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kateh

Lost in the Stacks

I read widely and compulsively and my fancies are ever changing. My love of reading, however, is no mere fancy. 

Currently reading

The Stress of Her Regard
Tim Powers
Progress: 480/960 minutes
Grass for His Pillow - Lian Hearn A fine follow-up to Across the Nightingale Floor, this historical romance set in medieval Japan continues the saga of Lady Shirakawa Kaede and Otori Takeo. I docked a star because until Kaede stops letting the menfolk boss her around and starts raising an army to defend her inheritance, the first half of this book is BORING. The second half is worth the slog, for the political machinations and romance of the second half. Looking forward to the next installment.
The Circle of Reason - Amitav Ghosh I tried and tried and could not finish this. I will try reading something else by Amitav Ghosh; this had a great plot but was otherwise absolutely impenetrable.
Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss, and Surviving the Titanic - Elizabeth Kaye Ashort retelling of the sinking of the Titanic, told from the perspectives of the passengers who made it into lifeboat no. 8. While the story was told with flare - I teared up twice - this is another kindle single that really should have been turned into a full length book. It was too short on detail.

Recommended, though, for anyone looking for a good, short read.
The Fearless Mrs. Goodwin - Elizabeth Mitchell

Isabella Goodwin was a thirty-nine year old widowed mother of four and a police matron in 1912 when she was sent undercover as a maid at a boardinghouse in the tenderloin district to root out the whereabouts of Eddie 'the Boob' - a professional boxer and their - from his 'tea dancer' girlfriend Swede Annie, and bring him in, if she could, for the worst bank heist in New York's history. The Fearless Mrs. Goodwin relates how she succeeded in doing just that. This was my first kindle single experience and on the whole it was fine. The story of mrs. Goodwin, the first female detective in the new York city police department would have been better as a full length book. While there was clearly a lot of research put into this article, I feel like there was a lot of information missing - I wanted to know more about corruption the police department and more details about mrs goodwin's assignments, I wish that more information about the trial of the thieves who perpetrated this heist was available. Also, the end of the article where the outcome of the trial is described came as a bit of a shock and was treated as an aside. The writing lacked the panache necessary to police and detective stories and read like an eighth grader's book report. Not a terrible way to kill half an hour, but could have been much improved upon.

The French Riviera: A Cultural History

The French Riviera: A Cultural History - Julian Hale This is an excellent overview of the cultural attractions of the French Riviera, from the Roman ruins to famous film sets of the 1960s. Hale points out the important architecture, gardens, museums and works of art and is judgmental with out being cynical, which I much appreciate in a travel writer. This book will be of particular interest to those seeking information on the lives and works of, or anecdotes about, expats and artists in the Riviera in the inter- and post-war years; the work of artists and writers like Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, the Scott Fitzgeralds, Rebecca West, Leger and others. In this it differs markedly from Robert Kanigel's High Season, which focuses most of its cultural reporting on the 19th century. There is very little over-lap between the two books. There is an excellent chapter on the collector- and show-gardens of the Riviera, as well as a great chapter on the attractions of the villages perches - the hill towns. Not a traditional tour guide like Frommer's or Rick Steve's, Hale's The French Riviera:A Cultural history is none-the-less an essential travel guide for any tourist or journeyman/woman headed for the South of France.

The Bay of Angels

The Bay of Angels - Anita Brookner

The Optimist's Daughter meets The Wings of the Dove, set against the glaring light of the Med, The Bay of Angels made me feel horribly sad. One of the main characters spends half the book dying, too young, I might add. This was not the book that I wanted to read about Nice. I wanted a romance and some adventure and a name-dropped cafe or bar I could go to and have a drink at like Zoe Cunningham did in The Bay of Angels, but neither Zoe nor her author were helping me out there. The Wings of the Dove, though also very sad One of the main characters spends half the book dying, too young, I might add. and not what I wanted to read right before going to Venice, at the very least gave me Florian's on the Piazza San Marco.



Cafe Florian - not open at 8am on a Sunday.

I got to sit at the bar there and have a drink, just like Merton Denshler (and Henry James, and any other male writerly type who passed through Venice in the past 300 years).



