Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece, by Susannah Fullerton

Approximately five years ago, I read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as well as her other five novels after receiving an all-in-one collection as a gift. Having only truly read Pride and Prejudice once (I can’t count the Cliff Notes I used in high school), it’s a wonder that I am reviewing this festive micro-history which delightfully illustrates why Jane Austen’s perfect Regency romance has remained so untouchable since its publication in 1813, even as her style and subject matter are profusely imitated, now more than ever!  

Reading Susannah Fullerton’s pleasant homage to the timeless novel upon its 200-year anniversary provided me with all sorts of intriguing details, historical background, and gossipy tidbits about its creation and legacy that enhance my appreciation of the novel.  Fullerton, president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, effectively demonstrates the reasons for the novel’s perfection and its ever-increasing appeal for readers of either sex, of all ages, in nearly every community worldwide. She cheerfully describes her analysis of individual characters, Austen’s style, and the famous opening sentence on which an entire chapter is devoted.

It was especially amusing to learn of all the various editions, versions, translations, sequels, retellings, mash-ups, adaptations, film interpretations, and other assorted Austen-inspired endeavors that have fueled a sort of Pride-and-Prejudice mania. Darcy-mania culture took off on the tails of the sexy 1995 BBC film version, starring Colin Firth (of the infamous lake scene), and kindled much new interest in the reading of the novel.

Fullerton pretty much concludes that no sequel author or film producer has ever really matched Jane Austen’s masterful style and that what lovers of the novel should really ever do is just keep reading and re-reading Pride and Prejudice. I agree that the masterpiece stands alone, but Austen did very effectively infect most of her readers with a desire to continue knowing Elizabeth and Darcy and to learn ever more about each well-drawn character’s future. Imagine if she’d lived long enough to write her own sequels, or to taste the fame her novels eventually gave her!

Check the WRL catalog for Celebrating Pride and Prejudice : 200 years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece

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Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple

A 2013 Alex Award winner (meaning its a book in the adult section found to be highly appealing to teen readers), Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a laughable and adventurous satire packed with hilarious characterization and witty dialogue mostly in the epistolary fashion using email correspondence, letters, police reports, report cards, and other documents.  Modest readers might find some strong language offensive yet very in-character when utilized.

You’ll find hilarious characters, some to love, some to hate, and some to drive everyone crazy!  Semple pokes fun at Seattle’s subcultures of anti-fashionable, pro-geek, tech-talking, community-oriented, hyper-diverse, ultra-green, alternative-lifestyle embracing citizens.  Semple herself is a transplant to the Seattle region from Los Angeles, as is the character Bernadette, where she wrote screenplays for “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Ellen,” “Mad About You” and “Arrested Development.”

Caution, spoilers (because the events are revealed asynchronously and non-chronologically): Bernadette Fox has escaped her failed career as a genius architect by isolating herself in a crumbling fortress of a home where she can’t sleep and torments herself with self-pity.  She’s become so anti-social that she’s hired a virtual assistant to handle even the most mundane logistics of her life.  For years, her precious 15-year old daughter Bee has been Bernadette’s only reason for living.  Bee’s been promised this trip to Antarctica as an award for her perfect report card (Her Microsoft-guru dad can afford it).  Now, she’s having a panic attack brought on by the prospect of accompanying Bee through the sea-sickening Drake passage, “the roughest and most feared water in the world,”  and this leads to a series of outrageous circumstances that culminate in a final resolution that just might restore Bernadette’s artistic passion.

The narration, and actual singing, by actress Kathleen Wilhoite, is extraordinarily energetic and adds much to the listening experience of the audiobook version, which I was whizzed through completely enraptured with joyous laughter.  When hearing her voicing the hysterics of the ‘gnats’ (aka the condescending moms of Bee’s classmates at Galer Street School), I was reminded of Tea Leoni’s over-the-top character in the movie Spanglish.

Check the WRL catalog for the print or large print versions, too.

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The Hour (2011)

The Hour, a recent BBC period drama, has flown somewhat under the radar (at least when compared with the roaring success of a series like Downton Abbey), and it wasn’t until a colleague recommended it that I even became aware of the series. Set in 1956 at the BBC Lime Grove Studios in London, it follows the launch of an hour-long weekly current affairs television show, simply titled, The Hour. 

The six-part miniseries stars Romola Garai as Bel Rowley, the independent (female!) producer of the show; Ben Whishaw (the new “Q” in Skyfall and star of Cloud Atlas) as her best friend, Freddie Lyon, a brilliant and passionate reporter; and Dominic West as the charming and well-connected anchorman, Hector Madden. This is the opportunity Bel and Freddie have been waiting years for – to be a part of a new breed of investigative news program that could change the face of news at the BBC.

