The Best Book for this period is How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn!
Best of Ten!
A Century of Books: How Am I Doing? March Report
I forgot to post this on Wednesday, like I usually do.
In January 2024, I foolishly decided to join Simon Thomas’s Century of Book Challenge, even though I knew that reading 100 books, one for each year in a century, from 1925-2024, would be tough because last year I only read 169. So, how am I doing? I was trying to finish by the end of December, but I clearly didn’t make it.
Here are the holes in my project with the books listed for this month below. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.
- 1925-1934: complete!
- 1935-1944: complete!
- 1945-1954: entry needed for 1948
- 1955-1964: complete!
- 1965-1974: complete!
- 1975-1984: entry needed for 1981
- 1985-1994: complete!
- 1995–2004: entry needed for 2003
- 2005-2014: complete!
- 2015-2024: complete!
Only three books to go! They are all big honkers!
Since February 26, I read the following books. The ones for this project are listed in bold. As you can see, I concentrated this month on books for this project:
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs for 1861
- The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer for 1934
- Mrs. McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie for 1952
- The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith for 1952
- Excellent Women by Barbara Pym for 1952
- The Quiet American by Graham Greene for 1955
- Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen for 1993
- Moo by Jane Smiley for 1995
- Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle by Katie Whitaker for 2002
- Looking for Alaska by John Green for 2005
- Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay for 2006
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver for 2007
Review 2560: #ReadingIrelandMonth25! The Country Girls
I have read many very long books lately, so I was relieved when I realized that I could read the first novel, The Country Girls, in my big volume of The Country Girls Trilogy for 1960 for my A Century of Books project. Not only that, but it would qualify for Reading Ireland, too! I will certainly read the other two novels at some time after I finish my project.
Just as another indication of the unreliability of Goodread’s list of books published for specific years, it had listed the trilogy for 1960, but all three novels as a single volume were not published until 1986.
Caithleen is 14 at the beginning of the novel, a naïve, gawky girl from Western Ireland. She adores her mother, but they both fear her father when he is drunk. Their house is falling apart, because her father routinely blows all their money when he is drunk and returns angry and violent.
The other girl is Baba, Caithleen’s frenemy, who bullies her in public and pulls nasty tricks on her but sometimes shows she likes her. Otherwise, her friends are older men—Hickey, who has worked for the family for years; the inappropriately behaving Jack, a pub owner; and Mr. Gentleman, who is middle aged and married but whom she likes.
Caithleen has won a scholarship to a convent school and is dismayed to learn that Baba is going, too. She tells Caithleen that scholarships are stupid, and her parents are paying her way, which obviously is better. Both girls are dreading going. Caithleen is suffering through a party at Baba’s house when People come to tell her that her mother is dead, having drowned crossing the Shannon when a boat sank.
The novel follows the two girls until they are 18 and get a room together in Dublin. All the while, Baba specializes in talking the more sensible and cautious Caithleen into situations where she gets into trouble.
This novel is a bit sad, a little funny, and true-to-life, as the naïve Caithleen follows more worldly Baba in their unusual friendship. Some tension is evoked by Caithleen’s continued friendship with Mr. Gentleman. I liked the novel very much and intend to read the other two of the trilogy.
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Review 2559: What Sheep Do in Iceland When Nobody’s Around
A friend of mine has family in Denmark, and she brought back this little novelty book that came from Iceland. It has great illustrations and is silly and funny, and very imaginative.
The tone of the book is set right away by the cover and title page. I took a photo of the title page, and here is its caption, in case it’s unreadable in the photo, “Because of their herding instinct, they find it very hard to resist a conga line.”
The book starts out with a more-or-less straightforward history of how sheep got to Iceland and of Icelandic sheep-keeping details, but then it just becomes silly and full of puns, with great illustrations. Perfect for a lighthearted quarter hour of reading.
I jumped into this book from a great pile of tomes I accumulated for my A Century of Books project. In fact, I interrupted my reading of Angle of Repose because I was so behind in my number of books read (I usually am reading at least 20 books ahead of my blog, and I was only in at about 13) that I wanted to dash something off and also relax. Angle of Repose is good but for some reason I kept getting distracted from it, so it took me more than a week—an unheard-of rate for fiction, even at 600+ pages.
