50books: since I'm home
Feb. 2nd, 2009 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerSince I am neither (alas) en Ecosse or even at work, but sit here at home waiting for the car to be worked on, I'll catch up on my book list for this year.
I'm working through some low-hanging fruit, finishing off books that I had started already.
Number 3/50 is the third Blandings novel in the "Life at Blandings" compendium. "Heavy Weather" traces the further affaires de coeur of Ronnie Fish and Sue Brown, the employment history of Monty Bodkin, the literary career of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, and the professional ups and downs of the publisher Lord Tilbury and the private investigator Percy Pilbeam, as well as the Blandings regulars Clarence Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance Keeble, Lady Julia Fish, and the magisterial Beach the butler. Not forgetting, of course, that other noble Blandings inhabitant, the porcine princess the Empress of Blandings. Japes, tomfoolery, love thwarted and rewarded, espionage, crime, and general adventure are gotten up to. An entertaining read, if not mentally taxing.
Number 4/50 is John McPhee's "The Crofter and the Laird", a Christmas present from my sister Cornelia. First published in 1969, it's an account of the American writer's stay on the island of Colonsay (population at the time: 138; now reduced to 108). His book is part history, part journal, and part sociological study. It's an excellent record of how one can be captivated by a place and its people in spite of, perhaps in some part because, one is wholly an outsider. McPhee doesn't have, nor does he allow to reader to possess, any sentimental misconceptions about the nature of life in such a small and constricted community. He portrays the pleasures and the problems of that sort of rural, localised life very clearly, I think. I enjoyed the book; it confirmed my belief that while I will never be a part of such a place nor a permanent resident of one, still I would like to get to know one, for the value of the perspective it gives one.
Continuing the Scottish theme, 5/50 is a book I picked up in Edinburgh last year, Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe". I won't lie; Scott's writing is very heavy going. It's not as hard to read as James Fenimore Cooper, but it's harder to read than Dickens or Austen. The language itself seems very stilted to the modern eye and its vocabulary very antique (the more so, I tend to imagine, as I think Scott was trying to seem more 'antic' because he was dealing with a medieval subject). Still, it's a grand story, with its collection of brave and noble knights, brave and wicked knights, daring rogues, beautiful ladies, pompous nobles, and traitorous villains. Jousts, sieges, ambushes and feasts in the merry greenwood, all the stuff that would make great 1940s and 50s cinema (provided a couple of screenwriters were brought in to spark up the dialogue a bit!) I admit myself surprised that only one serious film version has been made (plus several TV versions, most of them highly forgettable).
New for this year, 6/50 was "Dreamers of the Day", a historical novel by my sometime friend Mary Doria Russell. It follows her excellent "A Thread of Grace" and, like it, is a very well researched piece of writing that takes a historical episode and both introduces the reader to those events and their setting, but also tells the tale of those people with depth and feeling. Real people and the author's creations, none of the characters in Mary's novels are shallow or two-dimensional. Much of this story takes place around the edges of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference that more or less created the states (and tensions) of the modern Middle East. But while much of the story is, I am sure, a deliberate foreshadowing of and analogy to events of recent years, that is only part of what Russell wants to do with the book. I see some of her personal philosophy of relationships, of religion, traces of her knowledge of anthropology and archeology, indications of her desire to research and share the history of her beloved Cleveland, and the pleasure and joy of a novelist doing her best to describe her observations and insights into the human condition. Though the ending is quirky and I feel somewhat contrived, the book overall is an excellent one, quite up to her high standards, and well worth a read.
I'm working through some low-hanging fruit, finishing off books that I had started already.
Number 3/50 is the third Blandings novel in the "Life at Blandings" compendium. "Heavy Weather" traces the further affaires de coeur of Ronnie Fish and Sue Brown, the employment history of Monty Bodkin, the literary career of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, and the professional ups and downs of the publisher Lord Tilbury and the private investigator Percy Pilbeam, as well as the Blandings regulars Clarence Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance Keeble, Lady Julia Fish, and the magisterial Beach the butler. Not forgetting, of course, that other noble Blandings inhabitant, the porcine princess the Empress of Blandings. Japes, tomfoolery, love thwarted and rewarded, espionage, crime, and general adventure are gotten up to. An entertaining read, if not mentally taxing.
Number 4/50 is John McPhee's "The Crofter and the Laird", a Christmas present from my sister Cornelia. First published in 1969, it's an account of the American writer's stay on the island of Colonsay (population at the time: 138; now reduced to 108). His book is part history, part journal, and part sociological study. It's an excellent record of how one can be captivated by a place and its people in spite of, perhaps in some part because, one is wholly an outsider. McPhee doesn't have, nor does he allow to reader to possess, any sentimental misconceptions about the nature of life in such a small and constricted community. He portrays the pleasures and the problems of that sort of rural, localised life very clearly, I think. I enjoyed the book; it confirmed my belief that while I will never be a part of such a place nor a permanent resident of one, still I would like to get to know one, for the value of the perspective it gives one.
Continuing the Scottish theme, 5/50 is a book I picked up in Edinburgh last year, Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe". I won't lie; Scott's writing is very heavy going. It's not as hard to read as James Fenimore Cooper, but it's harder to read than Dickens or Austen. The language itself seems very stilted to the modern eye and its vocabulary very antique (the more so, I tend to imagine, as I think Scott was trying to seem more 'antic' because he was dealing with a medieval subject). Still, it's a grand story, with its collection of brave and noble knights, brave and wicked knights, daring rogues, beautiful ladies, pompous nobles, and traitorous villains. Jousts, sieges, ambushes and feasts in the merry greenwood, all the stuff that would make great 1940s and 50s cinema (provided a couple of screenwriters were brought in to spark up the dialogue a bit!) I admit myself surprised that only one serious film version has been made (plus several TV versions, most of them highly forgettable).
New for this year, 6/50 was "Dreamers of the Day", a historical novel by my sometime friend Mary Doria Russell. It follows her excellent "A Thread of Grace" and, like it, is a very well researched piece of writing that takes a historical episode and both introduces the reader to those events and their setting, but also tells the tale of those people with depth and feeling. Real people and the author's creations, none of the characters in Mary's novels are shallow or two-dimensional. Much of this story takes place around the edges of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference that more or less created the states (and tensions) of the modern Middle East. But while much of the story is, I am sure, a deliberate foreshadowing of and analogy to events of recent years, that is only part of what Russell wants to do with the book. I see some of her personal philosophy of relationships, of religion, traces of her knowledge of anthropology and archeology, indications of her desire to research and share the history of her beloved Cleveland, and the pleasure and joy of a novelist doing her best to describe her observations and insights into the human condition. Though the ending is quirky and I feel somewhat contrived, the book overall is an excellent one, quite up to her high standards, and well worth a read.
