Lucky Number 3: Villette by Charlotte Bronte

The classic spin number has been spun, and it is number 3, so I will be reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte in the next two months.

This is a doubly lucky number for me because Villette was already in my reading plans. As I mentioned in the comments to my list, one of my goals for the end of the year was to finish out the novels of all three Bronte sisters. I have already read both Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, and I’ve (of course) read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and have read Jane Eyre many times.

That left me Charlotte Bronte’s other 3 books: The Professor, Shirley and Villette. I read The Professor last month & I’m currently reading Shirley. Once I finish Shirley, I’ll probably take a week and then get going on Villette.

Abigail by Magda Szabo – #1970 Club

Abigail
by Magda Szabo
Translated from: Hungarian
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1970
Genre: fiction
Pages: 333
ReRead?: No

Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabó’s books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a general, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful daughter. Gina is devastated when the general tells her that he must go away on a mission and that he will be sending her to boarding school in the country. She is even more aghast at the grim religious institution to which she soon finds herself consigned. She fights with her fellow students, she rebels against her teachers, finds herself completely ostracized, and runs away. Caught and brought back, there is nothing for Gina to do except entrust her fate to the legendary Abigail, as the classical statue of a woman with an urn that stands on the school’s grounds has come to be called. If you’re in trouble, it’s said, leave a message with Abigail and help will be on the way. And for Gina, who is in much deeper trouble than she could possibly suspect, a life-changing adventure is only beginning.

I was, unfortunately, never able to find my copy of The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, which I had planned to read for the 1970 Club. It’s somewhere in my house, but where?

Anyway, when I was trolling about for something (else) to read, I noticed that this one was first published in 1970. I had bought a copy of the NYRB edition at a library sale at some point, and I was able to find it because I keep all of my NYRB’s on a single shelf, where they look wonderful.

I really loved this book. I didn’t have any baseline of expectation for it when I opened it, but suffice it to say that I was not expecting a Hungarian boarding school story set at the bitter end of WWII, when the Germans invaded their former allies in Hungary.

Gina was a very interesting character – strongwilled, but also a vain and coddled teenager who is forced to grow up in a hurry after her father, a high-ranking officer in the Hungarian army who can see clearly the unhappy future that is unfolding, for both his country and for him, personally, packs her off to a boarding school. He is trying to keep her whereabouts a secret so that she cannot be used against him, as he is fully expecting to be captured and tortured at some point.

Gina’s dramatic misery at the boarding school, coping with her change from a lighthearted social life in Budapest to an implacably austere religious school, is both agonizing and somehow very funny. The end, with Gina’s desperate flight to avoid capture by enemies of her father, is gripping.

Szabo wrote two other books that have been translated and published by NYRB Classics – Katalin Street and The Door. I will definitely read both.

Classics Club Spin #39

I am rather terrible at finishing my spin books, but it’s fun to play along anyway. The details on The CC spin can be found here, but generally the idea is to select a list of 20 books on the classics club list that I have been meaning to read. Then next Sunday, October 20, the Classics Club website will post a number between 1 & 20, and that is the book that I will read.

I have a Classics Club “list” posted, but I decided to just make up a list of 20 books that I consider to be classics in some respect from my print TBR for this spin.

His Excellency Eugene Rougon by Emil Zola
Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Stoner by John Williams
The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen by Elizabeth von Armin
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
Good Behavior by Molly Keane
The School for Love by Olivia Manning
Abigail by Magda Szabo New Grub Street by George Gissing
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Vicar’s Daughter by E.H. Young
Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton
Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

So, which one will it be?