The bad news about this book is that from the U. S. I ended up ordering it from Iceland! I assume my friend got it in Denmark, so maybe European readers will be able to find it. Anyway, it’s a hoot! I’m categorizing it as children’s literature, because I have no other suitable place for it, but I think it is probably just as funny for adults. Maybe even more so.
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Review 2558: Reading Wales Month ’25! How Green Was My Valley
I didn’t intend to participate in Reading Wales Month ’25 this year, but when this novel fit into my A Century of Books project, I decided to fit it in for Reading Wales, too.
Such a lovely book this is, especially in the music of its language. It’s the story of the Morgans, a family of Welsh coal miners, told by one of its youngest members, Huw.
Huw is six when the novel begins. His family and those of the others in the valley are relatively prosperous, but there are signs that with the mine owners, profits are becoming more important than the lives of the men. Huw’s older brother Davy has been reading socialist literature and is talking about a union, but his father is against it.
It’s difficult to summarize this book because it’s full of family events, one of the first being Huw’s brother Ivor’s marriage to Bronwen. And there is the arrival of Mr. Gruffydd, the new preacher. But overarching everything for the men is the work, as pay gets lower and the valley begins experiencing periods of hunger and want.
I was as entranced by this novel as I ever was, the family so upright, god-fearing, and loyal, Huw’s experiences as he grows up. All the while, the fate of the valley is foreshadowed as Huw speaks from his 60s, returning just as his house is being destroyed by a mountain of slag.
It’s a real page-turner, not in terms of action, but for other reasons.
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Review 2557: Cousin Rosamund
Cousin Rosamund is the third book in West’s Aubrey family series, and another was planned. I couldn’t tell when reading it, but apparently West died before finishing the second book, This Real Night, so it was finished from fragments and notes. Cousin Rosamund was assembled the same way, although West’s style was certainly captured.
The novel begins sometime after World War I. The three Aubrey girls, Rose, Mary, and Cordelia, are the only ones left of their immediate family, but they still have Nancy, their old neighbor; their beloved cousin Rosamund; and the folks at the pub on the river. Cordelia, always the odd girl out, has become less hostile since her marriage.
Cousin Rosamund comes to tell Rose and Mary that Nancy is getting married. Mary especially is upset that Nancy didn’t tell her herself, but Rosamund’s intercession, they see later, is needed so that they will not judge Oswald on sight, for he is gauche, awkward, unattractive, and a man-‘splainer. But he loves Nancy and she him, and that is all that counts.
Rose and Mary are now both successful and famous pianists, but neither is interested in marriage. Mary, in fact, seems to find the idea distasteful, although they are glad to see their friends happily married.
Inexplicably, Rosamund, who has been working as a nurse, marries one of her patients. The girls are all hurt not to be invited to the wedding, and once they meet the groom, they are horrified. His name is Nestor Ganymedios, and he is rich, extremely vulgar, ugly, and probably dishonest in his business dealings. Further, they see almost nothing of her after the marriage.
This novel is about marriage, which West examines in several incarnations. Unfortunately, it ends before we learn the explanation for Rosamund’s choice, but at least West’s intentions for the entire series are explained in the Afterword of my Penguin edition.
All of these novels are beautifully written and show a profound knowledge of music. The girls have such pure affection for the small number of people they love, yet the characters are realistically drawn.
One caveat: In this novel some characters express outdated ideas about homosexuality, and some homosexual characters in the book are not depicted positively, but it is not clear when she wrote this. The first book went to the publishers in 1956, at which point she said she planned three more, but though she finished most of the second, she seemed unable to finish this one. It ends about 1929, but her original plans were to encompass World War II.
Although it doesn’t fit the context of what I’ve discussed, I wanted to give just one quote because it’s so lucid and poetically spare. Rose has seemingly been disgusted with her long-time friend Oliver after he told her the story of his first marriage despite its end not being his fault. She is really fighting a battle with herself. She enters a room where he is.
He came toward me and I became rigid with disgust, it seemed certain that I must die when he touched me, but instead, of course, I lived.
Wow.
