This book was a really nice companion for a day here.

On flight one I switched to this.

Heard one calling from my bookshelves.

I‘ve been working through this. About half way now. (Although usually without this little purring helper)

Entertaining and recommended if you want a fun book. It‘s surprisingly fun, also serious, ranting and thoughtful. He covers Africa's tragic colonial history, then the surprising realities of various African countries - the arbitrary borders, tensions from colonial divisions, their youth and variability, and success and failures and new successes. And he has fun ranting on the western perspectives.

I sampled this one this morning, and it opens really nicely. So now I‘m 36 minutes into a 36 hour audiobook, and I‘m fascinated. Hadn‘t really processed that J Edgar Hoover was a Roosevelt big government guy before he went all COINTELPRO. Didn‘t know he was gay, or anti-right wing. But, of course, he was racist and anti-liberal, and powerful enough (for 48 yrs) to be really destructive. Anyway, I‘m all-in so far.

Thin stuff, but this Pulitzer Prize winner comes around and ended up a nice audiobook. Hua Hsu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants who came to the US to study. He was born in Illinois. The book is mostly about his days at UC Berkley in the late 1990's, and the lessons he learned there about life. Of course, he has to make it do a bit more than that for the book be any good. He does.

Apparently when my brain needs a rest, this is what I go to. A 1965 biography?/study?/hagiography? of Princeton basketball star Bill Bradley. Bradley would go on to a Rhodes scholarship, an NBA career with the Knicks, a long period as a US senator and a serious president candidacy. But that all happened after McPhee‘s awe-filled exploration of a then young mr. perfect. What weird? It works. It‘s a terrific book.

Wellington Square 👆

1st time reading Brookner. So clean and polished and easy and perfect.

Harriet Lytton has an imperfect, or worse, marriage to an older man, and pins her hopes a daughter she raises to be independent, and who naturally grows up to be independent of her mom. This does some really meaningful stuff, looking at loneliness, desire, and disappointment. So much unspoken, undone. It all feels relatable and real.

A predetermined divorce? Two parasitic homeless American newlyweds never leave Europe. Their marriage, designed to end, shatters early. What next? This is a silly setup that should not work. But it works delightfully. Wharton was having fun. #whartonbuddyread

What stands out here are tidal pools. Carson starts on the rocky coasts of Canada and New England, checking out every niche in every layer if the tidal rhythms, animal by animal. And then she works south. I found it demanding a lot more of my attention, listening, then it was drawing. Another animal, another minute aspect in detail. Which animal now? 🙂☺️ Well, I appreciated her passion. I hope to finally listen to Silent Spring next.

Alas, she did not understand.

Is anything solved? They still have no money and they still can‘t communicate. But they have experience. Nick and Susy and five Fulmers are bonded and off for another honeymoon. Anyone else imagine Wharton maybe giggling a bit behind her concealed straight writers face?

Well, Wharton has a way. What was your take? Was it too lite, too simple? Does it work? (Why or why not?) Want more Wharton?

#whartonbuddyread

This. It‘s like such a crystalline picture. Richard Wright has this way of making himself a regular person in the completely insane, oppressive violent world of the 1920‘s Jim Crowe South. It‘s dystopian, and nonfictional. His response, his strength, but also his tone - it‘s like “What are these people thinking?!…Is this real?” - is incredibly powerful. It‘s an amazing window into that reality, our history.

I‘m sure Brian Stone meant well, but this felt overcooked to me. Stone translated four mid-length works by Chaucer into modern English: The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Birds and The Legend of Good Women, with an autobiographical prologue. I thought it read too easily. I checked a few places against the Chaucer‘s original, and this is just really different and really freely “translated”. But I got through it…

Well, that‘s an open eye. Anyway another book I‘m starting, and a new-to-me author.

Starting a new audiobook

Hmm. Can I actually get through this?

