Faithful by Alice Hoffman - 2016 - 288 Pages

 

Faithful by Alice Hoffman - 2016 - 288 Pages

Alice Hoffman works I have so far read:

The Marriage of Opposites- 2015

"Everything My Mother Taught Me" - 2016

"The Book Store Sisters" -2022

The Foretelling - 2006

"Conjure" - 2014

Aquamarine- 2001

The Ice Queen - 2006

Property Of -1977

Skylight- 2007

The Invisible Hour 2023

Rules of Magic- 2017

Practical Magic - 1997

Faithful- 2016

" From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers comes a soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.

Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.

Alice Hoffman’s “trademark alchemy” (USA TODAY) and her ability to write about the “delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary” (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel." From Simon and Schuster

The Bookish Libra has a marvelous review 

I love the work of Alice Hoffman and hope to eventually read all of her works.  

As I read Faithful I did so from my perspective as the father of three daughters in their 20s.  I could not but think how negatively I would have reacted to two of the three men Shelby was involved with. In one case of an ex-convict covered with tattoos I would have been totally wrong,  

Shelby has a hard time bonding with people.  Her shaved head does not help.  She steals dogs and a cat and provides them with a loving home.  

We follow Shelby as she evolves into a less inward bound person.  I found the ending very gratifying after much previous pain for Shelby.  There are lots of interesting side encounters throughout Faithful.

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic, The World That We Knew, The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Book of Magic, The Red Garden, the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. She lives near Boston.

School for Love by Olivia Manning. - 1951- Introduction by Jane Smiley 2009

School for Love by Olivia Manning - 1951

OLIVIA MANNING (1908–1980) was born in Portsmouth, England, and spent much of her childhood in Northern Ireland. Her father, Oliver, was a penniless British sailor who rose to become a naval commander, and her mother, Olivia, had a prosperous Anglo-Irish background. Manning trained as a painter at the Portsmouth School of Art, then moved to London and turned to writing. She published her first novel under her own name in 1938 (she had published several potboilers in a local paper under the name Jacob Morrow while a teenager). The next year she married R. D. “Reggie” Smith, and the couple moved to Romania, where Smith was employed by the British Council. In World War II, the couple fled before the Nazi advance, first to Greece and then to Jerusalem, where they lived until the end of the war. Manning wrote several novels during the 1950s, but her first real success as a novelist was The Great Fortune (1960), the first of six books concerning Guy and Harriet Pringle, whose wartime experiences and troubled marriage echoed that of the diffident Manning and her gregarious husband. In the 1980s these novels were collected in two volumes, The Balkan Trilogy (available as an NYRB Classic) and The Levant Trilogy, known collectively as The Fortunes of War. In addition to her novels, Manning wrote essays and criticism, history, a screenplay, and a book about Burmese and Siamese cats. She was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976, and died four years later." From The New York Review of Books. Publisher of School for Love 

School for Love is a very powerful exquisitely rendered work of art. It also has by far the best portrayal of a Siamese Cat in a literary work ever. (Sadly I cannot find her book on Burmese and Siamese cats on Amazon.)

This novel centers on Felix, a British boy whose mother has just died. Felix and his mother lived in Baghdad back when Iraq was a British colony, so Felix, whose father is also deceased, has to make a long journey home by ship at a time when berths on ships are reserved for service members, diplomats, and others who are directly working to bring the second world war to a close. He has a sort-of aunt in Jerusalem named Miss Bohun, and she offers to take him in while he waits for a place on the ship. Miss Bohun was an orphan herself and was taken in by Felix’s paternal grandparents, so she grew up with Felix’s father, as a foster-sibling. Felix has never met Miss Bohun before, but he has heard his mother grumbling about her. Felix who seems about thirteen, is first and foremost a lonely, grieving child who desperately needs love. One might think that Miss Bohun, an orphan herself, would be sympathetic to Felix’s feelings, but you would be wrong.


There is a lot of drama involving the other casts in the house.


It soon becomes clear – to the reader at least – that Miss Bohun is a manipulative monster, a rather absurd and disillusioned creature who considers herself a paragon of virtue when in fact she is anything but. She appears to have taken over the running of the house from its former occupant, the Polish refugee, Frau Leszno. Having been relegated to the position of Miss Bohun’s cook/housekeeper, Frau Leszno is currently residing in the servants’ quarters, a reversal of fortunes she deeply resents. In this scene, Miss Bohun tells Felix how she came to live at the house, clearly implying that she was doing Frau Leszno a huge favour by taking control of the situation. Or, if one looks at it another way, Miss Bohun saw an opportunity for personal gain which she seized without a moment’s hesitation. Felix falls in love with Faro, the resident Siamese cat.


