Elizabeth, ever-hopeful reader, for 2024

Here's goes, one more time . . . can I get to 75? Anything is possible.

1. Rebel Without a Clue by Charles Levinsohn. Read for work. Struck a chord with me, partly because I'm about the same age as the author.

Better reads in 2024!

Happy reading in 2024, Elizabeth!

Welcome back, Elizabeth!

Happy reading in 2024!

All, many thanks!!

2. Girl One by Sara Flannery Murphy. This book, for my sci fi/fantasy book club, was described by one member as magical realism. Despite this (!), I enjoyed it quite a bit. The main character, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, discovers her mother is missing and their home partially burned. She joins with a reporter, Tom, who knew her mother to search for her. Josie is the first (Girl One) of nine miracle babies, girls born by parthenogenesis, without fathers. The girls are like clones of their mothers physically, though they sometimes diverge in personalities. They also, Josie discovers, have powers--different for each girl. She herself discovers she can lock eyes with someone and command them to obey her (they do). Another girl is a healer; one has a more destructive ability to kill by touch. After the girls were all born at a place in Vermont known as the Homestead, with a male doctor as the apparent leader of the experiment, disaster follows: a fire and two deaths, followed by the girls and their mothers scattering and mostly not in contact with each other. Josie and Tom seek out each of the mother-daughter pairs and find that her mother visited them.

By the second half of the book, secrets are being revealed, and there are a lot of twists and turns. Much of what Josie thought she knew about her past seems to have been based on lies or imagination. Did she really understand and know her mother at all? Was the doctor she revered and wanted to emulate the good man she thought he was, or was he a monster?

This is a good start to the year--one hopes more intriguing novels await me!

I will have to hunt down Girl One. That sounds fascinating!

3. Three religious tracts, read for work.

4. Persuasion by Jane Austen. I should say, first of all, that this is my favorite book by a favorite author, to give an idea of the estimation in which I hold this work. It is a felicitous experience to read it once again; to compare the reality of the original work with the filmed version (also a favorite--and I mean the one with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds). It is the story of Anne Elliot, the middle daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a vain and spendthrift baronet, father to three daughters. The eldest, Elizabeth, lives at home, as does Anne; the youngest, Mary, is married to Charles Musgrove. At the beginning of the novel, Sir Walter is forced to face the reality of his debts; he is asked to "retrench," and shudders at the thought of having to do so. He's convinced to move his household to lodging in Bath and rent his home, Kellynch Hall, to an Admiral Croft and his wife, Sophie.

Sophie, it transpires, is the sister of one Captain Frederick Wentworth, another naval man, who had courted Anne eight years previously but been rejected (on the strength of advice from her friend Lady Russell) because he was without reputation or fortune then--both of which he has now gained. In the peace following Napoleon's exile, he comes back to England and appears, by report, to be looking for a wife. When Anne goes to spend some weeks with her sister Mary, she is thrown into the society of her sister's in-laws, the Musgroves, parents of two eligible daughters, Henrietta and Louisa. Captain Wentworth becomes a favorite of theirs, and Anne discovers that he seems to think she has lost the bloom of youth--he says he should not have known her. Embarrassed and as much in love with him as she was eight years before, she watches from the sidelines, as it were, while those around her wonder which of the Musgrove sisters he prefers. When it's clear that Henrietta is committed to marrying her cousin, Charles Hayter, it seems as though Louisa will capture the Captain. But a trip to Lyme to see old naval friends of Wentworth introduces the group to Captain Harville and his wife and to Captain Benwick, who had been engaged to Captain Harville's sister, unfortunately now deceased. Benwick has taken refuge in books, and reads a great deal of rather mournful poetry; Anne suggests he leaven his poetry with some prose.

Louisa falls on the beach when jumping down from stairs there, and is taken to the Harvilles' home to recuperate. Soon after, Anne leaves Mary's home to join her family in Bath (without much enthusiasm). There she finds a formerly estranged cousin, Mr. Elliot, who now seems on the best of terms with her sister and father. He is the heir to the title and Kellynch. He appears struck by Anne and it's soon rumored that he's courting her.

Anne begins visiting a crippled former school friend, Mrs. Smith, who remains well aware of gossip in Bath society through her nurse. When Anne makes it clear that she's not interested in receiving an offer from Mr. Elliot, Mrs. Smith reveals some information about how he really feels about Anne's family, showing her a letter he had written to her late husband. (And, as a note, the book does not include the idea that the movie makes explicit, which is that he has lost the money he gained by marrying his late wife.)

