Classic Book #14 Finished

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

I really expected to hate this book, based on the reviews I read. I am definitely NOT a fangirl of Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester never made my heart pitty-pat anyway. But reading the reviews, there were so many, “Yes! I loved this book! I am woman, hear me roar! Woo hoo!” reviews that I thought, “This book won’t be my cup of tea.” In the end I liked it more than I expected. I thought it captured the overwhelming “otherness” – compared to England – of the tropics. The bright colors, the extremes of sea and mountain. The mixing of races that was rare elsewhere (at least that’s my impression – so sue me if I’m wrong), the difference in language. I can see why someone like Mr. Rochester would be taken aback, overwhelmed. I can see how it can seem like just too, too, too MUCH. And then to marry (in haste, certainly, for money, probably, to prove you’re a “good son”, oh yes) a woman you barely know for whom this place is the very breath of life? Bound to cause problems. Doomed from the start. She’s the tropical bird that withers anywhere else. Not excusing anyone here – I think this book showed that EVERYONE in this book had a part in weirdness and poor decisions. I didn’t change my mind about Bertha/Antoinette much. I still thought she WAS crazy by the time he took her to England. And I don’t think it was all his *fault*. That whole “she just needed more lovin’ to make her better” idea is off the rails. That was just an excuse Christophine used for her. She spent a lot of time drugging Antionette up to “let her rest” so she wouldn’t “break up.” Given her past I don’t see that B/A was ever going to be anything BUT a dysfunctional mess – even if she *wasn’t* certifiable. Mr. Rochester certainly should have treated her better – was that ever in doubt? Not for me when I read Jane Eyre. But this book didn’t ever convince me that she wasn’t headed down the road to crazy, even before Mr. Rochester shows up. So it was evocative, interesting, thought-provoking. But for me, not “mind-changing.” 3 1/2 stars, rounded down. Because I’m just crabby.

January 2022 “non-classics” reads

January was a big month for books, but a lot of it was finishing books I had already started.

This was a month of “classic mysteries”: I read Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe book Over My Dead Body. Good, but not the best. We do learn a few interesting snippets of Wolfe’s history. And there is a lot of international intrigue wafting around. I wouldn’t start here if you want to read Stout.

Then two Agatha Christie books. Death on the Nile, which I read because I am reading along with the Close Reads Podcast group. Basically a “locked room” kind of mystery, but on a boat going down the Nile. I had read it before, so I was not surprised, but it was enjoyable even then, because you get to rethink scenes you had passed by on the first read. Also, one day soon I want t see the Branagh adaptation of it.

Followed that up with another Christie set in Egypt: Death Comes As the End. Set in ancient Egypt, it seems like this is Christie’s love letter to her archaeologist husband and his work. Enjoyed it – it differs, because there is no “detective” who comes to solve the case. Worth reading!

Then there is Stella Riley’s historical romance Garland of Straw. I just love this author. More history than romance in this one, and I for one liked that. I know little about the English Civil War, so the politics intrigued me. Romance scenes are perhaps a bit steamier than I prefer, but there are not many. I received the next two books in the series for Christmas and they are waiting for me.

I read The Hangman by Louise Penney, which is an interesting book. This was written as part of Canada’s Good Reads program – which is aimed at people who are not habitual readers or adults who are new readers or even readers maybe going through second language programs. It has a more direct style, with some description, but not as much as she normally writes. The language is very clear. I think this is a spectacular idea and I appreciated the story very much for what it was.  It is not necessary to read this if you are reading through the Inspector Gamache series.

And finally, a nonfiction book In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park. The story of her family and their escape from North Korea. Heartbreakingly sad – perhaps not as affecting as Nothing to Envy was for me, but certainly worth the read.

Classic Book #13 finished

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

See, the tricksy part of Anthony Trollope is that you think he is writing a big old Victorian novel. And big it certainly is! Close to 1,000 pages, 100 chapters, it is the longest book I’ve read in a very long time. But I couldn’t quit it. Because, although some people would like to tell you that Trollope is writing about “them” and “the past” – he’s not. He’s also writing about us and the way we live now. So at opposite ends of the spectrum – Hemingway and Trollope – the fact remains that the great writers tell stories that show us ourselves in some way. That point out over the years that things may look a little different, but at the heart of it, we’re the same sinful folk we always have been. To think yourself and your time superior to a character like Melmotte is to blind yourself to the reality all around you.