You can decide for yourself if Miss Bohun knocks a pregnant war widow boarding in the house down the stairs, causing her a miscarriage, because of jealousy over others in the house liking her.


The close of School of Love really an amazing partially happy ending.


"Read today, it seems a work of uncanny prescience. The grave concerns of our own age—religious fanaticism, passionate competing territorial claims—are here in embryo, set into the precisely rendered, everyday texture of an era that has vanished. The alien British feel that Du Bois complained of in 1956 was not, in fact, cultural—it is a characteristic of Manning’s unique vision and style, her cool way of dissecting her world and her experience, in which even the most pitiable or terrifying circumstances are worthy of interested and detailed scrutiny." From Jane Smiley's introduction

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride - 2023- 512 Pages

 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride - 2023- 512 Pages

YouTube has numerous very well done videos focusing on this book.

I was totally drawn into the lives of the characters in The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store from the intriguing open to the beautiful close.

"From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird." From the publisher 

Pottstown, Pennslyvania in the 1930s is a very diverse divided community with African Americans who still look on South Carolina or Georgia as home, immigrants from Jewish communities in Europe and white people who pretend their ancestors came over on the Mayflower.  I really appreciated how McBride showed us the difference between various Jewish immigrant communities, from Romanians, Hungarian,  Russian to the want to be a "real white person" arrogant Germans.  Many of the white people look down on African Americans and are not crazy for immigrants.

At points the novel is heartbreaking,  at other times (especially during the concerts) it is tremendous fun and the ending is so beautiful and moving. 

James McBride is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Oprah’s Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill ’Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.

I hope to read all of his novels and his memoir.

Olivia Manning: A Woman at War –2013 - by Deirdre David

 

Olivia Manning: A Woman at War by Deirdre David- 2013

Olivia Manning 

Born: March 2, 1908, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Died: July 23, 1980 (age 72 years), Isle of Wight, United Kingdom

Partner: R. D. Smith (1939–)

Notable works: Fortunes of War Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy 

"Olivia Manning: A Woman at War is the first literary biography of the twentieth-century novelist Olivia Manning. It tells the story of a writer whose life and work were shaped by her own fierce ambition, and, like many of her generation, the events and aftermath of the Second World War. From the time she left Portsmouth for London in the mid-1930s determined to become a famous writer, through her wartime years in the Balkans and the Middle East, and until her death in London in 1980, Olivia Manning was a dedicated and hard-working author. Married to a British Council lecturer stationed in Bucharest, Olivia Manning arrived in Romania on the 3rd September 1939, the fateful day when Allied forces declared war on Germany. For the duration of World War Two, she kept one step ahead of invading German forces as she and her husband fled Romania for Greece, and then Greece for the Middle East, where they stayed until the end of the war. These tumultuous wartime years are the subject of her best-known and most transparently autobiographical novels, The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy.

Olivia Manning refused to be labelled a 'feminist,' but her novels depict with cutting insight and sardonic wit the marginal position of women striving for independent identity in arenas frequently controlled by men, whether on the frontlines of war or in the publishing world of the 1950s. However, she did not just write about World War Two and women's lives. Amongst other things, Manning published fiction about making do in Britain's post-war Age of Austerity, about desecration of the environment through uncontrolled development, and about the painful adjustment to post-war British life for young men. As the author of thirteen published novels, two volumes of short stories, several works of non-fiction, and a regular reviewer of contemporary fiction, she was a visible presence on the British literary scene throughout her life and her work provides a detailed insight into the period.

Grounded in thorough research and enriched by discussion of previously unexamined manuscripts and letters, Olivia Manning: A Woman at War is a timely study of Olivia Manning's remarkable life. Deirdre David integrates incisive critical analysis of Manning's writing with extensive discussion of the historical contexts of her fiction." From Oxford University Press 

Olivia Manning: Writer and War introduced me to an Writer I should have long ago read. Manning was friends or at least acquainted with many well known literary figures. She was very close to the poet Stevie Smith. Her novels deal extensively on marriages. Her own was problematic but shaped her life. She was totally into the reading life from her childhood on. David showed what Manning's life was like during World War Two and in the highly rationed days in post War London. Manning was seen by some as a "difficult" person, judgemental and superior. She had numerous sexual partners as did her husband. She became pregnant at 36 but the child died in her uterus at seven months but she has to carry it until it was delivered at nine months. She never emotionally recovered from this.