But a chance meeting with a childhood friend and a hushed-up murder on the Underground thrusts Freddie right into the middle of a deadly Cold War conspiracy and the silent war being waged between MI6 and the KGB. As Freddie begins to investigate, the trio becomes embroiled in a tangled web of politics, ambition, and romance. But a controversial breaking story could spell the end for the program, just as it is beginning.

And in amongst all the secrets and spy-games, I even learned a fair amount about the Suez crisis in 1956 between Britain, France, Egypt, and Israel (something I wasn’t even particularly aware of prior to the show), as well as the rules regulating broadcasters at the time. To my surprise, there used to be a fourteen-day gag rule that prohibited news programs from debating or analyzing anything discussed in the Houses of Parliament until two weeks after the event. But our intrepid team manages to find a neat way around this limit to free speech.

The Hour is lushly produced with period sets and costumes and is a wonderful piece of escapist drama. It is full of quick-witted repartee and fast-paced dialogue. The love triangle at the heart of the story is nicely balanced by the Ian Fleming-esque intrigue that seems to follow Freddie wherever he goes. Best description? It’s like HBO’s The Newsroom crossed with John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 

Check the WRL catalog for The Hour.

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Losing Clementine, by Ashley Ream

Each chapter in this entertaining, dark yet humorous debut novel counts down the 30 days pop-artist Clementine Pritchard has given herself to set her affairs in order before her suicide. She starts by crashing into the annoying car that blocks her driveway daily, tossing a teapot she never wanted anyway out of her apartment window, and flushing her medications for various psychoses–freeing her body from the numerous side effects she’s suffered from most of her life. The complex details of Clementine’s troubled history are revealed slowly with each day. I don’t want to reveal too much that will spoil the suspense for potential readers, but I quickly became fascinated with this flawed but loveable protagonist’s compelling story. I was not able to assume what had happened to her in the past or predict what she might do next, so the pages just kept turning.

It was uncomfortable but also quite funny watching her live her last days on the edge without the usual fear of consequences for her rash actions, eating her lovingly described extravagant last meals, and fearlessly speaking her mind. I found myself fearing for how she might pick up the pieces if for any reason she were not to have the courage to go through with her planned death. It all seems very considerate, how carefully she prepares so that no one will be terribly inconvenienced or have to go to any expense for her loss, yet she has falsely assumed that her death would cause no harm.  Clementine may have gravely underestimated her worth to significant others in her life. In the course of her last month, it turns out that some are not who they had seemed, and new people have entered her life unexpectedly.

I found this to be a very touching story and a quick read that was well worth my time. Anyone who’s ever contemplated suicide, even for just a moment, can relate to Clementine’s state of mind and the fact that suicidal thinking creates distance in relationships. Older teens may find appeal in this book’s emotionally intense themes of childhood abandonment, but recommenders should be aware that it contains adult sexual and drug-related content. I look forward to more contemporary fiction titles from Ashley Ream.

Look for Losing Clementine in the WRL catalog.

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The Father Hunt, by Rex Stout

He’s pigheaded and high-nosed and toplofty, and he thinks he’s the best detective in the world, and so do I, or I would have moved out long ago.  – Archie Goodwin, The Father Hunt

As much as I love exploring new mystery authors, I like to periodically return to old favorites, revisiting those iconic characters created by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others.

Rex Stout introduced the world to Nero Wolfe in 1934 with a style that was definitely American, and unabashedly New York.  Although his characters followed a familiar trope, the eccentric but successful detective with a less-brainy but resourceful sidekick, the interaction between his characters is what drives the stories.  Detective Nero Wolfe is an orchid grower with a greenhouse filled with 10,000 orchids and a gourmand who requires a full-time cook.  He has an abhorrence of physical activity and an even greater dislike of having his strict schedule interrupted, especially for work.  His legman and the narrator of the stories, Archie Goodwin, is a tough, street smart, witty, ladies man whose narrative voice is unlike other sidekicks such as Watson or Hastings.  He is a fully-fleshed out character, existing not only as an observer and foil for Wolfe but as an integral part of the story.  He interviews suspects, soothes concerned clients, and knows his greatest value is in his ability to badger Wolfe into working so that the firm earns enough to keep all three full-time staff employed, fed, and with a roof over their heads.

