Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

I have heard people talk of Laurie Colwin for years, but mostly about her food writing. Her book of food essays, Home Cooking, is a beloved title among many foodies and readers (Nigella Lawson is a fan). I was vaguely aware that she wrote novels, too, and when I saw this book at a second-hand bookshop in Texas last October I added it to the stack and resolved to try her writing. And I’m so glad I did! I really enjoyed this very quirky, funny novel about two cousins, Guido and Vincent, and their search for love and contentment. Both their characters are very well-drawn as are those of the women they end up marrying. The writing, the plot and the characters are all just delightful, charming and, yes, cozy. I have not read anyone quite like Colwin before, but I think if you like Barbara Pym you would probably like the understated humor here and the true pleasure she takes in writing about domestic affairs. I am looking forward to reading more of her books soon and was really pleased to see that they will all be re-issued this year.

In other news, my garden has not quite lived up to my expectations! Nearly all my sweet peas died except for one pot that is still thriving (though I’m not sure for how long as it has suddenly become very hot here). I do have some sunflowers sprouting and I know they usually can survive our hellish summers so I have lots of hope for them. I am also planning to sow zinnias and cosmos which can sometimes survive the heat. If anything exciting happens (such as actually getting blossoms) I will be sure to share.

Help the Bronte Parsonage

Like many museums and cultural centers, the Bronte Parsonage Museum has taken a financial hit while closed due to covid. There is some fear that they will not be able to continue operating beyond this year. That would be such a tragedy. I really enjoyed my visit to the museum in May 2019 – it was a highlight of my trip to England. Being in the very place where the Bronte sisters wrote and lived was inspiring and illuminating (who knew it was so small!) and I would have visited again in April if my trip hadn’t been cancelled.

In an effort to raise funds the museum is currently taking donations, which you can read about here. A group of scholars have also organized a one day virtual event called Bronte2020 which will have some fabulous Zoom talks and panels, including a conversation with Sally Wainwright, creator of the excellent Bronte biopic To Walk Invisible. All proceeds from registrations will go directly to the museum.

The event is this Friday, September 4, and you can register at the Bronte Parsonage Museum site. I have taken the day off from work and plan to attend as many of the events as I can, though they start at 1:45 am Arizona time!

Please consider donating to the museum or registering for the Bronte2020 event. Let’s keep the Bronte Parsonage Museum open!

Do You Reread?

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been well during this unsettling and strangely consistent madness. I’ve been hit with low-grade loneliness and boredom, but am otherwise fine. I am still working at the library. We did shut down for two months back in the spring, but we have been open in some form since mid May. Currently, we are open for hold pickups and 45 minute appointment blocks for patrons who need to use the computers, fax, scan or study at a table. This set up is working quite well and I’ve heard it might continue through September, but we never know for sure (which has been one of the hardest parts of working through a pandemic).

Has your reading been affected by Covid? Mine certainly has. I have read more than I thought I would, but not as much as I could have. As we enter into our sixth month of the pandemic I am really craving good books and that has meant returning to reads I have already visited – and know I am guaranteed to like. I recently reread Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Pure delight and enjoyment. And now I am rereading Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. Yes, it is a sad and devastating look at infidelity and betrayal. But it is so good on the dynamics of families and women’s sacrifices. It is so well written. After I finish the Whipple I think I will move on to One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, a novel I absolutely adored when I read it about 6 years ago. I am pretty sure I will still adore it and am going to savor my reread. After that? I might revisit a Marghanita Laski or return to At Mrs. Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor. We shall see.

Have you reread anything in the last few months?

Recent Reading Roundup

 

I’ve read a few books lately, but haven’t had time to do individual posts on each one so I’m just sharing my brief thoughts on them here:

