Author: whatmeread

Nonfiction November

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I thought I might participate in Nonfiction November this year. I haven’t participated before, not being the biggest nonfiction reader, but I thought I’d try to do a post a week, if they are appropriate. I am also planning to review two nonfiction books this month, including one I originally intended for the 1962 Club, but it didn’t fit my schedule.

The host for this week’s Nonfiction November is Based on a True Story, so people’s reviews and comments will be listed there.

So, here is the description for the theme for this week:

Week 1: Your Year in Nonfiction : Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favourite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

I have read eight nonfiction books this year, three of which I haven’t reviewed yet (although two are coming up in a few weeks). They are listed in order of my reviews:

These books don’t easily fall into categories, but:

  • 3 are memoirs and 1 is a biography
  • 4 are related to literature, 3 by authors known in the literary world and the last about Shakespeare’s work
  • 1 is a sort of travelogue or nature book
  • 2 are science-related

The books I enjoyed most were The Other Day, a memoir of Dorothy Whipple’s childhood, which was touching and funny, and The Bathysphere Book, a nonlinear account of the ocean explorations of William Beebe in a bathysphere, leading up to his deepest dive in 1930. This book was really interesting and included vivid descriptions of a bunch of colorful characters. Unfortunately, my reviews of these two books won’t appear until November or December. Silent Spring also made my mind boggle.

I have only recommended The Bathysphere Book to my husband. It will be interesting to see if he reads it.

I didn’t really have in mind gaining anything by participating except maybe that participation will draw me into reading more nonfiction.

Review 2261: Jenny Wren

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This novel is called Jenny Wren after its main character, Jenny Randall, but I actually preferred her sister, Dahlia. The two sisters are the daughters of a mismatched couple, beautiful but lower-class Louisa and Randall, who is her social superior. Once her husband got over his infatuation, he criticized her actions and her manners and made himself responsible for their daughters’ education. Both have the right accents and manners, but Jenny cares more about what people think than Dahlia does and is ashamed of her mother, particularly because while their father was away at the war (WWI), Louisa had an affair with Thomas Grimshaw, a local farmer.

Now their father has died, and Louisa has sold the farm and purchased a large house in a fashionable neighborhood in Upper Radstowe to open a boarding house. The Dakins next door are friendly to the girls until they mistake Louisa for the cook. Miss Jewel, who also runs a boarding house, is hostile and on the look out for hints of scandal, such as that suggested by Thomas Grimshaw’s visits every Saturday. Louisa isn’t happy to see him, but she sold him the farm and borrowed money from him to buy the house. He’s hoping she will fail and be forced to marry him.

Jenny has dreams of meeting some young upper-class man and falling in love with him, but she sees the very existence of her mother as a threat to this “future.” She is disposed to like Edwin Cummings, their boarder, but looks down on him as worker in a shop. He is an expert on antique furniture and wants to have his own shop, and she is beginning to be friends with him when she meets the son of the local gentry, Cyril Merriman, and falls in love with him. After a misunderstanding, she lets him believe her name is Jenny Wren and is afraid to tell him who she actually is.

In the meantime, Dahlia goes from making fun of Mr. Sproat, the curate, to beginning to like him. However, the family’s second boarder, Miss Morrison, hopes to marry him.

Louisa, who makes several badly misjudged decisions based on wrong assumptions, invites her sister Sarah to stay with them. Sarah turns out to be an unpleasant woman who wants to take the boarding house over from Louisa. To do that, she decides both girls must leave the house and Louisa must marry Grimshaw, and she sets out to bring these outcomes to pass.

The novel concentrates on Jenny, because she undergoes the most personal growth. I found her to be quite foolish at times, and her attitude to her mother made it hard for me to relate to her, but she grows up in the end.

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Reading Thirkell’s Barsetshire Series In Order: Final Wrap-Up!

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Yes, after more than two years of reading a book a month, I finally finished reading all of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels in order. That’s 29 of them! A few brave folks at least kept up with me by reading and or by commenting on one or more of my reviews.