In The Father Hunt, a young woman (always a weakness of Archie’s) named Amy Denovo hires the pair to find her father.  She had gone most of her life with no knowledge of her family outside of her cold and distant mother.  Her mother’s recent death from a hit and run driver has revealed a secret: every month since Amy was born, a check for $1,000 was sent from her father.  Being a proud woman who knew she could support her daughter herself, her mother cashed the checks and placed the money in a metal box.  Over the 22 years of Amy’s life, this has amounted to $264,000.  No small sum, especially in 1968.  She decides to use some of that money to track down her father, a task made more difficult because Amy is convinced that her mother was living under an assumed name.  Who she was and where she was prior to Amy’s birth is as much of a mystery as the identity of the father.

Tracking down the birth name of Amy’s mother as well as discovering the man who wrote the checks is a relatively easy task for a detective of Wolfe’s abilities.  However when the man can prove the impossibility of his being Amy’s father, the case hits a major snag.  If he is not responsible for Amy’s parentage, why did he send over a quarter of a million dollars over the years to Amy’s mother?  Who actually is her father?  And is it a coincidence that Amy’s mother was killed by a yet unknown hit-and-run driver?  Only by focusing on the last questions is Wolfe able to bring about a resolution to his case.

Readers of mystery and crime fiction who are not already familiar with Nero Wolfe will find this a great introduction to the series.  Wolfe fans like me will always enjoy an afternoon spent in his company.

Check the WRL catalog for The Father Hunt

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Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie

Confession time?  I never read anything by Salman Rushdie until I picked up Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002.  I found his essays on everything from “Being Photographed” to “Going to Electoral College” to be funny, pointed, and written in approachable, engaging language.  So what was holding me back?  Perhaps it was that intimidating glare, which makes him look as if you’re going to disappoint him no matter how hard you try.  (Of course, looking for the picture I was thinking of yielded only photos of a smiling, avuncular wiseman.  Strange.)

On a whim, I picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories and began reading it aloud to my wife.  It quickly became a standing date–9pm each night we’d sit down and I’d dive into The Sea.  Rushdie’s enchanting story drew us along right to the wonderfully satisfying end.  It practically defines what I love to see in totally escapist reading, but with a punch that few writers can pull off.

Haroun is the son of Rashid, a famous storyteller who lives in his own imagination and sometimes visits the “real” world to perform the pieces he finds in his fancy.  Haroun’s mother Soraya sometimes frets over money, but is largely happy until a nasty neighbor poisons her image of Rashid, and the two run off together.  Haroun rejects his father’s fantastic view of the world, and Rashid loses his storytelling facility.

Unfortunately, it’s election time in the country Alifbay, where Rashid has been hired to enchant voters so the politicians can tell equally large whoppers to earn votes.  Without his skill Rashid cannot perform, and only professional pride makes him go to his last gig in the isolated Valley of K to entertain provincial voters.  Haroun talks them onto a wild bus ride with a driver named Butt, who delivers them to their putative employer Snooty Buttoo and his fantastic houseboat.  But aboard the houseboat, Haroun finds himself flown away to an invisible moon that houses the Sea of Stories.  An immense ocean whose currents of standard storylines flow together to create new tales, the Sea is also being poisoned by “popular romances” which have turned into “long lists of shopping expeditions, and “talking helicopter anecdotes” that are spoiling the rich imaginative source that has nourished both tellers and listeners for all of human history.  The poison leads back to the enemy of storytelling, “Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech” Khattam-Shud, whose name means “The End.”

With Haroun’s assistance, the good Guppees, the Plentimaw fish, and the people of P2C2E (Processes Too Complicated to Explain) defeat Khattam-Shud and his Chupwalas, and balance returns to the moon.  With the Sea of Stories saved, the world undergoes a transformation that ensures the defeat of the colorless and the victory of the whimsical.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is called a children’s story, but it would be an exceptional child (indeed an exceptional reader of any age) to catch all the puns, literary allusions, political caricature, and meaningful verbal tics Rushdie gives his magical characters.  Haroun is a marvelous stand-in for readers living in the dull world.  His sudden gift of a wildly psychedelic experience reminds of what we set aside as we “grow up.”  It must have been a Chupwala who decided it belonged outside the realm of those who need it most.

Check the WRL catalog for Haroun and the Sea of Stories

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The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage and Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to be a Better Husband.  This quirky title really had me because I had been interested in learning more about Asperger Syndrome.

Reading David Finch’s book helped satisfy my curiosity and also endeared me to this amazing story about a man who isn’t diagnosed with Asberger until after he’s married with children.  The diagnosis explains a lot for him, but his approach to dealing with the problems it has caused in his relationship is so intense that he actually saves his marriage.  Wow, if only every spouse would be willing to do whatever it takes to adjust behavior and communication skills and to make such a powerful difference for his family!

