Birdgirl: Looking to the Sky for a Better Future by Mya-Rose Craig - A Memoir- forthcoming March 28,2023

 Birdgirl: Looking to the Sky for a Better Future by Mya-Rose Craig - A Memoir- forthcoming March 28,2023

"Birdwatching has never felt like a hobby, or a pastime I can pick up and put down, but a thread running through the pattern of my life, so tightly woven in that there’s no way of pulling it free and leaving the rest of my life intact.”

Birdgirl is a very powerful deeply moving memoir by a twenty year old woman.The focus is on how a love of birdwatching, called "twitching" in England, lead her to a deep interest in conservation and climate issues. Interwoven with this is her story of growing up dealing with her mother's serious mental health problems, she was bipolar. Her mother was from Bangladesh and her father English which impacted her life in a society with biases against minorities.

Mya-Rose Craig began birdwatching at eight, starting with her father, she became obsessed with birds, seeing them, listing her sightings on birding website and becoming at 17 to be the youngest person to have seen over 5000 species of birds, half of the estimated 10,000 in the world. Her mother, a solicitor, had extreme mood swings. Growing up Mya-Rose did not understand the causes of this but she came to look for down turns which might keep her mother feeling like doing nothing all day to be as inexplicably to her up moods when her mother would work 12 hours a day, then come home and plan bird watching trips.

Each chapter begins with a description of a bird she hopes to see. I learned a lot about birds, their environments, birding lodges (for fun I followed a few lodges on Facebook)

Her family had the resources to go on lengthy birdwatching trips all over the world. They spent three months touring twitching hot spots in South America. Her mother planned the trips and Mya-Rose noticed her mother, who was also an obsessive twitcher, seemed better on trips. I learned birdwatching was a competitive pursuit as well as a community building activity.

Mia-Rose began to get noticed by British media. At 13 she was giving speeches all over England, she became involved in environmental causes along with Greta Thunburg. She was trying hard to fit in as a young teenager with her age peers. We see the struggles to find help for her mother. The mother's issues emotionally strained the father. She begins a program to get more minorities involved in birdwatching.

I am very glad to close out this year on The Reading Life with such an interesting and inspiring memoir. If Mya-Rose Craig can pack so much in just 20 years I know she will be a powerful force for the good of the earth.

 "I am a 20-year-old prominent British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, diversity activist as well as an author, speaker and broadcaster. At age 11 I started the popular blog Birdgirl, and at age 17 I became the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world" from.https://www.birdgirluk.com/

For more about her amazing accomplishments I refer you to her website.

From Amazon 

"Mya-Rose Craig, also known as Birdgirl, is a 20-year-old British-Bangladeshi birder, environmentalist, and diversity activist. She campaigns for equal access to nature, to end the climate and biodiversity loss crises, issues which she believes are intrinsically linked, while promoting Global Climate Justice. She also fights for the rights of indigenous peoples, is an Ambassador for Survival International and has previously written a book in the UK amplifying their voices.

At age fourteen she founded Black2Nature, to engage teenagers of color with nature and at seventeen she became the youngest Briton to receive an honorary Doctorate, awarded by Bristol University for this pioneering work. Also at seventeen she became the youngest person to see half the world's bird species and shared a stage with Greta Thunberg, speaking to 40,000 protestors. In September 2020 she held the world's most northerly Youth Strike, traveling with Greenpeace, for whom she is an Oceans' Ambassador, to the melting pack ice of the high Arctic."

Mel Ulm

Electra by Euripides- First Produced c. 420 B.C.E. -translated by Emily Wilson 2016- This play is included in The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides-Preface, general introduction, play introductions, and compilation copyright © 2016 by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm

 
Electra by Euripides- First Produced c. 420 B.C.E. -translated by Emily Wilson 2016- This play is included in The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides-Preface, general introduction, play introductions, and compilation copyright © 2016 by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm

An Ancient Reads Work 

CAST OF CHARACTERS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) PEASANT, husband of Electra ELECTRA, daughter of the dead king of Argos, Agamemnon, and the wife who murdered him, Clytemnestra,ORESTES, exiled brother of Electra OLD MAN, loyal servant and long-ago tutor of Agamemnon MESSENGER CLYTEMNESTRA, mother of Electra AEGISTHUS, lover of Clytemnestra and co-murderer of Agamemnon; in possession of the throne of Argos CASTOR (with POLLUX, nonspeaking role), brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra, who have become gods PYLADES, friend of Orestes (nonspeaking role) and CHORUS of women of Argos.