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Review 2556: American Psycho
Is American Psycho a satire? a commentary about the manners and morals of young, wealthy Wall Street workers? a faithful depiction of New York City in its seedy 1980s days? a horror story? Or is it all of these things? Whatever it is, it was a DNF for me, although I made it almost halfway through.
I avoided this novel when it first came out, because it caused so much buzz that I knew what it was about. However, when I saw it filled a hole in my A Century of Books project, I was curious enough to get it from the library.
Patrick Bateman is a twenty-six-year-old Wall Street executive who is obsessed by the condition of his body, what everyone around him is wearing, what he eats and drinks, and how wealthy he is. (In a scene halfway through the book, he is angry because two prostitutes he has hired don’t care what he does for a living or how much he makes.) He is exactly like all his friends and coworkers. In fact, a running joke is that they all look so alike that they keep mistaking one guy for another. There is one difference for Patrick. He is a serial killer.
As far as I could tell, there’s no plot to this novel, just one scene after another of he and his friends at dinner or in a club trying to impress each other, and then going out to score drugs or sex. Every outfit he and his friends wear is described, especially including brand names. (In the first scene with two girls in it, they are wearing clothes by the same designers in the same colors.)
There is nothing to like in any of these people. They are racist, sexist, homophobic monsters who think it’s funny to hold money out to a homeless person and then snatch it back. The only seeming difference between Patrick and his friends at first is that he occasionally says something extremely hateful and violent, sometimes to his friends, that they don’t seem to hear (possibly because they’re almost always in loud places or they are so self-absorbed that they’re not listening). At first, these utterances and similar thoughts seem to be just very strange fantasies, but anyone who has heard anything about the book knows they are not.
The novel faithfully depicts late 1980s New York, in all its glitter and grit. It also includes conversations that, unless the men are being crass, hateful, or rude, read as if they’re taken verbatim from stereo brochures, etiquette and travel books. One chapter, thankfully short, is about the musical artistry of Genesis, and two pages are devoted to describing Patrick’s stereo system. The technology passages, meant to show how up-to-date and expensive his equipment is, now just seem dated.
The serial killer part doesn’t come out right away, but I don’t feel like I’m writing spoilers because this book is so famous. There are hints that something else is up besides partying, especially when he describes his expensive overcoat streaked in something dark or is furious because he can’t communicate with his Chinese laundry about getting the blood off his clothes. Finally, after about a hundred pages, he brutally murders a homeless man and cripples his dog. That’s just the first one he describes (although apparently not the first one he commits) and I read another 50 pages but ultimately couldn’t face the nail gun (which I only know about from seeing a picture from the movie).
I hated, hated, hated, this book.
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Review 2555: Angle of Repose
Again, when I finished reading this book, which was supposed to be for my A Century of Books project, I found the year already occupied. I have been using Goodreads and often Wikipedia to find books for each year, but Goodreads seems particularly inaccurate. I suspect that what happened here was that it listed the novel for, say, 1981, where I still have a hole (as of this writing in February), because of a 10-year anniversary reprint. I often check the dates if they seem suspicious, but this one didn’t. It’s especially bad now because it took eight days to read, and I am way behind on my reading. I only have a few more books to go, but from now on, I’m double-checking the publication date before I start reading.
Lyman Ward, a former academic just in his 50s, has contracted a bone disease that has frozen his neck so that he can’t turn it, confined him to a wheelchair, and resulted in the amputation of one of his legs. He is almost completely helpless, so his son wants to move him into care, but he stubbornly remains in his grandparents’ home in Grass Valley, California, being taken care of by Ada, a local woman.
His wife, Ellen, left him abruptly for his surgeon when he was helpless in the hospital. Although her partner died soon after and she has shown signs of wanting to return, he stubbornly refuses to see her.
Lyman can read, though, and do other sedentary activities. He was raised by his grandparents, and his grandmother was in her time a famous illustrator and writer, Susan Burling Ward. He has come across newspaper clippings and letters she wrote to her best friend, so he decides to write a biography of her, partly to answer questions for himself about events in his family he doesn’t understand.
Angle of Repose combines Lymon’s current experience and thoughts as he does this work with the events in the biography he is writing. The historical arc of the novel predominates, so much so that I occasionally wondered why Lyman’s story was there at all. However, by the end I understood how his grandparents’ history informs his own.