Deirdre David is Professor of English Emerita at Temple University. She has been a member of the faculty at Smith College, the University of Maryland, and Temple University. At Temple she was chair of the department for five years and, throughout her teaching career, has offered undergraduate and graduate classes in Victorian Literature, the History of the British Novel, Postcolonial Literature, and British Literature Since 1945.

Professor David is the author of Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels (1981), Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy (1987), Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing (1995), and Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life (2007).  She is also the editor of the Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2001) and co-editor (with Eileen Gillooly) of Contemporary Dickens (Ohio State University Press, 

"Hinterland" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 20 Pages - included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 Buriedinprint.com 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

"Hinterland" is the 30th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  The story centers on a middles aged married couple with two grown daughters.  One of the daughters has recently moved back home after a fight with her husband.  

"EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE STAYED PUT this year except Meg and Roy Sloan of Milwaukee, Wisconsin...Although both Meg and Roy are patriotic in a vague and non-rhetorical way, and good mature citizens who pay their taxes and vote and hold opinions on gun legislation and abortion, they’ve chosen this year to ignore the exhortation of their president to stay home and see America first. The Grand Canyon can wait, Roy says in the sociable weekend voice he more and more distrusts. The Black Hills can wait. And the Everglades. And Chesapeake Bay..."

They have decided to spend three weeks in Paris. 

"Over the years, in the seasonal rounds of business and pleasure and special anniversaries, Meg and Roy Sloan have set foot on most of the continents of the world: Asia, Australia, South America—and, of course, Europe. They have, in fact, been to Paris on two previous occasions...And now, in the autumn of 1986, an uneasy, untrustful time in the world’s history, the Sloans have returned. “But why?” quite a number of their friends said. “Why Paris, of all places!” .

Shields packs so much into twenty pages, a terrorist scare at a museum, exploring shops, dining, and an account of the dynamics of a marriage.

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs - by Camilla Townsend- 2019 - 320 Pages

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs - by Camilla Townsend- 2019 - 320 Pages 

The commonly accepted view of preconquest Aztec culture is that of a savage society in which thousands of people had their hearts cut out by priests in order to appease their Gods. Montezuma is depicted as a coward. In her amazing book Professor Townsend uses her knowledge of indigenous languages to give us a much more nuanced view.

"In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated, and rarely consulted by scholars.

For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured.

This engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their own words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing the trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists." From Oxford University Press

I was very moved by Townsend's reinterpretation of views La Malinche as a traitor to her own people, criticizing her collaboration with the Spanish conquistadors. She is seen as complicit in the downfall of the Aztec Empire, facilitating the invasion and subjugation of her own culture. As Townsend says Malinche had no ties to the Aztecs, the enemy of her people who she had every reason to hate. Townsend goes into details about the lives of women as well as the role of marriage among royalty.

If you have any interest in Meso-American history, this is a book for you.

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters - 2017- 320 Pages

 

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters - 2017 - 320 Pages

This week's menu at Chez Panisse

YouTube has a number of videos on Alice Waters and her restaurant Chez Panisse.

"New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard bearer Alice Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of what is arguably America's most influential restaurant.

 

When Alice Waters opened the doors of her "little French restaurant" in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape—Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naiveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers. In Coming to My Senses Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity.  Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded. Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman's evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food." From the publisher 

I highly recommend Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters.  It is numerous things combined,  a  memoir of growing up in middle class America in the 1950s and 60, a marvelous account of the counter cultural anti-Vietnam war era, her transformational time in Paris, her several romances and of course her love of food culminating in the opening of her restaurant in 1971.  

"Alice Waters (born April 28, 1944, Chatham, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American restaurateur, chef, and food activist who was a leading proponent of the “slow food” movement, which billed itself as the healthy antithesis to fast food.

Waters studied French culture at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1967. She participated in the 1960s Free Speech Movement, and the idealism that was then prevalent at Berkeley was reflected in her ideology throughout her career. She studied abroad for a time in France, and it was there that her love of farm-to-plate dining took hold. Following graduation, Waters spent a year studying at the International Montessori School in London before returning to California to teach.

In the 1970s the United States was still years away from the “foodie revolution,” which by 2009 had brought farmers’ markets and organic foods to a larger audience. Waters’s prescient passion for whole, unprocessed foods inspired her and her friend Lindsey Shere to found a market-inspired restaurant in Berkeley, California, despite having little capital and no experience as restaurateurs. When Chez Panisse opened in 1971, it was with a relatively untrained staff, a set fixed-price menu that changed daily, and an uncompromising dedication to a vision that seemed to many untenable: Waters wanted to create meals that used only locally grown seasonal ingredients, and she wanted to forge relationships with the producers and suppliers of these items. 