"Both this Electra and the one by Sophocles —perhaps written at about the same time, though neither can be securely dated— are recastings of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, and both feature realistic characters who are not particularly laudable. In Euripides’ drama, both Electra and Orestes are more interested in recovering their patrimony and their aristocratic way of life than in accomplishing the justice of Zeus. They spend more time plotting the murders than summoning Agamemnon’s ghost, a reversal of the pattern by which Aeschylus had displayed the piety of his heroes." From The introduction to Electra

The play begins with a peasant giving a lengthy speech in which he explains why Electra committed her murders and their consequences. Electra's mother has forced her to marry an old peasant farmer. She must labor, her clothes are dirty and her hair is short. Only aristocrats with slaves can have the luxury of long hair. Electra is, as her mother intended, humiliated by her circumstances. The marriage is never consummated as her husband has too much respect for her to touch her. When her brother Orestes returns they do not initially recognize each other. He assumes he is a criminal and he that she is a peasant. The children of Agamemnon are criminals and the peasant, way down on the social scale, is much more an embodiment of Greek ideals than they.

"Electra and Orestes offer horrifying descriptions of how they killed their mother in the peasant’s house. They saw her bare her breast and heard her plead with them not to kill her. Electra helped the hesitant Orestes thrust his sword through their mother’s neck. Once the deed is done, they both express regret: Electra takes pity on Clytemnestra as she lies dead, putting the clothes back on the body of “our unkind kin, the enemy we loved.”".

A sense of Wilson's translation can be seen in the explanation Orestes gives as to why he has returned.

ORESTES: Ah, Pylades! My best, most loyal friend, linked by both hospitality and blood. The only one who still respected me, stuck by me when Aegisthus made me suffer. He killed my father, with my monstrous mother. I’ve been away, a visit to the god; no one in Argos knows I’ve got back here, to pay my father’s killers death for death. Last night I went to see my father’s grave, and wept for him, and gave a lock of hair, and killed a sheep, and poured blood on the fire, in secret from the powers that be— those tyrants! And I’m not setting foot inside the walls, if anybody sees me; secondly, I’m looking for my sister, since they say she’s married now and living with a husband. We’ll team up: she will help me kill those two, and help me understand what’s going on behind the walls. just coming to the borders of the land. Two reasons: first, so I can get out fast, if anybody sees me; secondly, I’m looking for my sister, since they say she’s married now and living with a husband. We’ll team up: she will help me kill those two, and help me understand what’s going on behind the walls."

There are two other translations by Emily Wilson in the collection. I also am looking forward to reading six of her translations of Seneca as well as her highly regarded recent translation of the Odyssey.

Emily Wilson is the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities, professor of Classical Studies, and graduate chair of the Program in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. and Corpus Christi College M.Phil.) and Yale University (Ph.D.). In 2006, she was named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship. In 2019 she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2020 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Philadelphia with her three daughters, three cats, two rats, and one dog.

Follow Professor Wilson on Twitter @EmilyRCWilson. Professor Wilson frequently tweets about the Odyssey, translation, and her pets. From https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/

There are links to links to several articles by Wilson as well as several interviews on her website.

Mel Ulm

Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs -1915- reprinted in the British Library Women Writers Series - 2021 with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

 Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs - 1915- British Library Women Writers Edition-2021- with a Preface by Lucy Evans and an Afterword by Simon Thomas

"Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform".- From The British Library

Winifred Boggs - 1874 to 1931

There are currently 15 works in the British Library Women Writers Series. I am hoping to read through them. Most are fairly brief and all include author bios and expert commentaries. The Kindle Editions are under $4.00.

British Women Writers Works I have so far read

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes -1935

The Love Child by Edith Olivier - 1927

Tea is So Intoxicating by Ursula Bloom (writing as Mary Essex)- 1950

Father by Elizabeth Von Armin - 1931

The Tree of Heaven by Mary Sinclair- 1917

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn - 1943

Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs- 1915

So far Sally on the Rocks is my favourite in the series.

As the story opens Sally Lunton is in Paris, World War One has just begun. Sally's six year relationship with a young English man has just ended. She has been making a little money as a painter but not nearly enough to be comfortable. At 31 she knows she must find a husband before she gets much older. Plus she no longer feels save in Paris. She decides to return the small English town of Little Crampton, under the care of her dedicated guardian. Her parents are deceased and she has no siblings.

