restingmotion

June Books

Here it is the end of July, another month shaped by inconsistency. I have been trying to write a book post for over a week, and my fifteenth draft is possibly even worse than my first. Perhaps it is time to let go of any pretentious that I can write anything more than a straightforward list. Perhaps it is time to start yet another first draft, and then hit publish before creeping doubts seep in.

Here are the books, listed in order read,  no categories or cute stuff this month.

 

53.     Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular.  If you have read my book posts over the years, you probably know that I am crazy about Murakami and I will preorder just about any of his books.  This is the first book that has proven difficult for me, but I can also safely say it is as much the timing of the release, and the timing of my reading that caused the difficulty.  This is a series of short stories, told from the male perspective, in many ways the typical perspective of many of Murakami's protagonists, everyday, simple-appearing kind of guys who are observant and yet also isolated in some way.   As is also typical for Murakami, nothing is as simple as it seems.  As usual Murakami uses magical realism in a deeply psychological and almost allegorical way.  This book explores the inner lives of men, and Murakami makes no attempt to state that they are representative of all men, just as it is obvious that he is exploring deeply seated feelings and archetypes.  There are a three stories in which the men are so awful from a woman's perspective that female readers may have trouble reading them.  I did struggle, but I also finished each one; they are worth finishing as this author is clearly not misogynistic,  and these men are emphatically condemned. Although Murakami writes from a male perspective, and often from the perspective of rather hapless men with little understanding of their own selves, he clearly writes from the perspective that women are in charge of their own destiny, and have their own equally important and powerful lives, lives which are alas, often completely separate from, and sometimes incomprehensible to,  the inner workings of these men's emotional states. As usual for Murakami there is a lot of music in the story, and also exploration of the strangely almost invisible way the heart and soul works.  Although I struggled with the stories, mostly because I was in the middle of my own struggles with isolation, and strange interruptions in life, my own questions of meaning and relevance, many of these stories have struck with me, and I have had to read them again.  Perhaps not my favorite book of Murakami's but still worth reading and owning. 

 

54.     Lawrence Block, The Burglar in Short Order  is a series of short pieces concerning Bernie Rhodenbarr, who is certainly my favorite literary burglar.  Some of the pieces are variations on scenes in the novels, or have appeared other places.  Some were appealing, others were not. I might have preferred another novel, but this was fun and a good way to round out my collection even if it is probably of little interest to anyone but Bernie Rhodenbarr fans.

 

55.    Tayari Jones, Dispossession. This is a short story, exclusive to Audible, and it takes a little under an hour to hear the entire story.  It is about a mother reminiscing about her life and the choices she made raising her son, whom she sent away from Atlanta to a boarding school in the Northeast.  Her relationship with her son is now distant, (she has been dispossessed of him) and she struggles to understand the huge divide in their lives as she reviews her own life and the choices she has made.  I found it poignant and moving. Even though it is sad, I found it a powerful escape on a difficult day, and a reminder of the struggles we never see in other people's lives. 

 

56,     Ann Cleeves, Raven Black.  My second foray into the novels of Ann Cleeves was as rewarding as the first, this time with Raven Black, the first of the Jimmy Perez, Shetland Island series.  There is not a lot of development of Perez' character in this first novel, but there is enough that he is interesting, and although he is Fair Isle born, he also carries a sense of being an outsider, noted here primarily because of his coloring and name.  I like that this aspect of Perez character is not over-developed, and in fact the idea that Perez does not come across as being particularly egotistical.  He is, instead, an observer and a listener.  I also like the fact that Cleeves writes this novel well from different perspectives, with the different voices remaining individual and separate.  Particularly moving is seeing the events through the eyes of a lonely, confused and frightened older man, Magnus, who is seen by the community as the natural prime suspect in this murder, and in one that occurred many years earlier.   That Magnus is not the killer seemed evident to this reader early on, but Magnus' story, and the way lives are shaped by lies and fear haunts the entire community in this novel.  In fact I would say this is something Cleeves is very good at, fleshing out the way we let lies and falsehoods become facts, how we ruthlessly cling to these stories despite their costs, both to ourselves and the victims of the falsehood, simply because we prefer the supposed comfort of a lie than the perhaps more uncomfortable truth of reality.  Highly recommended and I look forward to more novels by this author.

 

57.    Ross I.S. Zbar, Floating Feathers. Ross Zbar is a physician and his memoir, Floating Feathers, the story of a horrific accident, how he survived it and recovered, despite equally horrific and inhumane treatment in the ICU, treatment that is all too common, and in fact standard.  Zbar uses his experience and his knowledge of medicine to offer insights into the often brutal ways we treat critically ill patients, how those standards evolved, and he offers suggestions for ways to make caring for the critically ill more compassionate and humane, which would lead to greater healing.

 

58 & 59.    Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. The School at the Chalet, and Jo of the Chalet School.  Elinor Brent-Dyer is the author of a rather long series of novels for young girls, beginning in the 1920s and spanning the course of 40 years, of which these are the first two.  I had not read them before, but apparently they were fairly beloved, and I might well have read them had we lived in Spain a little longer, until I was slightly older perhaps, simply because British books were more available than American ones.  Therefore I was intrigued when a friend lent me the series. The setting is charming, the author creates a pleasant bubble of a world, and the characters are believable and well developed.  But the stories barely hold together and I do not feel they have held up well.  It is not merely the extreme ethnocentrism and xenophobia, although some of these attitudes will be shocking to modern readers, but the way people are primarily described by their "ethnic" traits more than their individual characters is disturbing.  I have read other books from this era, and grew up in a time when America was far less open to diversity, but even so, at times these novels made me cringe. Also the forced jocularity and use of slang feels forced now, even though I have no idea if it actually would have at the time.  My pre-teenage self might have loved these books.  My oder self feels there are better books, even from this time period, which although perhaps still dated, offer a more timeless appeal.  I admit that although I initially enjoyed aspects of the books, I grew increasingly reluctant to finish and I dreaded the thought of picking up a third. I returned the series to its owner.

 

60.    Arianna Davis,  What Would Frida Do?  This book is billed as self-help/biography, and it does in fact mix both of these genres.  I read it hoping to attend a book group at the local art museum, which, due to chemo side effects, I missed. (the story of my life lately). Davis's goal appears to be uplifting Frida. Kahlo as a role model for today's young women on how to live life boldly despite any setbacks  that might occur, and to be true to oneself and one's own talents and gifts.  She also offers the reader a great deal of information about Frida Kahlo's life and art, as well as attempting to set Frida up as a role model for the confident modern young woman. The style was breezy and light.  In fact I initially found the book charming, perhaps a little gushy, in a girl-crush kind of way.  I had no problem with this and Davis is a good writer and I applaud her efforts in writing this book.  My problem with the book is that it did not appear to follow or adhere to a specific outline or timeline and became very repetitive, probably for this reason. The author would repeat the same anecdotes and stories, describe the same artworks in almost the same words, although granted she was trying to make different points.  Because of my chemo-induced haze, I kept thinking, "Oh I lost my place, I already read that" but this was not the case.  When I looked back, it was easy enough to locate the repetitive passages. That girl-crush sense became stronger along with a forced sense that there was just not enough material here to make the case.  I grew bored, and increasingly annoyed, especially as I would read another chapter and cry to myself that the author had just said the same thing in not so different words a few pages earlier.    I do think Ms. Davis made valid points and some of her analysis was enlightening.  And truthfully I think the book has potential.  I certainly have not written a book and admire anyone who can do so.  I agree with Arianna Davis that Frida's attitude and life have much to teach us and even though I felt that this book was rushed to press and could have used editing, I hope Ms, Davis writes more books in the future.