It’s a mismatch. Susan Barling as a young woman is from Upstate New York, a gifted artist just beginning to become known. She yearns for a life of culture. Her best friend, Augusta, comes from a prominent, cultured New York City family, and as young women, Susan and Augusta make a threesome of friends with Thomas Hudson, a poet and editor who goes on to become famous himself. She meets Oliver Ward, a young mining engineer, when she is very young. Unlike her other friends, he is taciturn and maybe too respectful of them all. He goes away on a job in the West for five years.
Thomas, sensitive, intelligent, and delicate, is Susan’s idea of a perfect man. He picks Augusta, though, and Oliver returns around the same time. Despite her friends’ misgivings, Susan decides to marry Oliver. Her idea is that Oliver can get some experience in the West and then move back East to live a more cultured life. She doesn’t seem to realize that to do his work, he must be in the West, and he is suited for that life.
As far as his career is concerned, Oliver seems too prone to consult Susan’s convenience, and she has unrealistic ideas. He turns down some opportunities because they don’t seem suitable to Susan. He takes a short-term job and they live apart. (She is too genteel for these rough mining camps.) She finally joins him near a mining town named New Almaden, southeast of San Jose. He has taken a house away from town, which anyway she removes herself from, as she does everywhere they live, thinking herself too good for the company. As Lyman says, his grandmother is a snob. Here she begins a pattern of not joining into society and their life but enduring it.
The couple doesn’t thrive financially. At this time, there are lots of qualified engineers available and most of them aren’t as fussy about where they’ll go. Susan’s work writing articles about the West and illustrating other writers’ work is helping support them, despite Oliver’s dislike of the situation and Susan’s complaints about it. They move to Leadville, Colorado, which although it is primitive, allows her to open her home to some intelligent visitors and have lively, informed discussions, which she loves. But the Leadville mine eventually grinds to a halt because of a lawsuit brought by would-be claim jumpers.
The couple goes to Mexico, which Susan loves, but the mine doesn’t prove promising. Their projects gain and then lose funding, and so on.
Susan writes to Augusta constantly, but Augusta never acknowledges Oliver as a fit husband. I fear that much of Susan’s growing disappointment has to do with wanting to justify her choice to her friends.
In the novel’s current time (the late 1960s and early 70s), Lyman expresses some irritating views on the times and young people. I wasn’t sure whether they were Stegner’s own views or more delineation of Lyman’s character, but Lyman eventually forms a sort of friendship with a young woman who acts as his secretary for a time.
This is ultimately a fascinating and absorbing story, but this time through (I apparently read it in the mists of time but didn’t remember anything about it) I kept getting distracted from it. I’m not sure why. I think, though, that it deserved more attention from me. Although I was bothered by Lyman seeming to blame all his grandparents’ problems on his grandmother (and after unfortunate events, his grandfather’s intransigence), the novel is considered Stegner’s masterpiece and won him the Pulitzer.
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Review 2554: #ReadingAusten25! Pride and Prejudice
For years, I read all of Jane Austen’s novels once every year, but I haven’t done that since I started this blog. Now, Reading Austen 25 has given me an excuse to do it again.
The neighborhood is thrilled, because Netherfield Park, a large estate that has been vacant, has been leased. More importantly, the new occupant is Mr. Bingley, a young, single man of fortune. Foolish Mrs. Bennett, with five single daughters, is certain he will marry one of them.
Mr. Bingley has come with friends, and the first time everyone meets them is at a local ball. Although Mr. Bingley seems attracted to Jane Bennett, Elizabeth Bennett’s beautiful older sister, his friend Mr. Darcy stays aloof from the locals and will only dance with members of his own party. (That may seem okay to modern readers but is really very rude for the time.) When Mr. Bingley tries to get him to dance, suggesting Elizabeth as a suitable partner, Darcy slights her.
Later, Lizzy meets Mr. Wickham, a pleasing young man who grew up with Mr. Darcy. He tells her that Mr. Darcy has treated him wrongly, especially that he withheld a living from him that was promised to him by Darcy’s father. Lizzy is shocked.