The Good People by Hannah Kent – I read this for one of my library’s book clubs and though I found it riveting, it didn’t inspire a very good discussion. And I’m not sure why. It takes as its subject the conflict between folk superstition and Catholicism in a rural village in Ireland during the early nineteenth century. The writing flows really well, the historical details are rich and descriptive and the central conflict is truly complex. But the book club members didn’t have much to say about it. This might have colored my enjoyment a bit, but it is well worth a read.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson – This is another library book club choice (I now lead two book discussions a month at my library) and was one of the most praised books of last year. Alas, I didn’t care for it very much. The writing is poetic and the story is told in vignettes, which I quite like, but the characters were almost solely depicted in terms of their sexuality and physical desires and that put me off. Not the descriptions of sex, but the fact that the characters aren’t defined by much else.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel – Like many readers I loved Station Eleven by this author and was so excited when I saw that a new title by her was to be published this year. I was fortunate to get a review copy and spent a lovely few days savoring it. This book is not a disappointment at all but it is a very different sort of book from Station Eleven. It centers on the fall-out from a Ponzi scheme collapse and how it affects different people who’ve invested in the scheme and who’ve been involved in it. I loved the interconnectedness of their stories and St. John Mandel’s quiet writing style. It really is a book to linger over.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell – This is one of the “hot” books of spring and is another review copy I gobbled up. But not comfortably.  It depicts the abuse of a fifteen year old girl by her forty-something teacher. And it is very hard to read at times. It is very nuanced and the author does an admirable job of making us see how sick these attachments are. They are not love stories. They are full of manipulation, gaslighting and abuse of authority. A very unsettling yet timely novel.

On Wednesday I am going to Nashville for the Public Library Association conference and am really excited to get lots of review copies from all the major publishers who will be there. I’ll share what I am able to snag next week!

Happy 2020!

Hello and happy new year to anyone who is still reading this blog! How is the year treating you so far? Mine is off to a busy start, mostly at work, but I now have this week off and no reading obligations for the library so I am able to read anything I want for a blessed week. It feels exciting yet almost uncomfortable at the same time. And I can’t decide what to read! But I’m sure I’ll sort that out soon and find a book to lead me into my lovely vacation week.

Yesterday I presented my “New Year, New Reads” program to library patrons, recommending 10 books for them to consider reading in the next few months plus sharing three of my favorite books from the last decade. We had 40 people attend once again and the room was full and buzzing with happy readers and book lovers. This is the 5th year I have been presenting these programs at my library and it has slowly become one of our most successful adult programs throughout the entire system. The first time we gave the program I think we had 8 people show up. So to now regularly have an attendance of 40 people who love us and our recommendations is very gratifying.

Because of this I will continue to read buzzy contemporary literature in 2020 in order to fulfill my work obligations, but I also want to read more books just for me this year. Without guilt! And I know I say this every year but please indulge me – I also want to start blogging more regularly in 2020.

What reading or blogging goals have you set for this year?

Sunday Bulletin – September 22

Hill Top – the home of Beatrix Potter in the Lake District

Hello, friends! I hope you are all having a great September. Mine has been busy – it seems to have gone so quickly. There hasn’t been anything exciting going on, just the usual day-to-day of living. Sadly, though, I haven’t been reading as much as I would like to. I think our continuing heat has addled my brain and made me too lethargic to even read books I have been excited about for months. Such is the reading life. Sometimes we are ravenous, sometimes we can barely swallow a morsel.

So, I don’t have any books to chat about but I would like to know – what is the best book that you’ve read recently? Though I’m not reading much right now, I still love to hear about what others are loving.

Have a wonderful week!

Sunday Bulletin (on a Monday) – July 22

Sheep in Haworth

Hello, everyone! I hope you’ve had a lovely couple of weeks. Our weather has been unrelentingly hot and oppressive. Usually by this time in the summer we have had a couple of monsoon storms, but there has been nary a drop of rain yet. It is so unusual and a bit frightening, especially as we have a large forest fire blazing near Flagstaff. We are supposed to get rain tonight so I’m crossing my fingers it really happens.

I’ve not been reading much lately and I never do in the summer. Life seems more hectic and work is definitely all- consuming. We’re busier and staff naturally want to take vacation so I am usually left behind. Plus, I think I am a bit weary of contemporary fiction though I keep trying to find something that will click. And when I turn to classics my old guilt creeps in. So I end up reading nothing. One day I hope I figure this out!

Books finished this week: NONE, sadly. What have you read lately?

Sunday Bulletin – June 23

On my second day in Manchester we visited Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, another place that had been on my “want to see” list since my last trip to England. It is in a busy residential area of Manchester with houses and apartments and a big park with basketball courts surrounding the pretty Victorian dwelling. Despite the encroachment of the modern world, once you step into the house, you step back in time into a comfortable, high ceilinged-friendly space that is a good representation of what the house would have been like when Gaskell, her husband and four daughters lived there in the nineteenth century.