 

61.    Carol Culver,  A Good Day to Pie. I read one of the author's previous novels, That's Amore, in May, and found it a sweet, well written and charming romance of the old school, meaning. without steamy sex.  I understand that this is a transitional novel for the author, and although it was entertaining light reading, I did not find it flowed as well as the romance.  But I also have to admit that I am not, generally a reader of cozy mysteries and my criticisms may be completely off-base given the appeal of the genre. Although I could easily pick out the formula, the bright young woman, talented baker of pies, smart but insecure, small town environment, various interesting characters with a grudge,  it just did not seem to gel, and I felt that the author's transitions between points in the plot/formula were not as smooth as in the romance.   There was a great deal of back-circling and repetition.  Again, it got me through a rough day and the author is a talented writer so these kinks are probably worked out in future books in the series.  There are some potentially interesting story lines here, and I like the fact that Hannah's grandmother lives in a high-end nursing home, and that the author begins to explore some of the difficulties that occur in such places.  I smiled at the competition between the ladies in the bridge group.  I cannot say I would not read another on a particularly difficult day.

 

62 & 63.    Marcella Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  Two cookbooks, an older volume and a newer, updated edition.  I wrote about them here. 

 

64.    C. Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills is Gold?  I adored this book. I think it is brilliant, a brutal story told with delicate realism.  It is a grand tale of the west in the time of the gold rush, about Chineseness, the immigrant experience, and gender identity.  In some ways this book is a sweeping, old-style Western, in others it is lyrical exploration of the meaning of home and the yearning for more, something all humans share.  I like that Zhang explores difficult issues: the lives and difficulties faced by Chinese and other Oriental immigrants, discrimination, gender identity, the kind of brutality brought about by xenophobia, but she does it in a rather gentle way as compared to modern trends.  This does not make her message any less powerful.  This is the time of the gold rush, and gold is a constant here, both as a physical thing worth seeking, as a metaphor for greed and avarice, but also as a metaphor for the yearnings of human nature, the constant searching for the ideal of home, of love, of the meaning of life itself.  Just as, apparently, one can never find enough gold, we never achieve what we are searching for.  Just as Lucy thinks she has found what she was seeking and settles in, she finds that the reality and the dream do not match up; yet she stays.  And we see many characters here, both immigrant and white, rich and poor, driven to search, yet also allowing themselves to believe that they have found their dreams.  This is a novel about the important searches of life, which are not, in the end, about accumulating wealth.  The ending is, in one sense, inconclusive.  And yet I think not. We never achieve what we are searching for, we never stop yearning even though we may temporarily convince ourselves otherwise.  I find the ending both unsettling, because we tend to seek fixed happy endings in novels, and calming, in that yearning itself is such an ongoing and essential part of human nature.  For Lucy to own her wanting, to accept that it is, in and of itself, a part of her, is indeed a fine ending.

 

65.     Martha Grimes, The Man With a Load of Mischief.  I had never read Grimes before and I considered this an experimental read, as I fleshed out different types and classes of mystery.  Grimes, an American author, writes classic British detective mysteries revolving around Scotland Yard inspector Richard Jury.  She does seem to employ all the comfortable tropes that readers of the genre expect, comfortable settings, small, quaint villages, quirky characters and a sense of humor in the telling off the story, dropping steady clues to help the reader untangle the mystery, including the addition of a few red herrings.  Yet I felt that plot was not a strength here.  The identity of the murderer was obvious from the very beginning and although there were still details to work out, and a few red herrings, even most of the motive was quite clear well before the end of the novel.  Perhaps this is the point.  As I have said, I am a relatively new reader of mysteries.   I did like Melrose Plant, but again, think this is not my series.  I would be more likely to reread Christie, who is a master of plot.  The Man With a Load of Mischief was an entertaining, if not memorable, bit of fluff.

 

66.    Karin Slaughter, The Silent Wife.  Karin Slaughter's novels are nothing like the others explored here, and The Silent Wife is no exception.  This novel, the 10th in the Will Trent series, comes full circle. The first novel of the Grant County Series centers on a horrific rape and this novel opens with a prison riot and a prisoner, claiming to have been falsely convicted of that first rape, who offers to trade testimony for a chance to move to a lower security facility.    The novel masterfully interweaves the two investigations and two stories, which are essentially one complexly interwoven story.  The original investigation is weak and that weakness is explored, as is Sara Linton's complex relationships with both of the lead investigators, her deceased husband, and sheriff of Grant County, Jeffrey Tolliver, and her new love Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent.  This is a complex novel, and yes it is also a violently disturbing one at times.  

 

There are admittedly times I would prefer not to know the horrific details of the crimes perpetrated against women, but I understand Slaughter's point.  Violence against women is common, and often horrific, and as long as well deny this, we cannot stop it or change it.  Too many many girls and women are beaten and/or raped; too many men and boys do not see the issue.  The statistics are staggering. This is Slaughter's point, that violence and abuse is all too real, all too common, and although we console ourselves by saying that most of it is not "that bad" we are lying to ourselves.  The continued and ongoing trauma to the victims does not fade away.  The attitudes of the perpetrators do not soften,  Our cutlure and our world is tainted even if we do not see it, perhaps all the more so because we do not see it. I don't fault Slaughter for attempting to shock me into realizing that the world is not the bubble I would like it to be.

 

Of course the other thing I read the Will Trent series for is for Sara Linton and her relationship with Will Trent.  It is complex, concordant, and satisfying, even though in many ways on the surface, and in the eyes of other characters in the novel, it makes no sense.  Sara loved Jeffrey Tolliver, but that relationship never really worked; it was discordant.  They each loved the person they wanted the other to be, not the person they were.  Will and Sara's backgrounds were terribly different,  on at least one level, in that Sara grew up in a loving  safe family and Will grew up in a children's home and a life of abandonment and abuse.  But like so much of life, such differences are only one prism that shapes life.  Both Will and Sara are phenomenally bright, bright enough to be disconnected from others, Sara was brutally raped  and her life subsequent to that rape has changed her, and made her far stronger than she appears, a counterpoint to the way Will is far more vulnerable than he appears.   Both have a deep understanding of the evil that lies just below the surface of life.  This novel brings all this together, the relationship, the histories, the dark underbelly of violence against women in this country, the way that violence cannot be ignored even when we would prefer to put it aside and not think about it. How every act of violence, even those we write off as "minor", change us.  I am not sure where Slaughter is going next.  I fear that this is the end of Sara and Will, but I hope not.  I doubt it is the end of Slaughter's writing.

 

67.    Lucy Foley, The Guest List. Last among the mysteries, but far from least, is Lucy Foley's The Guest List, which is a stylish and fascinating "locked-room" kind of mystery.  We have a wedding on a remote island.  We are told there will be a murder.  We know who the prime suspects are and the story is told from their perspectives.  It is not difficult to deduce who will be murdered, although the actual murder is not revealed until the end, but the rest is a complexly unfolding puzzle.  I was surprised by this mystery and liked it more than I thought I would. The plotting is almost Christie-like, although this is a thoroughly modern mystery, a mystery that explores modern pop-culture, influencers, and the secrets that lie beneath the glitz.  The story unfolds in an alternating telling of "now" and "before" but the before is not always clearly delineated from the now and the different voices often overlap and become almost indistinguishable..  As the story progresses more and more inconsistencies crop up, and more odd coincidences as well, and yet the book is thoroughly satisfying, page-turning, and told well overall.  None of the characters are all that likable, but I found myself rooting for the murderer in the end.  A good read.