  • Brona of Brona’s Books
  • Silvia Cachia
  • Davida Chazan
  • Christine of All the Vintage Ladies
  • Liz Dexter of Adventures in Reading
  • Penelope Gough
  • Gypsi
  • Helen of She Reads Novels
  • The Readable Word
  • Renee
  • Anne Roy
  • Sue
  • Mary Taylor-Lee
  • Simon Thomas of Stuck in a Book
  • Yvonne of A Darn Good Read

I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

Having finished this project (yay!), I thought I’d wrap up by making a few points about the project in general:

  • Was the project worth it? In a way. Before I started it, I had been reading the books arbitrarily, when I came across them, and I think I had read eight or nine of them before. However, attacking them in this way, I would have vague ideas that I had seen characters before but could seldom remember much about them or their relationships with other characters. Reading the books in order helped with this a lot. Some characters who recurred in almost every book became very familiar to me and I could remember others easily. However, I wished I had made a spreadsheet for myself from day one to note relationships and what I knew of each character, it got that complicated, especially toward the end when Thirkell seemed to introduce characters out of the blue and for only one book.
  • Were the books written before and during the war really the best ones? That’s the common understanding, but I think they kept up their quality longer than that. In answer to this question, I would say that the last four or five books weren’t quite up there with the rest.
  • What is the effect of reading one a month? Reading one a month does have the problem that you get a little tired of Thirkell’s tropes. She has character types that reappear and she has conversations that keep repeating. Also, she does remind you of things that happened to the characters, but towards the end, she brings these things up more than once a book. I think if you were reading one book a year, as you would if you read them as they were released, this wouldn’t bother you as much as if you are reading one a month. In fact, the reminders of what happened to the characters in previous books would be helpful.
  • Did the last book being finished by someone else matter? Maybe not. The only difference I could detect were a few conversations, especially at the birthday party, that didn’t seem as clever as usual. Otherwise, I really couldn’t see much difference. However, I have no idea how finished this novel was before Thirkell died. If anything, I would say that there were fewer things repeated in the same book, a problem I had been running into for the last three or four books.
  • Were there things I didn’t like about the books? Yes, there were quite a lot of comments that we now consider politically incorrect, especially toward the end of the series. At first, I just put them down to the times, but after a while, they seemed to get worse. There were some racist expressions, despite there being no actual nonwhite characters, and a lot of classist attitudes.
  • What is valuable about this series? Even though it is set among privileged characters, it is a chronicle of the changes to society that were caused by the war and its aftermath.
  • Who were my favorite characters? Lady Emily, Lucy Marling, Miss Merriman, Wicks, Lord and Lady Pomfret (Gillie and Sally Foster), Lord Stoke, Gradka, whom I at first found irritating, but afterwards made me laugh as soon as she appeared.

Anyway, I’m glad that I finished this project and am glad to be finished with it!

Review 2260: #ThirkellBar! Three Score and Ten

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Three Score and Ten is the last novel of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series, finished by a friend after her death. Could I tell the difference? Maybe.

As I’ve commented before, Thirkell’s later books don’t really have plots, but this book works toward three events—Mrs. Morland’s 70th birthday, a romance for Lord Mellings, and another romance for Sylvia Gould, whom I don’t even remember meeting before.

As usual with the later works, the novel consists of a series of tea parties and dinners, with the Barsetshire Agricultural Show also taking place. Mrs. Morland entertains her grandson Robin because his siblings have the measles, and he is exactly as I remember his father, Tony, as a boy, including behaving several years younger than his age of ten or eleven.

The birthday party gives its author the opportunity to bring in almost everyone who has ever appeared in the series. Several characters who aren’t invited appear in an indignant meeting called because of the intentions of Lord Averfordbury to tear down Wiple Terrace, home of Miss Bent and Miss Hampton and several Southbridge school teachers, and put up a factory.

Could I tell that not all of the novel was written by Thirkell? Not so much, although maybe the conversations at the birthday party are not as clever. Twenty pages, by the way, are devoted to that party, which is about 18 more than were taken for any of the many weddings that appeared in the series (although admittedly most were only mentioned) and about 15 too many.

