It's Just So Hot!

It's so hot that it's like being snowed in (even though, no, actually, it doesn't snow here in Vacaville) because you can't even go outside!  I run out first thing in the morning to do errands, rush home, close the curtains, and hunker down and let the air conditioning wash over me.  So the kids will be back to school in a few days, and maybe you'll have some unstructured time on your hands, and  you're stuck inside.  How about a little something to read?

This summer I read a whole bunch of books (ahh, yes, that's the me I'm used to, the staying-home-reading one, not the hiking, out-and-abouting one), but I didn't love all of them.  Joan Rivers' latest, I Hate Everyone...Starting with Me, just wasn't that funny.   The Red House by Mark Haddon was kind of depressing, and I didn't really even like the characters (but I have to come clean and tell you I didn't finish it).  Peter Cameron's Coral Glynn was okay, but it seemed sort of self conscious--This is a Book That Takes Place in England in the 1950s.  These are all new books, all very popular, and I wanted to love them, but I didn't.

Here, however, are the ones I did love.  First of all, Hard Country, by Michael McGarrity. It's a Western, which isn't usually my bag.  Although, I did love Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, that  wildly popular Western novel from the 1980s.  Hard Country did sort of remind me of that book.  It takes place in New Mexico territory, and tells the saga of one John Kerney, and the trials of his life.  Very long, very good.  I cried in the end.

Next, I so enjoyed The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. Apparently Ms. Moriarty happened to read a snippet about one summer in the life of silent film star Louise Brooks, and it sparked this novel.  When Louise Brooks was 15 years old, she was sent from Kansas to New York for a few weeks of dancing lessons, and she was sent with a chaperone.  This tells the imagined story of Cora, the chaperone, and her experiences with the scarily worldly, headstrong Brooks.  I loved it.

The Lifeboat  by Charlotte Rogan is a Titanic-era story.  It is, not surprisingly, the story of a ship that sinks and some of the passengers' (particularly one young woman who is a newlywed) ensuing time on a lifeboat.  It's almost a bit suspenseful.  I thought the ending was a little weak, but I still enjoyed it and think it's worth reading.

The Bolter is the true story of Idina Sackville, and it's told by her great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne.  Idina Sackville was part of the Happy Valley Set, wealthy British adventurers who settled in Kenya and were the subject of many stories, including James Fox's White Mischief (which was very interesting, I might add)  They were self-indulgent, lawless, careless, and selfish people.  Idina was no different, but Osborne is able to bring out another dimension to her, and we see her as a lonely, restless soul who, really, was just looking for someone to love her.  She abandons her marriages regularly, and was the inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter in The Pursuit of Love (another of my favorites). I found it compelling reading.

Finally, Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym's first novel, tells the story of two sisters, Harriet and Belinda, and their lives in a small English village, replete with vicars and curates and minor royalty and tweeds and tea and gardens. In parts I laughed out loud, even though the humor is subtle and gentle.  I just love Barbara Pym.  If you haven't read anything she's written, this is as good a place as any to start.

I'm still reading, so I'll have more ideas soon.  I'm just starting Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, and it looks interesting. I've got Frances Osborne's newest book Park Lane waiting for me at the library.  If you're feeling flush, grab a few of these books off Amazon.  If you're feeling po, well, reserve them on the library website.  Of course you know which way I'll be doing it.

So Much Fantastic Non-Fiction!

[caption id="attachment_847" align="alignleft" width="140" caption="Doesn't Dorothy Emily Stevenson look like a nice person?"][/caption]

I am not a person who likes to impress others with her challenging reading choices.  My most favorite books are by D.E. Stevenson.

I think reading should be fun.  If I happen to learn something along the way, well, that's a nice bonus.  But it's certainly not essential to my reading enjoyment. Does Mira Sorvino really expect me to believe her favorite book is Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time?  Um, okay.  And Gwyneth Paltrow curls up with Crime and Punishment? Really now.  Nobody ever cops to a Danielle Steele or a John Grisham, so how on earth do these amazingly prolific writers sell all those books?  I guess it's all of us poor slobs who aren't feeling the Dostoyevsky this week.  Okay, well, whatever.  I'm getting off track.

This summer I've gotten involved with a few non-fiction books.  I'm only going to give you a very brief gist of these works--you can look them up on Amazon.  But I have really enjoyed all these books, and they are well worth reading.  They would be good for a book group, too.

First up:  Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.  Autobiographical account of the English Fuller's childhood in Africa.  And there is the second one, mostly about Fuller's mother (which is really a sequel because there are a fair amount of references back to the  first one), called Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness.  A lot of tragedy in the Fuller family, but a lot of humor, too.  (The mother waves her arms around and cries, "Nicola Fuller of Central Africa is experiencing a drought," with increasing urgency, whenever she needs a new cocktail.  I am considering taking up this little habit.)

Next, we come to In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.  I was reading this and marveled to my children that here I was, reading about Woodrow Wilson and isolationism, and I was enjoying it!  Larson is some sort of magician in this way.  This is the story of the American ambassador, William Dodd, who was appointed to Germany in 1933, just as Hitler's power was really being felt.  So of course the historical period is a fascinating one, but Larson makes it all so compelling, even things like Wilson and isolationism, or the political procedure by which Dodd was appointed to his post.  This is the story of an American family living in a most extraordinary time. It helps that a lot of the story revolves around the ambassador's daughter.  I always like to hear about things from a woman's point of view.

Fourth is The Psychopath Test  by Jon Ronson.  Starts off with a strange puzzle that Ronson is asked to help solve, the purpose of which I found to be a bit confusing.  But stick with it just a few more pages and things get going.  It's incredibly interesting stuff. Ronson interviews various individuals that display the degrees of psychopathy. He chronicles his experiences quite wittily, but does not minimize the terror these individuals are capable of stirring in others.  There really is an actual psychopath test, with about 24 personality traits characteristic of psychopaths.  You read this list and, first of all, worry that you yourself are one.  But the mere fact that you are worried that you are means you aren't.  As you read, however, and ponder individuals you have known, and may still know, you begin to see that perhaps there are more psychopaths floating around than you'd care to admit--think CEOs and politicians.  And that guy you dated.

So I guess it's only four non-fictions I'm passing on to you.  Seemed like more, probably because I've been reading more non-fiction than fiction lately.  But really, these are all as entertaining as fiction, and educational to boot!  Maybe I'll give A Brief History of Time the old college try next summer (yeah, right).