I’m not going into a long explanation of the book. Go over to Sparknotes or Goodreads and read synopsis after synopsis of this wonderful book. But don’t ever fool yourself that it’s NOT The Way We Live Now.

Classic Book #12 Finished!

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

I liked this more than I expected to. What helped with this was reading Amor Towle’s introduction in the the new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition after I read the book. I don’t think you should ever read an introduction before you read the book. Why read pages explaining a book that you haven’t read yet? Doesn’t make sense. But this one was helpful to me, especially when Towles wrote: “It is a testament to Hemingway’s skill as a storyteller that nearly a hundred years after its publication The Sun Also Rises remains deeply satisfying despite essentially being a novel of unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly.”

And that’s it. There is not one character, save maybe (maybe) Jake, that you have any hope that they might construct a meaningful and satisfying life for themselves. Everyone is broken (Jake literally, others mentally) or burned out or just so world-weary and cynical. Alcohol reigns supreme as the coping mechanism of choice. If you thought the characters drank a lot in Russian novels, well, they ain’t got nothing on Hemingway’s version of the Lost Generation.

The sad thing is that it’s not just them. It’s also us and our generation. Those so lost that the next event, the next drink, the next gamble, the next “anything but settling down to a regular life” is always on the horizon and to be chased after. While Hemingway was writing about the 1920’s, it doesn’t seem so different from the 2020’s in many ways.

And that made me sad.

Roundup of The Books of 2021

One of my resolutions for this year is to actually keep better track of what I have read on this here blog. But, you know, as with all resolutions, wishing and doing are two different things. We shall see.

Anyway, on to the roundup of my 2021 reads.

I read 60 books in 2021, and you’d think with all the time I spent in the hospital, and recovering from being in the hospital, that it would be more, but no. When I was so sick or tired, I couldn’t keep my head in a book for an extended period of time. It was more like late night episodes of Perry Mason, Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock. Fatigue doesn’t equal sleep for me; it just means fatigue. And more fatigue. And more fatigue. But I digress. Again.

I looked at the 60 books and categorized them into a few groups to make it easier to deal with and highlight the stars.

First, “The Long Reads”

This year I read 5 really long fiction books, all of which were STARS for me. I read the first 3 books of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: The Game of Kings, Queen’s Play, and The Disorderly Knights. Dunnett writes deeply detailed historical fiction and doesn’t make any bones about how detailed it is nor does she do a lot explaining to her readers. There are many things that I probably missed in this first read, but Lymond is a hero worth rooting for. He is a vastly talented young man, playing a long and deep game, with a morality that is strict, but certainly his own. We see his back story gradually unfold as the books go along and he is both infuriating and dear to my heart all at once. As we say in our house, “he will do what he will do and there’s no doing anything about it” quoting one of the songs from Cats. Dunnett’s women are stellar – but not proto-feminists or anything anachronistic. They are powerful and wonderful, within the scope they have due to the times they live in. Other secondary characters live and breathe as well. And while she is no George R. R. Martin, killing off everyone in sight, be prepared to lose even people that you have fallen in love with. I expect to finish the other 3 books of the Chronicles in 2022. I recommend them, though not to the faint-hearted.

Dickens, oh, my beloved Dickens. This year I read Bleak House, which is a 5 star books for me. Some people get fed up with him and all his details. Not me. This was nearly a perfect book, with characters I cared about, both honorable and otherwise, smart and silly, the whole gamut. To me Dickens’ great genius (and perhaps his biggest flaw to those who don’t love him) is his sheer ability to create character and character. They come spinning out of his head like magic – and he doesn’t know when or why to stop. I say don’t. But it does make for a convoluted narrative. I also read The Pickwick Papers, a book which I had started several times, but this time it caught for me. Not a novel with a long, connected story line, this is a series of vignettes and Dickens’ first published novel. You can see the seeds of books to come in the little stories. And you see the first of Dickens’ great characters: Samuel Weller.

The non-fiction

Only 5 non-fiction books this year: The Path Between the Seas (about the building of the Panama Canal), Packing for Mars (about space exploration), Wait ‘Til Next Year (a lovely memoir), Night (devastating little book by Elie Wiesel), and then the book that I would recommend: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. This last book is something that I think all readers (and non-readers) should read and think about.