This book was hilariously funny, and I did not want to put it down.  Sometimes, a memoir is just a one-time deal, but I think Finch should write more of them on a variety of subjects that touch his life.  His odd personality and easygoing writing style were the perfect ingredients for a very entertaining read.

Check the WRL catalog for The Journal of Best Practices.

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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

Another advance reader copy that came to Williamsburg Regional Library.

One of my colleagues and I were looking over the cart of ARCs when I pulled this from the shelf.  “Sounds too magical-realist,” she said doubtfully.  I was still intrigued by the title, and decided to give it a few pages.  I took it home and immediately plunged into Clay Jannon’s world, which Robin Sloan writes with anything but magical realism.

Clay’s career is stuck in neutral, a bad place to be in cutting-edge San Francisco’s Web-design world.   Along about the time the last of his savings is headed to pay the rent, Clay is desperate enough to take anything.  A sign in the window of a dim little shop (overshadowed by the neon of the strip club next door) advertises “Help Wanted,” and Clay enters Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

If the store is surviving on actual, you know, book sales, Clay can’t tell it.  Working the overnight shift, he rarely has any customers except a girl from the club dropping in for the latest bestseller, which Mr. Penumbra doesn’t stock.  What he has, in his queerly shaped store, are tall shelves packed with volumes written in languages and letters Clay can’t decipher.  Odd people sometimes duck in to pick up select volumes and duck back out after putting them on their special accounts.

With nothing much to do overnight, Clay starts building a virtual copy of the Bookstore to aid him in finding stuff from the collection.  Then he starts adding data from past circulations and finds a pattern that amazes him and astonishes Mr. Penumbra.  His discovery leads to another, and another, and the whole chain of discoveries leads Clay right back to the place he really started.

Sloan does a great job with the characters, from the friends who support and encourage Clay to the avuncular Mr. Penumbra.  The characters play off one another, co-operating and offering their skills as Clay carries out his quest.  But it’s the idea behind the story that really intrigued me—that there’s an exciting new frontier at the intersection of print and technology, and that advocates of both need to remember it.  And even if writing about books on a blog is only building a little cabin on the edge of that frontier, well, that’s enough for me right now.

Check the WRL catalog for Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

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Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater

Yesterday, I wrote about James Thurber, whose writing blends a love and mastery of language with a healthy sense of the absurd. A more contemporary writer who shares Thurber’s skill in both these areas is Daniel Pinkwater. The New York Review of Books has re-released Pinkwater’s wonderfully odd book Lizard Music, and I was glad to be able to add that to my shelves.

Young Victor, a fan of Walter Cronkite and TV news in general, is all alone at his house for the week—his parents are having a rough time and have gone off on a trip to reconnect, while his older sister who is supposed to be watching him has headed off with her hippie friends to the Cape. It is a typical start to a coming of age story, isn’t it? Where Pinkwater takes you from here, though, is anything but ordinary. Victor falls asleep while watching the news and wakes to stumble across a late-night TV show featuring human-sized lizards playing music. He heads off to the nearby city of Hogboro, and keeps running into an old man with a chicken on his head, to say nothing of constant references to lizard musicians. Suffice it to say that things only get odder from here on out.

Pinkwater’s deadpan delivery and comic timing make this a perfect read for pretty much anyone. Victor is an appealing lead character, and he does learn some things about himself throughout the course of the book. But it is the surreal humor and the pleasant oddness that characterize Pinkwater’s writing that really are the attractions here. If you like this one, there are lots of other Pinkwater books to choose from (I would recommend The Hoboken Chicken Emergency; Pinkwater has a way with chickens!).

Check the WRL catalog for Lizard Music

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The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber

The New York Review of Books is a superb journal, and I have been a long time subscriber.  I enjoy their extended book reviews and essays that explore art, politics, government, ethics, and many, many other topics.  The library has a subscription at the Williamsburg Library building on Scotland St.  if you want to take a look.  In addition to publishing the journal though, the NYRB also has been republishing some classic works of literature for both adults and children.  It is great to see these books back in print, and last time I was at a library conference I purchased two of my favorites.

The first purchase was The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber, who has long been one of my favorite writers.  Thurber made his name with his witty, though sometimes dark, short fiction and essays as well as with his wonderfully idiosyncratic drawings, many of which found their way into the New Yorker in the magazine’s early days. However, Thurber also wrote some wonderful books for younger readers.  Thurber’s  joy in language and absurd humor keep these books as fresh and interesting today as when they were first published.