A Campari and Lemon Soda. Just like Merton Denshler

This was one of the more expensive 'been there, had a drink like Person X' experiences I've had in my life, but I must recommend it: the waiters are all impeccably dressed and polite, the atmosphere is warm and inviting and cozy, the people watching is top notch, and they have the BEST bar snacks - and you get them all to yourself!



Biscotti, peanuts AND Potato Chips! The peanuts come with a spoon! Those pesky American Exchange students sitting behind me have to get their own!

So, The Bay of Angels disappointed in regard to fresh ideas for activities in the South of France, and the only landmark of note is St. Rita's in the Vieux Ville.



description.

A lot of funerals happen there. (It didn't help my mood today when, just after finishing a section of this novel where a funeral is held at St. Rita of Cascia in Nice, Handsome Boyfriend and I drove past the Shrine of St. Rita of Cascia in Philadelphia and a funeral procession was exiting the church. It was a very Stranger than Fiction moment.) Which is all to say, if you are planning a trip to the Riviera and want to read a few good novels set there to gear you up for the trip, maybe leave this one at the bottom of the pile.



However, I can't believe that I've never read Brookner before; the writing here is top notch, not a clink or clank or cliche to be found. She is the real deal and I have every intention of devouring the rest of her oeuvre. (Bay of Angels was her 22nd(!!?!) novel!) Bay of Angels is also a great, albeit small, novel. A young woman, Zoe Cunningham reads fairy tales as a child, and believes in them. She and her mother, who are 'independent' (i.e., don't have to work), live in a modest flat in London until Zoe, seventeen and supplanting The Blue Fairy Book with the Greek Myths of gods intervening in human life, and her mother meet Simon Gould, wealthy widower, who marries Mrs. Cunningham and whisks her off to his home in the South of France, buying Zoe her own flat in London and setting each of them up with a private expense account. Zoe's 'theory' - that fairy tales and/or deus ex machinae will come true as long as you believe - is proven correct. Then everything goes to hell.



In the great literary tradition of the city-as-character, Nice plays the role of fairy godmother or protector goddess in Zoe's fairy-tale gone wrong. It is a moving, multi-layered story about love and fate and family that asks and seeks to answer how much control we have over our lives. The twenty-year-old Zoe reminded me so much of myself at that age, too.



Recommended with caveats.
From the Umberplatzen - Susan Tepper From full stop: "This photographic language conjures the cliche “a picture is worth a thousand words.” And herein is our argument, our little thesis. Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, but a thousand words is worth exactly that: a picture. A scene. Something developed just enough to look at, but no more. An appearance. A superfice, face, or front. A phaneron."
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton I read a great interview with Daniel Mendelsohn on The Browser a couple of weeks ago on the subject of 'Updating the Classics.' A quote from that interview was immediately brought to mind when reading The Forgotten Garden:

A.S. Byatt's Possession and The Children's Book cover much of the same ground (including the fairy tales) and are much better written than TFG, and don't require condiments, and if you haven't read either of those novels you should before you dive into this. You will be well rewarded for your effort.


The story is this: In modern times, Cassandra Andrews, Brisbane native, widow, sometime antiques dealer, is left a cottage in Cornwall (my favorite place I've never been to) by her grandmother. In the 1970s, Nell O'Connor uncovers a mystery at her father's funeral and flies to England to investigate, and in the 1890s, a young street urchin discovers her aristocratic roots and comes to wish she hadn't. It is all very mysterious and the details are given out all at the right time and there was a nice, if expected twist at the end, and all of these women come off authentically and you will root for them.

Life was missing, though. Each of the three main characters, Eliza, Nell, Cassandra, floated as if in a cloud. None were allowed intimate friendships or relationships, none of them allowed a career path or calling or vocation that they could follow with success. Each had lost, under tragic circumstances, their lovers and friends and any hope that they had of families and none were allowed to follow any other dreams. There is some mention, at one point, of a family curse, but it seems an add-on to make a good story - it is never followed up on. The thought of an entire family of women without any vocation or friendships, whose lovers and closest friends are doomed to be taken from them in tragic and awful ways was depressing, unexplained and unbelievable.

