MarysLibrary

Young Mrs Savage

Having read about D E Stevenson, of whom I had not previously heard, in Elaine's blog, Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover, I've been reading those of her novels that the Spokane Library still has on their shelves. Quite a few, surprisingly, as many of her novels were reprinted in the 1970s in the US.

My favorite so far is Young Mrs Savage, published in 1948, and dealing with the adjustment to life after the war in England and Scotland. Dinah Savage married young and after the war found herself with a small income, no servants, and four small children. Her husband was not killed in the war; he died in an accident immediately afterward.

Her brother, back after many years at sea and working in London in a boring job (but a job nonetheless - not every returning veteran found one), suggests she take the children to stay in the house they grew up in, on the seaside, near Edinburgh. She and the children meet lots of new people and she becomes better acquainted with many people she knew as a child.

A lovely book, slow moving, including stories Mrs Savage tells her children, little adventures for the children, and some mysterious new friends. Just the sort of book women must have longed to read right after the war - a book in which the struggles are over and the good are rewarded and - as it takes place mostly in Scotland - there are lots of scones, much whipped cream and strawberry jam, and no problem finding chops for dinner or candy for the children.

Slipstream

When I posted about the Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Barbara at Life Must Be Filled Up mentioned the author's autobiography which apparently inspired many people, places, and events in the novels. These include a grandfather who was a "minor composer" (he wrote the Warsaw Concerto), a mother who was a ballet dancer (with Diagehlev's Ballets Russes), and a character who wanted to be an actress (herself.)

The autobiography, Slipstream (2002) sounded so interesting that I ordered a copy from abe.com. And today it arrived, displacing entirely the four books that came home from the library the day before yesterday and the five books that I bought at Auntie's Bookstore yesterday, and indeed, every other book in the house.

At the front of Slipstream, Howard provides a cast of characters - people she has known who are mentioned in the book - that includes Sybille Bedford, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Cyril Connolly, Joyce Grenfell of St Trinian's fame, Terence Kilmartin of Proust translation fame, Olivia Manning, Carson McCullers, Ivor Novello (real name David Ivor Davies), Malcolm Sargent (whose nickname apparently was Flash Harry), and Barbara Skelton (whose memoirs were filled with what Anthony Powell called "peculiarly incisive malignity.")

Also Elizabeth Taylor (the author), Antonia White, Pablo Casals, Marc Chagal, Isadora Duncan, and many others.

Thank you Barbara.

Tea

"If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty." ~Japanese Proverb

The Light Years

Some time ago, when this first of the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard showed up on my library shelves, I borrowed the book because I liked the cover. I struck gold.

There are now four Cazalet novels and I've read them all. Gulped them down one-two-three-four to tell the truth. That was back in the late 90s. Then one day a month or so ago I was browsing among the books to be reshelved and there was The Light Years. So I borrowed it and read it again.

I am again amazed at how Elizabeth Jane Howard has been able to create five husband/wife pairs, a few odd female relatives, a handful of governesses, children's nurses, and other servants, and fifteen children ranging in age from 17 to newborn and make them memorable from the first page. There's a family tree and  a list of families, children, and servants at the beginning of each volume in this series, but I don't think I had to refer to these aids more than half a dozen times before I knew each character well.

This first book runs from summer of 1937 when the Cazalet family gathers at the home of the grandparents for a carefree vacation to the late summer of 1938 when the family is again gathered but is now listening nervously to the wireless to hear the news about Chamberlain's visit to Munich and the possibility of war.

A made-for-TV adaptation of The Cazalets is available from Netflix and I've added it to my queue. I want to re-read all four books before I watch it, but I'm now zipping through the second volume so it shouldn't be long.

Tea

I've become interested in tea recently. I've always been a tea drinker, starting with Lipton as a girl and moving on up to Stash and Twinings later. I've always liked "dust" teas, probably because my first tea drinking was typical American tea-bag tea, which for many years tended to be what was left over when the Chinese and English and French (more on them later) had taken the whole leaves off the top. This kind of tea needs to be doctored with milk and sugar to be drinkable.

Then I discovered quality tea and especially oolong and flavored teas. High quality tea can now be had in a teabag - especially those pyramid bags that allow the water to reach more surfaces. Really good tea doesn't need to be masked by milk and sugar but I've continued to use them even with double bergamot.

