MarysLibrary

Reading Paradise Lost

Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd
The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal'd the most High,
If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais'd impious War in Heav'n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.
       - Milton, Paradise Lost

Over at the Barnes and Noble Book Clubs, Laurel from my online trollope group is leading a three-month reading of Paradise Lost.

Milton is second only to Shakespeare in the strength and beauty of his language. You might want to read along with the group and find out what all the fuss is about.

Jan Does It Again

My friend Jan gives me a book every now and again for no particular reason. She just sees a book and thinks it has my name written all over it. Today in the mail came a copy of James Tully's The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte: The Secrets of a Mysterious Family: A Novel.

Bingo!

I've seen the book around and as I've become interested in the Brontes in the last year or so the book has made me curious. I'm now 50 pages into it and it's meeting and exceeding expectations.

The author writes true crime books but this time he decided that while using historical documents, many of them primary sources like letters and diaries, he would put the story into fictional form. I guess he didn't want to deal with letters from irate Bronte-lovers if he presented his theories as a possibly true interpretation of what actually happened in the Bronte family.

I'm pleased and excited that Jan decided to send me a book and especially that it's this book that she sent. Thanks again, Jan.

How Many of Me?

There are 358 people in the US with the same name as me. How do I know that? I learned it here.

A Walk in the Park

It was damp when Karla and I headed out for our walk yesterday morning. Ginger wasn't with us - she's visiting realtives in Colville.

It was wet outside, but no longer raining. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

So when we got to the Gaiser Conservatory we stopped in for a visit.

There are a lot of strange and beautiful plants and flowers in there.

Everything looked very, very green.

And then, alas, the batteries in my camera died.

The Dentist and the iPod

I was at the dentist again yesterday for a three-hour crown prep (three crowns.) To make the time pass while two people had two hands each in my mouth, along with eight to ten pieces of dental equipment, I listened to Pride and Prejudice on my iPod with the volume turned way up.

I think this may qualify as a pain control breakthrough. The time went by much more quickly than it usually does and I swear the pain was less because of those delightful words. Try it next time you have to undergo dental torture.

My reward -- you know I always get a reward for dental visits -- was some Tillamook Mountain Huckleberry Ice Cream. I swoon.

BookSwim

BookSwim has just surfaced and it looks promising. It's sort of a Netflix for book lovers. You subscribe and BookSwim sends you a handful of books of your choice. When you've sent back two or three or whatever they send you more. Prepaid envelopes, popular fiction, quick turnaround. Sounds good.

At least at first they are going to stick to very popular books (duh!) But think about it. The library has 43 people on the waiting list for that title Oprah mentioned and the book costs $30. And you want to read it NOW. Get it from BookSwim. You'll have it within the week, maybe sooner (maybe later if you're out here in the Pacific Northwest.) You can be the first in your book club to read all the fiction on the best-seller list without going bankrupt.

Fall in love with one of BookSwim's books? You can buy it at a discount. Want to talk to somebody about it? There will be an on-line forum. Need help figuring out what the book is all about? A link to an on-line guide will be included in each book. Want suggestions for more books akin to the one you just read? There will be a rating system and reviews by readers.

The founders are two 20-somethings, Shamoon Siddiqui and George Burke. Here's a great interview with George at Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 blog, and one with Shamoon on Ross Notes. Sign up for the Beta version here.

Cat and Mouse

Lat take a cat, and fostre hym wel with milk

And tendre flesh, and make his couche of silk,

and lat hym seen a mous go by the wal,

Anon he weyveth milk and flesh and al,

And every deyntee that is in that house,

Swich appetite he hath to ete a mous.

                    - The Manciple's Tale, Chaucer (from the Spectator)

Christine Falls

I tried to read John Banville's Booker-winning novel, The Sea, but I didn't enjoy it and I gave up. I almost did the same thing with his mystery Christine Falls, written under the pseudonym, Benjamin Black.

This is a slow-moving story that begins in Dublin in about 1950. We are introduced to the family of Judge Griffin, his son, Mal, the obstetrician, and his adopted son, Quirke, the pathologist. Mal is married to Sarah and they have a daughter, Phoebe.

It doesn't take long to realize that Sarah and Quirke are in love. Something went very wrong in their youth and Quirke ended up with Sarah's sister who died giving birth to a stillborn child just a year after they were married. Why didn't he marry Sarah? Why did Sarah marry Mal? This is a family with a lot of secrets from the reader.

As the book opens Christine Falls dies giving birth to a baby who is immediately whisked off to America and placed with a working class family in Boston. When Quirke finds his brother-in-law altering her medical record he becomes curious about the girl. How did she die? Why would Mal lie about her death?

He asks a few too many questions and unfortunate things begin happening to him and to the people he talks to. He patches together some of the story, realizing that Christine's baby isn't the only one that has been whisked off to America.

The big mystery is who is the father of whom? There are some interesting developments as paternity is revealed, but there are no surprises. The reader figures out the crux of the matter about 200 pages before Quirke does.

Nonetheless, this is not a bad book. It's not a thriller, and it doesn't require the kind of detecting skills needed to solve the murder in an Agatha Christie novel, but it's interesting, extremely well written, and skillfully put together. There are no coincidences, and nothing is illogical. People act as we expect them to do, given their character, and Black carefully describes character throughout.

This is the first in a series. Despite my disappointment with this book I'm looking forward hopefully to the next book. Black is a fine writer, and I think once he settles down he may become a fine mystery writer.

Old Friends

I love everything that's old, -- old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. - Oliver Goldsmith

I got an email this morning from an old friend with whom I had lost touch. What a thrill it was to see her name on the list of new email messages!

She had moved a couple of times and we had moved, her old email address wasn't valid and mine wasn't working half the time. The church we both went to in Alexandria, VA, had no record of her current address. (But then it had no current address for Wilhelm and me either.) Bobbie and I just kept missing one another.

And there she is back in my list of contacts and just a keyboard away. New friends are wonderful. They keep us alert and learning and reaching. But old friends are best. I've known Bobbie for almost 25 years, through ups and downs, and there is no replacing her.

Joe Sandilands

I'm on a roll. The latest in my string of first-rate escape fiction is Barbara Cleverly's first Raj detective story, The Last Kashmiri Rose.

It's 1922 and Commander Joe Sandilands of Scotland Yard is on the last day of his tour of temporary duty in Calcutta when the acting governor asks him to look into a string of perhaps coincidental deaths in Bengal. This is the last thing Sandilands wants to do, but duty calls and he answers.

Five women have died, each of them in March, and each accidentally. One woman died in a house fire, one drowned, one was bitten by a cobra, one fell off a cliff, and the most recent was ruled death by suicide. But there are those who think this is a string of murders.

Sandilands is assigned a native sergeant to assist him in his inquiry, Naurung Singh, an alert and intelligent police officer. Together they tackle the problem of investigating murders that occurred as much as twelve years ago.

Helping Sandilands is the wife of the Collector of Panikhat, the station where the murders occurred. Nancy Drummond is a terrifically appealing young woman and Sandilands falls for her. She is charming and kind but makes it clear she loves her husband. The love story subplot turns out to have a twist or two in it.

It's not too hard to figure out who murdered the women, the trouble for the detective and for the reader is to figure out why and how. The answers to those questions are very clever indeed.

And so I'm about to go dig up the second book in the series, Ragtime in Simla.