The advocacy venture for which she became best known was the Edible Schoolyard, originally established in 1995. Waters began the program by planting a garden in the yard of Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. A cooking classroom was installed a few years later, and by 2009 the Edible Schoolyard was a thriving educational tool, though not a source of lunchroom produce. The program expanded to include affiliates in other cities, including New Orleans and Los Angeles. From the Edible Schoolyard grew Waters’s new cause, that of persuading the government to increase funding to improve school lunch programs. Her indomitable dedication to providing schoolchildren with more healthful-eating options earned Waters a fair share of detractors, who argued that seasonal food was a dispensable luxury for already underfunded schools. As with her restaurant, however, her philosophy regarding the project was “If we do it right, the money will come.”

The James Beard Foundation named Chez Panisse outstanding restaurant and Waters outstanding chef in 1992; the foundation also presented her with a lifetime achievement award in 2004. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, received the French Legion of Honor in 2009, and was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2015. Waters wrote a number of cookbooks and We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto (2021; written with Bob Carrau and Cristina Mueller). Her memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, was published in 2017." From The Encyclopedia Britanica

I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad - 2019 - 423 Pages

 

I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad - 2019 - 423 Pages

YouTube has several informative videos on this book

I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad is a combination cookbook, history of the Philippines, a memoir and the story of how a passion for Filipino food produced a highly successful restaurant.

"Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by The New Yorker, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Houston Chronicle, Food52, PopSugar, and more

Filipino food is having its moment. Sour, sweet, funky, fatty, bright, rich, tangy, bold—no wonder adventurous eaters consider Filipino food the next big thing (Vogue declares it “the next great American cuisine”). Filipinos are the second-largest Asian population in America, and finally, after enjoying Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese food, we’re ready to embrace Filipino food, too. Written by trailblazing restaurateurs Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad, I Am a Filipino is a cookbook of modern Filipino recipes that captures the unexpected and addictive flavors of this vibrant and diverse cuisine.

The techniques (including braising, boiling, and grilling) are simple, the ingredients are readily available, and the results are extraordinary. There are puckeringly sour adobos with meat so tender you can cut it with a spoon, along with other national dishes like kare-kare (oxtail stew) and kinilaw (fresh seafood dressed in coconut milk and ginger). There are Chinese-influenced pansit (noodle dishes) and lumpia (spring rolls); Arab-inflected cuisine, with its layered spicy curries; and dishes that reflect the tastes and ingredients of the Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans who came to the Philippines and stayed. Included are beloved fried street snacks like ukoy (fritters), and an array of sweets and treats called meryenda. Filled with suitably bold and bright photographs, I Am a Filipino is like a classic kamayan dinner—one long, festive table piled high with food. Just dig in!" From the publisher 

Speedboat by Renata Adler- 1976 - 192 Pages - with an afterword by Guy Trebay

 Speedboat is an American classic, a classic for American readers steeped in life in New York City in the 1970s.Winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, this is one of the defining books of the 1970s, an experimental novel about a young journalist trying to navigate life in America. 

"When Speedboat burst on the scene in the late ’70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before. It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice, ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it." From the New York Review of Books 

Timelines move backwards and forwards giving the novel a sense of elasticity and fluidity as we flit from one situation to the next, from one topic to another. One of the pleasures of reading Speedboat stems from not knowing where it is going to take us and whether we will return subsequently to the same period in this woman’s life or move on indefinitely. In this example, Jen touches on her days as a student in Paris – It’s a brief stopover, and we don’t know if we’ll hear more at a later stage:

"One night, in Paris, during the last days of the Algerian crisis, I was studying in a common room at the Cité Universitaire—where I used to live and where four apparently interchangeable Americans incessantly played bridge. A bomb went off. The explosion was enormous. Windows smashed. Doors fractured. The reception desk blew up. The lights went out. The first words after the thunder and reverberations in the darkness were an imperturbable, incredulous, “Two hearts.” (pgs. 30-31)

Adler’s slices of prose vary in length—anything from a sentence or two to a couple of pages. And they vary in tone, too—some are underscored with laconic wry humour, others convey a darker mood. Several fragments are keenly observed:

