Review 2730: The Backyard Bird Chronicles

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I am not really a bird watcher, but we have feeders out and I enjoy trying to identify the more distinctive birds who come to our feeders (not so much all the different kinds of little brown birds). I heard about this book from a radio interview a year or so ago, and it has taken this long for it to percolate up to the top of my pile.

In the interview, Amy Tan mentioned that she had started watching birds more avidly after she developed a condition that didn’t allow her to drive safely or be out alone. She doesn’t mention this in the book, just says she doesn’t drive, but talks about her childhood fascination with bugs and other things she found along a creek that somehow kept her looking down instead of up.

However, she began to observe birds seriously in 2017 and also returned to drawing. She had lots of questions about birds and felt she could answer some of them by drawing them accurately.

The result is a bird journal that she kept until 2022, when she decided to start a new journal that looked up even more, out of her own backyard and into the wooded places beyond. The journal is full of drawings, one for each journal entry, starting out fairly rudimentary (although better than I can draw) and getting more complex. Some of the entries are lighthearted, the drawings accurate but with quirky captions or imaginings of what the birds are saying or thinking. Although most of the drawings are black and white, there are two sections of colored illustrations, and other colored drawings pop up all over the journal.

Tan is a wonderer, and she has questions about a lot of things—what does it mean when a bird does this? can birds play? (I think she proves that they can) how much of their behavior is instinct and how much learning or even thinking?

One of the stories Tan told on the radio that had me hooked is how she got a hummingbird to eat out of a small feeder right in her hand. That entry is the first one in the book. How cool is that?

Although it’s more full of questions than answers, this book is a good one for anyone who is even vaguely interested in birds, like I am.

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Review 2729: Mrs. Kimble

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In 1969 Richmond, Virginia, Birdie Kimble is blindsided when her husband Ken leaves her to run off with a teenaged student at the college where he’s a pastor. The young mother of two children, she has no idea how to cope and takes to drinking instead. Her bills unpaid, her car breaking down, and her children unfed and uncared for, she comes close to having her two children, Charlie 6 and Jody 2, taken by protective services.

A few months after leaving Birdie, Ken Kimble appears in Florida with his young girlfriend Moira at her parents’ house. Although Ken is in his 40s, he now looks like a hippy. There, he meets Joan, a Jewish reporter from New York who is staying in the house she inherited from her wealthy parents while she recovers from a mastectomy. She likes Ken and invites him to stay after he and Moira break up. Soon, he has transformed himself into a real estate dealer with the help of her uncle—oh, and he’s discovered he’s part Jewish. She becomes Mrs. Kimble number two.

There’s another wife to come after Joan dies of a recurrence of her cancer, leaving Ken a wealthy man. This time, he marries Dinah, the girl who used to babysit for him and Birdie.

The tales of these three marriages are told from the points of view of the wives with an occasional look at what’s happening with Charlie. This is the story of a man who is charming, but it seems as if there’s no there there, a man who reinvents himself to get what he wants with no regard for morals or ethics.

It was interesting to me to read that Haigh began this novel as a story about Birdie and her children but became interested in exploring Ken Kimble. However, that’s what she doesn’t do, or only by inference. Despite some obvious preferences—for very young women, for example—Joan, who is near his age, is probably only acceptable because of the money—he is basically unknowable. And the section about Birdie, which is the longest, was almost unbearable to me because she is so hopeless and helpless. I’m sure there are women like this, but I just wanted her to snap out of it. She finally does, sort of, but it takes years.

I found the book relatively interesting, but it is not a favorite.

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Review 2728: Held

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Held is a poetic musing on some deep subjects framed in the fluid story of mostly one family, with a perplexing few sections about Marie Curie. It begins during World War I and goes forward for some time before looping backward and forward between (mostly) descendants and ancestors.

Returning painfully disabled from World War I, John reopens his photography studio. John and his wife Helena have a deep connection, but John is troubled by his war experiences. After he hires an assistant, an image that shouldn’t be there appears in a photograph, making him wonder if some essence of the dead exists after death.