 

There you have it.  I got the June list out before the end of July, and hopefully next month will be better. 

Catching Up

I had every intention of writing a post before this, every intention of writing about my birthday, two weeks past now, about small and joyous celebrations with friends and family.  I planned to write a thoughtful post about outdoor concerts and history, and even an Independence Day concert and how nice it was to sit on the lawn, watching a diverse community -- ethnically, politically, economically, socially -- gather together and listen to music that celebrates the brighter side of the American experience.  In this age of pandemics and lockdowns and "me too" and "Black Lives Matter", all important, we also need to sometimes be reminded of the good things that tie us together, even when those good things are only music.  

 

Of course there is no "only" to music.  Music is basic to human experience. Just as, for all our failings, we should not belittle dreams and optimism and the hope of doing better, for these are also part of both human experience and the American experience.  Our founding fathers, our ancestors wherever they were from, were not perfect people, nor are we.  It is good sometimes to be reminded to celebrate the optimism of their hopes, of the historical optimism of our dreamers, even when we fail to live up to them.  Because it is my hope that we can try and try again.  It is easy to forget that despite all that is not right in the world, there is much that is better, and if we share our dreams, we can be better yet.

 

Geesh.  I didn't think I had that in me.

 

My goal today is actually to catch up on some finished projects, more of a "See! Look what I've done" post than a meditative, thoughtful post.  Although I can't claim that "doing" has actually been one of my goals of late, things still get done at their own slow meandering pace.  

 

 

I started this cardigan in February, before my life got turned upside down, and I finished it in early July.  I am happy with it, happy to have made it, happy at the prospect of wearing it even though at the moment, it is the last cardigan that will fit in my cardigan drawer.  Of course I will knit more cardigans, and I will probably have to let go of something along the way.  Life really is not about buying things, having things, even making things, although making, communing with both other humans and the world at large is an important part of creating a good life.  Having more doesn't make us better people, or even happier people. And my compulsion to knit is more about the making than the having more aspect of stuff, and about the joy of wearing something I made.  

 

My life, as small as it is at the moment, is actually fairly full, and fairly content, if not always pleasant, and I am suprisingly content to knit a little here and there, to take some string and turn it into something both useful and beautiful.  I am blessed to not experience the need to rush, the need to butt my head against deadlines.   What makes life good is not really about deadlines, about having or doing more.  A good life is not even really about how far we can remove ourselves from pain and hardship and tragedy, because these are the reality of existence the everyday presence of the cycle of life. Living a good life is about how we choose to cope with the life we are dealt and for each of us the choices are different.  There is always choice, even not making a choice is a choice. Every person's choices are unique to them, to their own hearts and experiences, they are not ours to judge. My choices, or at least my preferences, although I have occasionally bowed to outside pressure in terms of choices, more so when I was younger, revolve around books, the making and sharing of food, yarn and fiber.  These are my happy places. 

 

 

Two weeks ago I finished a sweater, the second of the two cardigans I had been working on.  This one is in purple cashmere.  Both the pattern, and the yarn are from L'Atelier in Redondo Beach, California.  The pattern is called Back to the Future, the yarn, Classica DK, for those of you who care about those things. I had shown you snippets, bits and pieces of the project before, and I assembled it slightly differently than usual this time, knitting and blocking the body, assembling it, then knitting the sleeves, knitting them to fit, and setting them into the finished sweater after blocking.

 

 

Of course, my summer shift does not coordinate very well with the sweater, but it is unlikely they will be worn together, at least in public.  I have worn the sweater already. Cashmere has that wonderful quality of somehow adapting to body heat cycles, and there are days during my chemo where I am simply cold no matter what the ambient temperature, although mostly the opposite is true.  I am not handling the heat of summer well.  The garden suffers and knitting thrives. Curling up  in a comfy spot, occasionally in a cashmere sweater accompanied by a soft and fluffy blanket,  with a book or more yarn is the epitome of cozy comforting self-care.

 

 

The second project I am sharing with you today was born from the first.  When I finished this cardigan I had two skeins of yarn left.  I also had one skein of the same yarn in a green-teal, from a cashmere pullover I knit in 2018, as well as a bag of color samples of the same yarn (shown above).  My initial plan had been to make a scarf using the green and the miscellaneous samples, and to turn the two skeins of purple into a hat.  But it soon became obvious that although a scarf can be knit from less than 300 yards of DK weight yarn, I couldn't wrap my head around creating said scarf with the 10 colors I had in such a way as to produce a scarf I would actually wear.  

 

 

Much knitting and ripping and reknitting ensued.  Then, after a day of weighing and calculating, I came up with a plan for a simple garter stitch scarf that would use up most of the yarn and would create a scarf of the scale I prefer.  The end result is balanced, but not quite symmetrical, which is fine with me as I have always been more interested in balance than in classic symmetry.  And there are a few subtle variations mostly due to small variations in yardage.  Although all the small samples are the same weight, they vary in yardage.  This is not surprising.  The white yarn, which is not weighted with dye, has the most yardage per gram, and the yardage varies with each color.  I wonder if someone has done a study on this, on the weight of dye as it affects the yardage on skeins.  Someone probably has, and I distinctly remember that there are certain yarns that contain significantly less yardage per gram in black than in other colors.  Not that I am going to follow up on this; it is just idle speculation on my part.

 

 

Here is the scarf in its entirety.  I am calling it by the not very creative name of "bits and bobs scarf".  I used up all but a couple of inches here and there of the yarn samples, and all but about 6 inches of the green yarn.  I was somewhat concerned that I would not have enough to finish the alternating striping at the end of the second end (following the gray) but I did.  I also used 1 1/2 skeins of the purple cashmere, leaving half a skein.  I can live with that.

 

 

I am very happy with the results and it will probably get lots of wear, or at least as much wear as I can manage, depending on the variability of Knoxville winters.  I can wear the scarf with the cardigan on many Knoxville Winter days, but it will also look lovely with my muted-plum all-weather winter coat, so that is a distinct advantage.

 

It seems interesting to me that I have knitted two cardigans and two scarves lately, after not knitting winter things for a while, especially warm winter scarves.  I am working on a third scarf now.  They suit this time and place in my life.  Just as part of living a full and relatively contented life though chemo means listening to my body and letting it claim all the rest it desires, so too the creative life revolves around listening to what my knitting muse desires, not in a mad rush to finish, but sometimes just letting the yarn run through my fingers, happily knitting a few rows, then contentedly caressing and admiring what my fingers have wrought.

 

Late June, Garden, A Sweater

I don't know how June has passed so quickly by.  It feels almost as if I missed it, or perhaps I just slept through large swaths of it.  I am over 1/3 done with chemo, next week I will be half done.  What a relief.  This particular course seemed easier than the first two, perhaps because I slept more and tried to do less, perhaps just dumb luck.  I suspect that my summer and my quest, such as it is, is to realize and find my way through the tunnel of darkness that is the dominant cultural myth of my time and come out on the other side. Or in other words to undo the shackles of the idea that doing more, constant stress, and lack of sleep are the hallmarks of a life well lived. 