Before Anne can share this information with Lady Russell, other events overtake her. The Musgroves come to Bath to buy wedding clothes for their daughters, and during a pivotal conversation between Captain Harwick and Anne, Captain Wentworth hears her impassioned defense of the hearts of women, who, without outside employment, love longer than men, even when hope is gone. His hope is revived; he leaves her a letter offering her his heart again.

Anne's character is, perhaps, Austen's finest--she is kind and helpful and cultured. She has a fine moral sense. She might be unbearable if not for the fact that she spends most of the novel suffering from her awful family, her disappointment in love, and the fear that she'll have to watch the man she loves marry someone else. Although people outside her immediate family--such as the Musgroves and Lady Russell--value her, her father and sister Elizabeth dismiss her almost entirely, and Mary leans on her as an ear for her nearly endless complaints. It is immensely satisfying to contemplate her future with Captain Wentworth!

>9 ejj1955: I, too, just finished Persuasion, my first Jane Austen, at least the first that I remember. I picked it after adding the 2022 Netflix version (Dakota Johnson as Anne) to my list there. I would be interested in your thoughts on that version, if you have seen it. (Also watched the 2007 BBC version (Sally Hawkins as Anne), which was closer to the book.)

>10 twogreys: twogreys I haven't watched the 2022 version but will seek it out this evening . . . I'm very fond of the 1995 film with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, which is pretty faithful to the book. There's a 2007 version as well. I know one version I saw--not sure which--really irritated me because at the end Captain Wentworth presents Anne with Kellynch Hall as their future home, ignoring the entail on the property that would make that impossible.

5. What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan. This book considers twenty issues in Jane Austen's novel, from what characters call each other to whether anyone has sex or how much money is enough. It's fascinating and some of what I've read will affect all my future reading of Austen's works.

Hello Elizabeth, how art thou?

>12 Owltherian: I am well! How are you?

>13 ejj1955: I'm great! Ate dinner after accidentally not eating all day- went to the park, i was very busy.

6. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass. This was our book club book this month; I'm a bit shaken after reading it. I feel kind of like an idiot--it's certainly not that I thought slavery was pleasant, or that the happy slaves at Tara in Gone with the Wind represented reality, but until reading this book I don't think I realized quite what it was like. Douglass describes beatings as being routine--for any or no reason, men or women or children would be whipped. The living conditions were abysmal--sleeping on the ground, sometimes without blankets or any warmth; insufficient food. No rest. He is adamant that Christianity as practiced in the South by slaveowners does not represent the religion at all; that those who most proclaimed themselves to be Christian were the worst slaveowners. During a brief period of kindness from an owner's wife, he was taught the beginnings of how to read; her husband forced her to stop, which possessed him with the fierce desire to learn this skill. How he became the gifted writer he did from such sketchy beginnings is a testament to the mind of this man. It's a short book, under 200 pages, but it will not be forgotten. He escaped slavery in 1845 and went on to become an author, an orator, and US minister to Haiti.

>11 ejj1955: In between two famous books, Elizabeth, that one caught my eye.

I must say that I have posed myself some of the same questions reading Ms Austen!

Have a great weekend.

Elizabeth, I've been with this group since the beginning. Please know that no one counts if you make it to 75 or not. This is a wonderful, healthy, caring group. I'm adding your recent read to my TBR pile.

All good wishes.

I haven't read anything written by Jane Austin. It's time to change that. I've added Persuasion to the ever expanding TBR list.
Your review is incredibly excellent. Thank You!!

>18 Whisper1: Wow, Linda. That is a remarkable admission. I haven't read all her books (3 out of the 6 main novels) but I am astonished you haven't read any of them - I am sure that you would love them.

Thank you all! I know that no one is criticizing me for not reaching 75 books per year--except myself. I'm wondering if I should start recording the books I start but don't finish? (E.g., The Female Quixote, aka Arabella, by Charlotte Lennox. Very amusing but after reading about a quarter of it, I'd had enough of Arabella, so went to Wikipedia for a synopsis before the Zoom discussion of it.)

Am happy to recommend Jane Austen to any discerning reader!!