"The wallflower sat reading in the Paris restaurant. There used to be so many categories of wallflower: the anxious, smiling, tense ones who leaned forward, trying; the important, busy, apparently elsewhere preoccupied ones, who were nonetheless waiting, waiting in the carpeted offices of their inattention, to be found. There were wallflowers who clustered noisily together, and others who worked a territory, resolute and alone. And then, there were wallflowers who had recognised for years that the thing was hopeless, who had found in that information a kind of calm. They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody’s brother, somebody’s usher, somebody’s roommate, somebody’s roommate’s usher’s brother, or, worst of all, with that male wallflower who ought—by God who ought—to be an ally, who could, in dignity and the common interest, join forces to make it through an evening, but who, after all, had higher aspirations, and neither the sense nor the courtesy to conceal it, who in short, scorned the partner fate and the placement had dealt him, worst of all. The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody’s brother, somebody’s usher, somebody’s roommate, somebody’s roommate’s usher’s brother, or, worst of all, with that male wallflower who ought—by God who ought—to be an ally, who could, in dignity and the common interest, join forces to make it through an evening, but who, after all, had higher aspirations, and neither the sense nor the courtesy to conceal it, who in short, scorned the partner fate and the placement had dealt him, worst of all. The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought a book. (pg. 151)

       

Renata Adler was born in Milan and raised in Connecticut. She received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr, an M.A. from Harvard, a D.d’E.S. from the Sorbonne, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an honorary LL.D. from Georgetown. Adler became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1963 and, except for a year as the chief film critic of The New York Times, remained at The New Yorker for the next four decades. Her books include A Year in the Dark (1969); Toward a Radical Middle (1970); Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al., Sharon v. Time (1986); Canaries in the Mineshaft (2001); Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker (1999); Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Decision That Made George W. Bush President (2004); and the novels Speedboat (1976, Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel) and Pitch Dark (1983), both available as NYRB Classics

Provence 1970 by Luke Barr- 2016 - 226 Pages

 I highly recommend pairing a reading of Province 1970 with a viewing of the movie Julia and Julia (currently available on Netflix). 

 This is the second nonfiction work by Luke Barr focusing on French food upon which I have posted. My first of his works was Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class. (Both available at the Boston Library via Libby.)

"Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now. The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In Provence, 1970, he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance." From Penquin House Press

Provence 1970 includes detailed descriptions of meals and even a few recipes.

 

"Today Is the Day" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 3 Pages - Included in the Short Stories of Carol Shields

 

"Today Is the Day" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 3 Pages - Included in the Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields 

Buriedinprint.com 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

"Today Is the Day" is the 27th Short Story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  It is among the briefest of her stories,  It shows the tremendous versatility of Shields.  "Today Is the Day" reads like an ancient folk tale.  Here is the opening:

"TODAY IS THE DAY THE WOMEN of our village go out along the highway planting blisterlilies. They set off without breakfast, not even coffee, gathering at the site of the old well, now paved over and turned into a tot lot and basketball court. The air at this hour is clear. You can breathe in the freshness. And you can smell the moist ground down there below the trampled weeds and baked clay, those eager black glinting minerals waiting, and the pocketed humus. A September morning. A thousand diamond points of dew."

As fitting for a folk tale we have our troll:

"All the women of the village take part in the fall planting, including, of course, scrawny old Sally Bakey. Dirty, wearing a torn pinafore, less than four feet in height, it is Sally who discovered a new preserve of virgin blisterlilies in a meadow on the other side of the shiny westward-lying lake. There, where only mice walk, the flowers still grow in profusion, and the bulbs divide year by year as they once did in these parts. Sally lives alone in a rough cabin on a diet of rolled oats and eggs. Raw eggs, some say. She has a foul smell and shouts obscenely at passersby, especially those who betray by their manner of speech or dress that they are not of the region. But people like her smile. A troll’s smile without teeth. In winter, when the snow reaches a certain height, the men of the village take its measure by saying: The snow’s up to Sally Bakey’s knees. Or over Sally Bakey’s bum. Or clear up to Sally Bakey’s eyebrows. No one knows how old Sally Bakey is, but she’s old enough to remember when churches in the area were left unlocked and when people could go about knocking on any door and ask for a chair to sit down on or for a cup of strong tea."

"Today Is the Day" is a brilliant work.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has biographical data and accounts of her novels,

"Hazel" - A Short story by Carol Shields- 22 Pages - included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

"Hazel" is the 26th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. Hazel is a recently widowed woman in her 50s with two married daughters. She has enough money to live comfortably but she feels bored now that she lives alone. Never having had a job, she applies for work as a kitchen product demonstrator. To her surprise, she gets the position.  

We follow Hazel as she advances in her career.

 My main purpose now in posting on the stories of Carol Shields is to keep a record of my reading.

Red Planet Mars 1952 American science fiction film -starring Peter Graves and Andrea King. - directed by art director Harry Horner in his directorial debut.

 

Red Planet Mars 1952 American science fiction film -starring Peter Graves and Andrea King. - directed by art director Harry Horner in his directorial debut.