In fact, I seem to let go of something each week.  But I gain things as well.  Time spent with friends.  The joy of simple meaningful work,  work simply to participate and share the benefits of this life, with myself, with the world around me, with friends.  Granted my particular bubble is mostly internally focused at the moment, but there are always cycles where we need to look inward, to brush off the accumulated dust of worldly cares and other's expectations.

The garden is progressing along at its own pace.  I have scattered a few pictures here and there, much the way they pop up in my life.  "Oh, look at this!" I might think.  The daylillies are blooming now, the later, larger, hybrids.  Still scattered about in temporary holding stations all, except for the one immediately above, which I had planned to move, but which I now think is in its perfect location already.  I love the contrast of the flower with the Japanese maple behind.   Perhaps the scale of the daylily is off, compared to the maple and the other plants.  Perhaps it is exactly that juxtaposition that I find appealing.  A reminder that what I imagine the world to be and what it actually wants to become rarely align.

I also managed to finish one sweater, and photograph it.  I can probably finish another today, but it will not be photographed today so wait for that in another post.  

This is the mixed yarn, multi-striped sweater I am calling Blueberry Season.   It is basically an unstructured cardigan as it was knit in the round and split at the armholes.  I actually tend to prefer cardigans with seams as the seams add structure, but in this case, given the widely varying weight of the yarns and the mix of colors, it was easier to knit in one piece.  The sweater itself is rather slouchy but the sleeves are more closely fitted, which is my own preference.  For one thing, I do not like floppy sleeves that get in my way, secondly, having a garment fit across the shoulders to the bust, as well as in the sleeves,  adds more than a tiny bit of silhouette to the shape, providing contrast to the loose body.  To my eye, it looks less 1980s and more 21st Century. It may be all in my head and not born out in photographs, but if the sleeves and shoulders fit, I feel sleek and modern.  Most of style and beauty is in the mind anyway, or it is so superficial as to be ephemeral and ultimately meaningless.  

Or so I tell myself.

 

So this is it right now.  I am keeping up.  I love to drink my morning coffee with the sunrise.  This morning I was watering a few areas that needed extra help following recent heat.  I am not allowed to dig at this particular stage of my treatment so any garden progress is pretty much on hold and I am learning to leave the door locked on those inner demons that might try to chime in and make me feel guilty over things not done.    

And I will leave you this photo, taken early this morning, in the horizontal light which brightens and blurs everything. Li'l bang coreopsis and Li'l Lyme Hydrangeas.  A combination that will bring me joy throughout much of the summer.  The hydrangeas are just opening, the coreopsis will move through flushes of rest and bloom, as do we all, reminding us that summer is a time not just of frantic pursuit, of outdoor adventure and accomplishment but also of languor, repose, and retreat.

 

Happy summer.

 

 

 

 

Reading in May

Did you think I had forgotten?  I still keep a list,  although I am not convinced that the May reading list reflects anything more than random unsettledness.   But first, the List:

39. Ruth. J. Gendler, The Book of Qualities.

40. Việt Thanh Nguyễn, The Committed.

41. Karin Slaughter, Unseen.

42. C.S. Wilkins, Breezy in Bandera.

43. Karin Slaughter, The Kept Woman.

44. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

45. George Gissing, The Odd Woman.

46. Lee Miller, Landscape Design Combinations.

47. Bryan Chick, The Secret Zoo.

48. Tom Robb Smith,  Child 44.

49. Karin Slaughter, The Last Widow.

50. Olga Ravn, The Employees.

51. Ann Cleeves, The Long Call.

52. Carole Grace, That's Amore.

 

Let's see, five suspense novels, three of them by Karin Slaughter.  I have been slowly, intermittently, working my way through the Sara Linton novels, and although I was beginning to waver during the end of the first series, with Will Trent I have become more engaged.  I connected with Sara Linton from the first novel, small town girl, too smart, awkward, self-doubting -- she is a character I can understand and it is for this reason that I continue to read.  The brutality of the novels doesn't really bother me.  Sara and Will are sufficiently complicated to carry me through and I always learn something, feel my time was rewarded even if that reward is simply escape into a world so completely outside my own experience.

 

As to the other two, Ann Cleeves is a new to me author who has been oft recommended.  I saw The Long Call  at the library and picked it up.  Alas it is a new series and now I have to wait months for the second book.  I have sought out some of Cleeves' previous novels.  More about that later.  Matthew Venn is a fine character with a sharp mind, the story is complex and richly woven with both intricate relationships, a great slow-burn of a story that peaks near the end of the book and was quite a bit more complicated than I expected it to be.  

 

Tom Robb Smith's Child 44 is another slow burn, but this one is dark, raw, and emotionally draining.  Unlike Slaughter, whose brutality and darkness is somehow separate from the reader, at least this reader, this novel  seeps under one's skin and explores humanity's deepest emotions in a way that is quite unsettling.  Smith accomplishes this while telling a gripping story, one I had read before.  I didn't realize this until I was in to it, but I read this years ago, when it first came out in paperback, either when George was sick, or I was packing to move, a raw and emotionally draining period in my own life.  The book was worth reading again and it managed to surprise me even on this second reading.  Leo Demidov is a fascinating character, both filled with strength and conviction as well as doubt, but perhaps those are necessary balances, each bolstering the other.  I might well read the next.

 

Intermingled with the mystery/suspense were two literary novels.  Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Committed was every bit as brilliant, poetic, sarcastic, dark, cutting and outrageously humorous as The Sympathizer, except without the fine line of hope in the face of despair that ran through the previous novel.   I loved it but it also left me feeling cold and unsettled in my bones.  Both novels are disturbing in that they cut right to the heart of who people are, the way we act, and the stories we tell ourselves to hide the truth of our lives from ourselves and each other.  In that sense these are not happy escape novels.  But they are brilliant, insightful, intelligent, witty, poetic, and incredibly humorous.  Nguyen has a way of capturing a scene, an emotion, a way of wrapping truth and a story in humor so that you don't notice you are bleeding until after you have rolled on the floor in laughter.

 

Olga Ravn's The Employeees is a completely different kind of novel and it is not an easy read, although I do think it is brilliant and proved worth the effort.  Such a short novel: science fiction; some unknown place; some unknown time.  The story does not emerge linearly.  In fact, we get a series of short interviews, sometimes reports, sometimes vignettes, sometimes almost poetry, and through the spacing of these interviews, the use of words and white space, Ravn explores what it means to be human, memory, self, life itself as some of her characters are human-born and some are made, artificial life.  But as the story progresses the lines begin to blur and the question of who we are and how we define ourselves emerges.  I found this fascinating, unsettling, but also calming in an odd sort of way.  Highly recommended for those who can work their way slowly through metaphor and vague images, who can read a poem a day in search of a unifying thread.

 

Then there were the toss-offs,  quick easy reads that I enjoyed, some more than others, at the time of reading but which are effectively completely forgettable.   Landscape Design Combinations  was the only non-fiction in this group and although it had lots of pretty pictures, I found nothing new or particularly inspiring in it --  an afternoon of garden pictures that will have no impact on my future gardens.   Of the remaining books, Eleanor Oliphant was probably the best of the lot.  It is a rather quirky novel, and the author does a good job of hinting at Eleanor's past without either revealing too much or too little.  Eleanor herself is endearing and charming, and I loved her unintentional sense of humor.  An excellent feel-good read with little long-term impact.   I don't know how The Secret Zoo ended up on my stack; the cover perhaps?  It is a children's novel, but not a good one although I initially thought the premise was interesting.  It reads much like a bad children's movie, pandering to stereotypes with shallow character development.  That said, probably my 8 year old self would have loved it.  That's Amore is a romance, given to me by a friend in a period when I was having trouble reading or settling down, and it surprised me with how good it was.  The writing is crisp, and there is wit in the dialogue despite the other tropes of the formula.  It is a bit out of date for modern tastes in this genre, sweet and romantic, with no steamy scenes, not that I am objecting.  A perfect novel for when you crave inane feel-good fun.