The “Classics”

This was a harder distinction. These are always considered classics, and maybe some of my “other fiction” could be as well, but these are here because “other people say” they are classics. This year I read Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Richard II, Mansfield Park, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Out of that lot, I would recommend that you read all of them. But my favorites were Death Comes for the Archbishop and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. My least favorite was Jane Eyre. I know so many people like it, but the Brontes are not my cup of tea. Which is surprising to me.

Other Good Fiction

Perhaps not classics, but books that I enjoyed and would recommend to others: News of the World, The Road, All the Pretty Horses, Rebecca, The Severed Wasp, The Stone Angel, Out of the Silent Planet, Project Hail Mary, The Extraordinary Life of Samuel Hell, Unequal Affection, Piranesi, and Mythos. Biggest surprise of this lot was how much I admired Cormac McCarthy’s two books – but they are not for the weak of stomach or heart. I can’t say that I liked them, but I understand his genius better. But wow, I’m glad I don’t live in his head. The Stone Angel was a great, though depressing book by a well-known Canadian author that I had never heard of. Piranesi was fascinating, and while I would recommend it, I don’t think that I liked it as well as my friends did. I think you should probably rely on them more than me. They are certainly more within the mainstream of thought about the book, with their glowing reviews. My thoughts are more restrained. It might change upon a second reading. All the rest are worth your time, for sure. Look them up.

Other fiction – just OK

Four other fiction books didn’t make the “would recommend” cut: The Truants, The Midnight Library, The Perfect Child, and The Werewolf of Whitechapel. In every case I so wanted to like them but found that they were either infuriating or fell short of their promise in some way. In particular, I really wanted to like The Midnight Library, but in the end just couldn’t reconcile myself to all of its “lessons.” Perhaps if I had read it at 25 instead of 65?

A Fun Series

This year I lucked into Martha Wells’ series of novellas about Murderbot. I know, I know, it sounds silly. And in some ways, it is. But it is enchanting, and rip-roaring, and fighting-the-bad-guys fun. All with really interesting questions in the background about what makes a person a person. Murderbot is a robot who has hacked her (its, but to me always a her) control unit. She doesn’t *want* to care about her “owners” but she finds herself caring after all, even despite her best intentions. These are short, fun, sci-fi romps through space. Do yourself a favor and read them. This isn’t even one of my *preferred* genres and I find them absolutely wonderful. The three I have read so far are All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, and Rogue Protocol. I intend to finish the rest this year. Fun, fun, fun. And thought provoking as well.

Mystery fiction

This year I focused more on the “classic” mysteries, reading 3 Nero Wolfe books, 3 Lord Peter Wimsey books, and one Agatha Christie. Then I threw in Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (Inspector Gamache) and Alexander McCall Smith’s The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe (#1 Ladies Detective Agency). The only book I didn’t like of the whole crew was Sayers’ Five Red Herrings, which may be a perfectly plotted mystery, but the amount of time spent on railroad time tables made it a chore to get through. Not my favorite by any means. Of this lot, I highly, highly recommend Louise Penny and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. I intend to continue to read through both series.

Regency romances

My comfort reading of choice, and I refuse to justify it in any way. I read 15 Regencies this year. Highlight was a reread of Heyer’s The Talisman Ring, which I think is just genius and so, so fun. If you are a romance snob, as I once was, read Georgette Heyer. She will change your mind. Some of the Regencies I read are not worth mentioning – they were fun, but basically just soap bubbles of books. Not sorry to have read them, but glad I read them via Kindle Unlimited instead of owning them. I think that there are a couple of authors who stand out from the rest, though, when you talk about period romances. Caroline Warfield is one of them – I am enjoying her Ashmead series very much indeed and think she is a couple of levels above the average Regency romance author. The other author I recommend is Mary Kingswood. I have found her novels to be above average as well. Both write in groups of books with the same locale or family. So if you find you like the series, there are generally five or six of them to enjoy. I also think that Stella Riley is another author who is way above the average. She’s not strictly Regency (right now I am going through her Roundheads and Cavaliers series, set during the English Civil War) and she is a step or two “hotter” (if you know what I mean) than the others. Of the others I read, I would recommend Joyce Harmon’s A Feather to Fly With, because it’s not often the heroine of a Regency is actually involved in something illegal and dangerous! I’m not a fan of Harmon’s mashup of Regency/SciFi/Austen fanfic with her Regency Mage series, but I do like some of her backlist.

