April, 2023 Reading

April feels as if it vanished in a flash. Great month -- vacation to San Antonio, Texas where I saw my wonderful friends Teresa and Cindy for the first time in...what? 24 years? (Before I forget, Teresa is an audiobook fan. I'm hoping she'll give me ideas for books to listen to.) Visited The Alamo, which has given me ideas for May reading. Ate an embarrassingly huge amount of delicious Tex-Mex, except that I don't feel embarrassed at all. Did I mention San Antonio's Riverwalk? I dream of a small, book-filled apartment right there, overlooking the river. Another fun excursion was to Ripley's Odditorium. Fun and overwhelming. Plus, Fiesta de Los Reyes was going on, so the city seemed especially lit up, in all senses of the phrase.

My two bookstore visits in San Antonio were to: Pandora's Bookstore, which is tiny and charming with a small stock that seems thoughtfully selected. My favorite of the two was The Twig Book Shop, a larger space with more variety. The area The Twig is in used to be a brewery, and the whole area feels fresh and idyllic. Anyway, back to The Twig: Hooray for Indie bookstores! I found several Annie Ernaux books, which I've been looking for. I bought Happening, a memoir. I also bought The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. by Lee Kravetz, which I'd sort of been dancing around for a few months. I also bought some book earrings to wear to book group. What I regret not buying was a little Dorothy Parker doll which was nestled in with other literary figures in doll form. Mark Twain was cute, but Dot caught my fancy. When I finally checked out and left, I really really really did not want to go. Is there a word for the pain of parting from a bookstore?

But wait! During a looooooooong layover at Dallas Love Field, I stumbled onto a gem of an airport bookstore called Ink. Quirky inventory Entertaining browsing. I had to restrain myself. Finally, I saw The Last Detail by Darryl Ponicsan. It was 50% off. I HAD to take it home. I'll happily do another layover at Love Field. 

And at last, here's what I read in April:

1. The Rainbow Comes and Goes - Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper. Memoir. Audiobook. Now I feel like bingeing and reading all about the Vanderbilts. Enjoyed hearing the authors read their book. Gloria's Mid-Atlantic accent -- does anyone talk like that anymore?

2. Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen - Sarah Bird. Novel. Historical fiction about Cathy Williams, who successfully posed as a male soldier named William Cathay right after the American Civil War. I discovered that for me, historical fiction has got to be feisty and fearless. Sarah Bird was firmly anchored in history, and once she did that, she really leaned into the fiction part. And that's how it needs to be. The novels that stick too close to the history feel stuffy and airless. Practically the very moment I finished Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, I found the audiobook version at another library. Oof. Read by Bahni Turner, one of my favorite audiobook narrators. Double oof. This book is definitely worth a reread, so I'll go that route next time.

3. Who Is LeBron James? - Crystal Hubbard. Biography. It may seem odd, but I knew almost nothing about LeBron James, except that he was a pro basketball player who had played for Cleveland. I enjoyed this biography.

4. What Is the Story of Nancy Drew? - Dana M. Rau. Literary History? Although I only read two or three Nancy Drew mysteries, I was still a great admirer of the greatest girl detective. Glad to read her origin story. It was interesting to see how she's changed and evolved over the years. Bonus points to this book for talking about my favorite Nancy Drew book The Hidden Staircase.

5. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen. Novel. Bolstered by the annotated edition and the audiobook version in tandem, I finally finished this novel. Does Austen get the credit she deserves for her truly memorable supporting characters, some vile, some hilarious?

6. At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier. Historical Fiction. Audiobook. In the early 1800s, the Goodenough family settles in the swamps in Ohio, because their wagon gets stuck there. The patriarch, James, is mad about apples, so he sets about creating an orchard by buying seeds and saplings from Johnny Appleseed, and by grafting. His wife, Sadie, has no patience for orchards and prefers the apples to be used for applejack, which is her way of escaping the difficulties of pioneer life. In what I consider a good reading month, this was my favorite book. Highly recommended.

