A little note to say that I’m taking a hiatus from writing about the books that I read here. I’m not sure if it’s a break, or if I’m through with my written musings — but right now I wish to concentrate on my Life During Wartime Challenge (I plan to do it for 2015, too!). I feel like I have so much to say about sustainability, frugality, making, and doing, and want to spend what time I have to write musing about those subjects.

I’m still a voracious reader (to put it mildly), and will continue to write bits about what I’m reading on twitter — I hope you’ll consider being my twitter friend!

Thanks for reading throughout the years! xoxoxoxoxo

image: Vanessa Bell’s painting, Interior with artist’s daughter, 1935-1936. ❤

Last week, I had an overwhelming desire to re-read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. ‘Tis the season, yes?

I’ve spent the last few days clutching my throat, reading wide-eyed late into the night. Although I loved the book the first time I read it, I loved it even more after another read. It was just as eerie and chilling as my first time, but the element of surprise was replaced with a superior sensation: that of wrestling with Kostova’s overarching themes. History: what and who makes it? Power. And what about scholarship — this obsession with books and chasing ideas across countries and centuries, and how it intertwines with history and the present. Evil and Good (and the grey, the blur, between). East and West. What a heady, rich stew of ideas!

The characters and settings are so well-drawn. You smell each place. You eat there. You know the characters’ habits and clothing and quirks. They become very real, and very dear.

Without giving anything away — I think the next to last chapter is one of the most mysterious, spectacular, spine tingling things ever written! The part in the not called the Rosenbach museum in the book, but actually the Rosenbach in Philadelphia if you’ve read it – !!!

Although the book was written in 2005 and takes place mostly in the early to mid 20th century, it feels much older. That’s a compliment — and speaks to the characters’ world views as well as the style. That you believe the characters have a world view is also a compliment.

Gosh I think this is a fantastic book! A new entry on my special read again and again and again and again shelf.

image: Vlad Tepes. This drawing is said to be a copy of an original drawing of him done during his lifetime. Chills!

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters is one of the page turning-est, excruciatingly suspenseful books I’ve ever read. It is also one of the books most filled with minute, painstaking detail. It also made me blush. I loved it! I devoured it. It was over too quickly. Again, please.

It is after World War I and England is a different place. Fathers and sons are dead, or back from the war with no prospects and much anger. Gentility is crumbling. The middle class are going places they’ve never been before. Things are different for women — do you keep your old role or bob your hair? Things are different for everyone.

I am so moved by the way Waters shows not tells. A thousand tiny details. Reading by the dying light to save electricity, the mends mended in Frances’ underthings, red hands from too much housework. The father’s faux Jacobean furniture showing  all you need to know about how he lived his life. Lillian’s fluff and feathers. The accused’s teeth.

I also appreciate my — unsureness? of the motivations and inherent goodness of every single character. The complexity is refreshing and very, very human. It’s been a week since I’ve finished the book and have been mulling over Frances and Lillian, and I still find certain of their actions inscrutable — in a good, rich, intense way. Like life. Life-like.

The book also asks some hard questions about World War I — about those who gave their lives, and those who were left to pick up the pieces. About responsibility.

It is also a book about freedom and life. Who gets to live? Who gets to live the way they wish to?

Like I said before — again, please. I know I turned the pages too quickly, my heart in my mouth. Bravo, Sarah Waters. Thank you, Sarah Waters.

 

At Home with Madame Chic: Becoming a Connoisseur of Daily Life — the title really does say it all. In her latest book, Jennifer L. Scott exemplifies how to revel in the art of everyday living. She’s not writing about grand dinner parties, telling you to do a $20,000 renovation of your kitchen, or pushing you to buy anything. Rather, she advocates mindfulness, appreciation, and grace whist straightening clutter, emptying  the dishwasher, and gathering your loved ones for a meal. Her message is one I can get behind wholeheartedly: make your home life a priority.

Scott argues that how you do the things we think of as  mundane can set the tone for how you do everything. I must say that my experience leads me to agree — I have the best days when I know things are in their place, I look presentable, I have a nutritious lunch packed and ready to go, and I’ve thought about what we’re having for dinner and know we have the ingredients in the house. I then feel centered and free to wholeheartedly engage in the work of my day, whatever it may entail. Scott outlines how you can accomplish this not by spending all your time slaving in the house, but by setting a few simple routines, having a minimal, put together wardrobe, and a good attitude. Her book is full of inspiration, tips, and tricks. There are recipes for everything from cake, a 10 item wardrobe, to homemade vinegar cleaner.