Great American Road Trip: Nevada

The Princess of Las Vegas
 by Chris Bohjalian
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: March 26, 2024
Genre: fiction
Pages: 400
ReRead?: No
Project: great American road trip
A Princess Diana impersonator and her estranged sister find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of money and murder in this twisting tale of organized crime, cryptocurrency, and family secrets on the Las Vegas strip.
Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never gains an ounce, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, hair feathered into a style thirty years old, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap. On top of that, Crissy’s daily diet of Adderall and Valium leaves her more than a little tipsy, her Senator boyfriend has gone back to his wife, and her entire career rests on resembling a dead woman. And yet, fans see her for the gifted chameleon she is, showering her with gifts, letters, and standing ovations night after night. But when Crissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, and when Richie Morley, the owner of the Buckingham Palace Casino, is savagely murdered, Crissy’s carefully constructed kingdom comes crashing down all around her. A riveting tale of identity, obsession, fintech, and high-tech mobsters, The Princess of Las Vegas is an addictive, wildly original thriller from one of our most extraordinary storytellers.

Stop 5/50: Nevada

This was possibly the perfect book for my stop in Nevada. A book narrated by a Princess Diana impersonator, who performs in a seedy, off-strip casino, and gets mixed up with cryptocurrency-gangster bros.

I have somehow managed not to read a book by Bohjalian, even though he has written more than a dozen and several of them have been on my list for a long time. I enjoyed this one enough that I plan to continue to dip into his back list.

This book did have flaws. The middle section dragged. The main character, Crissy, and her sister, Betsy, made some frustratingly terrible decisions – even if they were necessary to move the plot forward. And the ending was abrupt and convoluted.

Overall, though, I enjoyed my visit to Las Vegas and felt that this book really nailed the slightly tawdry aesthetic of the less savory parts of the city.

Where I am going next: Utah, to begin my exploration of the Four Corners states: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico & Colorado.

Great American Road Trip: Idaho

Idaho
 by Emily Ruskovich
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 2017
Genre: fiction
Pages: 320
ReRead?: No
Project: 2024 read my hoard, great American road trip
One hot August day a family drives to a mountain clearing to collect birch wood. Jenny, the mother, is in charge of lopping any small limbs off the logs with a hatchet. Wade, the father, does the stacking. The two daughters, June and May, aged nine and six, drink lemonade, swat away horseflies, bicker, and sing snatches of songs as they while away the time.
But then something unimaginably shocking happens, an act so extreme it will scatter the family in every different direction.
In a story told from multiple perspectives and in razor-sharp prose, we gradually learn more about this act, and the way its violence, love and memory reverberate through the life of every character in Idaho.

Stop 4/50. I have had this book on my TBR since it was published in 2017.

My Washington book was a bust. This book more than made up for it.

I can’t say that it was an “enjoyable” read in the traditional sense of the word, because in many ways, this book left me gutted. But, it will be a long time before I forget May and Wade and Ann and Jenny and especially June, or the house on Mt. Iris, near Priest Lake in Idaho.

I read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson in January, 2023, another strangely beautiful book that is set in Northern Idaho. As I was reading this book, I was reminded of Robinson’s writing style. When I read the afterward, this made a lot of sense to me. Ruskovich studied at the well-regarded Iowa Writer’s Workshop, under a list of luminaries that included Robinson.

The writing in this book is gorgeous. Each character is delineated with precision and delicacy. The book begins with an act of inexplicable violence – Jenny, wife of Wade, murders her youngest daughter, May, with a hatchet. June, the older daughter, is lost when Wade takes Jenny and May into town and leaves June behind so she doesn’t have to share a backseat with her dead sister, promising to return for her. By the time he returns, June is gone. She is 9.

The reader is transported back and forth between the narratives of Wade, who has lost his entire family in one terrible day and who, because of early onset Alzheimer’s is losing his memory of his family bit by inexorable bit. Ann, Wade’s second wife and a former teacher who dwells upon her memory of the single time she saw June as she grapples with the reality that soon, she will carry the burden of a past tragedy that Wade has forgotten. Jenny, who spends the next three decades in prison, frozen in a sort of stasis, her life ending on the day she murdered her daughter just as surely as she ended her daughter’s life. And Elizabeth, who becomes Jenny’s cellmate, surrogate daughter and friend.

This book is all about the characters. It is strangely luminous for a book that is so dark, and the humanity shines through in a way that I can neither understand nor explain. I don’t know if I would recommend it, beyond saying that I loved it. It has been seven years since this book was published. Whenever Emily Ruskovich publishes her next book, I’ll be first in line to buy it.

