, Lewis meets a young Englishman while staying in an inn, at the foot of Mount Blanche and they spend an enjoyable evening and day together.  They discuss many things and he encourages Lewis to visit certain not well known chapels, while in Italy and look at the paintings.

His eyes had been opened to a new world of art. And this world was his mission to reveal to others - he, the insignificant and ignorant Lewis Raycie.

"Oh, but it's not a Carlo Dolce; it's a Peiro della Francesca, sir!'  burst in triumph from the trembling Lewis.


His father sternly faced him.  "it's a copy, you mean?  I thought so!"


"No, no; not a copy; it's by a great painter ... a much greater ..."

Needless to say papa Racie was not enamoured of the unknown artists who's paintings Lewis had brought back to the States.  Within a year, with the disgrace of the much acclaimed collection coming from Europe, Mr. Raycie was dead and his wife too.  Leaving Lewis, who married his sweet heart Treeshy, a small allowance of $5,000 per year, in contrast to the millions left to the girls.

Eventually by an insignificant cousin, Lewis was left a small house in New York City, where he decided to show his art collection, now he could actually show these wonderful paintings.  It never caught on.

Fast forward about eighty to a hundred years, the time of the automobile.  A hither to unknown collection of a now famous artist has come to light.  It's been gathering dust in an attic all these years.

I wouldn't race out to get this book.  But it's a short easy read, and Edith Wharton is a time honored American author.

Christy

Marilyn Monroe's Reading Library

Some of the books in Marilyn Monroe's reading library.

Christy

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I read this book a while ago, it was part of Boosul Boy's summer school reading and since I had not read it and The Scarlet Letter is an American classic, I wanted to read it.

I'm rushing to get this in and another review for my final round up on book reading for 2010.

My first misconception was that the Scarlet Letter was a written letter,  it was in fact an embroidered A on Hester Prynne's clothing.  A for adultery.  First published in 1850. the setting is the early days of the Massachusetts Puritan Colony.

It's a story of adultery, guilt, open and hidden sin, and how this psychologically effects one.

Arthur Dimmesdale is the minister and secret father of Hester's child Pearl, he struggles with conscience and his own weakness.  Roger Chillingsworth, Hester's husband from Europe, revenges himself on the frail psyche of Dimmesdale.

Who was made the stronger of the two?  Hester or Dimmesdale?  Throughout the story it is as if Hester grows and has drawn strength from the public knowledge of her adultery, where as Dimmesdale is shrinking day by day, because of his tormented conscience.  Chillingsworth's revenge eats himself up, as he physically becomes older and wizened.  Pearl who is released from all bounds of society by being rejected by society, has a clear childlike sight into situations that even adults cannot see; as society has boxed their thinking, blinkered their eyes.

 This is a must read for everyone.  It's more than a tale of Puritanical New England, but delves deeper into society how it moves and thinks, and what it means to live outside the accepted bounds of society.

Exerts from the book which have such depth:

...yes these were her realities all else had vanished.


...as if her heart had been flung into the street to trample on.


...sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures.

...occur but once in a lifetime ... she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many a quiet years.  She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present.  Tomorrow would bring it's own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next ...


...than to hide a guilty heart through life ... to add hypocrisy to sin.  and would that I might endure his agony as well as mine.

Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied ..., that she was banished and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere,...

Hester Prynne was able to make a living with her beautiful needlework.


...gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men ... even while sumptuary laws forbade these ... to the plebeian order (from the Latin, lower class, peasant)

The child's attire, was distinguished ... by a fantastic ingenuity, airy charm.


It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation.  She had in her nature, a rich, voluptuous Oriental characteristic, ... a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, ... Woman derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.


"Pearl" as being of great price, ... purchased with all she had, ... her mother's only treasure.


The child could not be made amenable to rules ... Above all the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.


... the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master word, that should control the new and incomprehensible intelligence.


Such passages, such writing and formation of words.


Christy