7. The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. - Lee Kravetz. Historical Fiction. I gobbled this down immediately. Sylvia Plath doesn't really speak or confess in this story. Instead, her life and legend is examined from three varying points of view: First, Esmee, a master curator at an auction house, is brought three spiral notebooks which seem to contain a handwritten draft of The Bell Jar. Secondly, the reader is sent back in time to the late 1950s where we meet Boston Rhodes -- she's a blast, what you'd call the breakout character on TV -- a poet who was part of Robert Lowell's poetry seminar that Plath attended. Boston Rhodes, who seems based largely on Anne Sexton, perceives herself as Plath's rival.  Finally, we go back again in time to 1953 and Dr. Ruth Barnhouse, who treated Plath during her first breakdown. For devotees of Sylvia Plath, this novel is a little irritating, but also vastly amusing -- so many Easter eggs to be found! Kravetz did his research, and did it well. In addition to being historical fiction, it's also a mystery, and I'm not a mystery fan, but I liked this very much. I'm thinking: Reread.

For some reason, I have recently developed a longing to get a book tattoo. Don't know what to make of this, and it has extended to looking at potential designs.

I hope to do a post in a few days to share what I'm currently reading -- it's a fascinating stack.

Library Loot: Val Lends A Hand

The title of this post should read "Val lends a CARD" because I have somehow misplaced my faculty card, which is what I use to check out books. Seeing my downcast look, Val took pity and lent me her card, with the admonition that I had to return it by midnight because my beautiful dress would turn to...oops, wrong story. Here's what has been checked out on Val's card:

Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s - Ann Douglas. A study of intellectual life and the arts during the 1920s. So many people figure that Paris during this decade was the place to be at that time, but Douglas asserts that there was plenty going on at home.

Scott O'Dell - Hal Marcovitz (Who Wrote That? series). A juvenile biography of the author of Island of the Blue Dolphins. Fun fact: O'Dell was born Odell Scott, but when he was working as a reporter and a typist scrambled his byline and rendered it as Scott O'Dell, he liked it so much that it became his pen name and eventually he legally changed it. OK, I'm on a roll now: Fun fact #2: O'Dell was on the set of the movie Son of the Sheik back in the 1920s. The script required a close-up of Rudolph Valentino holding a string of pearls. Valentino was hot, but he "had hands like a butcher", according to O'Dell. Apparently, O'Dell had the goods, so he became Valentino's hand double for that one scene. Fun and informative reading. I'd love to read the others in this series.

Now, to find my own card...

You Load 16 Books & What Did You Get?

CanadaBoy is leaving!

Moving!

Relocating!

Abandoning....no, that last one's a little bit strong. Anyway, you get the idea. He's outta here when his contract finishes next month.

Yesterday we were sitting in his office eating chicken. It was delicious. He ordered in two kinds -- the regular fried chicken and the one with the spicy sauce with sesame seeds over that, and this time, they didn't skimp on the sesame seeds. I was trying to enjoy the food and conversation, but I got to thinking that there wouldn't be many more lunches like this. Then I tried to remind myself that people come and go over here; this is the way of the expat. Then I wasn't hungry.

I hadn't quite worked up to full-scale brooding, but my conversational skills were waning, and even on the verge of sucking. CanadaBoy must have noticed, so he told me that I could have first crack at the books stored in his cabinet. Here's what I found and took back to my office:

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery

The Little Prince --in English and Korean. [Obviously, I'm up to something here.]

Kim - Rudyard Kipling [I've never read Kipling. I like his name, though. Both of 'em.]

Driving Over Lemons - Chris Stewart [The former drummer for Genesis moves to Spain and runs a peasant farm. I loves me some 'life abroad' stories.]

Macbeth - William Shakespeare [I've never read this. My son loves it.]

The American - Henry James [My first outing with James wasn't so fun. I want to like him. I really DO!]

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [Damn, C'est huge.]

Russia Under The Czars - Henry Moscow [Published in 1962. YA history. Ex-library book.]

My Own Two Feet - Beverly Cleary [Memoir.]

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - Lester David [It looks like trashy reading, but my grandmother, mother and aunt were crazy about the Kennedys, so I grew up reading stuff like this.]

Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain [I feel about Mark Twain the way Mr. Bybee feels about Jesse James and all those Civil War heroes.]

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce [I've never read Joyce, except for the Molly Bloom chapter in Ulysses. I've got a block about him.]