John and Helena’s story takes up about a third of the book, and then we travel forward to 1951 and a very short section in which Helena agrees to model for a famous artist and awakens her own artistic tendencies, buried since the death of John. We also briefly meet their daughter, Anna.

Then it’s 1984, and Peter, Anna’s partner, is relieved to welcome home his daughter Mara, a doctor who works in war zones. Mara has met Alan, a journalist, who seems to share with her the same deep loving connection that each member of this family has with the others, and with their friends.

These are some of the bones of the stories, but these characters are thinkers as well as feelers, and they consider some weighty subjects. Nature is also intimately entwined in these stories.

I understand that many readers have found this novel difficult, especially because of its fluid structure and many characters. None of this bothered me, but I am not a person who dwells on the meaning of life, so I felt I was missing a lot of the more esoteric content. I still enjoyed it. It’s absolutely beautiful, and the kinds of relationships depicted are to be admired. The characters are good and kind.

I read this for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2727: Lessons in Crime: Academic Mysteries

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Another British Library Crime Classics volume features mystery stories set in schools. Many of these seem a little more benign in general than their usual collections, only a couple featuring actual murders. In fact, it’s almost halfway through the book before we encounter an actual murder, although earlier there is an attempted one.

In “The Greek Play” by H. C. Bailey (1932), Reggie Fortune’s goddaughter invites him to her school play because she thinks something disturbing is happening. It is.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson visit a school from which a wealthy man’s son has disappeared in “The Adventure of the Priory School” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1904).

Another student disappears in “The Missing Undergraduate” by Henry Wade (1933).

I really enjoyed “The Gilded Pupil” by Ethel Lina White (1936) about a governess who is unwittingly used to trap a wealthy man’s daughter.

“Murder at Pentecost” by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933) doesn’t feature Lord Peter Wimsey but Montague Egg, and some schoolboys help solve the murder of the master.

Schoolboys assist again in the search for a diamond hidden in what was once a private home but is now a school in “Ranulph Hall” by Michael Gilbert (2000).

It’s Raffles versus an old school nemesis during a reunion in “The Fields of Philippi” by E. W. Hornung (1905).

The anatomy professor is substituted for the corpse in “Lessons in Anatomy” by Michael Innes (1946).

I intensely disliked Detective Chief Inspector Dover in “Dover Goes to School” by Joyce Poster (1978). Fat, slovenly, lazy Inspector Dover seems to solve the crime by accident in a story I think was supposed to be funny.

“When the Deaf Can Hear” by Malcolm Gair (1959) is an almost too basic story about the disappearance of some club money.

“Low Marks for Murder” by Herbert Harris (1973) follows languages master George Faraday as he plots to murder the headmaster.

The three most repellent sixth formers in existence form the main characters in “The Harrowing of Henry Pygole” by Colin Watson (1974).

“Dog in the Nighttime” by Edmund Crispin (1954) is very short, as Gervase Fen expeditiously solves the mystery of another missing diamond.

Headmaster Richard Lumsden’s cruelty to a boy is repaid in “Battle of Wits” by Miriam Sherman (1968).

Finally, “The Boy Who Couldn’t Read” by Jacqueline Wilson (1978) features another cruel instructor.

Some of these stories of comeuppance are too far over the top, and at least one story is so abbreviated that it made me think it might be an incident taken from a longer book. In general, like all such collections, the stories are mixed in interest and craft. Overall, the feel of the volume is a little more lighthearted than usual with these collections, with some exceptions that are notably cruel.

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Time for another Classics Club Spin

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It seems like we just had one, but it’s time for Classics Club Spin #44. How does this work? Classics Club members post a numbered list of 20 of the books on their lists. The club picks a number, and that determines which book for the club you will read next. Lists have to be posted by this Sunday, May 17, and the deadline for reading the book is Sunday, July 5.

I don’t have much left to read on my current list, so this will be very repetitive:

  1. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  2. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  3. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  4. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  5. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  6. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  7. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  8. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  9. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  10. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  11. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  12. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  13. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  14. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  15. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  17. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  18. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  19. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  20. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney

So, there it is, my list! Happy reading, everyone!