#rereadtheclassics (except this would my 1st reading this) #naturalisty @AllDebooks

#whartonbuddyread

Nick is hanging in mixed comfort with the Hickses, while Susy wallows in indecision. Five months of no contact! Is Wharton pressing our limits of belief or capturing a strangled relationship? I thought the chapter on Susy‘s state of mind before Streff‘s 1st disturbing kiss was quite powerful. (But I do wonder about getting engaged before kissing, even in 1922)

Thoughts?

#whartonbuddyread

I finished this week thinking this was a transition section, that we‘re waiting to see what will actually happen. But looking over my notes a lot happens. Our year of bliss dissolves in moralistic self righteousness. Nick runs off, writes a terrible letter and climbs aboard with the very likable Coral Hicks. Susy heads to Paris and has a marriage proposal from Streph, care of a tragic accident. Where to, dear Edith? Thoughts?

My next book. Started today.

I‘ve started this anthology from 1996 (and I‘ve owned it long enough that there was a Borders bookmark inside).

I'm just not a very good poetry reader. I really wanted to like this. I love that David Justice is a major 20th-century poet out of depression era Miami - the time and place where my grandparents were struggling to start their adult lives. But I just never felt I linked into this. It had its moments, some very meaningful to me. But much of this felt to me like not very much about not very much. Seems likely I missed a lot.

A time-capsule gem. A 1951 overview of what was known about the oceans - the sea life, the tides, bathymetry, geology (before plate tectonics!), ocean currents, weather, sediments and salt and oil exploration, and human history. She looks into warming oceans, rising sea levels and how all this effects the weather (in 1951!). It's biology, geology, climate, all wrapped together with the knowledge of that time. And it's elegantly written. Terrific.

Chapters 1-8 #whartonbuddyread

An opening gimmick, begging for stress, catastrophe and, of course, jealousy. But does it feel gimmicky, hanging out romantically on Lake Como and Venice,
surrounded by the wealthiest Americans and removed from the real world? Almost a garden of eden, if thorns everywhere.

And, another question, on time: This promises a lovely study of how “now” is forever, until it isn‘t. Any one else thinking on this?

I had fun ordering/buying/requesting books on my birthday. They‘ve all arrived now. 😍🙂☺️

(Illustration is from a 1405 illuminated manuscript. Link in comments.)

So I read this because Chaucer translated it (from Middle French to Middle English). There are a number of beautiful medieval manuscripts still around. This playful story about a lovesick youth trying to get back to his beloved rose in the garden, and all its graphic innuendos and playful philosophy, was a big hit in its day. Some dry spells, but I enjoyed it.

Working my way through Carson‘s four books on audio. I started this one, from 1955, yesterday. The warming of the oceans was already known and an important topic.

About time for me to begin (in my case, public domain, kindle format) #whartonbuddyread

The playful opening to House of Fame (c1379?), pondering the nature of dreams.

I started this collection of four poetic works yesterday. In my year of Chaucer, I‘m only just now actually reading him - or a modern verse translation anyway.

A widower finds a photograph of his diseased wife discretely but intimately holding hands with another man.

While the response lights up obsessive, if cooly reptilian, thoughts, with emotions circling, it's still a thinner baseline to a story than I might have anticipated. But it's well written, and I enjoyed it.

A look at the Irish Magdelan laundries completes the #Booker2022 longlist for me.

The opening to this novella is quiet and mundane. But as story tensions develop, that opening style becomes a sturdy story framework. I got into it and enjoyed it and I had only about 2 hours in which to do that because it‘s really short.

A child's perspectives of folklore and magic, one that is strikingly playful with language. I can relay that, but I actually struggled with this book. It demands you meet its playful-thoughtful-childish-not-childish mindset. But it's so short that I finished well before I had a chance to do that, so I didn't get much out of it. But, still, it was nice to get a window into this Alan Garner experience. #Booker2022

A reflection on Sappho‘s and history‘s fragments. We are left with so little Sappho, we can only confront the lost and unrecoverable. Here a handful of famous fin de siècle lesbians form a comparable set of fragments of a lost, repressed world. I lost my mom while in the middle of this book, which is why i‘ve been so quiet here. When i got back to the book, it had unfortunately lost its magic. But it deserves a look.