Where I was last: Washington
Where I went next: Nevada

Great American Road Trip: Washington

Blackberry Winter
by Sarah Jio
Rating: ★★½
Publication Date: September 1, 2012
Genre: historical fiction
Pages: 286
ReRead?: No
Project: great American road trip

In 2011, Sarah Jio burst onto the fiction scene with two sensational novels--The Violets of March and The Bungalow. With Blackberry Winter--taking its title from a late-season, cold-weather phenomenon--Jio continues her rich exploration of the ways personal connections can transcend the boundaries of time.

Seattle, 1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, goodnight and departs to work the night-shift at a local hotel. She emerges to discover that a May-Day snow has blanketed the city, and that her son has vanished. Outside, she finds his beloved teddy bear lying face-down on an icy street, the snow covering up any trace of his tracks, or the perpetrator's.

Seattle, 2010. Seattle Herald reporter Claire Aldridge, assigned to cover the May 1 "blackberry winter" storm and its twin, learns of the unsolved abduction and vows to unearth the truth. In the process, she finds that she and Vera may be linked in unexpected ways...

Stop 3/50 was Seattle, Washington, in 2011 and 1933.

Unfortunately, this book was a disappointment, although I could absolutely see how it would work really well for a different reader.

I had two significant issues with the book, and both are related to the dual-timeline narrative structure. I find that this type of book is very hit-and-miss for me. There are books where I feel like it really works – Kate Morton’s books leap to mind for me here. But, there are also many more books and authors where I don’t feel like they really pulled it off.

This one fell into that category for me. Often when I read a dual-timeline book, I find myself absorbed in one of the timelines – almost always the historical one – and much less interested in the other one. In this book, I really wasn’t interested in either timeline. I selected it because I felt like it had a lot of potential, but when it came right down to it, Jio didn’t succeed in making me care about either of the main characters. Sitting here, writing this review, I can’t even remember the name of the present-day narrator and I just finished the book about nine hours ago.

The other major issue I had with the book was its “Lifetime Movie of the Week” quality of using massive coincidences to tie the two timelines together. These elements, to me, were simply laughably convenient and entirely unbelievable.

Seattle is a metropolitan area of 4 million people and the whole “hey, my bestie’s aunt just happens to have incredibly crucial information about an unsolved abduction from the 1930’s that I, a newspaper reporter, am looking into” was too much for my credulity to bear. It would have been fine – great, even – for a reporter to have solved an unsolved abduction without needing to incorporate that level of intertwined absurdity. I think that authors do that to try to heighten the investment of the reader, but for me, those sorts of machinations really take me out of a story and make me doubt the author’s confidence in her storytelling ability.

And, as a bit of an aside, another thing that bothered me about the book was the way that the author used the fact that a blackberry was growing on a grave as some sort of folky metaphor for being specially chosen. The thing is, though, as someone living in the PNW, I am all too aware blackberries are an invasive weed here. There is nothing selective about where blackberries grow – they grow fucking everywhere, as anyone whose neighbor has frustratingly allowed a huge goddamned blackberry bramble to take over their property line would know. Because it is a constant battle to avoid your (ahem, my) property turning into a replica of Sleeping Beauty’s castle once they have a foothold. I am speaking from real life irritating experience here. So, even though this is a really small thing, it just annoyed the hell out of me. I kept wanting to yell at the author “Trillium. Trillium is the metaphor you are looking for here…” even though it didn’t tie in with the whole blackberry theme.

I did enjoy the Seattle setting. I live in the Portland area, and I have always loved Seattle, and would spend more time there if my husband didn’t have such an irrational aversion to the University of Washington from his time as an Oregon Duck. So, even though the book was a bit of a dud for me, I enjoyed hanging out at Pike Place Market and other Seattle hot spots for a few hours.

Next destination is Idaho!