 

Now let's deal with George Gissing.  I did not like The Odd Woman. It reminded me of all the worst things about Victorian Literature, and there are Victorian authors I adore and whose writing withstands the passage  of time.  Not Gissing.  Of course don't tell my former college student self that I ever admitting to liking anything Victorian.  That girl thought literature stopped in 1800.  Yes, we all have our faults.   That said, there were many good things about this book.  It was filled with shocking and valuable information about the plight of women in Victorian England.  Alas for Gissing he is no Upton Sinclair and I would be surprised if this story provoked outrage, which is a shame.  I did find it interesting, upon reading this, as I noticed how many of these same biases still shape our understanding of women's worth and women's work today.   Gissing was excellent at sussing out the foibles of people of society (then and now) and their blind spots and self-delusions.  In fact, I wished I was reading an in-depth sociological study rather than a novel; that, perhaps, I could have appreciated. 

 

And what are those two remaining books? The green ones?  Those are little frivolous bits of fluff that surprised me and which I adored.   J. Ruth Gendler's The Book of Qualities is a brief book, an alphabet book of sorts, although dealing with emotions and qualities.  I found it charming, and although yes, sometimes the analogies are simple, they are also at times quite profound.  I breezed through this book once, and keep it near my mediation chair as I find it often offers a perfect diving board for reflection on those mornings when I am too scattered, too tired, to nauseated, to settle my mind.    And since I have already. said I "breezed" through The Book of Qualities, that brings up our last book, Breezy in Bandera.   Bandera is a town in the Texas Hill Country, and this novel was written by a blogger whom I have followed for a few years now, although never really commenting.  I think I found her through knitting, but she is a fabulous weaver and inspires me, even though I have not yet warped my loom.  I found the story well written (it is a romance), and I felt at home with the descriptions of place, as if I was back in familiar territory. with a character I could relate to (an introvert who loves to cook and feed people and weave).  Yeah.  My kind of story.  Make no excuses for what you love.  I am looking forward to the second book.

 

 

What Was I Thinking?

Whenever I get too deeply in my head, too deeply in my own obsessions and excesses, my too-muchness, life has a way of reminding me  to slow down.

 

 

Way back in January I said I was going to resurrect the old knitting and sewing blogs.  I had plans.  Big plans.  I should know better. I was always the kind of child whose eyes were too big for her stomach.  I still am that child.  I want to do everything, to know everything, to miss nothing, and even as I recognize that I cannot physically do that, neither can I manage it psychologically.  Another part of me wants to sit on the grass and stare at a dandelion for hours, to be lost in dreams, to play, and to let my imagination run wild while the world slips by unnoticed.  

 

For a while I managed three blogs.  For a while I didn't even manage one.  You know what?  It doesn't matter.  But what does matter is that I rediscovered something and that is sometimes my own tendency not only to overthink, but my tendency to allow my own ideas and inspirations and general mental peripatetic overdrive leap far ahead of what is actually important.  I am not a knitting person as distinct from a sewing or needlepoint or embroidery person.  I am not a gardener or a cook.  I am all those selves and more.  There is no one thing I am driven to come home and focus all my energies on, at least not consistently.  The more I try to compartmentalize myself and my interests the more confused I grow.  I need to hop from pile to pile, and sometimes I need to knock all my piles down and let them reconfigure themselves in news ways.   

 

All of this is a long way of saying that all I have energy for is one blog.  Actually, all I have interest in is one blog, one life, one me.  So sometimes, if you are not interested in x or y, I may bore you to tears.    There are days when I bore myself to tears. So be it.

 

 

So what has happened in the ten or eleven days since last I wrote?  Precious little.  Precious little is a good thing.

 

I spent two days mostly knitting, not this past weekend, but the one before that.  I finished the sleeves on the purple cashmere sweater and blocked them.  You can see them just above.  While they were blocking I finished the front edge of the sweater.  All that is waiting now is for me to seam those sleeves and attach them to the body of the sweater.  Haven't done that yet, the story of my life.  

 

That same weekend, I rounded up the remaining yarn from the multi-yarn striped cardigan I have also been working on and divvied it up into two equal parts.  I wanted to make sure that the sleeves would be identical in their stripe sequence, and that sequence already varies slightly from the body of the sweater because I ran out of two yarns.   Very little knitting has been done since, but I do hope to finish this second set of sleeves over the course of this week.  No rush.  I cannot wear either sweater until the weather cools, and yet I am itching to start something new. 

 

 

I also opened my birthday presents from 2020.  You might remember that I promised to buy myself some fermentation crocks. Smaller crocks than the giant 3 or 4 gallon crock I already own, which is too large for me to lift when empty, much less haul around when it is full of cabbage, or anything else for that matter.  Since I am not feeding an army of teenage boys, there is no reason for me to make gallons of sauerkraut at a time.  But Covid-19 also happened last year and I was not able to order the crocks I wanted from Sarah Kersten studio until May.  As you can see I went a little overboard.  Remember what I said about excess?

 

At least they arrived before this year's birthday.  Due to my reduced energy levels, it took me a day to open all the boxes and unwrap the crocks.  They are still sitting on my dining room table.  Now I have to figure out where to keep them.  I had already prepared a nice fermentation shelf downstairs in the cool basement, but if I want to actually use these crocks this summer, they need to be in the kitchen, because I don't have energy to chop and prep and haul pottery up and down the stairs.  As it is, it took me three days to clean up all the packing materials and haul it out to the recycle bin.  But I did.  And before recycle pickup.  Sometimes my joy in small accomplishments is almost too big to contain.

This past Saturday was one of those days my cardiologist warned me about, one of those days where the best option was staying in bed or perhaps lounging on the sofa.  I suppose it could have been a perfect knitting day.  Instead it was a cookbook reading day, a reminisce and dream about food day.  I have owned Marcella Hazan's first cookbook, The Classic Italian Cookbook, since 1980.  Marcella Hazan taught me about Italian food, and the book is now, 40 years later, stained and falling apart.  I knew I would need to replace it but had been dithering, loath to part with an old friend. Then I happened upon this book, a compilation of Hazan's first two cookbooks, in my local second-hand bookstore for 75 cents.  Of course I bought it.  I spent Saturday in my pajamas, wrapped in a cuddly blanket, reading both cookbooks and cross referencing the recipes to be sure that everything I cared about in the first book was included in the second. Only two recipes failed to make the cut, and I understand the rationale, even as I myself am loathe to give them up.  I am not planning on letting go of the original book anyway, at least not at this point as I have space and it holds too much sentimental value.  Needless to say, I also discovered a lot of new-to-me things I want to cook, next time my cooking hat is on anyway.  And those two recipes?  They are pretty much a part of my culinary DNA, my mental repertoire, but a back-up copy has been made.  I have forgotten things before, doubtless I will do so again.

 

Hope you are having a great week.  Today is chemo day, and another cycle begins.

 

 

Five Things Friday

Just a quick update.  A little shaky this time around, chemo #2, but not as bad as the first round. A dose reduction has helped and some acceptance that I am, and always have been, sensitive to medications, especially those that affect heart rhythms.  A bit of a boost now though hopefully means that the end of the summer will also be a bit more manageable.