7. Legacy by Paige Addams. Read for work. A fantasy novel, which I enjoyed.

8. "The Gift of the Magi," "The Cop and the Anthem," "The Last Leaf," and "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry. Should I count these? Why not . . . this was what I read for a book club discussion today. I'd read the first and the last of these before, and enjoyed them again. Of the other two, I found "The Cop and the Anthem" rather sad--about a homeless man in NYC trying to get himself sent to jail for the winter months. "The Last Leaf" was pretty affecting, about a sick woman who says she won't die while there's still one leaf on the tree she can see out her window. After she begins to mend, it's discovered that the lone leaf she is focused on was painted on the wall of the opposite building by an older artist wo lives downstairs; he does this in terrible weather and becomes sick because of it, and then dies. O. Henry is a master, mostly forgotten now, unfortunately.

9. The Man in the High Tower by Phillip K. Dick. Wow. Well, I just finished this wild ride through some alternate history. In the early 1960s, the US is living under the Nazis and the Japanese after losing WWII. Most of the book takes place on the West Coast, where the Japanese are in charge (and the use of the I Ching to make decisions is very common); it's fairly clear that the Germans and Japanese aren't really friends and view each other with a fair amount of distrust and suspicion. Dick bounces back and forth among a fair number of characters, including two German men, one masquerading as a Swede and one masquerading as an Italian. There are two American men who make unique pieces of jewelry, and the ex-wife of one of them, Juliana, who spends some time in Colorado, goes to Denver with one of the Germans (who she then kills), and then heads south to visit the title character, a man who wrote a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. She eventually finds him, though he no longer lives in the "high castle"--just in a regular ranch in a suburb. Juliana reveals that the truth is that the US and Great Britain won the war and then leaves.

I am wondering if I should watch the TV series based on this book. Will I then understand it better? I'm certainly puzzled in many ways at this point.

Hmm. No time to tarry; have the next book club book and four days to read it.

10. Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey. I read this book because it fell off my shelf, basically. Or, I should say, re-read it. Talia, a thirteen-year-old member of the border dwellers in Valdemar, is told by her father's nine wives (!) that it's time for her to marry. Horrified, she escapes to a hiding spot in the hills, then tumbles out of it when she hears hoof beats below her. She discovers one of Valdemar's Companions, pure white beings who look like horses but are rather more, choosing someone to mind-meld with who then becomes trained to be a Herald, officials of the Queen of Valdemar (Selenay). Talia determines to return the Companion, Rolan, to the Heralds, so she takes a road trip, being greeted by guards at the edges of various towns with kindness, food, clothing, but very little information. Not until she arrives at the huge city of Haven and the court does she find out that Rolan has chosen her, and she's destined to become not only a Herald by the Queen's Own, a special advisor and confidant for the queen. Additionally, she's welcomed as a possible antidote to the Queen's daughter, Elspeth, a child known as The Brat.

Talia embarks on a series of classes and training in everything from history to combat to swimming. She slowly makes friends, but finds it difficult to trust others or display emotion because of the way she was raised. A threat to her life--she's thrown into icy water--leads to her being saved and protected, and her tormenters are eventually found and exiled from court.

This is the first in a trilogy, with quite a number of other books set in Valdemar and outlying kingdoms. I'm tempted, of course, to keep reading, despite the pile of other things I'm supposed to be reading! But this was very quick, two days of reading. But I'm doubting I'll get my sci fi book club book done in that amount of time, which is what I have left for it. Oh, dear.

11. "Cut and Thirst: A Short Story" by Margaret Atwood. Well, yes, another short story. This one by the great Atwood. It begins with a group of three older academic women, who meet to discuss the potential murder of nine men. The crime of these men was done to another friend of the women, a writer who is suffering from MS. Years ago, she edited an anthology and left out one of the male writers they all knew; he encouraged the other men on their list to write negative reviews of the anthologist, whose reputation suffered for a while. After the initial discussion of murder and difficulty figuring out how to do that, the women decide something a bit less drastic is called for, so they decide to bake some pot brownies and lace them with laxative. One of the women sets forth with a pan of these items, but realizes when she arrives at the apartment that it's the wrong Stephen--the nicer one of the two on the list. And he's married. Not sure how to get out of it, she joins the couple in having the brownies, although she has one to their two (the wife) and three (the husband).