Things look good for Jane, though, as Bingley is very attentive. Unfortunately, at a ball hosted by Bingley, all of Lizzy’s family except Jane behave in an embarrassing manner—her mother loudly discussing Jane’s chances with Bingley, her foolish younger sisters making exhibitions of themselves, and her father loudly correcting Mary. The next thing they know, the entire Bingley party has left for London with no intention of returning. Lizzy blames Jane’s disappointment in love on Caroline Bingley—Bingley’s sister—and on Mr. Darcy.
This novel is a domestic drama, a romance, and a witty social satire. Austen is gifted at creating characters whose personalities become obvious almost as soon as they open their mouths. I find it hard to choose my favorite Austen novel, but this one is certainly the funniest, with such characters as Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennett, and Lady Catherine De Bourgh.
Harking back to a discussion last month about Austen’s wobble between sense and sensibility, I see more evidence of it here, when Mr. Darcy takes Jane’s calm demeanor for indifference to Mr. Bingley and when, later, he doesn’t speak to Lizzy because he can’t tell if she cares for him.
Anyway, of course, this novel is great.
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Review 2553: September
I think Rosamunde Pilcher is considered a romance novelist. Judging from this book, though, I wouldn’t call her that. Although there are some romantic situations in it, this book, in its focus on family and the beauties of Scotland, reminds me more of something by Molly Clavering’s or D. E. Stevenson’s family-oriented novels, although much more recently written.
The novel is about two families in small-town Scotland and particularly what happens when a neighbor decides to hold a ball for her daughter in September.
Violet Aird is a mother and grandmother. Her son Edmund is a businessman who spends a lot of time traveling. His daughter Alexa is a shy young woman living in a house she inherited from her other grandmother in London. His second wife, Virginia, is an American who loves being home and taking care of their eight-year-old son, Henry.
The other family is the Balmerinos. Archie Balmerino is the local laird, and although he owns a lot of land, the family isn’t as prosperous as it was, especially since Archie lost a leg in Northern Ireland. His wife Isobel has arranged to take paying guests in the summer as a result. Archie’s sister Pandora ran off with a married man when she was 18 and hasn’t returned. Archie and Isobel have children, twelve-year-old Hamish and much older Lucille, who has been living in Europe.
Lucille is traveling around Europe with her Australian friend, Jeff, when she decides to go to Majorca to visit her Aunt Pandora, whom she has never met. Pandora is beautiful, rich, and generous. Lucille hadn’t been planning to return home for the ball, but Pandora decides they should all drive back together for the party.
Trouble is brewing between Edmund and Virginia, because Edmund has signed Henry up to go to boarding school in the fall without consulting Virginia. When Virginia objects that he is too young, Edmund thinks she is babying Henry and is coldly insistent. About then, she meets a man Alexa has invited home, who turns out to be an old friend.
Alexa herself has become involved with a man for the first time. He is Noel Keeling, up to now a lady’s man who usually dates women a lot more attractive than Alexa.
I said this novel isn’t exactly a romance, but it unfortunately employs some romance conventions. One is to describe almost everything everyone wears. The other is to describe almost every room people enter. Pilcher also tells us the contents of almost every meal, no matter how commonplace. In fact, I found the book to be about two hundred pages longer than it needed to be.
Another issue I had with it was that although it was published in 1990 and gave no clear indication of its time setting, it seemed so horribly out of date for then that I wondered if it wasn’t an old manuscript that had been set aside until the success of The Shell Seekers. One example is that the American Virginia spots an American across a room and wonders why you can always tell an American. He doesn’t even wear a crew cut. What? I haven’t seen a crew cut on anyone except the military since about 1961!
And then there is Archie with his false leg made out of either tin or aluminum. In the 1970s-90s, legs were being made out of such things as polymers, and I think I can safely say that no one has ever made an artificial leg out of tin or aluminum, neither of which would support the weight. (Oh, I see now that artificial legs were made out of Duralumin, a hard, lightweight alloy of aluminum, during World War I. Well, the time setting may not be specified, but the novel is set a lot later than that, at least in the 1960s or 70s and I suspect later.)
I was interested enough in the story to finish it, even though Pandora’s big secret was pretty obvious from near the beginning of the book, but thought the novel was only a middling effort.
What? Me Read? 