And finally

Goodreads says that I read 19,238 pages during 2021. The average rating I gave books this year was 3.8 (out of 5) stars. Since I am purposely stingy with 5 stars, I consider this an excellent year of reading. I hope 2022 will be as good!

May Non-“Classics List” Reads

Well, this makes it easy, there WERE no Classics List reads for May! I’ll need to remedy that in June, and the book I just started is from The List, so June won’t be a total zero when it comes to classics.

On to the May books. Looking over the list for May it is apparent that I was recovering from several months of heavier reading. Plus it was raining all the darn time, so that gray sky was oppressive. I really do think I suffer from a mild case of whatever that thing is where you get sad and grumpy after days of no sunshine. A couple of more classic-y type books, but for the most part, just some enjoyable reading.

The Substitute Bridegroom by Charlotte Louise Dolan. A sweet little Regency romance. Regency romance is my go-to destressor (WordPress says that’s not a word, but whatever). Regencies follow a few different plotlines and tropes and this one is no different. I had not read anything by this author and it was a serviceable, enjoyable read, but nothing spectacular. If you like Regencies, you might want to check it out. This is not great like Heyer, nor funny like Chesney. Just a nice couple of days’ read. Three stars out of five.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. See? I didn’t just read frothy nothings! Well, I suppose some people might see The Pickwick Papers as Dickens’ version of frothy nothings. I did not expect to like it as much as I did. I had just finished Bleak House last month (which is GREAT – see my previous review) and went into this one thinking that it could not possibly be as good. And I was right. But the fact that it doesn’t quite measure up to Bleak House doesn’t mean that it is not a great book.

This is not so much a connected story as a series of stories, wild tales, ghost stories, poems, and all manner of writings, all jammed into one book. It is as if Dickens is trying out lots of different styles an genres – “Do I want to write a mystery? Do I want to take a stand against the legal system? Do I want infuriating characters? Do I want funny vignettes?” And the answer to all of these questions was “Yes. Yes I do. Why choose?” So he didn’t.

You see the beginnings of several other stories – including A Christmas Carol and the legal shenanigans of Bleak House’s Jarndyce and Jarndyce. You see his absolute delight in creating characters that may sound like cardboard figures when you describe them, but somehow end up morphing into *people*. What started out as a kind of “duty read” ended up being an altogether enjoyable experience.

And I closed the book after 804 pages sorry that there was no more. Dickens and Trollope both are like that for me. However much there is, it isn’t enough.

BTW: The Audible version of this book, narrated by David Timson, is stellar and comes with my highest recommendation. If I could buy you a copy, I would. 4 stars out of 5.

Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Not a great book, but a fun little romp. I like epistolary novels, so this one had a leg up from the beginning. And I loved that it started out as just a fun exercise between two writer friends.

I don’t know that I think that the story holds together particularly well, and I agree with other reviewers that there is not enough character development. I DID keep having to think, “Now is Kate the one in London, or is that Cecy?” So there’s that.

But after a couple of really, really long books, this was a nice palate cleanser. I’m not averse to reading the other two books in the series (and I actually own them) but I’m not in a particular hurry to read them.  3 stars our of 5.

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis. I have had the Space Trilogy on my shelves for many years. I had read the first two in the series, but never the third. I decided I would read the third this summer, but thought it only fair to reread the first two so I would be “up to speed” before reading the third. It turns out it was a good thing, because while I remembered sort of the “bones” of the story, I really only remembered the actions of the explorers and virtually nothing of the interactions with the inhabitants of Malacandra.

This book is good and thought provoking and weird and uncomfortable. It took me a bit to come up with the label for my thoughts about this one and uncomfortable is perhaps the best I can do. I suppose that is the normal response, really, for a human who lives in a “bent” world when confronted with a world that is not fallen. I stood there with Ransom, asking myself, “Where are the bad guys? Who is in charge here?” And the answer was Oyarsa – and it reminded me of the Israelites – standing there begging for a King like all the other people – when they had the best King of all, God himself.

It also made me uncomfortable (and I mean this in a good way, you know) to think that Maleldil made everything to live its time and then go home to him. Nothing was intended to be permanent, other than that time to come. I suppose the discomfort comes in confronting ideas that we know to be true but that we only see out of the corners of our eyes (the way Ransom sees the eldil) – that we catch a glimpse of but not more. And we stop and wonder.