As in other books in the series, there is a rich busybody older woman who asserts herself in a very judgemental way into the lives of residents. "The sooner you discovered that Miss Maggie was neither to be defied nor ignored, but appeased, the better. Also that it would save time and trouble to tell her your own version of the worst. No matter how small the skeleton she pounced upon, the lady could make its bones rattle so loudly that you would be deafened". In Little Cranpton men were allowed to have a premarital adventure but a hint of this could destroy the reputation of a woman.

  Sally is advised to set her sights on Mr. Bixby, a bachelor in his forties who manages the local bank. Besides his salary he receives £3000 pounds a year from an inheritance, quite a good income. She has some competition as a widow is also after him. Mr. Bixby is smug, a bit portly and way to hung up on the advise his late mother left him about Women in a book she wrote.

 Men are already returning, broken, and traumatised from the trenches, and others were being hailed heroes merely for wearing a uniform. Mr Bixby is over the age to enlist and he basically says he is to valuable to be in the war. He seems jealous of the appeal of soldiers to women.  

Another important character enters. An officer who disobeyed the command of his superior. This leads to his entire command but for three men being killed. He is falsely branded a Coward. He is also from Little Crampton and has returned there. 

I do not want to give up much of the really quite involving plot.

One thing I was really struck by was how antiwar the novel was. Not to be hyperbolic in my companion but I recently read Persians by Euripides and I was reminded of the opening speech of the Persian messenger describing the horrible devastation inflicted on Persian soldiers forced to fight in a war meaningless to them. From the mouth of Sally:

"This war reaping the youth and manhood and strength of the world, robbing us not only of this generation, but the next, is horrible, but it still rages on. God looks down from His high Heaven, but He does not put back the sword in its scabbard. Death is horrible, and life sometimes more."

Readers now will not probably accept the treatment of alcoholism as a character weakness.

There are numerous exciting plot turns, interesting minor characters, some stuff for foodies. We know what the characters look like, how they dress and what they are hiding.  I felt I was there in Little Crampton.

I found Sally on the Rocks a delightful work

Next on my list is Chesterson Square by E. F. Young.

Mel Ulm

Clouds- A Comedy by Aristophenes-First Produced 423 B.C.E.- translated by Aaron Poochigian- 2021

 Clouds- A Comedy by Aristophenes-First Produced 423 B.C.E.- translated by Aaron Poochigian- 2021 

An Ancient Reads Work.

Aristophanes, (born c. 450 BCE—died c. 388 BCE), 

Emily Wilson's Review of Aaron Poochigian Collection of four comedies by Aristophenes- A Marvelous Introduction to the Comedies of Aristophenes - at Emilyrcwilson.com

This is the fourth comedy by Aristophenes I have so read. Prior to this I have posted on Lysistrata, his most famous work, Birds and Women of the Assembly. These works are included in Aaron Poochigan's collection.

In his introduction Poochigan says that Clouds, unlike the other three plays focuses on one person and his attempt to improve his financial situation. (But similarly to Lysistrata and Women of the Assembly, strap on dildos are a big factor. Here is my suggestion for a Dissertation- "Dildos in Classical Drama").

Characters 

Socrates, the philosopher who runs The Thinkery[9]

Strepsiades, student who joins The Thinkery

Pheidippides, his son

Chaerephon, disciple of Socrates

The Clouds, who form the chorus

Chorus Leader

Slave

Students

First Student

Wrong Argument

Right Argument

First Creditor

Second Creditor

Witness

Xanthias

As the play opens Strepsiades is in bed but he cannot sleep because he is very stressed by the debts he has run up to support son's, Pheidippides betting on horse races. Strepsiades tells the audience that his wife, from a wealthy clan, encourages the son Pheidippides in his interest in horses as it is regarded as a hobby for aristocrats. Strepsiades's creditors keep adding on interest and are now threatening to sue him which could cause him to lose all he owns.  

Strepsiades tries to get his son to enroll in an academy run by Socrates, The Thinkery, in which young men are taught to win arguments. When his spoiled son refuses he enrolls himself even though he is way older than the other students. It seems that the students are expected to allow their instructors to work them over with strepon dildos. All Strepsiades wants to do is learn how to refute the true claims of his creditors when he appears in court.

Wikipedia has a decent article laying out the plot. Strepsiades learns of the absurd doctrines taught at the school. Clouds is a savage attack on the perceived by Aristophenes decay of Athenian morality caused by Socrates.  