Review 2726: The Land in Winter

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For Britain, the winter of 1962-3 was one of the coldest on record, with massive amounts of snow in some areas. Miller has set his novel in a rural area near Bristol where two young married couples are neighbors.

Eric Parry is the local doctor. His wife Irene is early in pregnancy, but he is also having an affair with a wealthy married woman. Irene, somewhat isolated in their country home, is feeling her separation from her sister Veronica, who is in the U. S.

Next door are Bill and Rita Simmons. Bill is the son of a wealthy immigrant who has left his father’s world behind to become a farmer. Rita is about the same distance along in her pregnancy as Irene. She is a lively girl with a dodgy past, but she is haunted by voices, and her father is resident at a nearby asylum.

Rita comes calling on Irene, and the two women get along well. Irene finds Rita pulling her out of herself and getting her out of the house.

Both of the households have some class differences, although they are noted rather than seeming to cause problems. Irene is quite posh in origin, whereas Eric’s father was a railroad worker. Bill has attended university and seems to be a bit ashamed of his father, who is a slum landlord, while Rita’s past hints at darker things.

This novel was more moody than anything else. For some reason, perhaps in time setting and themes, it reminded me of The Ice Storm (although that is set ten years later), the movie not the book, which I haven’t read. There’s the sterile life of the housewives, the weather, the rowdy party, and the infidelity.

Of the books I’ve read by Miller, this is not my favorite, but it is certainly atmospheric and had me genuinely worried about some of its characters. I read it for both my Walter Scott Prize project and my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2725: The Long Shadow

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I clearly liked Celia Fremlin’s Uncle Paul, but her books get better and better. I bought this book to schedule it around Christmas, because it is a seasonal novel; however, somehow that didn’t happen. It’s marketed as a mystery, but it’s more of thriller that builds slowly but doesn’t seem slow when you read it.

Imogen has been a widow for two months after her scholar husband was killed unexpectedly in an automobile accident. Although the charismatic Ivor was revered by many, she knew him for an attention-seeking egotist who treated his family badly. She feels that she would be all right if she could just be left alone, but instead people are giving her the attention they think she needs in her bereavement.

When finally the last person has left, Imogen isn’t alone for more than a few minutes when her stepson Robin arrives planning to stay for a while. Imogen is fond of him, but he is also selfish and hasn’t been able to hold down a job.

Imogen has just had a disturbing experience. Her friend Myrtle talked her into attending a party where she met a student named Teri. Teri accused her of murdering Ivor and said he has proof, even though Imogen was at home when the accident happened 200 miles away. Imogen knows the accusation is nonsense, but she is unnerved.

Could things get worse? They could! Imogen’s stepdaughter Dot arrives with her husband and two boys for the holidays, uninvited, as is Ivor’s second wife Cynthia, who arrives from Bermuda. Imogen hasn’t even met Cynthia, who is clearly hoping for some kind of financial settlement from Ivor’s estate. Finally, Robin brings home a surly girl, a student named Piggy.

Once all these people are assembled in the house, strange things begin happening. First, on Christmas Day one of the boys claims to have seen grandfather dressed as Father Christmas in Ivor’s study. Then one of the boys dreams of a face hovering over his. Papers are disturbed, messages appear from the grave, and Teri is hanging around trying to blackmail Imogen. Imogen never seriously considers a haunting, but something is clearly going on.

I could have wished for Imogen to be a little less polite and passive, but if she hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have such a good story. She is too empathetic, feeling sorry for people who are taking advantage of her.

There’s no way for the reader to figure out what’s going on, but getting to the solution is lots of fun. The writing is witty, especially the observations Imogen makes to herself about other characters’ behavior.

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Review 2724: Ancestry

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

I wasn’t looking forward to reading Ancestry, because I haven’t really enjoyed either of the other books I’ve read by Simon Mawer. However, he keeps getting shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize, which is one of my projects, so I keep having to read him.

For this novel, Mawer has tracked down records about his own family, going back four generations on both sides, and written a novel trying to make sense of what he found. I have to say that I found this idea interesting, although Mawer still managed to fit in a reference, not to labia, which seems to be a fascination, but to female pubic hair, which is about the same.