All of the men in the book get killed off in one way or another, or are just monstrous half-humans, but, I thought early on, this could just be an entrance point to introducing some lady-loving-lady relationships.But no. This novel is completely sexless also, and what's worse, seems to suffer from complete pleasure anxiety. No one enjoys intimacy, and should they, be in physical or emotional, it spells the doom of their relationship. Child-bearing and rearing (and losing) is a major theme in this family saga but the processes of having children and building families is filled with dread and destruction and dashed hopes(and no character should dare conceive out of wedlock - she will lose her baby. Though bearing children in wedlock is no guarantee, either.)

Cornwall (my favorite place I've never been) is always so atmospheric in novels - so dark and dreary and dare I say it, pregnant with suspense, but here, it seems even the atmosphere of Cornwall has miscarried, and what is left is listless and dull by the emptiness of our characters lives. Though, in the end, at least one of the women is able to find some hope, it comes to late to save this novel.

I will probably read another Kate Morton novel (the writing is very pretty and also mysterious) when I have a week in a beach chair and some Mary Elizabeth Braddon, whose melodramatic Victorian mysteries are perfect for the beach, in the bull pen.
The King of Kahel - Tierno Monénembo, Nicholas Elliott

I received Le Mot Juste: A Dictionary of Classical and Foreign Words and Phrasesfor my tenth birthday, and though I am unable to locate it in the stacks at the moment, (though I suspect that it is somewhere in the second or third row of books on the shelf in the foyer) i distinctly remember an entry for a word in Javanese (or Zulu?) that translates roughly into English as "the act of stealing everything a man owns by borrowing each of his possessions one by one and not returning them". This word, if I were willing, in this sweltering heat, to move away from my spot in front of the fan to get up and look for the aforementioned book, would make a fitting description in this review for precisely what happened to the kingdom of Fouta Djallon and her princes and almami-spiritual ledger and ruler of the entire kingdom- but also what ultimately happens to Aime Olivier Viscount de Sanderval in his doomed pursuit of the Kingdom of Kahel.

The real de Sanderval was:" the spitting image of the 19th century. . .Beginning with his education and temperament, everything had prepared him to live for the passions of his time - ideas, science, and the great expeditions. He had been molded with the mind of a pioneer in the century of pioneers." His expeditions into the interior of africa produced the maps necessary for the french to begin staking their claim there. Tierno Monenembo has written a romance of this brave and idiosyncratic man, whose religious, scientific and cultural theories made him both an object of interest and scorn in French society. In The King of Kahel, Aime dreams of a kingdom of his own in Africa, and in his 42 year, heads to Africa to conquer one. The year is 1880, and he is headed to western Africa to build a railroad. De sandervals approach to colonization is one of friendship, and while the French government ignores his exploits, he is steadily building up the political loyalties and friendships that he needs to install himself as king of the provence of Kahel and get the treaties that he needs to build a railroad from the coast to the jungle. He sweet talks the Fula ledge dears, making them his friends and partners in crime. His dream of Afircan riches get closer and closer, as he manipulates the warring princes Into giving him land and title.

Once he finds success, the french government begins to show Interest in his conquests, and just as Sanderval has carved out a little kingdom - a trading post here, a railway concession there, so the French begin to take sandervals land- here a military garrison, there a colonial governors mansion. eventually, his dreams.


TKOK is a starts off as a wonderful romantic adventure and was an enjoyable read, though not a replacement or a peer of Things Fall Apart.


An aside, TKOK was the first complete novel that I read entirely in e-book form, and I must say, the experience is vastly different from reading a book printed on paper. The highlighting and search functions made the 'wait-who was that guy again?' question answerable in a seconds, and the recall of interesting quotes immediate. Something is lost, however, when a character is tracking hares through 'the rocky Mediterranean inlets' of Cassis, and with a quick highlight and a a featherlgiht touch of a screen, there are images of the rocky Mediterranean inlets near Cassis. They are beautiful, but that immediacy and unalterable fact of their appearance robs the reader of an opportunity to imagine what they might look like. I thought to turn it off, but once I started accessing the Wikipedia entries at my fingertips I couldn't stop. What is a kepi? Who was Samori Toure? The answers were right there. I barely needed to think. I got bored. I haven't given up on the dead trees yet.

Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera

Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera - This is a nice, short history of Queen Victoria on vacation, which earned its fourth star in the last chapter with a fascinating bit of British colonial history and the illumination of how important the Queen's leisure was to international relations.

This work suffers from the same problems that plague most histories of the French Riviera. Never a seat of political intrigue and relatively safe from military campaigns, there isn't much history to write about. It has a great climate, but was hard to get to until engineering advances (and the order of Napoleon) brought the Corniche Road and, later, the railroad. Nice was a popular winter resort for consumptives fleeing cold northern climes, until people got the bright idea to vacation there. In a moment of economic uncertainty, someone built the Promenade des Anglais (that is, the Englishmen's walking path) which brought jobs and more Englishmen. Royalty and hanger's on started coming down to walk, gamble, and see each other's flower gardens.

So Victoria did what everyone else did when they came to the Riviera: next to nothing. She spent nearly a year of her life, in six week segments, visiting Cannes, Hyeres and Nice. She visited the Riviera more than any other vacation spot outside of England. She visited Churches and was an engaged participant in the yearly Battle of the Flowers.

Nelson's short history is a lovely work of insight into the vacation habits of the elderly Victoria - rote knowledge of the Royal families of Europe helps keep the characters sorted, but there is a helpful 'Dramatis Personae' in the back if the reader needs some help.
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead - Sara Gran Claire DeWitt is an excellent, if fanciful, new police procedural from Sara Gran, set in New Orleans, and Claire DeWitt, Private Eye, is a fantastic new character on the detective-fiction scene.

New Orleans, 2005. Hurricane Katrina has devastated the ninth ward and its surroundings. A D.A., last seen days before the hurricane, is missing and his nephew and heir needs help. He calls 'the most famous p.i. in the entire world' (nearly a direct quote), Claire DeWitt.

CDATCOTD is VERY V.I.Warshawski in that the city is a character unto itself in this novel - a deeply scarred and frightened character that doesn't easily lend a hand or a welcome. But Claire DeWitt is a much darker, far more deeply disturbed person. She's a nihilist and a seeker. An amoral moralist. She's sharp as a tack but has a long history of mental illness and self-destruction and institutionalization. (If you'd seen what she's seen . . .) In her own words, she never met a drug she didn't like. She's a high school dropout, a multi-millionaire, and a friendless orphan. It'd all be so unbelievable if Gran didn't pass it off with such panache.

Highly recommended for fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. Docked a star for some boring stretches.
Timeless  - Gail Carriger From the back cover of my copy of Timeless: "Timeless is the final novel in the Parasol Protectorate series."

You know what I say to that?

BOO.

This was a fantastic paranormal romance series, with characters I loved and smart and fantastically written plots and absolutely no cheese. This was romance a girl could feel proud to read. I will miss Lady Maccon terribly, but wish her well in retirement. I hope Gail Carriger sees fit to resurrect her someday, soulless though she may be.

The flower of the Chapdelaines

The flower of the Chapdelaines - George Washington Cable Recommended by Rebecca West in the Paris Review interview.

High Season: How One French Riviera Town Has Seduced Travelers for Two Thousand Years

High Season: How One Riviera Town has Seduced Travelers for Two ThousandYears - Robert Kanigel As is the trouble with so many histories of the French Riviera, this one suffers from a lack of things to write about. The author clearly loves Nice, but his effusion does not make up for the utter sameness of his subject matter overtime.

There are a couple of interesting bits: the quotes from journals of Marie Bashkirtseff introduced me to a diarist I must read more of. There are some interesting quotes from other early visitors to Nice that give a vision of the seaside sanatarium of the early 19th century before the arrival of Les Hivernants.

Also of interest are the descriptions of the experience of American infantrymen during the first and second world wars. While the first world war vets seemed to have been well received - the Nicois called them 'Sammies', after Uncle Sam - the vets of the second world war sent to Nice on leave, with out any oversight from Commanding Officers, who were boarded in Cannes, did not behave themselves.