One more issue that has little to do with the original novel. I think I’ve had occasion to comment about the earlier Moyer Bell editions (all of the post-war novels) that they had a lot of typos. I haven’t mentioned that in a while because they got better, but this book had lots of them, including ones that show the text couldn’t have even been subjected to a spell checker.

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Review 2259: The Dry

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I had some problems with the only other book I’ve read by Jane Harper, but I thought I’d try The Dry, her first and most acclaimed novel.

Aaron Falk, an Australian Federal agent, has returned to his home town for the first time in 30 years. Even though he is returning for the funeral of Luke Hadler, his childhood best friend, he probably would not have come if he hadn’t been urgently summoned by Luke’s father, Gerry.

Falk’s return is not warmly welcomed. When he was 16, one of his close friends, Ellie Deacon, was found drowned, with foul play suspected. A piece of paper with his last name on it was found in her room, and both he and his father were harassed until they left town.

The finding in the current crime is that Luke shot his son and wife and then himself over despair at the impending failure of his farm. The drought has gone on so long that many farmers have failed and along with them, most of the local businesses. The town is a shadow of its former self.

Gerry doesn’t believe his son shot his family. He wants Falk to stay a few days and investigate. Falk reluctantly agrees.

When he begins investigating, he finds that the local cop, Sergeant Raco, thinks some things were missed in the original investigation, which, since he was new in town, was conducted by the police from the nearest large town. Falk and he begin working together despite the local hostility toward Falk.

While he is at it, Falk also tries to find out what might have happened to Ellie. Are the two events related?

This novel was nicely plotted, with believable characters. The setting was so effectively described that at times I felt I could feel the heat and the town under pressure from the environment, old hostilities, and an unthinkable crime.

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Review 2258: This Other Eden

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This Other Eden is based on a true event, when the State of Maine evicted the entire mixed-race community of Malaga Island, people whose forefathers had lived there since the 18th century, and placed 11 of them in a home for the feeble-minded.

It’s no coincidence that a conference on Eugenics takes place just before the committee of the Governor’s Council of the State of Maine begins considering the fate of the occupants of Apple Island, a fate the occupants have no say in. It’s the turn of the 20th century, but Benjamin Honey arrived on the island in 1793 with his pockets full of apple seeds, bringing his wife Patience.

Now four small families live on the island, the Honeys, the McDermotts, the Proverbs, and the Larks, along with the abandoned Sockalexis children, all guilty only of being dirt poor and mixed race. They live by subsistence fishing and gathering the fruits of the forest. The winters are brutal. In the spring, the schoolteacher/preacher Matthew Diamond settles in his house across the bay and rows over daily to teach the children. The mainlanders consider the islanders inbred and sub-intelligent, but Matthew Diamond knows that Esther Honey, the matriarch, can recite Shakespeare from memory, that he has to teach himself algebra to stay ahead of Emily Sockalexis, that Tabitha Honey has a gift for Latin, and Ethan Honey is a talented artist.

The fate of the islanders is already decided when the Governor’s Council arrives and starts measuring their heads with calipers and asking them idiotic “intelligence” questions. Matthew Diamond decides to try to save Ethan, so he writes a letter to his friend Thomas Hale in Enon, Massachusetts, asking him to sponsor Ethan at an art school. Soon, Ethan leaves the island.

Harding’s writing is sometimes poetic, and he likes to pursue extended metaphors. Sometimes I liked this, and other times I didn’t have the patience for it. However, I found this novel less obscure than the other two of his I have read, touching, and ultimately with a more positive ending than was probably the case with the actual inhabitants of Malaga Island.

I read this book for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2257: The Tenant

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I’ve given up or finished a few mystery series lately, so I thought I’d try the first Kørner and Werner series by Danish author Katrine Engberg.

An older man who lives in an apartment building in downtown Copenhagen is surprised to find the door open in his downstairs neighbors’ apartment, occupied by two young girls. When he tries to investigate, he falls over the body of one of the girls, Julie Stender, who has been gruesomely murdered.

For Detective Jeppe Kørner, this is his first important case since his breakdown after his divorce. To identify the victim, he and Anette Werner turn to Esther di Laurenti, the owner of the building who also resides there. She knows both the girls, but Julie was kind of a pet of hers. Esther has another young friend, Kristoff, her music teacher.