Just a reminder
#whartonbuddyread

My current audiobook

(With fascinating time-capsule geology. This is written in 1951, a decade before the basic theory of plate tectonics was worked out.)

Carson‘s first book is a striking poetic-prose tour through the US eastern coastal world. Published in 1941 shortly before Pearl Harbor, this was lost until the success of next books.

I listened after learning about Carson and her eels in The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson, read recently with #naturalitsy

Pictured is a black skimmer

Whoa!

A look at the human cost of racism without pity - well, that's the idea. What comes out is some insanely and uncomfortable intense tension using a Shakespeare-like villain—all calculation without consequential foresight—confined in racist space. This is followed by a lot of contemplation, some of it awkward and with an agenda. No literary work of perfection, but a powerful and uncomfortable novel.

(Richard Wright is a 2023 theme for me)

The novel where Wharton revisits that insanely wealthy world she grew up in, 1870‘s New York‘s wealthy established families and their stifling culture. She criticizes this old lost New York world, but remains very attracted to. It comes out beautiful.

Thanks #whartonbuddyread for all the chat and posts. This was my first time reading this.

For baseball fans - the story of the cheating scandal behind the 2017 World Series champions, my team. Drellich broke the story with Ken Rosenthal, and here covers how a fantasy baseball aficionado from Wharton used a NASA engineer and an investment banker among others to help build a team by analytics and any technology available (within the rules or not).

Oh, Ovid

Jury duty day 3. This is -not- conductive to finding reading time. Unexpected breaks and unexpected ends of these breaks. Unpredictable time all day.

I think, with Heroides, Ovid gives us the only Roman-perspective sympathetic view of woman. (Maybe a touch also in Metamorphoses.) Don‘t trust him.

Not as nice as yesterday. I‘m now on a jury and spending my morning in a courthouse Lubys.

Also, I started After Sappho and it reminds me of reading a collection of her known fragments, which took all of about 2 hours. Our one western classical female author of stature was lost. (Is there another?) We‘ve lost every book, and are left with tantalizing fragments of poems. Here these pieces are played into feminine suppression.

The painful side consequences of downtown jury duty. (Campesina Cafe, downtown Houston)

“Ah—i‘ve had to. I‘ve had to look at the Gorgon.”

#whartonbuddyread
Mar 11 - chapter 28-34 (the end)

A section of Newland, Ellen, Catherine Mingott, May and Dallas. As Newland plans to commit to Ellen, May resolves everything. Then an epilogue 25 years later, happy, but so bittersweet. I‘m mainly left with an image of an empty Paris park bench. Thoughts? I‘ll post some questions in the comments.

Getting going with some 13th-century literature, and the philosophies of love. Chaucer translated this into (Middle) English. It also influenced Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and everyone else in Europe‘s intellectual creative zeitgeist of this era. @Dilara

Planning ahead - our next #whartonbuddyread

Apr 15 - chapter 1-8
Apr 22 - chapter 9-15
Apr 29 - chapter 16-23
May 6 - chapter 24-30 (the end)

Editing to add that anyone is welcome to join. 🙂

#whartonbuddyread

May Archer and her bow. Newland and his pathetic liaison attempts. And a window into Ellen (and Boston, pictured) Does May really know everything? We‘re in the middle chapters, maybe our novel has slowed down quite a bit. What‘s capturing your attention? Thoughts?

I‘m glad kitty is relaxed because this book is insane and has my little brain all worked up. After stumbling through a dry introduction (by Wright), I started yesterday.

My 3rd novel by Gurnah, all since he won the Nobel Prize. I‘ve enjoyed them all. He‘s a wonderful storyteller, weaving gentle kindnesses into serious story tensions. This 2001 novel is a beautiful book about two refugees from British Zanzibar and later independent Zanzibar/Tanzania, who meet up in England.

My new audiobook. This, released Feb 14, is making a few headlines, including NPR. I live in Houston and I‘ve become a fan of Houston Astros. I might still be after I finish this. (I‘m watching their first game of spring training as I post this.)