Book Thirty-Nine - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Part One

I knew nothing about this book when I started reading it, and that's how I like it. No preconceived notions! The first hundred pages or so were witty and fun. I'm about halfway through and it hasn't been so much fun lately, but I'm still liking it.

Book Thirty-Eight - The Shell Seekers - Part Two

Rosamunde Pilcher
From The 50 Best Hotels in Cornwall

I actually finished this book some time ago but it has taken a while for me to get back to my blog. This is the story of a family, of how it came to be, how the members of that family hurt each other and loved each other. It’s a story of difficulties during WWII, of living in Cornwall, England (a place I have visited and loved!), of sacrifice and selfishness, of love and loyalty, of birth and of death. It’s a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.

There was something there, veneered by wariness.

What a great line!

One character reminded me of a few people I’ve known – if you gave him a million dollars he would complain. And he’d ask for another million within thirty days. Alas, these people will never be happy, but then happiness is not what they seek. Gotta have the stuff: the car, the house, the vacation home, all the stuff to fill both houses, etc. Now, I could be wrong, but I believe if money could buy happiness the Betty Ford clinic would be empty.

It was going to be all right. There were to be no histrionics. For this deliverance [character’s name] was deeply grateful, but she felt sad too, because it is always sad when someone you have known as a child finally grows up, and you know that they will never be truly young again.

Yes! Such mixed emotions. There is just something about being a child and believing in magic – believing anything truly is possible. What do we lose when we stop believing in the tooth fairy (for instance)? It’s that whole growing up thing – parents have children so they will leave one day –that’s the eventual goal, right? To rear children who will become happy, responsible, independent adults? The last two years I’ve watched the Decorah Eagles, a pair followed by cameras in their cottonwood tree in Decorah, Iowa.The Raptor Resource Project put up the cameras and people all over the world watched on Ustream. This year the pair decided to move -- even though the old nest had an open floor plan! According to the experts, eagles really like to build nests. Needless to say, there are no cameras in the new nest so we won’t be able to watch them this year. Seeing these eagles for the past two years was such a gift. We saw the Mama lay the eggs, watched as both Mom and Dad incubated their babies (and shimmied to close any open air holes between the nest and the eggs). And then, one by one, the babies hatched. They struggled out of their shells and entered this world. We watched Mom and Dad feed them and teach them. And we watched and watched and eventually each little eaglet flew from the nest for the very first time. And it’s the poignancy of those moments that this character felt when she knew that the child would never be truly young again.

A ring was the accepted sign of infinity, eternity. If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, she knew all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. It was a question which, from time to time, caused her some anxiety and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste. But now, it seemed, the question had become irrelevant, and so the answer, whatever it was, was no longer of any importance.

This made me cry when I read it and again as I just wrote it down here. It is always poignant reading the story of someone's life - you dip into the past for a while and then head back to the present. You go back and forth and learn why the person is who they have become. And the person seems to want to tie up loose ends from the past. They know they've reached the last phase of their lives and as they look back, it's all very emotional to me. I don’t want those characters I love to die, just as I don’t want the people I love in my life to die. And yet they do. We all will. Reading a book like this brings back all of those feelings. It makes me think. And that can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Book Thirty-Eight - The Shell Seekers - Part One

What is a basket chair? This book, published in 1987 and set in England, mentions basket chairs a lot. I Google-imaged but am confused!

And OMG I am SO loving this book! I don't want to stop reading for pesky things like eating and working and sleeping. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

Book Thirty-Seven - The Alchemist

Paulo Cohelo

I took a break from The Shell Seekers (which I'm thoroughly enjoying) to read this month's book club selection, The Alchemist. Oh my goodness, Mr Cohelo, you sure know how to tell a story.

I read it in two days. I do love a quest, and the protagonist of this book is on quite the quest. He's an Andalusian shepherd boy and I experienced his journey, his highs and lows, his passions, and his joy along with him. He's way more mature than I am, though. He has a sense of self that never seems inflated; he takes a noble journey without setting out to change the world. All of it and none of it is about him.

We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

The Alchemist is a very spiritual book but it is never preachy - or so it seems to me. It might be interpreted differently by one who has rejected religion and/or  spirituality of any sort. Yet the questions are universal and so I think even someone who disagrees with the main premise (see above quotation) will find merit in the boy's quest. 

The author has a video on Amazon about this book - he enjoys reading the reviews!

Book Thirty-Six - Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Well I got through the first part anyway. The first part is called "The Maid" and since it was written in the Victorian era, you just know that title doesn't have anything to do with scrubbing floors. Tess was so wishy washy! She was like a freshly caught fish flopping around in a boat, turning first this way and then that. Not that I'm any great fisherman, mind. I like the sitting in the boat part and the casting part, but I believe that the killing and the cleaning are best left to professionals. Anyway, Tess was sort of like that fish out of water, not fitting into her new situation. There are so many things she could have done to make it better! I know she was young and conflicted even before she got there, but she recognized a snake and didn't move away from it. She should have allowed the snake to inhabit his own territory while she went the other way. (Got kinda an animal thing going on here, don't I?)

I didn't feel like I got enough description from Hardy. There was a brief mention about Tess' living quarters when she moved but what was it like? What did it look like? Was it comfortable or simply tolerable? Reading Tess felt like an assignment, as if someone told me to elaborate on the symbolism. Symbolism schymbolism, why didn't she tell that woman the truth? It couldn't all have been about her "place" in society. Tess was educated. She must have learned about other people and other ways of life when she was in school.

I won't be finishing Tess, invoking rule #2.

The next book I'm reading is The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. It was published in 1987 and all I know is that it is about a family. I hope it's something I can love! The time before I start a book is always filled with promise.

I chose The Shell Seekers because it jumped off the shelf at me. I'm speaking literally: as much as a book can talk, this one said, "Read ME!" as it fell to the floor in front of my desk. For several months it's been sitting on the same shelf as a dozen other to be read books and yesterday it apparently decided it was tired of waiting. I just love it when a book speaks to me.

Who's With Me?

I'm considering reading Gone With The Wind next. Anyone want to join me??? Should be a delightful 1472 pages, and I hope to discover what was appealing about Ashley. Oops, spoiler alert!

Middlemarch

George Eliot

Finished. Finally.

It isn't as though I hated it. It got better toward the end but it never got really good. I should have trusted my earlier instinct about it. Finishing it seemed like a chore and that is not why I read.

One quote I enjoyed -

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Amen to that. And Amen to Middlemarch!