You can't always get what you want (in a reasonable amount of time)

J. California Cooper's Life is Short But Wide is not a book I knew anything about before I found it while scrolling through my library's digital library collection.  I'm surprised by this fact; I read Life is Short but Wide soon after reading O, Pioneers! and the two felt very similar to me.  They are both about religious women struggling to make ends meet in the west.  But while Willa Cather focused on the Scandinavian immigrant experience, J. California Cooper focused on the Black American experience.  I enjoyed both authors because they gave completely different perspectives on similar experiences.  Cather's story focused on life during the earlier part of the century; Cooper starts her story at the beginning of the century and then continues it through the early part of the 21st century.

Life is Short But Wide is a pretty awesome title.  I feel like this is probably a truism from way back in the day that I was unaware of, but I love this phrase and want to use it as Aarti's Philosophical Quote on Life.  Once you get past the title, you get to the actual story.  It's one of those multi-generational sagas that starts with one generation of graduates from the school of hard-knocks and continues on over the next three generations or so.  I am never sure how to provide plot summaries of books like this, so suffice it to say that each generation of characters we follow is interesting and different, but it's very hard to keep them straight in your head.

I really enjoyed this book because I think that westward expansion and life on the frontier in American history have been completely white-washed.  Many authors ignore the Native Americans that lived there before the American settlers arrived, and many people pretend that only white settlers went west when many more people made the trek.  J. California Cooper brings that American history to life in ways that Willa Cather didn't even try to.  Here are African-Americans who are frightened of white people, and Native Americans who are normal, not spiritual alcoholics.

This fact in and of itself makes me love Cooper as an author.  Her skill with writing about people's feelings, which is hard to do without sounding very corny or lame, also really impresses me.  And a major plot point of this book is about two people who are past middle age falling in love with each other, and I think it's glorious that she makes two elderly people the subject of a romance.  So many points in Cooper's favor!  I plan to read more by her.

This book was not perfect.  It felt really preachy, really often.  There was a conversation between one female character and a younger female character that felt more like a list of To Dos from a graduation speech than anything else.  There was also a section towards the end in which one of the characters talks about Jehovah's witnesses, and tells one of his friends (and all of us readers) just why Jehovah's witnesses are the best.  And there are many comments about the way people dress now, politics, and so much more.  This would have been fine if it was done in the service of giving us more information about a character's personality and point of view, but it usually felt like Cooper's Philosophy on Life was coming out through the mouthpiece of her characters, and it got pretty annoying.  It's not that fun to read monologues about religion in a novel.  At least, not for me.

The book also took FOREVER to get to the end.  There was a lot that happened, but from at least halfway through, we know that one character, Herman, wants a family and "something that is mine, all mine."  And then there is another character whose name just so happens to be Mine.  And yet, we literally (and I do not exaggerate) spend THIRTY YEARS waiting for these two to realize they should get together.  I mean, come on.  No wonder they are practically septuagenarians by the time their romance starts!

Also annoying - there was a voiceover narrator who had zero part in the story.  This always annoys me.  What is the point of creating a narrator with a personality and a point of view on events and all the rest, and then do nothing with that character?  Not even give us her name?  I don't get it.

 I just listed a lot of things I disliked and glossed over the parts of the book I did like.  It was a somewhat odd book, but I did enjoy it, and I plan to read more by Cooper.  However, if there is more preaching about how we should all become Jehovah's Witnesses and how women should never love anyone more than they are loved themselves in her other books, then maybe I will not read a lot more by her.

Rusticating in Georgette Heyer's world

The Nonesuch holds a special place in my heart because it was the first Georgette Heyer novel I ever read and it really got me so excited about the author and kicked off my obsession with Regency England.

At this time of year, I often turn to Georgette Heyer, though I usually go to one of her mystery novels as I have not finished all of those.  (Though I have not finished all her historical novels, either.)  This time, though, I wanted light and frothy fun so I returned to The Nonesuch.

After having read this book again, I can see that it takes some inspiration from Pride & Prejudice.  A very wealthy and attractive man inherits property in a small town and comes to see what can be done with it.  The town obviously goes crazy.  Sir Waldo Hawkridge, other than having one of the most memorable names ever, is extremely eligible but has never been interested in marriage before.  Miss Ancilla Trent is a governess-companion to a beautiful, spoiled brat of a 17-year-old, and while she is very attracted to Sir Waldo, she hates the sporting set that he leads and represents.  But, of course, the two meet and hit it off and chaos ensues, as it so often does in books like this.