While I think it is important to read, it is not *riveting* in the way that LOTR or even Narnia are. Perhaps because the ideas are harder. Very worth the read. 4 stars out of 5.

Bellfield Hall: Or the Observations of Miss Dido Kent by Anna Dean. This was another recommendation from a Regency Romance group I am a part of on Facebook. This is what Agatha Christie might look like if Miss Marple were in the Regency rather than St. Mary Mead in the early 20th century. Dean is not as good at plot as Christie, but it is a good enough little mystery and it is kind of fun to have it set in a different time period. Plus, how can you not like a heroine whose name is Dido? 3 out of 5 stars.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. I like Mary Roach. This is the third book of hers I have read – Stiff and Gulp were the other two. She is two things at once – both intensely interested in what she is writing about and willing to see the humor in absurd situations. You will learn a lot reading Mary Roach. She is unafraid to ask the questions we all HAVE but are too embarrassed to ask. She’s not. She deals with both the serious (what are the effects of isolation on a long space journey? How much will people miss the everyday things of Earth when they are far away from them? What does space travel do to human bodies, long-term?) and the slightly ridiculous (Just what about sex in weightlessness? And how DO astronauts go to the bathroom? And how is the food, really?). Her footnotes are often hilarious and she sees the world slightly off-kilter. Highly recommended. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Sandra Burr. While it took me a chapter or two to get used to her voice, after half an hour or so, I began to enjoy her very much. 4 out of 5 stars.

The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry. I read this one for a Buddy Read with a friend of mine – her choice. I had super mixed feelings/thoughts about this book, but I am positive that it will make for some good discussion at our supper meeting this month. The author certainly knows how to write a suspenseful novel – I stayed up very late one night/morning to finish the book. But I had some problems with it. Most significantly the ending of the book. I do not expect a book to tie things up in a nice pretty bow, but I think there is some obligation on the part of an author to do better than Ms. Berry did. I rarely am angry over an ending, but I was over this one and felt like it was a cheat. And perhaps a cynical grab for more money with a second novel about these characters. Whatever. It wasn’t fair play. 3 out of 5 stars.

And that’s it! I have already started my Classics List read – Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. Also in the on deck circle is All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, to be read along with the Close Reads podcast folks. Here’s to summertime reading!

April “Non-Classics List” Reads

Five books finished in April. Two, Night by Elie Wiesel and Bleak House by Charles Dickens, were on my “classics to read” list and they have been reviewed separately in prior entries. The other three finished this month were:

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs. This is a fabulous little book. Aimed at readers who have lost their “long-read” mojo in an age of digital distraction and incessant social media scrolling, which, to be frank, is NOT me, the book proposes some solutions to the problem. The thing that makes this book fresh is that Jacobs does not condemn technology – he contends that his own reading problem was largely solved by using his Kindle! But he does recognize the inherent distraction that constant media consumption trains us to expect. He doesn’t like those “1 gazillion books you ought to read before you die” lists and counsels us to read at “Whim” (and the capitalization is important – read the book to find out why). Not necessarily to read solely what *pleases* us, never trying something new – but to be led by serendipity rather than a pre-made list. He is also a proponent of rereading – and that was the part of the book that most struck my heart. So much so that I am considering making the summer months a time of simply rereading the books that I call my favorites and save. 4 stars for this little gem.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. This book plays out the “what if” game. What if I hadn’t been in that Business Communications class that summer to meet my future husband. What would have happened? What would my life have been then? It is an interesting hook for a plot. Somewhere between life and death there is a library – where you can see what would have been “if”. The book has lessons to teach. And they aren’t subtle. I saw them coming from a mile away. BUT. That doesn’t invalidate the book, in my opinion. It just means that because I am much older than the target audience, I have already learned a lot of these lessons simply by *living*. I would have liked this book MUCH better at 20 than I do at 65. Not sorry I read it. 3 stars.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Oh, I know that millions of women are Jane Eyre fangirls. Not me. This was a reread for me along with the Close Reads podcast. While that podcast opened my eyes to many good things about the book and its heroine, I still can’t love Jane. I have come to think that it is simply that I am suffocated in a gothic novel – especially one like Jane Eyre that is so very long and so very wordy (and I’m not turned off by wordy!). While I can kind of get behind a fast-moving gothic like Rebecca (which could be kind of gothic-lite), the overwhelming atmosphere, heightened emotion and even all the descriptions of weather and scenery and everything else just made me feel like I was drowning. I can see the genius, so I will leave my initial rating of 4 stars, but it cannot ever be a “loved” book for me.