Great American Road Trip: Oregon

The Book of Cold Cases
 by Simone St. James
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: March 15, 2022
Genre: gothic, supernatural
Pages: 344
ReRead?: No
Project: great American road trip
In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect--a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.
Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases--a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea's surprise, Beth says yes.
They meet regularly at Beth's mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she's not looking, and she could swear she's seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn't right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?
A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in t

Stop #2/50

Oregon is my home state, which makes it interesting that I struggled a bit to decide on a book to read. The books that my home state is known for – Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, The River Why by David James Duncan – didn’t appeal to my current mood. When I was searching around for a book, this one came up & I remembered that I had already bought a copy a couple of years ago.

I’ve read a couple of other books by Simone St. James, and find her reliably entertaining. This might have been the scariest of all of her books so far. It is very ghost-y, and uses the scenery and climate of the setting well, with lots of cliffs, a plunge into the cold Pacific Ocean, and drizzle. Lake Claire is a fictional town on the coast, and I kept trying to figure out the real analog for it. I never did place it firmly in the coastal geography, but that’s just fine.

To be completely truthful, this is not a book I would usually read in May. I am always very attracted to books like this in the darker months, especially October. This would be a GREAT October read. But, I still enjoyed it, and from here, I am planning to continue my fictional drive north, to the State of Washington.

Great American Road Trip: California

Girls and their Horses
by Eliza Jane Brazier
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: June 6, 2023
Genre: fiction
Pages: 400
ReRead?: No
Project: great American road trip

Set in the glamorous, competitive world of showjumping, a novel about the girls who ride, their cutthroat mothers, and a suspicious death at a horse show

When the nouveau riche Parker family moves to an exclusive community in the heart of Southern California, they believe it’s their chance at a fresh start. Heather Parker is determined to give her daughters the life she never had—starting with horses.

She signs them up for riding lessons at Rancho Santa Fe Equestrian, where horses are a lifestyle. Heather becomes a “Barn Mom,” part of a group of wealthy women who hang at the stables, drink wine, and prepare their daughters for competition.

It’s not long before the Parker family is fully enmeshed in the horse world—from mean girl cliques to barn romance and dark secrets. With the end of summer horse show fast approaching, the pressure is on, and these mothers will stop at nothing to give their daughters everything they deserve.

Before the summer is over, lies will turn lethal, accidents will happen, and someone will end up dead.

I decided to start my road trip in California because there is no better start to the Great American Road Trip than California, unless it’s New York, and I decided on California.

I ran across this book because I have been mainlining a podcast with Anne Bogel called What Should I Read Next. She also runs an internet “book club” called the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club, which is reading this book for May. It’s $15 a month to join, but I decided to go ahead and pay for a month to figure out if it is worth my time, which is where I ran across this book.

I’m not sure if I loved it or hated it, but I read it in one day.

It’s definitely a modern thriller mystery. Told from the perspective of various characters, we start after the murder, but spend about 2 pages there and then go backwards, to four months before. And the author does not fill the reader in on the identity of the victim. Until about 95%.

I spent most of the book periodically looking up and asking my dog “WHO THE FUCK IS DEAD.”

I thought I had an inkling at about 70%, but turns out I was wrong. And because this is a modern thriller, all of the characters suck. Like, I hated them all. Maybe I liked one. No more than two. Probably only one.

I will say that my daughter was a horse girl, and she competed at the 4H horse fair, but her experience in a barn in Oregon was worlds away from the cutthroat world and million dollar horses of this book. Thank god, because these people had more money than sense. Or character. But I was thoroughly engaged, and I was wrong about the ending, and that’s satisfying.

Summer Reading 2024

In the summertime, I often enjoy coming up with a theme for my reading. Past themes have included Summer of Spies (courtesy of a bookish friend) and the 20 Crimes of Summer. For the past few years, I haven’t had the energy to indulge myself in any sort of a theme.

This year, though, feels different. It is my first full summer as a retiree, and I am having a great time with my reading right now. I’m already 110 books in for 2024, 33 books ahead of schedule to finish the year at 204, which was my reading goal.

So, I decided that a summer reading theme would be a great idea for this year.

So, here it is: the Great American Road Trip.