 

Garden time always brings joy, and this glowing pink hydrangea peeking out from behind the Japanese maple brings me joy each and every day.  I could just sit on the lawn lost in its loveliness.  The daylilly in front of the maple is also going to bloom.  I have forgotten everything about it, its name, its color.  Too much digging, too much trauma.  It hasn't bloomed in two years, but apparently has survived and is now coming back with strength.  There is hope in that don't you think?

 

Agretti.  A new to me green vegetable, which I adore.  Simply served here with a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of lemon zest and Aleppo pepper.  This came from GirlnDug Farm, my winter vegetable indulgence.   I am going to try to grow some next spring although apparently it is tricky and a bit difficult.   But that is what makes gardening fun.  I don't want to stop supporting local farmers, and yet there is joy and satisfaction in harvesting a. bit of one's own food, of fresh peas from the garden, a fully ripe tomato, perhaps a vegetable one loves but does not find easily.  Earlier this spring I attempted to grow spigiarello, another new to me Italian green related to sprouting broccoli.  A late start and neglect resulted in a tiny yield, but perhaps next year will be better.  I had visions of sharing spigariello with all my greens-loving friends. Plagued by hopes and dreams and visions of excess, I can't help but seem to be carried away. And yet the trick seems to be not in disappointment over dreams not fulfilled, but in the joys of discovering precious new things, new growth, tiny bowls of Italian greens.

 

Ah yes! Hidden in the middle, but perhaps most important of all!  Hair.  The requisite car selfie after leaving the wig shop.  I love my new hair.  I love the silver highlights.  Admittedly I had silver highlights but not this many, and long covid hair appeared more dark, too dark for my aging paleface.  It was time for short.  And my hair, or at least my old hair, was too fine to hold this kind of off the face look no matter what I put in it.    I like the shape of my head.  I like a hat or a turban. I fully believe that there is no shame in cancer and no reason not to embrace the fact of it.  But, I also love my wig, and yes, it has brought a spark of joy.

 

The Shade Garden.  It does seem that so much of my joys revolve around moments in the garden this year and I remain grateful for that, that enough is planted that I have these peaceful vignettes, these places of escape and repose, where all is good with the world and my soul is washed clear of its troubles.  I sat in one of these chairs one morning, facing away from the hydrangeas, facing toward the vegetable garden, watching the cardinals eat my peas, battle over who got the best peas.  I have had my own good fair share, so I don't mind.  It seems there is always something new to learn, some new drama, some newly discovered peaceful release.

 

 

And then there are all the little things. Having the energy to fill the two small planters in the front yard with flowers.  A kind neighbor who brings my garbage can down to the garage from the street after trash collection.  Surprise gifts of cuddly blankets.  Family who stop by with shishito peppers just because they know I love them, love both family and the peppers in fact.  A snuggle from my grand-puppy.  All these things are a world in and of themselves.  Sometimes I think we, or at times I at least, get wrapped up in thinking about all the grand things to see, to do, but in reality, perfection is in these little things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In The Market and In The Kitchen

This past Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market. It was a lovely morning, perfect for a stroll and shopping. I tend to circumnavigate the market first, eyeing the offerings and letting my brain buzz with excitement and inspirational visions of various dishes and menus.  Then of course, to sit, and collect those thoughts.  In this case also to remind myself that I would have chemo again in a few days, and my energy levels are unpredictable at best.  I overdid it the previous week, but more about that later.

 

Despite all the wandering, I seem to purchase from the same farms again and again.  This week, suitably chastened about excess, I tried to rein in my purchases, not completely successfully. Here is my haul from this past weekend.

Not shown is a bunch of local asparagus, purchased at the local co-op, which was promptly roasted for lunch.  

 

Note the carrots.  Lots of carrots.  This is where my exuberance got the better of me. Blame it on the previous week. As my energy level was fairly high and the carrot top season short, it seemed I could justify a little, controlled, abundance.

But why the reference to the previous weekend?  Above is the Memorial Day weekend haul, and, as you can see, it is somewhat smaller in total volume, but actually higher in cooking effort required. The broccolini and raspberries were promptly consumed, as well as the Japanese turnips, which are good for both cooking and thinly slicing and eating raw. Then there was a lovely bunch of carrots, only one, and a lovely bunch (head?) of celery with gorgeous leaves.  The flavor of celery is more concentrated in the leaves and inspired me to make soup.  Celery and carrots with plentiful leaves are a seasonal treat here in Tennessee, whereas they were a much more plentiful staple when I lived in the mid-Hudson region of New York.

 

Cook I did. I had already planned to make a big pot of venison chili, and thought I could make a couple of batches of soup at the same time, packaging everything up in quart-sized vacuum-bags for future meals.  I managed to do that despite the fact that my energy was at its lowest since my first chemo, about 25%, 30% on a good day, of my normal.  Having recently inventoried the freezer, I knew there were two boxes of washed and chopped carrot greens remaining from last fall, when I was inspired to purchase them but too low on energy to actually cook.  The fresh greens plus the frozen greens yielded four quarts of soup and the fact that the frozen greens were already washed and chopped saved me a great deal of effort. It says much when chopping 4 to 8 cups of carrots greens uses up one's energy and requires a multi-hour nap for recovery.

Over the course of the three-day weekend I managed to put away 10 quarts, or roughly 20 meals. (shown above): 3 quarts of chili, 4 quarts of carrot greens soup, and 3 quarts of chicken and celery soup.  It sounds like a lot, but in my past life, at full energy, I could easily have cooked and packaged three to four times that over the course of a long weekend.  Also admittedly this was a more esoteric selection than I usually put away, as I like to keep food on hand to deliver to people in need.  This was meant for personal use.  I couldn't quite manage running two pots at once, as I needed too much rest time between work sessions. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying accomplishment. 

 

By. Monday I realized that my heart rate was consistently lower than usual, my body temperature was low, and although I could raise my pulse, I needed excessive rest time. Tuesday I ended up in the hospital where I got a few days rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions.  I was mildly nauseous after the first chemo session, but tiredness seemed to be a bigger issue than initially anticipated.  I do have a congenital heart defect, and my pulse tends to run on the low side, which I tend to ignore for the most part, always refusing to see myself as someone who is, or can do, less than anyone else.   After a little worry on the part of the internal medicine department, a lot of rest on my part, and consultation with my cardiologists and several others, we decided that my heart is strong, even if atypical, and that no intervention was needed other than rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions.  

And before I knew it, I found myself at another farmer's market.  Of course the freezer was already rather full.  But the season for carrot greens is rather short, so yes, I did indulge.  When I got home I trimmed and chopped the carrot greens and washed them in several sinkfull's of water.  A nap was undertaken during one of those washing cycles.  My guess was that the four bunches of carrots would yield approximately 4 quarts of soup, which was close.  I ended up with 4 1/2, all now happily packaged and frozen,  The local onions went into the soup, the tops have been chopped and frozen with bags of vegetables for the making of stock.  

 

The chicken stock supply has now been exhausted. Although I have bags of chicken carcasses, necks, and vegetable trimmings in the freezer, stock making will not commence for at least another week or more, either due to exhaustion or the pending nausea period that immediately follows chemo.  I am not certain that nausea and a house that smells of chicken stock are compatible forces.  Not that I need stock.  Between the cooking festival over the past two weeks, the five 2-serving moussaka's that remain in my freezer, and other soups that have been frozen periodically, as well as a selection of fish and chicken frozen in single serving portions, I should not need to do any serious cooking for some time.