In the early 1950s there were a number of science fiction movies related to Mars,  Red Planet Mars, available on YouTube, is an entertaining film with an underlying religious theme,  

Critical response

When the film was released, the staff at Variety liked the film, writing, "Despite its title, Red Planet Mars takes place on terra firma, sans space ships, cosmic rays or space cadets. It is a fantastic concoction delving into the realms of science, politics, religion, world affairs and Communism [...] Despite the hokum dished out, the actors concerned turn in creditable performances."

The New York Times, while giving the film a mixed review, wrote well of some of the performances, "Peter Graves and Andrea King are serious and competent, if slightly callow in appearance, as the indomitable scientists. Marvin Miller is standard as a top Soviet agent, as are Walter Sande, Richard Powers and Morris Ankrum, as Government military men, and Willis Bouchey, as the President."

Allmovie critic Bruce Eder praised the film, writing, "Red Planet Mars is an eerily fascinating artifact of the era of the Red Scare, and also the first postwar science fiction boom, combining those elements into an eerie story that is all the more surreal because it is played with such earnestness."

The film critic Dennis Schwartz panned the film in 2001, writing, "One of the most obnoxious sci-fi films ever. It offers Hollywood's silly response to the 1950s 'Red Scare' sweeping the country".

British critic Leslie Halliwell described the film as "lunatic farrago that has to be seen to be believed

Like other older science fiction films it now seems comic, almost low camp

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang - 2018 - 566 Pages - Part One of a Trilogy - Nominee for Best Fantasy (2018), Nominee for Best Debut Author (2018)

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang - 2018 - 566 Pages - Part One of a Trilogy - Nominee for Best Fantasy (2018), Nominee for Best Debut Author (2018)





I was pleased to be able The Poppy Wars and the two other novels in the Trilogy via Libby.


I enjoyed the opening portions of Poppy Wars as the orphan Rin struggled as Rin, an orphan abused by her opium dealing Foster parents studied to pass a very difficult exam which would gain her entrance to a very prestigious school. Above all she wanted to avoid being married off to an older man so her Foster parents can be paid. When she passes her entrance to the academy and her time there held my attention.


Then war breaks out and Poppy Wars to me devolves into endless violence. I found it becoming a task to finish the story. The characters were obsessed with killing. Maybe the book was just not right for me but I returned the other two books in the Trilogy.


"An epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.


When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.


But surprises aren’t always good.


Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.


For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .


Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late"- from the publisher


I would say if you are a fan of the fantasy genre, as I am, give the book a try if you can get an E book via Libby

Devil Girl from Mars - 1954- Is black-and-white science fiction film, produced by the Danziger Brothers, directed by David MacDonald and starring Patricia Laffan, Hugh McDermott, Hazel Court, Peter Reynolds, and Adrienne Corri.

Available on YouTube 

 Devil Girl from Mars - 1954- Is black-and-white science fiction film, produced by the Danziger Brothers, directed by David MacDonald and starring Patricia Laffan, Hugh McDermott, Hazel Court, Peter Reynolds, and Adrienne Corri. 

"Nyah, a female commander from Mars, heads for London in her flying saucer. She is part of the advance alien team looking for Earthmen to replace the declining male population on her world, the result of a "devastating war between the sexes". Because of damage to her craft, caused when entering the Earth's atmosphere, and an apparent crash with an airliner, she is forced to land in the remote Scottish moors. She is armed with a raygun that can paralyse or kill, and is accompanied by a tall, menacing robot named Chani.

Professor Arnold Hennessey, an astrophysicist, accompanied by journalist Michael Carter, is sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the crash, believed to be caused by a meteorite. The pair come to the Bonnie Charlie, a remote inn run by Mr and Mrs Jamieson in the depths of the Scottish Highlands.

At the bar they meet Ellen Prestwick, a fashion model who came to the Bonnie Charlie to escape an affair with a married man. She quickly forms a romantic liaison with Carter. Meanwhile, escaped convict Robert Justin (under the alias Albert Simpson), convicted for accidentally killing his wife, comes to the inn to reunite with barmaid Doris, with whom he is in love.

Nyah happens across the inn, incinerates the Jamiesons' handyman David, and enters the bar. When she finds no one willing to come with her to Mars, she responds with intimidation, trapping the guests and staff within an invisible wall and turning Chani loose to vaporise much of the manor’s grounds. Discovering Justin and Tommy, the Jamiesons' young nephew, hiding in the grounds, Nyah kidnaps Tommy as a possible male specimen, and sends Justin back to the inn under some manner of mind control. Nyah then brings Professor Hennessy aboard her spaceship to view the technological achievements of Martian civilisation, including the ship's atomic power source. In exchange for Tommy, Carter volunteers to go to Mars with Nyah.