Espedair Street - Iain Banks [I don't know this author, but how could I not be drawn to someone with so many vowels in his first name?]

The Interpretation Of Dreams - Sigmund Freud [Hmmm...]

Beyond The Horizon - Eugene O'Neill [1920 play. Won the Pulitzer Prize.]

The Last Gentleman - Walker Percy [I haven't read anything by this author...wasn't he buddies with Flannery O'Connor?]

This is a pretty good haul. Rifling through CanadaBoy's book cupboard was a nice distraction, but I can't really say that I feel better.

Handle With Care

Last Thursday, I was reading someone's blog and this blogger spoke highly of Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell. I can't remember the name of the blog and I want to go back and visit. [Why don't I bookmark? Why don't I take notes as I'm reading blogs? My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is sneering openly at me.]

This blogger has also read a whole whack of (as CanadaBoy would put it) M.F.K. Fisher this year, which I appreciated, since I just finished enjoying How To Cook A Wolf over the weekend. (If anything about this blogger sounds familiar, please let me know the name of the blog, so I can bookmark it!)

Anyway, after reading about Down And Out In Paris And London, I knew it was the book for me. I fired off a quick handwritten note to Pablo and shoved it under his office door:

Dear Pablo,
Have you got Down And Out In Paris And London? I thought you might, since it's Orwell!
[Bybee]

Fast-forward to today, Monday. Today was a rotten, skulking, dirty-dishwater-drinking, unshaven, unwashed armpit mother of a Monday.

I realized with horror about 10 minutes before leaving work that I'd somehow lost my wallet on Saturday evening when Manfred, Jr. and I went out for dinner. I don't even have an excuse; I was perfectly sober! I didn't have much money in the wallet -- only about W7,000, but my ATM card and my alien card are in there.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to write more like a lady in my blog (hi Mom!) but I gotta admit: I'm kind of fucked right now. I said as much with tears in my eyes at work this morning, but CanadaBoy and Pablo say to give it 3 days before I make that kind of pronouncement. Someone might turn the wallet in, or at least mail the alien card to Immigration. South Korea's really a very honest country.

Although he couldn't have known it when he packed his stuff this morning, Pablo was about to make my scummy day a whole lot better. During a break, he snapped open his bookbag and fetched forth not one, but two Orwell books: Down And Out In Paris And London and Funny, But Not Vulgar, a collection of essays.

Wow. You should see these books! Most expats own rubbishy copies of books: Torn covers, dog-eared pages, pages yellowed and falling like the last autumn leaves, spines so cracked you can't make out a title there...well, you get the picture.

Not Pablo. Pablo likes a pretty book. The two Orwell books he loaned me are printed by the Folio Society. They're gorgeous! Hardback. Sharp black-and-white photos on the book cover, not a dustjacket. Delicately textured gray endpapers. Bright white pages, but not so bright that they cause a glare on the page. 2 sections of glossy photos...speaking of which, these are the kinds of volumes that use the word frontispiece to describe the photo opposite the title page. And, like the marischino cherry on a banana split, the slight but audible creak of the front cover when the book is opened. When Pablo sets out to buy a book, he doesn't mess around. He means business. He means collectible.

[Pablo opens Funny, But Not Vulgar and points out in the table of contents which essays are the must-reads]

Pablo: A Nice Cup Of Tea. That's a good one. In Defence of English Cooking. Such, Such Were The Joys. That's about his life at public school.

Bybee: Oh shit, Pablo. I should've known they were Folios. I'll have to be careful. They're beautiful.

Pablo: You're a reader. You respect books; I trust you.

Bybee: I'll wash my hands every time. I promise.

Pablo: [gentlemanly snort] I don't wash my hands every time. Sometimes, I'm like... [mimes holding a cigarette over the open pages]

CanadaBoy: [reaching out for a book] So, what are these, anyway? [takes one of the books. Pablo and Bybee watch him, friendly but wary. CanadaBoy's an unrepentant dog-earer from waaaay back] Orwell. Didn't he do a book about Burma?

*************************************************

So, to summarize: I can't do anything that requires money or an alien card, but while I'm waiting to see if my wallet turns up, I won't be bored because I've got these shining additions to Mount TBR. Thanks, Pablo.