The main reason that The Nonesuch appealed to me as a teenager was Sir Waldo.  He was not only tall, dark, handsome and confident, but he also was just a really nice person.  He was exactly the sort of person you could trust in a crisis, and I loved that.  I think I also LOVED all the slang that Heyer used in this novel (though this time, I was a bit overwhelmed by it).

The main reason The Nonesuch was quickly replaced by other Heyer novels on my favorites list is Ancilla Trent.  The whole conceit of the "misunderstanding" between her and Sir Waldo is completely ridiculous, in my opinion, and really lowered the quality of the book for me.  Also, Ancilla must tell Sir Waldo, a gazillionaire, how very well-paid she is at least four times over the course of the novel.  That is like me telling Bill Gates that I have tons more money than is conscionable.  It got so annoying!

But in my reading this time, I had some sympathy for Ancilla.  She is a governess in a small town that is rife with gossip.  She has no woman around her that she can really trust or go to for advice.  And her experience of the world is far more limited than that of her suitor, so she has a lot of angst trying to understand if Waldo is serious about her or just using her for a light flirtation to pass the time while he rusticates.  It was easy to see how she could get overwhelmed and frightened, and I couldn't help but pity her.  It really hit home how isolated she was, and how vulnerable she would be if Sir Waldo was just playing with her.  That is something that I think I must have missed on prior readings of this novel, and it really does have a very important effect on the characters and their interactions.

And of course, a Heyer novel would not be complete without a full cast of side characters!  With the exception of one horribly spoiled and selfish person, these were a delight and so much fun.  I really enjoyed this reread!  I wish the library had more Heyer titles on audiobook because I think that would be a new, fun way to experience the books.  Perhaps that is what will finally motivate me to get an audible account :)

Tales from a one-room schoolhouse

I read The Whistling Season in the weeks leading up to my vacation to Glacier National Park.  I thought it would be fitting because the book is set in rural Montana and Glacier National Park is in Montana, too.  I think I expected something like Little House in the Big Woods, except set in Montana.

That is not at all what The Whistling Season is, though.  It's narrated by Paul Milliron, a school superintendent who is now being forced to shut down many one-room schoolhouses in the area in which he grew up.  He narrates the story of his childhood as he looks back on his childhood; Paul himself was educated in a one-room schoolhouse.

The story starts in Marias Coulee.  Paul lives there with his brothers and his widowed father.  Unable to handle the stress of raising three boys, trying to make a success of a homestead, and keeping the house, Paul's father hires a housekeeper from an advertisement in the newspaper.  Rose Llewelyn arrives with her brother, Morris, and Morris takes over teaching at the schoolhouse.  Most of the stories that Paul relates in this book are about Morris' teaching methods and the passion he brought to the job.

Ivan Doig really succeeds in bringing to life an idyllic and probably never-experienced existence.  The Millirons live in Montana in the early part of the 20th century, as the world is on the cusp of World War I, and as homesteaders invest in a sure-to-fail irrigation project.  There's no rain coming, and it's hard to get people to stay put.  None of that comes through in the novel, though.  Or it does, but is just barely hinted at, and hardly central to the story at all.

What is central to the story is the schoolhouse.  And that's really where the heart is in this book.  Doig shares the passion that teachers can bring to a classroom, the excitement they can ignite in students, and just how important and effective a good teacher can be in the lives of so many children.  It was so fun to read about Morris' lessons, the way he was inspired to bring current events into the classroom, and the humor that came through in almost every vignette.

There were other aspects of this book that just didn't make sense to me.  For example, Paul is plagued by very vivid nightmares, but I am not really sure what the point of these nightmares was in the narrative.  There's also a "mystery" that comes to light later in the story that just seemed utterly random and completely out of place to me, and was resolved in a way that I did not appreciate much at all.  And I don't understand why the story was told in flashbacks - in my opinion, it did not really add anything to the narrative.