The Countess From Kirribilli, The Mysterious and Free-spirited Literary Sensation That Beguiled the World by Joyce Morgan-2021-419 Pages- A Biography of Elizabeth von Armin

 The Countess From Kirribilli, The Mysterious and Free-spirited Literary Sensation That Beguiled the World by Joyce Morgan-2021-419 Pages- A Biography of Elizabeth von Armin 

Born: August 31, 1866, Kirribilli, Australia

Died: February 9, 1941, Charleston, South Carolina, United States

Spouse: Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell (m. 1916–1931), Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin (m. 1891–1910)

Children: Elizabeth Reeves

Grandparents: John Beauchamp, Anne Stone

Cousin of Katherine Mansfield 

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Books by Elizabeth von Armin

Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)

The Solitary Summer (1899)

April Baby’s Book of Tunes (1900)

The Benefactress (1901)

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)

Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905)

Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907)

The Caravaners (1909)

The Pastor’s Wife (1914)

Christine (1917) (published as Alice Cholmondeley)

Christopher and Columbus (1919)

In the Mountains (1920)

Vera (1921)

The Enchanted April (1922)

Love (1925)

Introduction to Sally (1926)

Expiation (1929)

Father (1931)

The Jasmine Farm (1934)

All the Dogs of My Life (1936)

Mrs Skeffington- 1940 -selected by The Book of the Month Club

Her marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She came to despise both of her husbands. She felt liberation when the oppressive Count

 von Arnim-Schlagenthin died and after her separation from Bertrand Russell's brother she ridiculously portrayed him so harshly in a novel that he wanted to sue her until his attorney advised him that would, just make him look worse. Husbands and fathers overall come across as oppressive, boring, and just a bother, as Morgan documents.She had a three-year affair with a man twenty years her junior. They remained close even after he married.

 Her father was Henry Herron Beauchamp(1825–1907), a wealthy shipping merchant, and her mother was Weiss Lassetter (1836–1919). She had four brothers and a sister. One of her cousins was the New Zealand-born Kathleen Beauchamp, who wrote under the pen name Katherine Mansfield. When she was three years old, the family moved to England, where they lived in London but they also spent several years in Switzerland.cousin once removed of Mansfield

. Although Elizabeth was older by 22 years, she and Mansfield later corresponded, reviewed each other's works, and became close friends. Mansfield, ill with tuberculosis, Switzerland from May 1921 until January with her husband John Middleton Murry from June 1921. The house was only a 30 minutes from Arnim chalet. visited her cousin's niece often during this period. They got on well, although Mansfield considered the much wealthier Arnim to be patronizing.Mansfield satirized Arnim as the character Rosemary in a short story, "A Cup of Tea", which she wrote while in Switzerland, a wicked story indeed.

Two of her books were made into Hollywood movies, Mrs Skeffington and Enchanted April, for which she received $50,000 each (the equivalent today of just over a million dollars.)   

Morgan abundantly illustrates that Elizabeth von Armin did not have a lot of luck with men and her relationships with her children were often troubled . We see how disturbed she was by the turn of Germany to Nazism. Unlike many of the aristocracy of England she abored Hitler from the start.

Toward the end of her life she became increasingly lonely, her old friends were mostly dead. There is to be such sadness in these lines about a writer who brought joy to so many:

"Elizabeth spent Christmas Day alone. She felt desolate and cried tears she thought had long dried up. When a lizard crawled across her carpet, she sat down next to it for company." (1940)

I found Morgan's poignant account of her deep love for dogs both moving and heartbreaking. Dogs gave her the loyalty she rarely found in those she loved.

I am very glad to have read this book.

"Joyce Morgan is the author of three books: two about creative Australians and one about the discovery of the world’s oldest printed book. Her biography of artist Martin Sharp was long-listed in 2018 for the Stella Prize, Australia’s key award for female writers. Joyce has been a journalist for four decades in Australia, England and Hong Kong, specialising in Arts and Culture. A veteran traveller, Joyce also leads cultural tours to Asia and beyond." From The author’s website 

Three Sisters- A Play in Four Acts by Anton Chekhov- 1900- translated by Constance Garnett

 Three Sisters- A Play in Four Acts by Anton Chekhov- 1900- translated by Constance Garnett

I was motivated to read Chekhov's play by the chapter devoted to it in Viv Groskup's marvelous book, The Anna Karenina-Life Lessons from Russian Literature, "How to Live with the Feeling That the Grass is Always Greener: Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov".

Born: January 29, 1860, Taganrog, Russia

Died: July 15, 1904, Badenweiler, Germany

Spouse: Olga Knipper (m. 1901–1904)

Three Sisters along with The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull are considered Chekhov's best plays. The play was written for the Moscow Art Theatre and it opened on 31 January 1901, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

The three sisters, twenty something live in a provisional town but they long to move to Moscow.