As an aside, and not really related to this post, here I am all masked and turbaned, port connected and ready for chemo yesterday afternoon.  The turban helps keep the requisite mask, hearing aides, glasses, and yes earrings, in place and hopefully adds a bit of mystery.  Acceptable wigs have not yet arrived, and I remain comfortable without them but am open to experimentation.

 

All that remains to be dealt with from Saturday's haul are the actual carrots.  I am one of the odd people who prefer my carrots cooked, unless of course they are perfectly fresh young carrots such as these.  However I don't believe I can eat them all raw so I plan to make carrot puree with the rest and freeze it in 1/2 cup portions.  Carrot puree requires minimal effort, especially when the carrots are this young, fresh, and flavorful, and the puree makes a wonderful delicate sauce for use with fish, or probably chicken as well.   

 

Three Things That Make Me Smile

Yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. 

But rather than dwell on that, I shall share a few happy bits.

New red birkies. These make me inordinately happy. They make me so happy that i wonder why i thought I couldn't pull off white patent birkenstocks a few summers ago. Are they still cool? Or was white a passing fad?  Ooh the possibilities.

 

Last Friday I went to hear Tessa Lark play Michael Torke's Sky with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.  I was so hungry for live music that I went even though I did not feel well, and as much as loved hearing live music, my evening was a struggle.  I had not heard this piece before and I wished I had.  Usually I find new music exciting -- both emotionally and intellectually stimulating, but on this evening I could not connect the notes I was hearing to a pattern.  It was as if some some essential part of my wiring had temporarily shorted. By Saturday I had figured out that this was a not-unheard-of effect of the particular mix of drugs I am on at the moment.  For a person who considers reading and writing an essential part of her nature, as well as listening to music, this was difficult the most difficult aspect of chemo.   And yet, this week, restored, I have been listening to Tessa Lark playing Sky on YouTube again and again.   It is a happy piece and I am happy to have been introduced to it.

 

The Shady Patio.  It is a bit hot at mid-day for me to spend time here now, but at the waxing and waning of the day this is where you are most likely to find me.  Listening to the birds.  Perhaps doing nothing at all.

 

 

 

The Late May Garden

 I started this post 10 days ago, and here it is, still languishing.  Shall we see if I can resurrect it?  Perhaps a wander through the garden is exactly what we need.

 

On the Saturday before Mother's Day I finished planting the vegetable garden. Here is a picture taken from an upstairs window that very evening.  The next day I flew to Texas to see my mom.

It doesn't look that much different now, two weeks later.  The tomatoes and peppers are doing well, as are the eggplant.  Not everything else is up yet.  I have perhaps been remiss in watering daily during the current heat spell, but I have also given myself permission to fall down on the job as needed.  The experimental things are up, yacon for example.  The flush of green at the back, chervil, is now bronze and dying back in the heat.  It probably needs to be pulled but it has also probably self-seeded and will return, another flush of chervil gracing kitchen and garden. The fava beans (front) pods are plumping nicely.  I have been eating peas for a week or so.

I had a large handful, about a cup and half, of peas this morning with my local eggs and local bacon. The peas were steamed very briefly, just as long as it took to quickly scramble two eggs, American-style, but still just barely firm to the touch, while still tender and delicate, the way I like them.  This was actually the first relatively full breakfast I had enjoyed since my first chemotherapy on Wednesday.  Who can say no to breakfast in the soft morning light, especially in a garden?

 

I have not actually done much in the garden but enjoy it.  Put a plant in here and and there,  Add a few herbs to my salad.  I am waiting for the blueberries. 

 

While I was away the Louisiana Iris unfurled their blossoms and greeted me with their saturated colors upon my return.   They are still blooming, soft and velvety, as are the flag iris, which just don't seem to stop.

The blackberry blossoms are fading but the vines are covered in green fruit.  Mixed in with the blackberries are the polka roses:

I struggle to find a photo with both rose and blackberry blossom.  The scale of the roses dwarfs the delicate blackberry flowers.  Perhaps there will be roses when the fruit ripens.  Below is a photo of a rose for scale, one I posted on Instagram last week.

 

Yes, that is a hospital bracelet still on my wrist.  Doesn't it coordinate so nicely?  I believe I took that after coming home from my first chemotherapy session.

  

There were a couple of other photos taken before I actually started treatment, an attempt at registering a moment too quickly lost.  This peony, for example, the one nestled at the base of the little lime hydrangeas.  

This peony lives is this bed on the east side of the front yard.  You see the bed below in the morning light.  Alas the peonies are gone, but the bed is filling in nicely, and it brings me great joy.  This bed was my least favorite part of the yard when I moved in --ugly red knockout roses, red azaleas -- not me.  Now it looks like my garden.  The peony is behind the dogwood, hiding behind the nepeta now that the blossoms have fallen, the nepeta which looks almost. silvery in the horizontal light.

 

The Siberian iris which are nestled behind the cranesbill geraniums also bloomed this spring, their first bloom:

This bed has also filled in nicely and makes me smile every day.  Smiles are always good. No I haven't filled the planters yet.

I have started planting more cranesbill geraniums in front of the encore azaleas that were put in earlier in the spring, but you don't see much yet.  In fact, the leaves of this geranium are deep purple and are not really visible above the clay at the moment.  You see their tiny little tags. Named "ghost" they will have white blossoms.  Perhaps a moment of craziness, perhaps not, but is not that the joy of gardens, the indulgence of wild ideas, the hope that things will play well together?

As you can see, there is still much to be done.  Much promise ahead.  Much waiting as well and I am content with that.  There is time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Reading Update: April and Beyond

Somehow my reading plans for the year have shifted.  Here is my Summer Reading List.  I will read other books of course, but this is a more focused list, one to see me throughout the rest of the year.  I am one of those people who likes to learn as much as I can about whatever I find myself involved in, and the thought of learning about cancer is calming.  Since I cannot, at the moment, ignore cancer, I can learn as much as I can about it.

As you will see from my April list, I've already read two of these books, and yet they remain on the stack.  I actually shelved them and brought them back.  I have referred back to both books repeatedly, and both have excellent references and I also have a growing list of articles to work my way through.  Best to keep them at hand.

 

But what about April?  My reading in April was scattershot and unfocused.  Often my head wasn't in it.  Sometimes I was simply depressed, sometimes I was simply too tired.  It doesn't matter.  It seems likely that I will not reach my 120 book goal for the year, but then so what.  No one is keeping track but me, and it is a minor distraction. No groupings this month, simply fiction, and nonfiction.

30.  Jane Harper, The Survivors.

31. Danielle Girard, White Out.

32. Siddhartha Mukerjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

33. Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist

34. Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind.

35. Paulette Jiles, News of the World.

36.  Avrom Bluming, Estrogen Matters.

37. Việt Thanh Nguyễn, The Sympathizer.

38. Winifred Peck, Bewildering Cares. 

 

I started the month in need of some escapist reading and, as it turns out, The Survivors was not the best book for my state of mind.  It is beautifully written, but although it centered around a murder, it is really a slow-burn character study filled with gloom and the narrator's sense of guilt.  Given my own state of mind I found it difficult, but I stuck with it and I actually liked the ending, which pulled the story together.   I think, in a different frame of mind, I would have liked this very much as it is a very good exploration of how tragedy, as well as mindset and the assumptions and stories people tell about the tragedy, marks and changes people.  In this case a murder resurrects long buried but not dead feelings about an earlier tragedy, and the reader gets to see how those memories and fears have shaped both individuals and a town.  There are inconsistencies in the accepted version of what happened in the past, but no one really sees them because they have already formed their own narrative.  In some ways, when the truth arises, it seems like it came out of left field, except that it had been present all along, in the subtext.  I found the novel fascinating, tragic, sad, but also hopeful in some ways.