This book took me almost a month to read.  I think it's because so few characters really came to life for me.  It seemed like no one ever came into focus long enough for me to know him, except for Paul and Morris, and I didn't feel as connected to the people as I wanted to be.  I have read and watched so much recently about American history, westward expansion, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression that I wanted all of that to come vividly to life in a novel.  That isn't quite what happened here.  But the story was mostly enjoyable, and I think if you enjoy reading about pioneer life or one-room schoolhouses, then you might enjoy this one.

The naive, lonely girl gets her man

D.E. Stevenson is an author I've wanted to read for a while now.  She was a Scottish woman who wrote in the first half of the 20th century, and I had a vague sense that she would be something like Barbara Pym, an author that I've really enjoyed.

So I was quite excited to accept The Young Clementina to review, though it did take me a while to actually get around to reading it.  But that's what vacation is for!

The Young Clementina is about Charlotte Dean, a lonely, poor librarian living in London after WWI.  Charlotte tells us her story - of an idyllic childhood in the country, falling in love with a handsome gentleman, Garth, and then finding that gentleman much changed after he returned from the war.  And then struggling through life when her true love married her younger, prettier sister instead of her.  But life doesn't end just because it doesn't work out the way you want it to, so Charlotte goes on with her life and then gets a jolt back to the past when Garth asks her to raise his daughter while he goes abroad.

Going to the beach, flying a kite, and other rites of summer

Last week, we had some beautiful days of gorgeous weather, so I decided it was the perfect time to read Tove Jansson's The Summer Book.  The only previous experience I've had with Jansson is with her book The True Deceiver, which is set in the deep of winter and has a different atmosphere entirely to this one.  Though not so different that you can't tell they are written by the same author.

I was quite excited to read The Summer Book because it seems like most people really love it.  It's more a series of short stories than one cohesive novel, all centered on a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother.  Sophia's mother passed away recently and she's taken care of by her father and grandmother on an idyllic little island.  Sophia and her grandmother spend their days together traipsing through the woods, going to the beach, flying kites and doing other lovely activities, all the while talking about life, love, death, and other important matters.

I am sorry to say that I didn't really like Sophia.  Maybe something was lost in translation but it seemed like Sophia never just talked, she was always shouting or yelling.  Granted, she's six.  So... well, she probably did scream a lot, but it got exhausting even for me to just read about it.  That said, I do think that Jansson captured Sophia brilliantly here.  I don't know many six-year-olds, but I think that Jansson probably did because the way she shows Sophia's short-term thinking, her ability to jump from one topic to another, her passions and her boredom, is just so spot on.  She doesn't make Sophia out to be some sort of angel - she really does humanize her and shows us childhood, warts and all.

I did really like Grandmother.  Similarly to how she portrayed Sophia's youthfulness so wonderfully Jansson is fantastic at conveying Grandmother's mortality.  She gets exhausted quickly but doesn't want to show it.  She has lived a long and full life that Sophia doesn't even think about.  In every story, I was vividly aware that Sophia would not have her grandmother around for many more years, and it made me so sad for her. 

I admit I did not love this book the way that I expected to.  I don't blame the book, though, which when I think about objectively, really does sound quite lovely and just the sort of book that I would really enjoy.  I love vignettes!  And stories about young learning from old and vice versa.  And as someone who loved reading about Anne Shirley, who also grew up on an idyllic island, I feel like I should really like this book, too.  But I didn't adore it as much as I expected.  I think it's one I'll keep on my shelf to read in another few years, though.  Have you ever read a book and just known that if you read it again, you would have a totally different experience of it?  That's how I felt reading this one.

So if you are looking for a book that isn't too much of a time commitment but really does deliver on lovely stories and memorable characters, then try this one out!  But only if you are in the proper frame of mind :-)

A Puppet Show Turned Crime Scene

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag is the second book in the Flavia de Luce mystery series.  Once again, I listened to this on audiobook and really enjoyed the experience, though I didn't enjoy this book as much as its predecessor.

The murder doesn't even take place until a third of the way through the book, for one thing, and it was hard to believe that an 11-year-old girl could understand all the affairs and double-dealings that led to it, so much so that she could solve the murder.  But hey, it's a fun read, and Flavia is still a glorious character with whom to spend several hours.