Their parents are deceased, they have been left a comfortable house and enough money to have servants. The oldest sister, Olga is at 28 considered a spinster. She works as a teacher but wishes she could be a wife instead, even "to an old man". She functions as the matriarch of the family.

Marsha, the middle sister is married to a teacher who she despises for his pettiness. She has an affair. The youngest sister Irina, 20, longs for love. Their brother Andrei, whose ill-advised romance and compulsive gambling wreaks havoc on the family finances and eventually forces them out of their home. Weary of their small-town surroundings, the Prozorovs long to return to Moscow, the bustling metropolis they left eleven years ago. Unfortunately, ground down by disappointment, debt, and the oppressive ordinariness of their daily lives, they’re never able to get there. There is an army camp nearby and a number of officers visit.

Here is Viv Groskup's take on the lesson to be learned from Three Sisters. 

"The problem is, no matter how good we have it, the grass genuinely does seem greener elsewhere. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters, where all the three sisters really want in life is to get back to Moscow, scene of their childhood. Moscow represents a reaction against their present life – which they don’t want – and a promise of something better. They want Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. They say it enough times. But what they also want, crucially, is to be somewhere else other than where they are right now. Sound familiar?"

One of the factors I enjoyed in the play was that the Sisters seemed aware there was a growing demand for social change directed at ending the vast inequalities in Russian society.

"Chekhov’s brilliance lies in capturing something important about a life change that was happening at the time he was writing: people were starting to be able to affect their own lives, change their class, break out of the confines of their gender". Viv Groskup 

Les liaisons dangereuse by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos- 1782- 409 Pages- translated and edited by Douglas Parmée; introduction by David Coward- 1995- (Oxford World Classics)

 Les liaisons dangereuse by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos- 1782- 409 Pages- translated and edited by Douglas Parmée; introduction by David Coward- 1995- (Oxford World Classics)

This was the most read French novel during the 18th Century. It was condemned by the Church which served to increase reader demand.

"The lesson in happiness in Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a simple but profound one: happiness is real, not a pose. If you pretend to be something you’re not—and especially if you feign emotions you don’t have—sooner or later you will be found out. Les Misérables is a demonstration of how meaningless happiness is in the face of the suffering of others. Les Liaisons Dangereuses takes this a step further. It’s about one of the worst things any human being can do: actively and intentionally destroy the happiness of others. The one pleasure the Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont take is in dismantling any happy moment that others might be experiencing. Choderlos de Laclos shows us what he really thinks of this by giving them their comeuppance. This is a novel that leaves you feeling unsettled and unsure as to how exactly you’ve been manipulated." Ver Goskup

I added this book to my wishlist after reading Viv Groskup's chapter on it in Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature. It is an epistolary novel, a form which allows authors to make us of their characters private thoughts before the interior monologue came into usage. I was happy to see mentions of Samuel Richardson's classic epistolary work Clarrisa, 1748, in several letters.

(L'Abbé Antoine François de Prévost (1697-1763) was 

its first translator in 1751, later it was translated by Rousseau and Denis Dedirow, among others.)

Wikipedia has a decent plot summary so I will just make a few observations.

I do really hope I can watch the 1988 movie starring Glenn Close.  

It took me a bit of time to be drawn into the work. The letters are not fully candid, often aimed at manipulation of the receiver. We are drawn into a world of corruption brought about by the boredom of aristocrats. Seducing married women is a popular pastime, servants can be bribed to shield affairs from husbands. The letters are replete with sycophantic prevarication. It is an interesting challenge to slowly develop our understanding of intentions.

This is the author's only work besides a light opera and a few poems.He wrote it in six months while on leave from serving as a general in the French Army. He also is credited with inventing the modern artillery shell.

Viv Groskup sums up the power of this novel perfectly

"It is uncwhether the Choderlos de Laclos meant this novel as a provocative piece of entertainment intended as a celebration of amorality or as a political statement damning the aristocracy for their decadence and cruelty. Is it a celebration of libertinism? Or a vicious critique of it? The author’s intentions can never be known. Which I think is rather wonderful, as it means that we get to decide for ourselves. Furthermore, this boo is a perfect example of the sort of book that challenges your expectations and your morality over time. There are times when I can read (or watch) Les Liaisons Dangereuses and find it hilarious and delicious and clever. And there are times when I can come to it and think that it is a depiction of the absolute worst of humanity, so much so that it makes me want to weep forever."

Mel Ulm