My plan is to read as close to 50 books – one set in each U.S. state – as I can between May 16 and the end of summer on August 31.

I actually started the themed reading a few days ago, & have already made a virtual trip through four states: California, Oregon (my home state), Washington and Idaho. I’ll be getting posts up for those books in the next day or so.

Even though the four states I’ve visited so far are geographically adjacent, I’m not going to be travelling in any specific order. I have already identified some library books that I’ll be reading, and my plan at this point is to hit a few more western states, and then I’ll be (virtually) flying to Florida and renting an imaginary car to explore the Southern US.

This is going to be a mood reading project. I am going to try to find books that have a strong sense of place attached, but all genres are fair game. There may be a few states where I linger for more than one book, if that is where my mood takes me. And while I’m hoping to hit all 50 states, if I find myself growing tired of this project, I will strand myself wherever I am and move on to other reading without a second thought!

A pair by James Michener

Centennial
by James Michener
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1974
Genre: historical fiction
Pages: 1105
ReRead?: No
Project: 2024 read my hoard

Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America’s past, the story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe. In Centennial, trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters are brought together in the dramatic conflicts that shape the destiny of the legendary West—and the entire country.

I love a doorstopper, a sweeping epic, a long, dramatic read – and especially if it was published in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Authors like James Clavell, Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, M.M. Kaye, Colleen McCullough and, yes, James Michener. I read a lot of James Michener as a teen, because my dad loved them and they were always on our bookshelves. I definitely remember reading Chesapeake, which I haven’t yet revisited, but that’s the only one I am certain that I have read. I am fairly certain that I did read Centennial, but it’s four decades on, so I can’t be sure.

Anyway, now that The Dial Press has reprinted all of Michener in kindle as well as paperback formats, I’ve revisited a couple of them and plan to continue. As an aside, these are perfect to read on my lightweight kindle because they are so huge that reading them in paperback is physically difficult. In addition, although they are a little pricy for a 50 year old book, at over a thousand pages, it’s basically like getting 3 to 4 books for one price.

This is Michener’s Colorado/wild, wild west book, which follows several characters/families from Lame Beaver, an Arapahoe chief, through the present day (which was 1976). I found it be a great read, and especially enjoyed one of the chapters about a cattle drive that brings cattle to Colorado from Texas. This reminded me a lot of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, which is one of my favorite books of all time.

I really love this style of book, and wish that there were more modern writers who were writing this type of epic story in addition to Edward Rutherfurd. Since there aren’t, I’m just going to revisit the old authors.

The Source
by James Michener
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1965
Genre: fiction, historical fiction
Pages: 1080
ReRead?: Yes

In the grand storytelling style that is his signature, James Michener sweeps us back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago. Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the early Hebrews and their persecutions, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, all the way to the founding of present-day Israel and the Middle-East conflict.
"A sweeping chronology filled with excitement."

I read this one last April and never got around to reviewing it. With the Israel/Palestine conflict, it’s even more timely than it was last year. And, for anyone who is interested, the kindle version is currently on sale for $1.99 in the U.S. kindle store.

I liked this one even more than I liked Centennial, probably because the subject matter was much further away from my own historical past. I do believe that I read this one as a young adult, because there were elements that felt extremely familiar to me.

I long ago left my Christian faith behind, but I did not lose my interest in Christian history, and this book is a riveting exploration of a place that is deeply consequential to the spread of Christianity across the world. In many ways, Jewish history is world history.

I haven’t decided yet which Michener I am going to read/revisit next. I do remember really enjoying Chesapeake, so that one is in the running, but I also bought Iberia in 2016 and it’s just been waiting for me. These really aren’t books that I want to check out of the library, because it often takes me more than the checkout time to finish the book, and, as well, I expect them to have strong rereading potential.

I did decide that it was time to reread Shogun, since there is a new, lush adaptation available through FX, so that is the next 1970’s “sweeping epic” on my reading list. While I was at it, I also bought Tai Pan, which I remember actually liking more than Shogun. So, I’m heading back to feudal Japan once I finish Our Mutual Friend.