Realising that the only road to victory over Nyah requires trickery, Hennessy suggests Carter sabotage the ship's power source after take off. However, Carter attempts a double cross before boarding the ship, snatching Nyah's controller for Chani, but this attempt is thwarted by Nyah's mind control powers. Carter is released by Nyah, and they both return to the bar, where she announces that she will destroy the inn and kill everyone within when she leaves for London. However she allows for one man to go with her in order to escape death. The men draw lots and Carter wins the draw, still hoping to enact Hennessy's plan to destroy the spaceship.

At the last minute, Justin, alone at the bar and now free from mind control when Nyah returns, offers to go with her of his own free will. After take-off he successfully sabotages Nyah's flying saucer, sacrificing himself to save the men of Earth, and atoning for the death of his wife. The survivors celebrate their escape with a drink at the bar." Wikipedia 

I found Devil Girl From Mars a very entertaining way to spend 75 minutes.  It comes across as low camp.

Unknown World (a.k.a. Night Without Stars) is a 1951 black-and-white science fiction adventure film, directed by Terrell O. Morse, and starring Bruce Kellogg, Marilyn Nash, Jim Bannon, and Otto Waldis.

 Unknown World (a.k.a. Night Without Stars) is a 1951 black-and-white science fiction adventure film, directed by Terrell O. Morse, and starring Bruce Kellogg, Marilyn Nash, Jim Bannon, and Otto Waldis.

Available for free on YouTube 

The film concerns a scientific expedition seeking livable space deep beneath the Earth's surface in the event a nuclear war makes living above ground impossible.

Dr. Jeremiah Morley is concerned about an imminent nuclear war. He organizes an expedition of scientists and has them use a large atomic-powered tank-like boring machine, called the Cyclotram, capable of drilling down deep through the Earth's surface in order to find an underground environment where humanity could escape and survive a future nuclear holocaust.

"The expedition (Andy Ostergaard, Dr. Lindsey, Dr. Bauer, Dr. Paxton, and Dr. Coleman) begins after government funding has fallen through, and they are bailed out at the last minute by private funding from newspaper heir Wright Thompson, who insists on going with them as a lark. Romantic rivalry soon develops between Ostergaard and Thompson for Lindsey, and during the dangerous underground expedition two lives are lost to the perils of their adventure.

In the end the scientists accomplish their goal and find an enormous underground expanse with a plentiful air supply, its own large ocean, and phosphorescent light. However, all the lab rabbits brought with them give birth to dead offspring. Through autopsies, it is discovered that this strange underground world has somehow rendered the rabbits, and hence any other life form, sterile. Dr. Morley is deeply depressed by this news. When an underground volcano suddenly erupts, he fails to enter the safety of the Cyclotram and quickly perishes.

The Cyclotram, carrying the remaining survivors, enters the underground ocean to avoid the eruption. They soon find themselves rising toward the surface of the upper world, having been caught up in a strong, upward-moving ocean current. They eventually break the surface near an unknown tropical island." From Wikipedia 

At times the movie now seems unintentionally comic. I endorse it as escapism.

"Chemistry" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 20 Pages- included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

"Chemistry" is the 25th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted,  it centers on a mixed group of music students who gather weekly for lessons.

It is told by a narrator whom we learn little personally about and addressed to an unknown person she refers to as "you".  Shields has a great talent for bringing people to life in just a few sentences.

One of the common features in her stories is inclusion of references to items from high culture. In "Chemistry" is is Mozart and Bach.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has lots of data on her life and work.

Giant from the Unknown 1958 ‧ Horror/Sci-fi ‧ 1h 17m - Directed by Richard Cuhna - Available on YouTube

Giant from the Unknown 1958 ‧ Horror/Sci-fi ‧ 1h 17m - Directed by Richard Cuhna - Available on YouTube 

The citizens of mountain town Pine Ridge, California, are concerned about a series of livestock mutilations in nearby Devil's Crag. A local, Harold Banks, is also found dead there, killed in the same manner as the livestock. Sheriff Parker orders everyone to stay away. Local speculation is that the deaths are supernatural in origin. Native American, "Indian Joe", confirms their fears of a tribal curse, but is driven out of town by the sheriff.

Local geologist Wayne Brooks is told of Banks' death by friends Anne and Charlie Brown, two Pine Ridge siblings. Sheriff Parker is suspicious of Brooks, having heard about a recent confrontation between Brooks and Banks. As the sheriff is questioning him, Dr. Cleveland and his daughter Janet arrive in town. Cleveland is planning to do archaeological research in the area. While Brooks helps Janet pick up supplies, Parker warns Cleveland about the Banks murder. While at dinner with Cleveland and Janet, Brooks, formerly Cleveland's student, offers to be his area guide.