Classic Book #11 Finished!

Night by Elie Wiesel.

It is hard to review someone’s cry of the heart – so I will just say that the NY Times was right in their blurb on the front of the book. It is “a slim volume of terrifying power.”

This one I will have to think about for awhile before I can get my thoughts together. But it brings to mind my husband’s Uncle Barney, who was with the army that liberated one of the concentration camps. He never wanted to talk about it afterward – not even when the kids and grandkids wanted him to tell his story for school papers and the like. He said that no one needed to know or hear about what he had seen. It was too awful. And he said never to call the people who perpetrated such crimes “animals”, for animals are incapable of something so horrific.

And it made me realize the wisdom of Eisenhower after the liberation – he made sure that film crews went in and took lots of pictures. And he made German citizens who lived in towns near the camps – so near that he *knew* they had seen the smoke and smelled the crematoriums, yet “didn’t know” what was happening. He made them look – there are films of this in the Holocaust Memorial in Washington D. C. Pictures of women throwing aprons over their faces and *running* away after they had toured the camps. He didn’t want anyone, EVER, to be able to say “it didn’t happen.”

This book was on my Classics list – and I had never had the courage to read it before. Reading this and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in the space of a few months makes me wonder about humans. How do we survive such awfulness? How did some keep their faith in such awful conditions and others, like Wiesel, lose theirs? How do we turn into killers? How does it ever end? Can it ever end?

Wiesel gives himself no mercy in the book. He judges himself by an impossible standard. I wrote in the margins of my book “mercy and grace are due here” more than once. He broke my heart. You cannot convince me that he stopped believing in God. He was too angry at Him for that. But he certainly cried out – as did Jesus – “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!”

5 stars, certainly.

Classic book #10 finished!

Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Here’s my review from over on Goodreads:

I think this novel just stepped into the #1 place for all of Dickens’ novels. Yes, there is a boatload of coincidence that just happens to tie everything and everyone together. Yes, Esther Summerson is too good for real life. But I don’t care. Just the plethora of characters, good and bad, make the book worth every minute of time I spent on it. From the admirable John Jarndyce all the way down to Peepy. Mrs. Jellyby, who can care about Africa, but not about her own home and children. And Mr. Jellyby who just lays his head against the wall. The awful and wicked Mr. Tulkinghorn. So many. So many. Dickens was also a man on a mission: to expose and to make plain the awful, grinding poverty of the day. He could have written screed after screed about it and no one would have listened. But put poor little Jo in the book and maybe, just maybe, someone’s heart will be touched. And they will imitate the good and great John Jarndyce. He who does what he does without the least fanfare and with no desire for thanks or praise – because that brings on the East wind, you know. Dickens also sees what the poor are to one another. That many of them are far more generous with their little bits than we are with our excess. The brickmakers wives are kind to poor little Jo, when the rest of the world just wants to keep him “moving along” so we don’t have to *see* him. Is it pathos laid on thick? Perhaps. But in a cause that is worth the effort. Since I am a girl who always, always, loves the supporting characters most, I will always love Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet (the “old girl”) for their love for one another, their children, and their friend George. Dickens does well at portraying happy marriages and theirs is one of the best. It would take a very special book indeed to knock this off the #1 spot in my Dickens library. Nicholas Nickelby and the Pickwick Papers are on tap for later in the year. I don’t expect them to beat this one. I listened to the Simon Vance narrated version of the book. It was FANTASTIC. (less)

March “Non-Classics List” reads

Actually there were NO Classics List reads in March. But I am more than 1/2 way through Bleak House, so there will be at least ONE Classics List read in April. And note just to keep things on the up and up, I did substitute Bleak House for the Pickwick Papers which was originally on the list. I hope to get to Pickwick this year as well, but all the things I have read about Bleak House made it more compelling to me than Pickwick. Though I expect to enjoy both thoroughly. I am a Dickens fangirl.