Deciding this didn't go quite as planned, the women decide to go into bookstores and turn all the offending male's books around on the shelves so they can't be found, but they find, to their surprise and pleasure, that his books are nowhere to be found in the stores, while their sick friend's books are in plentiful and well-advertised sight.

This is all good fun, although one also gets the (familiar, I'm afraid) sense of getting older and facing mortality. These women have lost friends and husbands and know they are not what they were in their youth. There's plenty of enjoyment in these years, but the consciousness of time ticking away is not always a pleasant one.

12. Trina's Journal by Brad McDonald. This was a memorial book written by a friend about his beloved late wife. About 600 pages!

13. Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Lawrence Leamer. I realized, when discussing this book with a friend, that I haven't actually read Capote's works, yet I remain fascinated by him. I've seen the series (I think it's on Netflix) based on this book, and I've seen a couple of movies based on Capote and In Cold Blood. This book chronicles Capote's intensely personal friendships with a variety of wealthy society women--attractive, well-dressed, charming, and generally married (often more than once) to older, wealthy men. Fidelity was not a feature of this world.

The women included Barbara "Babe" Paley, Gloria Guinness, Slim Keith, Pamela Harriman, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill, and Maella Agnelli (her husband was the heir to Fiat). After years of parties, cruises, dinners out, and secrets, Truman wrote an article using pseudonyms for most of the women but spilling (rather viciously) many of their secrets. He was by that time in his life so affected by drugs and alcohol and hubris that he dismissed those who warned him against these revelations, claiming that the women were too stupid to realize the work was about them. He was wrong, and he was shunned by almost everyone he'd been close to.

I'm not sure why I'm interested in these tales: I admire Truman's talent, but despite all the gloss and luxury of these women's lives, I would never want to live like they did. Few seemed happy; they tended to shuttle their children aside to cater to their husbands or lovers or society. Even those with some ability rarely had a career of any kind. It was eye-opening to read about Lee Radziwill, who used the old title of her husband, Prince Radziwill, but who was consumed with endless jealousy of her sister, Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Lee even had an affair with Onassis before he met Jackie. After Jackie divorced him and moved back to NYC (taking a serious job as an editor), Lee's daughter moved in with her.

Truman's life ended when he was visiting Joanne Carson, the ex-wife of Johnny Carson. She split up his ashes and put some in a vault in California, while some went to NYC. After her death, a quarter of them were auctioned off for $45,000. Leamer notes that Capote would have made a great story out of this denoument.

SPOILERS

14. Falling Free by Lois McMasters Bujold. This is listed as the first in the books of the Volkosigan saga, despite not having any Volkosigans in it--perhaps I'll see the connection when I continue with the series, which I certainly will. In this book, an engineer, Leo Graf, is hired to work on an orbital habitat and finds, somewhat to his surprise, that the habitat is the home to a thousand young "quaddies"--so named because they have an extra set of arms and hands in place of legs. The quaddies have no rights to speak of--they are confined to the Cay Habitat and considered the property of the company that created them. One of the young women, Claire, has become involved with Tony and had a baby, Andy. She later learns that she's supposed to be mated with another young man to have her next baby, and she rebels against this, even considering suicide. She and Tony and Andy try to escape and end up hiding on the planet below, but they are discovered. Tony is wounded and remains on the planet, while Claire is returned to the habitat and has Andy taken away from her.

As Leo teaches the quaddies about welding, they all receive the news from another quadrant that there's been an artificial gravity device created--one that will make the quaddies unique suitability to zero gravity unprofitable. Leo soon finds out that the plan is to take the quaddies down to the planet below the habitat and, basically, leave them there with the basics for survival (in an environment they are neither used to nor suitable for). But what can be done?

Leo eventually realizes that the only hope for the quaddies is to take them far from the reach of the company and local governments, and he conceives of the bold plan to modify the habitat for long-distance flight and flee with the quaddies. He enlists Silver, one of the women, in his plan, and they begin to figure out all the pieces--how to steal a ship for the power, how to modify the habitat, how to get rid of the other humans with legs on the station. Leo isn't the only person with legs who wants to stay with the quaddies: there's a doctor (as long as his wife can be collected from the planet below, along with Tony) and the woman who runs the creche and takes care of the littlest quaddies.

Trying his best to stop Leo and the quaddies is Van Atta, formerly the head of the quaddy project and an old nemesis of Leo. Van Atta is preparing to fire on the habitat-ship when they are preparing to jump . . .