Brooks tells Cleveland of a local Native American legend that evil spirits will rise up in Devil's Crag. He also says that Native American artifacts have been found there and that he has them. Dr. Cleveland reveals that he is searching for the remains of a Spanish expedition that he believes reached Devil's Crag 500 years earlier. The specific group Cleveland is tracing, known as the "Diablo Brigade", split off from the main expedition and was led by a huge man named Vargas, also known as the "Diablo Giant". After dinner, Janet agrees to go on a date with Brooks after he takes Cleveland to his field laboratory.

At the laboratory, Cleveland is examining Brooks' artifacts when Janet opens a box with a small lizard inside. Brooks found it inside a rock, where it had been in a state of suspended animation for a long time. Cleveland continues examining it and the artifacts, as Indian Joe peers through a window, watching closely.

When Brooks and Janet return, Cleveland excitedly calls them inside. He pieced together broken fragments into a cross and now theorizes that the Conquistadors influenced the locals hundreds of years before. The next morning all three go to Devil's Crag, and Sheriff Parker follows them in his police car. Parker pulls up and chastises Brooks for leaving town because he knows that Devil's Crag is off limits. Cleveland produces a permit from the Commissioner of Public Lands that allows him to conduct his research. Cleveland assures Parker that they are armed and can defend themselves. Unconvinced, Sheriff Parker leaves, and the small group sets up camp.

The next day, while Brooks is examining the area, Indian Joe fires his rifle in Brooks' direction. Joe tells him that he is just hunting rabbits, but pointedly asks if they are there to rob Native American graves. Brooks assures him that they are only after Spanish artifacts, so Joe agrees to hunt elsewhere, warning Brooks that the place is evil.

Brooks returns to camp and informs Cleveland that the area is changed. He theorizes that a recent electrical storm disturbed the whole area. They begin using their metal detectors to search but without success. Janet encourages Cleveland to give up, and he agrees to stop. She uses one of the detectors and by chance detects something. The spot is excavated and a cache of Spanish artifacts, armor, weapons, and bones are found. Brooks finds a rock formation similar to the one in which the lizard was entombed and discovers the handle of a massive, still intact axe he believes belonged to the "Diablo Giant". Brooks is forced to leave because of a large electrical storm, just before the "Diablo Giant" Vargas rises from the site's detritus.

The next day, the group finds a large indentation in the ground and giant-sized armor and other artifacts. They discuss the possibility that like the lizard Vargas has been in a state of suspended animation and is still alive. Later that night, the body of the 500-year-old Vargas, revived by a lightning strike, stalks the group and eventually kills Anne Brown.

Sheriff Parker accuses and arrests Brooks for Anne's murder because a medallion (one of his excavated artifacts) was found clenched in her hand. It is later revealed that the giant Vargas is roaming the wilderness after causing another brutal death. Local men from Pine Ridge help the sheriff hunt down the giant, who is causing more damage and deaths. Brooks is eventually able to kill Vargas, forcing him to fall to a watery death from a bridge spanning a raging waterfall.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - 2023 - 336 Pages

 

August is  off to an excellent start for me with Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. From the shocking first chapter on I was magnetised by one unexpected turn of events after another.

"White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. 

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable." From the Publisher Harper and Row

Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.from the author’s website

I hope to read more of her work soon.

Mel u

The Reading Life

The Reading Life Review. - July 2024 - Future Plans and Hopes

 

The Reading Life has entered year fiveteen. I expect to pass  8,000,000 Pages views in August.

During July I posted on three short stories by Carol Shields (I am following a read along of all her stories initiated by Buried in Print).

In July for the 14th time I partipated in a wonderful event, Paris in July.

Blog Stats 

Eight of the featured writers in July are women, nine men. Only two are deceased, nine were featured for the first time.

Home Countries of July Authors

1. USA- 8

2. France - 4

3. UK - 3

4. Canada - 1

Home Countries of Visitors 

1. Hong Kong 

2. Singapore 

3.USA

4. India

5.Germany

6. Philippines 

7. Canada 

8. China

As of today our posts have been viewed 7,975,472 times

The most viewed posts were on short stories 

Future plans

I am currently reading two novels, Yellowface by R.K. Kuang and Fortunes of War-The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning. Additionally I am reading Jerusalem-The Biography of a City

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

I will continue reading short stories by Carol Shields.

I am also considering watching and posting on a few S/F films from the 1950s, all available on YouTube 

Mel u

The Reading! Life