In this outing, Bishop's Lacey is visited by a famous TV personality, Rupert Porson, who has a children's puppet show on the BBC.  He agrees to stage two shows in town with the help of his beautiful assistant Nialla, and Flavia offers to help.  But Rupert is electrocuted during the second performance, and no one knows who did it, though many people appear to have had ample motivation.  Flavia de Luce is on the case, using her cheerful demeanor and innocent, child-like gaze to get real answers to hard questions.

Chemistry Prodigy Finds Stamps, Solves Decades-Old Murder Mystery

Sign me up as the newest member of the Flavia De Luce fan club!  I am so glad I finally got around to reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, that there are several more books in this series for me to read, and that the audiobook narrator is FANTASTIC.  That is what I'd call a win-win-win situation, my friends.

Flavia de Luce is a precocious 11-year-old in 1950 with a strong love for chemistry, particularly the chemistry of poisons.  She lives in a grand old English country house with her two older sisters, neither of whom really understand her, her father, who keeps quite aloof from everyone, and their devoted servant Dogger, from whom she's learned all sorts of important things, such as how to pick locks.  When not in her laboratory, Flavia likes to ride her trusty bike Gladys to the library and play pranks on her older sisters.

One day, a dead bird with a stamp on it shows up on Flavia's front door step.  Later that night, she sees her father arguing with a tall, red-haired man.  The next morning, the redhead is dead in the garden, and Flavia is delighted to have a mystery on her hands.

Musings: Queen Lucia

Queen Lucia is E.F. Benson's first book in the Lucia and Mapp series that chronicles the lives of the upper crust in rural England.  I really loved Benson's Mrs. Ames, so I was excited to start his most famous series.  I listened to this on audiobook from the library, but it's also available for free download in the public domain from Librivox, so I'm reviewing this over at the Project Gutenberg blog.  I hope you jump over and visit as this was a great satire that really poked fun at the trials and tribulations of the rich in England.

Musings: Understood Betsy

One of my absolute favorite things about having a Kindle is that it gives me the opportunity to read old, somewhat obscure books very easily, whereas finding them in a bookstore or library would be fairly difficult.  I am sure that not all of these books will be a hit with me, but so far I've really enjoyed these forgotten classics.

One of these books is Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  It's a children's book about 9-year-old Elizabeth Ann.  Elizabeth Ann's parents died when she was very young and she was taken in by her wealthy city relatives, Aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances, who cared for and loved her but also ensured that she led a very coddled and sheltered existence.  Thus, Elizabeth Ann is scared of practically everything, is very shy, and often cries, just to ensure that she gets her aunts' full sympathy and attention.

But one day Aunt Harriet is taken ill by scarlet fever and Elizabeth Ann must be taken care of by someone else.  She is sent to the dreaded "Putney cousins" in Vermont, and is terrified of what she will find there.  She's heard often enough that her Uncle Henry, Aunt Abigail and Aunt Ann are very backwards people who do horrible things like chores, and she has no idea what she will find in a life with them.

But Betsy finds, as you may expect, that life is very pleasant with her new-found relatives, who give her room to grow and learn and gain a great deal of self-confidence.  Really, considering the number of books with this theme, one would think that all little city girls in the Victorian era wanted to up and move to a farm somewhere to live an idyllic, happy existence of churning butter, popping corn and eating frozen maple syrup.  I thought that I would be immune to this sort of story and would end up rolling my eyes a lot, snorting with smugness and sighing with disbelief, but I DID NONE OF THOSE THINGS.  I was, in fact, completely enamored and now am very interested in learning exactly how milk becomes butter.  If I move to a quaint and lovely rural home in Vermont with a rosy-cheeked, smiling grandmother-like figure to show me the ropes, will I too gain a lot of gumption and become a self-sufficient young woman who can take charge of the apples and butter for every meal?  I think it's possible.

I could take this opportunity to talk about how farm life in the late 19th century was probably not so idyllic, but I do not want to ruin the happy place in my mind wherein the butter churns perfectly, popcorn is made on the stove and never burns and everyone loves my homemade apple sauce.  I thought this book was a lovely way to show a girl learning how to stand on her own two feet, and really bloom into (very young) adulthood by being given the opportunity to make her own decisions and learn from them.  It's a light, sweet read reminiscent of Pollyanna, Heidi and all those types, and really makes me wish that we could all have a few years living the Little House in the Big Woods lifestyle.  But alas, we cannot.  So instead, I shall continue to download books that give me the opportunity to live vicariously through other people.