However, I bought some Mariage "Eros" a while ago and have moved up a step in tea-drinking. This morning I made tea in a pot with loose tea. The French have been tea-drinkers for as long as the English and they are very particular about their tea. The best of the French tea purveyors is Mariage Freres. One of their most popular teas, "Eros," is flavored and if you think about the French artistry with perfume you will get an idea of the subtlety of this flowery tea.

I used a ceramic pot and filtered the tea leaves out with a strainer. For my second and third cups I put a little hot water into the cup after I poured the increasingly strong tea. I should probably get one of those pots that have a built-in strainer so that I can remove it after the tea has steeped properly (three to four minutes for a black tea aromatic with 1 tsp of tea per six-ounces of water.)

Charade

Wilhelm wants to stay at the Hotel St Jacques when we visit Paris next spring. It was the hotel in the movie, Charade, which is one of our favorites and which we watched last night. Audrey Hepburn falls for Cary Grant while being chased by George Kennedy, James Coburn, and others. A wonderful movie.

The Wildwater Walking Club

The title of Claire Cook's new, 2009 novel, The Wildwater Walking Club appealed to me when I read about it in a blog a few days ago so I requested it from the library. It was just what I needed.

This is not great literature, but it's not chick lit either. It's well written and the main character is real enough for me to care about her and her attempt to pull her life together and find what she wants to do with herself. If she were to find love, too, well, that wouldn't be unrealistic for this kind of book.

I learned a good deal about growing lavender, the athletic shoe business, and Sequim, Washington. I relaxed and was entertained. This book, at this time, was just right.

Father's Day

Did you see the neat father/son photo on Bing today?

Main Street

The 22nd Ave Book Club has chosen for our next book Sinclair Lewis' Main Street. We had decided to read some best-sellers from the past and we were choosing from the 1920s. The other books we considered were All Quiet on the Western Front, Edna Ferber's So Big, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Lewis' Elmer Gantry, and a book by Zane Grey.

The movie last night was Gosford Park. I'd seen it before as had Mary Louise but we were eager to see it again. I turned on the subtitles, this being an Altman film where everybody talks over everybody else and the background noise, including the music of Ivor Novello, was substantial. What a fine movie with, as they say, a star-studded cast, starting with a favorite of mine, Michael Gambon.

Karla's fake sangria was great.

The 22nd Avenue Book Club

My book club is meeting at my house tonight to watch a movie. We have a handful of DVDs and tapes to choose from including Gosford Park, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and one of the recent Jane Austen adaptations. Karla is bringing sangria and I'm providing grapes. I can't wait.

Patriotic Grace

Peggy Noonan has long been a favorite writer of mine. She tends towards the conservative and has worked in a Republican administration, but she is far from strident and she is always thoughtful.

Her new book, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now(2008) has blended into it pieces from her regular column at the Wall Street Journal, but it is a new and refreshing look at America and what we need to do. The book was written before last November's election and it is an indication of her even handedness and sensible approach to 21st century problems that it is still of value now that we know who won.

Noonan covers dozens of problems and observations and worries and questions. She complains of the loss of dignity at airport security, an embarrassment that the people who have created this system will never have to share with the rest of us. She laments the decline of respect for middle-aged women, the people who do so much of the planning and management and sometimes financing of the lives of the young and the old.

She worries that we have no true civil defense plans in this country. She is appalled that nobody in government is working to rebuild and harden our electrical grid. She points out that the Department of Homeland Security is a mess, with inefficiency and duplication and no focus. She suggest some ways our leaders could help us recover from the mistakes of the Bush administration.

This is an informed and unbiased book with much to recommend it to the informed and unbiased reader, especially one who is elected to political office in the USA.

April in Paris . . .

Chestnuts in blossom . . .

Wilhelm is talking seriously about a trip to Paris next April. He says the 28th is the croissant anniversary.

Rosalie Figge

To Kill a Mockinbird

When I lived in Virginia there was a mockingbird who sat on my mailbox and sang to me nearly every day. It did a great imitation of the ring of our next door neighbor's telephone. I miss that mockingbird. One of the characters in Harper Lee's novel says the mockingbird doesn't hurt anybody, it doesn't eat our crops, it just sings it's heart out for us, and that's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

The last time I read To Kill a Mockingbird was shortly after it was published in 1960. I had forgotten much of it, remembering rather the scenes from the movie, which, outstanding though it is, misses a great deal from the book, which is remarkably rich and complex and very well put together, with one incident leading into another and all pointing to the denument.