I really enjoyed my visit to this house where Mrs. Gaskell wrote most of her novels and stories and where she entertained many friends including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and John Ruskin. It is a very “go at your own pace” type of museum where no one hassles you or bombards you with information. I felt more like one of Gaskell’s welcomed friends than a tourist. And there is a lovely tearoom and second-hand bookshop in the basement. I had a cup of tea and a delicious slice of pear tart while deciding which gifts and books to buy. If you are a fan of Gaskell or of Victorian fiction this is a great place to visit if you are in Manchester.

Here are a few more photos:

Books finished this week: 

Only one! I finished the very short Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens by Vita-Sackville West which is a monthly compilation of some of the gardening articles she wrote for The Observer newspaper in the forties and fifties. As I am now obsessed with gardens after my visit to England I devoured her advice and tips though I can’t grow any of the plants she mentions or even really go outside right now without getting heatstroke!

Have a great week!

Sunday Bulletin – June 9

Hello! How was your week? It was a busy one for me as I spent it preparing for my Sizzlin’ Summer Reads program at the library, which took place yesterday. We got 40 people – our biggest crowd yet! We had planned for 15 so I had to re-print my handout several times and we ran out of refreshments. It was heartening to have so many library patrons eager to hear about our summer recommendations (which I will share with you later) and to chat about books to each other. It was worth the hard work.

The above photo is of one of the places I visited in England, Biddulph Grange Garden in Stoke. When I was in London in 2014 I stayed up late one night not able to sleep and watched a program called “British Gardens in Time” on TV. Biddulph Grange was the garden featured on the program that evening and I knew that I needed to go someday as it looked so beautiful and peaceful. It wasn’t realistic on that trip, but since Stoke is only about an hour from Manchester I was able to realize my dream when I was there in May.  And it exceeded expectations! It is such a varied, rambling, yet well-planned Victorian garden. There are different areas of the garden: the Italian garden, the Chinese garden, the Pinetum, Lime Walk, Woodland Walk, etc. It is really like seeing several gardens in one. The weather the day we went was cool and refreshing and there weren’t many visitors. It was so calming and restorative. It was the height of tulip season when I was there so I saw lots of different varieties and was also able to see bluebells and wisteria. Absolute heaven!

Here are a few more photos of Biddulph Grange:

 

Books finished this week:

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield – I read this really quickly over the first part of the week as I had to lead a discussion on it in one of the library’s book clubs. At first, I wasn’t enjoying it because it seemed too slow, too whimsical. But as I continued on I really grew to love it. Setterfield keeps the story moving and flowing like the river that is central to the novel and all of the secondary stories end up making sense as a whole. The characters were good-hearted (for the most part) and I loved the contrast of the modern concepts such as photography and evolution against the superstitions surrounding the river. All in all, this is a beautifully told and well-written old-fashioned story.

What did you read this week?

 

Sunday Bulletin – June 2

Hello all! How have you been? It’s been three months since I posted here and I have no good excuse for my absence. Life just got in the way.

I did go to the UK for two weeks the first part of May and it was heavenly. Everything was so green and shining and the tulips, wisteria and bluebells were blooming in every garden I went to. I stayed in Manchester this trip and adventured around Northwest England, which I absolutely loved. It is gloriously beautiful and the people are so friendly and genuine. I visited some literary locations (Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, the Bronte Parsonage) –  I’d love to share my impressions with you so I will plan some travelogue posts in the coming weeks.

This week I’ll be furiously preparing for the Sizzlin’ Summer Reads program I do at my library every year where I recommend my summer picks to library patrons. I’m really behind in making my PowerPoint, creating my handout and writing my blurbs so wish me luck getting it all done before Saturday!

Books finished this week:

Circe by Madeline Miller – I flew through this lyrical retelling of the story of Circe, a witch in Greek legend, who was apparently a “minor” goddess. Miller takes her scant story and turns it into a fierce tale of a woman living life on her own terms. I really enjoyed this take on a character from mythology who I didn’t know much about (not that I know much about mythology in general) just as much as I enjoyed The Song of Achilles, her debut novel.

This is the second book I’ve read from the Women’s Prize Shortlist – have you read any from the list? Any predictions on which book will win the prize this Wednesday?

Have a fantastic week!