I’m a Feminist-with-a-capital-F and consider myself more concerned with what’s going on inside of people than outside, but this is very much a subject I am passionate about. I feel that we’ve lost so much  as a culture by working too many hours, not breaking bread with those we care about, and treating one’s home — HOME — with all of the loaded connotations that holds — as sacred, as a sanctuary, rather than a pit stop or dumping ground. I am so happy to read a book by someone who feels the same way, and who is exploring this topic with insight and flair.

I also really like the design of this book. It’s just a little bigger than your hand, and is organized so that after you read it, you can easily flip to a section that you need at the moment. For example, I re-read the chapter on throwing a tea today because we’d like to have a tea for our student worker who is graduating in December. Scott offers such delightful ideas for making a gathering that is special and do-able. I look forward to returning to little snippets in this book again and again — just the bit I read today had me feeling calm and smiling! Thank you Jennifer Scott! I am so happy to consider you a bird of a feather 🙂

 

Dickensian. What does it mean to you?

Some people think it refers to the social conditions or characters referred to in Dickens’ novels. Others would add sentiment. There was a recent Paris Review essay that spoke about the term since it was batted around so much after the release of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch — Sherrill describes the various permutations of what he feels Dickensian means, and goes on to argue:

Of course, we confer a special kind of canonical status when we adjectivize an author’s name. It’s an acknowledgment that his or her work has broadened the collective cultural imagination to the point where a new way of seeing or describing the world needs to be monumentalized in language. But in time, these coinages inevitably obscure or diminish a writer’s achievement. Regardless of how sophisticated one’s sense of Dickens’s oeuvre might be, the popular use of Dickensian conjures, whether we like it or not, shivering orphans, cloying sentimentality, fortuitous coincidence, and virtue rewarded.

At the same time, and more interestingly, it delimits and cheapens the work of the alleged Dickensian. Donna Tartt does salt The Goldfinch with references to very specific Dickens novels, at which moments she might as well be proleptically writing the headlines of The Goldfinch’s reviews. But to lean on Dickensian is to deflect attention from, for instance, the horrific realism with which Tartt treats the central violent trauma of The Goldfinch, and the fallout of its psychic afterlife. In this specifically, she departs from Dickensian models, which more often than not promise recoveries and prosperity for his formerly unlucky protagonists. Dickensian denies, then, as it must, a certain amount of Tarttness.

With this, I would disagree. What Sherrill and the criticism circulating in popular culture are overlooking is the Dickensian that I, and I would argue Donna Tartt, value: the gorgeous, long sentences that almost defy grammatical sense (but never do of course). The vocabulary. The heavy description. The extreme  anthropomorphization. The repetition. The perception. The darkly funny.

See?

I daresay that when critics called her novel Dickensian, Donna Tartt did not feel her accomplishment was in any way cheapened, but rather was over the moon with happiness! Who wouldn’t be when compared with a writer they most admire?

I say, let’s not abolish these adjectival name-terms. Let’s get to the heart of them! I hereby challenge everyone to read Our Mutual Friend (or Bleak House, or Hard Times, or even Great Expectations) and then tell me what you think Dickensian means! A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist do not count (although wonderful). David Copperfield is extra credit (and a joy!).  Dickensian. How would you define it?

…whose imagination was captured by Jenny Wren:

 

 

Lyrics:

Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing
But a broken heart, took her soul away

Like the other girls, Jenny Wren took wing
She could see the world, and it’s foolish ways

How, we, spend our days, casting, love aside
Loosing, site of life, day, by, day

She saw poverty, breaking all the home
Wounded warriors, took her song away

But the day will come, Jenny Wren will sing
When this broken world, mends its foolish ways

Now we, spend our days, catching, up on life
All because of you, Jenny Wren

 

Aw, I must have something in my eye 😉  And they accuse Dickens of sentimentality 🙂

I was listening to Revolver (on Mono vinyl. I know) last night and was thinking She Said, She Said could be about Jenny Wren, too (I know what it’s like to be dead/I know how it is to be sad) but alas its about some acid trip and Peter Fonda and such.