The police discover that Esther has been writing a murder mystery and she has used Julie as a model for the victim. Further, the murder is very much as described in the book. Only Esther and her writing group are supposed to have access to her draft.

I finished the book because I wanted to see how it came out, but what stood out almost immediately was the mediocre writing. When Engberg introduces each character, she tells a bunch of things about them, kind of a clumsy approach. Then there are lots of clichés, odd word choices, and inept metaphors. Part of this could be the translation, of course. One passage that I marked, a saying that Jeppa’s mother used, was “When you love someone, the callousness moves from your heart to the palms of your hands.” What does that even mean? Is callousness even the intended word?

As far as characterization goes, we learn a lot about Jeppa, but not so much about anyone else. In fact, I was taken aback by how over-the-top everyone was acting, with the police team snapping at each other all the time. It reminded me of the French mystery series Murder In that my husband and I have been watching, where I couldn’t decide whether everyone was overacting or they were just being French. (Just kidding. I have lots of French friends.)

Finally, the payoff was supposed to be weird, but it also seemed completely unlikely. I don’t think I’ll continue this series.

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Review 2256: He Who Whispers

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I was going to schedule this review for November, but this novel was at times so exciting and with a plot point so appropriate for the season that I had to move it to October.

Miles Hammond thinks of a meeting of the Murder Club for the first time in five years as another indication that life is returning to normal after the war. He is not a member, but he has been invited by his friend Gideon Fell. However, when he arrives for the meeting, only the speaker, Professor Rigaud, a woman named Barbara Morrell, and himself are there.

The three decide to hold the Murder Club anyway, so Professor Rigaud tells the story of an unsolved French case, in which Howard Brooke was murdered at the top of a tower that no one else had entered. Implicated in the crime but found not guilty was the fiancée of Brooke’s son Harry, Fay Seton. A verdict of suicide was found, but no one could account for a missing briefcase that Brooke took up to the top of the tower.

Miles has recently inherited his uncle’s estate, including an extensive library. The next day he has an appointment to hire a librarian, and to his surprise, the applicant turns out to be Fay Seton. He hires her and they travel to his house in the New Forest.

Miles and Miss Morrell did not hear all of Professor Rigaud’s presentation, because it was interrupted, so Miles does not know that before the murder, a whispering campaign accused Fay of infidelity and vampirism. But during the next night, something terrifies Miles’s sister so much that she is almost scared to death. And Gideon Fell and Professor Rigaud are already on their way there, because the inhabitants are in danger.

This attack on Miles’s sister leads them all to re-examine the original case. How was Howard Brooke murdered when no one else was on the tower? Is Fay Seton a murderer or has her past somehow followed her to the New Forest?

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2255: Introduction to Sally

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Ever since Sally Pinner was very young, her parents have tried to keep her isolated. That’s because, although she is obedient and good, she is the most beautiful creature anyone has ever seen. Crowds gather when she goes out, and Mr. Pinner views the extra profit he makes when she helps him in his small grocery store as dishonest.

After his wife dies, Mr. Pinner is at his wit’s end trying to protect her in London, so he swaps stores with a man who lives in the middle of nowhere. This plan seems to work very well at first, most of their neighbors being widows and spinsters, but Mr. Pinner gets a shock after Christmas. He lives only ten miles from Cambridge. Term has been out, but as soon as it starts, the village fills up with young men.

Jocelyn Luke, a young man with a promising future in the sciences, spots Sally and immediately loses his head. He decides to marry her, throw up his university career, and go work in London as a writer. When Mr. Pinner hears the word “marry,” he hastily agrees, because other men have wanted something from her, but it wasn’t marriage. Soon poor Sally finds herself married to a stranger, who quickly realizes that her accent and her way of expressing herself are not going to impress his mother. So, he begins trying to get her to say her h’s. Everyone she meets has plans for Sally, but no one bothers to ask her what she wants.

This novel is played mostly for laughs, but it has some serious messages about the treatment of women and people’s view of women. A Pygmalion-like story where the girl to be transformed has no aptitude for change turns that idea on its head. Chaos ensues.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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