On to the books I read:

The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith. This is #15 in the Precious Ramotswe series #1 Ladies Detective Agency. You don’t read these to be astonished by the intricate plotting and amazing mystery. You read these because of the characters. And this one did not disappoint. Grace Makutsi is setting up a restaurant, partly to prove to herself that she can do something on her own, and partly to emulate her great friend Ma Ramotswe. Charlie becomes an “assistant clerk” at the detective agency – and both succeeds and fails. Ma Potokwane of the orphans farm saves the day, and the evil Violet tries to hurt Grace yet again. And Botswana is still Botswana. For most people this would probably be a 3 star book. But for me it is so cozy and loving and kind, 4 stars.

The Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. I have not read much of L’Engle’s adult fiction. This was given to me as a Christmas gift. Very 80s New York high church Anglican. The story of Katherine, a concert pianist, as she looks back on her life from her position as a newly retired person. She has returned “home”, though she really hasn’t lived there in many years. She connects with an old friend, Felix, who was the Diocesan Bishop of New York (Episcopalian) and is now also retired. The book investigates her life as a wife, a mother, a pianist, one flashback at a time.

While there was much I liked about it, there were parts I found impossible to suspend disbelief enough to go along with. In particular, it bothered me that everyone she met *immediately* treated her as a mother-confessor-dispenser of wisdom. And that regardless of the terrible things she had been through, there was no residue of anger or resentment. And I also found her husband’s desire to have children, regardless of any personal cost to her of the way they would need to be conceived (I don’t want to say more, because I don’t want to spoil anything for new readers) absolutely awful. 3/5 stars

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. I had never heard of Margaret Laurence before a friend of mine and I decided to read it as a buddy read. I’m glad I read it, although it was one of the saddest, most tragic looks at a human life I’ve ever read. Hagar Shipley is 90 years old, suffering from at least the onset of dementia (if not full blown dementia) and is looking back at her long life as she fights with her son and daughter-in-law about moving into a nursing home.

Her life has been largely unhappy, because *she* is a prideful, stiff-necked, arrogantly-sure-of-her-rightness person. She is able to see places where she should have said one thing – a thing that would have made someone else feel better or comforted – but she could not bring herself to do it. She married a man, partly to spite her father, and then annoys and hounds him every day of their marriage because he is not what she wishes he were. She ignores one son and dotes on the other – to the benefit of neither. She loses those close to her, yet won’t reach out to the ones who are left.

Her son and daughter in law are portrayed in her mind as takers and leeches, but they have cared for her unstintingly for 17 years. They are now senior citizens themselves, with issues of their own – yet Hagar cannot, or will not, acknowledge their kindness or charity.

The writing is exceptional, I think. But it is just so, so, so sad. Unlike Stevens, in Remains of the Day, who looks back on a life almost spoiled by willful blindness to the facts, Hagar has no redemption, no change of heart. She has one moment of heart-stopping clarity. But it is too little, too late for her to grasp it and change. We see instead a wasted, unhappy life.

I would read more by Laurence. But I might want to make sure they are not *quite* so depressing. 4/5 stars

All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Entertaining short read. I liked being thrown right into the middle of the story, without a lot of preliminary world building yada yada yada before you can even get started with the story. In this one, you learn little by little about the world Murderbot inhabits – and the kinds of beings that live in it. Since it is told from the perspective of a part organic, part robot leased “machine” you are unsure how much of her perspective would align with a true human’s and how much is skewed because of her nature and lack of understanding.

I notice that I refer to Murderbot (what she calls herself) as “she”. The ‘bots are ungendered, but I immediately took her to be “she” – maybe because she is coming to terms with *feelings*? I’m not sure. Other reviewers have automatically assumed “he” so it is kind of genius on Wells’ part to handle that kind of ambiguity.

And really, that’s what the book is about – how does the ‘bot (who has hacked herself, in a way, and does not have the factory required control module any longer) come to terms with being a free agent in this world? And how does she come to terms with her growing interest in and (shock!) feelings for “her” humans?

I’ve already downloaded the second installment from the library. 4/5 stars

A good month of reading. Many books on the stacks, but I’m currently reading Romeo and Juliet and listening to the discussions on The Play’s the Thing podcast. I am re-reading Jane Eyre with the Close Reads podcast folks. (Unlike almost every other woman I know, I have not loved Jane Eyre in the past. I am hoping that the discussions as we read will open my eyes to something that makes me love it more. And I dislike her sister’s “masterpiece” as well, so there.) And I am more than halfway through Bleak House – which will be at least one title ticked off my Classics List.

What did YOU read last month?