 

Still looking for some kind of escape, I next picked up Danielle Girard's White Out. It opened well, and I did finish it, but again I struggled.  I perhaps could have forgiven the rough transitions, the holes in the plot, the disparate themes that were never quite connected, had the characters felt more compelling.  But to this reader they seemed so immature and inconsistent, behaving in ways that made no sense, and the inconsistencies were never pulled together in any coherent way.  Mostly I was just constantly annoyed with the lead detective, Kylie, who struck me as self-centered, illogical and often downright stupid.  Heaven help this fictional town, but at least my annoyance, and my desire to learn what had happened to the one interesting, but still too inconsistently drawn character, Lily, drove me forward.  Kylie does not interest me, so this will not be a series I will pursue further. 

 

After two iffy attempts with fiction I leapt into Siddhartha Mukerjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, which had been sitting on my shelf for what, a decade, now?  This was the distraction I needed.  I plowed through it as if it were the most gripping novel. I read hungrily.  I jotted notes and held conversations with myself.  I could not put the book down.  Yes, there was a lot of information, yes the author has some writing tics that I found annoying, but I think the book was compelling and beautifully written with wonderful metaphors and great flow.  Perhaps this too was just me, but reading about cancer as I started my own cancer journey proved to be a very calming thing.

 

The next book on my list, Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Antiracist,  just showed up because my turn finally arrived on the county library wait list.  It is an excellent book, a well written book, a book I am glad I read.  But I wanted to like it more than I did. Maybe if I had read it sooner.  I am grateful for Kendi's argument that you are either a racist or an antiracist, and his exploration of how racist ideas sneak into our consciousness without our even realizing they are there. I like the way Kendi explores the development of his own understandings as a kind of guidebook to how we can look at ourselves, the way he tells us that just because we do not know we are racist, we are not absolved from the responsibility of rooting out our own misconceptions and hurtful ideas.  There are some issues, more than we would like in fact, and racism is a big one, in which there really is no neutral territory.  You are either upholding it or trying to tear it down.  Unfortunately, and Kendi reminds us of this, the act of tearing down always starts within.  I am either upholding a system that harms others, or I am trying to fight it.  There really is no middle ground. I write this as the Tennessee legislature is attempting to legislate what can and cannot be taught about racism and American history.  I find this morally heinous.  There is no middle ground, I am either upholding racism, or I am acting to fight it.  If one does not acknowledge one's history of failings one cannot become a better person.  We all have failings, admitting them is not the same as saying we are bad people, only that we are flawed, as are we all.  I am either a racist or an antiracist. I hope I can become the latter.

 

After Kendi I returned to fiction.  Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a fascinating novel, very low key, but the very sense of detachment that the author employs serves to emphasize the disconnect here, the disconnect between what is happening in the world and what we want to be happening, between what really is and what we see, between how we act and who we think we are.  A middle-class and fairly middle-brow white family is renting a house on Long Island for a summer vacation.  They want to pretend that this is their house, their life, if only for a moment.  But then a black couple knocks on the door in the middle of the night, claiming to be the owners, seeking refuge from a disaster as yet unfelt in this vacation world.  Everything is challenged.  The internet is out, the news is out.  When there is no information people are driven both by fear and by hope, including the irrational hope that if they just can get back to their old life all will be well.  This is not so much an apocalyptical or even post-apocalyptical novel, but a pre-appocalyptical novel.  What happens when we don't know what is happening?  How do we behave? Who do we become?  Fascinating.

 

Next I picked up News of the World, which I had read before.  It holds up well on rereading.  I watched the movie as well.  Much as I enjoyed the movie, I still prefer the book, but then I almost always do.  Jiles captures Texas as I know it and remember it in her prose, the space, the landscape, even the history and the people.  I am reminded that I intended to read The Captured after my first reading of this novel, the true story of children captured by Indians.  I still have not gotten to that, but I will even though life intervenes.  I am also reminded that the Indian problem has been a problem throughout American history, not the problem of Indians killing settlers, but the problem of settlers who, once exposed to Indian culture did not want to return to their European roots. This dates back to Plymouth Rock, to early Virginia.  What does this tell us about our own civilization, about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves?  Reading this book again, especially following Alam's novel, the difference between Captain Kidd, who is very much a realist who deals with the world and what he needs to do, and Alam's characters, self-obsessed with their own bubbles and their neediness, so self-absorbed they don't really see others clearly, is striking.  Don't know where I am going with this yet, but that thought hovers.

 

I picked up Estrogen Matters after listening to an interview with the author on Peter Attia's podcast.  I have long been interested in the topic.  I went through menopause early, and was diagnosed about the time the a report was published from the Women's Health Initiative (2002) stating that HRT was dangerous and it increased the risks of cancer, stroke, hart disease and death.  Despite the fact that I had severe symptoms and was only in my early 40s, my doctor's refused to give me HRT. They continued to refuse, even as it became evident that this was not at all what the study found, that this report came from a misinterpretation of the data and it was not vetted by the scientists undertaking the study, that the risks were exaggerated or downright wrong.  I knew this because I had a tendency to read all my husband's medical journals from cover to cover. Yet I still could not convince my doctor.  It may or may not be too late for me now, nearly 20 years later, but there is all kinds of interesting information in this book, and all kinds of reference material available for follow-up.  I love a book that makes me think, and makes me reexamine my assumptions.

 

Next, I finally read Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer.  I read it now because his next novel The Committed came up on my library queue and I wanted to read The Sympathizer first.  I was completely blown away. It is a novel that it is almost disturbing in its intelligence, in its unsparing look at the world and the foibles of humanity. And yet it is not really polemical fiction.  It is brilliant and sharp, clever and touching. The author has a way of capturing a feeling, a place, a pivotal moment with such clarity that the reader feels the emotion of the time and is connected to his or her own pivotal moments, a way of capturing the mindset of its participants, of exploring a culture, its strengths and its discontents without really preaching.  It is a very clever book, at times bitterly sarcastic, at time outrageously funny, and although it takes place in the past it is still relevant to our lives today and our future.  As you can tell, I loved this book and was primed for the next one.  I am in the middle of reading The Committed now. 

 

I actually started Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck before I picked up The Sympathizer.  I usually like these mid-twentieth century novels of women's lives, and I usually like the novels of Winifred Peck.  But I struggled to engage with this one.  I suspect that I really needed a book that took me outside of myself, a book like The Sympathizer, and Bewildering Cares was just a little too slow for my agitated and peripatetic mind.  It is the fictional journal of a week in the life of a vicar's wife during a week in 1940, the story of a middle aged woman of some wit, who loves her husband and her parish even though she is often exasperated with the petty cares and trials of life. The novel is somewhat more serious and less light-hearted than Peck's other novels, but still funny, and I did love Camilla's constant obsession with the small things, when there were big things brewing all around.  But this is so much like most of us I found it endearing.   So there you have it, I enjoyed the book even as I struggled to read it.  A bit of an oxymoron, no?  But then, when did being human actually ever really make sense?