Yes, I’m still reading, and over the moon!!!! with Our Mutual Friend.

Just a little hello to say what’s going on in my bookish world!

-I’m intensely involved in Our Mutual Friend by Dickens. It’s the last book I haven’t read by him (and his last completed book). What a last first time! I am loving it beyond words. Off the cuff impressions: it’s so strange and sardonic and astonishing. Those that accuse Dickens of being too sentimental clearly are not referring to his later books. In Our Mutual Friend, he is skewering the world of money and society that goes even beyond Hard Times. I’ll save the official word for when I’m done, but this might just wind up being my favorite book by Dickens.

Also — Jenny Wren. “Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!”  OMG.

-I’m not in school this semester, which is really sad. Long story short: my husband got laid off, then got a new job that doesn’t provide health insurance until November. Thankfully, I was able to put him on mine — it’s exorbitant to do so, but so necessary. There went my school money. My professor kindly shared the syllabus of the class I had to drop with me, so I am still able to read and learn what I was so looking forward to reading and learning. I’m going to crack open Reading Images by Kress and Van Leeuwen today to catch up with the class — semiotics of the visual world. Yes, please!

-At the end of the Spring 2014 semester, my professor and I submitted a joint proposal to write an article for a special issue of Across the Disciplines that will be about Composition and the Arts. We just found out we got accepted! Our article is due January 1, 2015, so I’ll still be doing lots of academic work in the  coming months, even though I’m not in school. This makes me very, very, very happy.

…and that is the state of this bookworm!

image: Jenny Wren with Riah by Thomas Dalziel, done for the serial installments for Our Mutual Friend.

 

I very much enjoy reading the Old Fashioned Girls blog — it’s a great mix of bookishness, a view into their travels, yummy things to eat, stylishness, and other delights to come! When they announced their new book club, I jumped right on it. I always am intrigued by the books they mention on their blog, and knew I’d enjoy their taste in club selections.

September’s selection is My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier. We convene mid month to discuss to the half way mark, and then discuss the whole book at the end of the month. It’s not too late to join if you’re interested — the club officially opened yesterday. If you’d like to see the future selections, they’re listed through November.

Joining a book club at the start of September seems a joyfully appropriate nudge into fall, my favorite season. Happy reading!

Anne Fadiman, where have you been all my life?

I picked up At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays at the library, after reading a blog post by Thinking in Fragments about blogging and the familiar essay. I am so, so glad I did — I feel like I found not only my new favorite nonfiction writer but a new-to-me genre that I’m eager to read in and perhaps even try my hand at.

The essays range on such diverse subjects as Coffee, Charles Lamb, Mail, Ice Cream, and the Culture Wars, amongst others. They are compelling, exquisitely written, funny, perceptive . . . but the first essay in the collection, Collecting Nature, made my hair stand on end and gave me goosebumps as I read each of the 22 pages. Thank god it wasn’t any longer or I might have expired from overstimulation! Every word is perfectly chosen, every sentence masterfully crafted, each paragraph brutally, beautifully honest, and the whole shimmers. The essay magnifies so much of life, the world, the funny things people are and have always been, do and have always done that I’m left dazzled and blinking. It is, as the preface states regarding familiar essays — a balance of heart and brain, about the author and about the world. I would add that the ones that get you are ultimately about yourself, too. Collecting Nature? Guilty as charged.

I adore the bookishness of the essays — references to other books abound — literature, science, biography — Fadiman reads both widely and deeply. Thankfully, she has given us the gift of a Sources section — her favorite books about the subjects she writes on, and on the familiar essay. So much good stuff here — and so inspiring. The moment I finished the book I picked up Our Mutual Friend by Dickens (yay — she’s a Dickens fanatic too!) — I hadn’t yet read it and I need to know about Mr. Wegg and his Leg, which he goes to collect from Mr. Venus, “Preserver of Animals and Birds, Articulator of human bones.” !!!!

Of course this little collector couldn’t let the library copy out of her sight before she procured her own copy of this book and Fadiman’s other book of essays, Ex Libris. A book of essays on the love of books and words? I repeat, Anne Fadiman, where have you been all my life!