The character, Dill, is based on Truman Capote, who often visited a relative who lived next door to Lee in Monroeville, Alabama. A rumor has circulated for years that the book was really written by Capote, enhanced by the fact that Lee never published another novel. Having read much of Capote I think I can scotch that rumor. Everything about this book is alien to Capote's work except its excellence.

Stone's Fall

This new novel by Iain Pears, Stone's Fall, was keeping Cornflower awake nights because she couldn't put it down, so I requested it from the Spokane Library, thinking to look it over and send it back. I've been so dissatisfied with most of the books I've been reading lately (with the exception of D E Stevenson, whom I heard about from Book and Opera Lover) and Grace Livingston Hill (many of whose works I acquired years ago thinking I was going to write a paper about the values expressed in these intensely religious popular novels.)

Since I have recognized my mood, though not before giving up on or writing negatively about a few books that would probably please me at another time, I've been reading a lot of nonfiction and skimming literary fiction to make note of books to read later when I'm more intellectually fit to do so.

Then came Iain Pears and this marvelous novel, with a complicated plot and complicated characters, including the scintillating Mme Robillard (or Elizabeth, Lady Ravenscliff, as she once was.) The blurb and the reviews promise an examination of international high finance and politics, the "golden age" of pre-WW I intrigue, and the beginnings of the 20th century arms race. The novel stretches from 1953 back to 1867 - the chronology is backwards - and it moves from London and Paris to mid-19th century Venice.

I've only just started the book and so I have 500 more pages of this bounty to look forward to. Patricia Wentworth, Dorothy Eden, Mignon Eberhart, and Faith Baldwin are going to have to wait.

Mariette in Ecstasy

My friend Les in Virginia (soon to be in Santa Fe) recommended this book today. I ordered it immediately from Amazon.com.

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen was published in 1991. It's about a nun in an upstate New York convent just after the turn of the last century.

Each of us has at least one friend whose book recommendations are always worth reading. For me that's Les. He's the one who ought to be writing a blog.

Guess What?

Those were the words with which Wilhelm greeted me this morning.

Answer: Our new, $15,000 heating system isn't working. It didn't come on when he turned up the thermostat.

I want to cry.

Sunnyside

Today's Review-a-Day from Powell's Bookstore is the new novel by the author of Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold. Sunnyside is a riotous history of the early 20th century filtered through the life of Charlie Chaplin. The book title is taken from the title of a little-know Chaplin movie, Sunnyside.

The review, by Ron Charles of The Washington Post, is excellent, the kind of review that gives you the information you need to decide whether a book is for you or not. This one is definitely for me.

Here I Am

I haven't been posting lately. It's not that I've been really busy, exactly. More like preoccupied.

The new furnace ordeal is over now but for nearly two weeks we had no central heating. We chose to have the installation when we did because the weather forecast was for daytime highs of around 60 and lows in the 40s. A couple of space heaters would keep us warm enough during the three or four days it would take to remove the old boiler and install the new one.

That proved to be an overly optimistic forecast. Except for a couple of days we have had highs in the 40s or low 50s and overnight lows near freezing. It took rather longer to make the switch than I expected. And when the new furnace was in place, late last Friday afternoon, it was pumping steam out a vent on the side of the house rather than into the radiators. So we had another cold weekend.

All is now well with the new system, which has a thermostat on each radiator so that we can set the bedroom on low and Mary's Library, which has four windows, on high. The days of the thermostat duels between Wilhelm and me are over. The cats can snuggle blissfully on top of the warm radiators.

There have also been frequent visits to the physical therapist in recent weeks. More about that in another post.

I've been reading a lot but have felt too lazy to post about the books. However, I am now pulling myself together and will make a good faith effort to talk in the next few days about what I've read, including the titles I've picked up from one of my favorite blogs, A Book and Opera Lover. I've hauled my flu books out of storage and will report on them soon as well.

I sent most of those books I borrowed last month back to the library unread, and not because I wasn't eager to read them. I really did find most of them engaging. But time is limited and with the ongoing Central Heating Problem I needed to read some mysteries and other soothing books. There has been enough angst in our lives of late without reading about more of it.

It's the Hare 100-1

In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.  -- Anita Brookner