I think this must be the story of all beautiful places: in the beginning, they are beautiful and untouched, inhabited only by natives, themselves picturesque. Then, they are 'discovered' by outsiders, who marvel at this beauty. It's all downhill from there: the wealthy arrive to build their villas to take in the beautiful scenery and picturesque natives, who go to work for the villa owners. Investors come in and build hotels and resorts so that more tourists can marvel at the scenery, which is constantly being buried under more hotels. The tourists, tired of estoficada or whatever delicious local dishes the natives serve, have to bring in their own restaurants and foods. Then the place gets a reputation for being seedy, and some new gimmick must be dreamed up to keep people coming.

Nice can often, in travel guides and travel writing like High Season/i> and conversations with travelers, come off as the Jersey shore of the Mediterranean (though, admittedly, Avalon doesn't have a Matisse Museum. Or an opera house. Or a Chagall museum. Or roman ruins.) It's true, last fall, when we were walking down the Boulevard Jean Jaures and passed 'McMahon's Pub' and it's neighbor 'Planet Sushi', I got a little sad for the sameness that's been inflicted on us: I could have seen those two shops right next to each other in Center City Philadelphia. But then we turned off into the old city, the Vieux Ville, and got lost on purpose - climbing up and down staircase-streets that weren't more than five feet wide, dividing houses piled one on top of the other, tumbling, almost, to the sea. I didn't find that in Philly. The beach is pure heaven, especially if, like me, you hate being covered in sand, and the water is so salty you bob like a cork and the views from the sea are just the most beautiful.
My Dog Tulip - J.R. Ackerley, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas I have an eighteen-month-old sable border collie mix named Yiya, who is the apple of my eye and more dear to me than I ever could have imagined. I mean, how could you not love her?

Yiya, never happier than when playing in the mud

I hold ridiculous and completely irrational beliefs about her: that she knows what I'm saying beyond basic commands, that she is smarter and better looking than all of the other dogs at the dog park, and that everyone else can see this too. I worry and wonder if I should call the vet everytime her nose is too dry or too wet. Handsome Boyfriend and I spend an inordinate amount of time discussing her bowel movements: their consistency and regularity. I send her to daycare and worry if she's making friends with the other dogs. I refer to myself as 'mommy', as in 'give mommy's sock back right now!' This, I'm sure, is something like what parents feel about their children.

I love her whole-heartedly - after a long day of work, to see that face, always excited, always happy to see me, and bury my face between her ears and smell her puppy scent, it takes my cares away.

J.R. Ackerley also had a dog, but for love of whom he forsake all friendships and social relations. Her name was Tulip, and she was a terribly behaved but exceptionally loving Alsatian (or German Shepherd.) In one-hundred some pages, Ackerley discusses in detail her trips to the vet, her bowel movements (see - I'm not so bad, someone wrote a book about their dogs poop habits!), and his attempt to give his animal companion, so loyal and loving to her master, as full of a life as possible.

A great deal of the book is taken up with Ackerley's attempts to provide Tulip with the experience of mating and motherhood. Ackerley second guesses his choices constantly - is he doing what he should? What is a fulfilling life like for a dog? What are her wants and needs? Tulip, in turn, is equally, in Ackerley's words, concerned with Ackerley's well being, and in time, through the discussions of impacted anal glands and estrus, socially awkward pit stops and trips to the vet, My Dog Tulip turns into something of a philosophical work on the universal nature of intimacy and what it means to care for another being, human or no.

A five star book, one to warm your heart.

Biology Is Technology: The Promise, Peril, And New Business Of Engineering Life - Robert H. Carlson This is a good introduction to rational design of biological systems, but its target audience appears to be investors in biotech, with scientists working in the field only of secondary interest.

Carlson is an engineer with a background in aeronautical engineering. He is currently the CSO of biodesic, a company working on bacterial production of biodiesel suitable for fuel. His belief in the power of engineering principles as applied to biological systems is infectious, one would hardly expect less, but he goes overboard in his insistence that rational design of complex biological systems is possible NOW, if only biologists were replaced by engineers.

*Must go to work, but will finish review later*