In the first half of the 19th century, Isaac Block is growing up on the Suffolk coast as a subsistence agricultural worker. However, as a young teenager, he gets an opportunity to go to sea and takes it. Later, as a young man on leave, he meets Naomi Lulham, a single mother lodging with his Uncle Isaac.

This story is interesting, but Mawer was obviously able to find out more about the Mawer side, because he spends a lot more time on the story of George Mawer, a corporal in the Queen’s 50th regiment, who marries an Irish girl, Ann Scanlon. This story leads up to and spends a great deal of time on the Crimean War.

I found a lot of the details about these people’s lives interesting, but with all of Mawer’s novels, apparently, there is such distance from the characters that I didn’t get that involved with them, again.

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WWW Wednesday!

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

Right now, I am reading a book by one of my favorite cozy thriller authors (if that’s not an oxymoron), Catriona McPherson. I am not very far along, but it is already mysterious. McPherson is one of a few authors whose books I preorder as soon as I know they are coming out. This one is called The Dead Room, about a young widow who moves home to Scotland, where she has not been for years. Difficulties with family are hinted at, and there are intermittent sections in which she appears to be a prisoner.

What I just finished reading

My last book was just terrific, a historical novel set in far northern Sweden in the 19th century. It’s partially a mystery, but it features a famous pastor, a real person, who instigated a religious revival in the region. Most of the novel is narrated by the pastor’s Sami assistant, almost his son. It’s To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi.

What I will read next

I think I’ll be reading The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin. I have read a small quantity of Pushkin’s poetry, but I feel I’ll get along better with prose. I found this novella when looking for ideas for Novellas in November. It’s an NYRB edition, and I usually find those to be good.

That’s me, but what have you been reading?

Review 2723: The Three Musketeers

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My reading rate really slowed down in late January to mid-February because I read two real chunksters one after another. This one was the second, and A Fortunate Man was the first. This one was a lot more fun.

D’Artagnan is a youth on his way to make his fortune in Paris, carrrying an introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, who leads the King’s musketeers. D’Artagnan is a truculent lad, and he rubs up against two people who are going to affect his life. One is a stranger who makes fun of D’Artagnan’s peculiar horse, and the other is a beautiful, mysterious woman known as Milady. D’Artagnan is attacked by the man’s underlings and his letter is stolen.

Nevertheless, he presents himself to de Tréville upon his arrival, and he almost immediately meets the musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They are being rebuked for having been in a dispute with Cardinal Richilieu’s guards.

Although D’Artagnan has been taught to revere both King Louis XIII and the Cardinal, he quickly learns of the rivalry between the supporters of the King and of the Cardinal, whose machinations are the focus of much of this book. Then there is Anne of Austria, the Queen, who is at odds with both, but especially with the Cardinal.

When D’Artagnan tells de Tréville about the loss of his letter, de Tréville is very interested and tells him he will help D’Artagnan get a place with the Cadets. Almost immediately upon leaving, D’Artagnan falls afoul, separately, of each of the three musketeers and agrees to meet them one after another. I felt as if the whole of Paris at this time (1625) must have been overrun by swordfights, as these guys are all so ready to fight. Somehow, instead of killing or being killed by these men, D’Artagnan ends up their fast friend.

The plots and adventures in this novel are too complicated for me to describe in this review, but it’s the musketeers against the Cardinal, who employs the treacherous Milady as his agent. There is a plot to incriminate Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and D’Artagnan’s mistress, who conveys messages to and from the Queen, is kidnapped. And there is a plot to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham, who is helping defend some Huguenots holed up in la Rochelle, by combining an attack of France with the Spanish (although this part of the plot does not match with what I read in Wikipedia about how Buckingham was killed).

In any case, most of the novel is a battle of wits between the four men and Milady, who is truly evil. Although she is the Cardinal’s tool, he comes off as a little more balanced, although ruthless.

This novel moves right along from one adventure to another. Dumas has to remind his readers a few times that the men’s behavior was acceptable at the time, and that is an even bigger reminder for readers today. However, in general, this is quite a fun book to read. It was a pleasure to read it for my Classics Club list.

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