The Thirteen Clocks is a fairy tale, with the standard characters–a fair princess who is enchanted by an evil duke, a handsome young prince in disguise who must complete an onerous task to win the princess’s hand, comical rustics, and a dread monster.  What makes this book special is the playfulness that Thurber brings to the story.  Only a master of English could move as easily and seamlessly as Thurber does from alliteration to metaphor to rhyme to metonymy in short fashion.  It is a pleasure to read this book aloud and to let the words roll off the tongue and into the ear.

Here is a sample, trying reading it out loud.

From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets.

So take a turn down the path that leads to the “gloomy castle on the lonely hill” where the cold Duke has frozen time and only true love can break the spell.

Check the WRL catalog for The Thirteen Clocks

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The Descendants, by Kaui Hart Hemmings

I haven’t yet seen the movie based upon The Descendants but the Audiobook version narrated by Jonathan Davis clearly indicates why George Clooney played the protagonist Matthew King. Davis’ speaking mannerisms are similar to Clooney’s and as I listened I could almost picture Clooney doing that little forward yet sideways cock of his head with a raised eyebrow that he does so well.

Matt King, descended from a Hawaiian princess who had married a missionary, inherited the largest percentage of his royal family’s landholdings making him the largest landholder in the Hawaiian islands.  He holds all the cards as his shareholding cousins await his decision as to whose bid package will be accepted–each proposes the development of pristine land into shopping malls, golf resorts, and exclusive subdivisions with million-dollar views, but Matt is dealing with much larger issues.  With his risk-taking wife in a coma due to a boating accident, parenting is suddenly required of him to manage his teenage daughters, and he suspects his wife had been having an affair.

The narrative clips along at a fast pace as we join Matt on an interisland quest with troubled 10-year old Scottie who keeps acting out in a baffling way, beautiful 17-year old Alex who is furious with her dying mother, and an oddly charming character named Sid who becomes increasingly important to the story.  Matt drags them along from Oahu to the Big Island and Kauai as he processes the realization that he’s suddenly a single parent, seeks information about his wife’s affair, notifies close friends and family about Joanie’s fate, and attempts to connect with his daughters. Meanwhile, he must decide what to do about the land, and his decision is tied to the tragic events in his family life.

A focused plot allows insightful dialogue to reveal relationship issues between the characters.  I like and respect the character of Matt King a lot even though he owns up to some major flaws as a husband and father.  His endearing journey of self-discovery promises to heal the rift between him and his daughters.  The content does include profanity, sexuality, and drugs so it’s not a gentle read, realized when my kids were in the car listening to the CD!  I read that the movie is rated R primarily for the language, drug and sexual references.

I found this to be an excellent audiobook even though I suspect that a few Hawaiian place names were mis-pronounced.  The content accurately depicts many aspects of Hawaiian and Pacific island life that are familiar to me. Short chapters and engaging dialogue really kept me awake and I’m one of those people that uses recorded stories as a very effective sleep aid.  I look forward to the critically acclaimed DVD for which I’m currently #38 of 69 on the waiting list at the library.  I hope that the movie’s popularity will cause many viewers to read Kaui Hart Hemmings’ exciting book.

Check the WRL Catalog for The Descendants in Audiobook format on CD.  The book is also available in print.

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Waiter Rant, by The Waiter

The anonymous writer who subsequently revealed himself to be Steve Dublanica upon the publication of his second book is the creator of an award-winning blog in which he aired the behind-the-scenes dirty laundry of his workplaces in trendy New York restaurants. It’s often suggested that employees should avoid potentially slanderous comments online about their coworkers, bosses, or customers. Dublanica managed this anonymously for years with the only person ever pegging him as “the guy who writes that blog” turning out to be a famous actor who had patronized an upper-class bistro where he worked.

With hilarious anecdotes, Waiter Rant chronicles Dublanica’s early days as a fumbling beginner, at age 30, through his development into a top waiter with management responsibilities. He dealt with a lot of ups and downs, insane dealings with bosses and owners, but enjoyed being able to please the majority of his customers. His background in a Catholic seminary and a psychology degree helped him handle the toughest customers with ease. This “rant” made me recall my own awkward challenges with learning how to negotiate the delicate relationships and pecking order between wait staff and management as well as the hardworking kitchen crew and often-arrogant bartenders when I waitressed while in college and a few other times while I was still figuring out what I wanted to become. Apparently, restaurants are often quite the dysfunctional family, places where sexism, racism, nepotism, ethnic discrimination, segregation, indentured servitude, and sexual harassment are all alive and well.

The author had become disillusioned after a foray into various short-lived healthcare jobs that had made him feel victimized, alienated, and depressed, and had only taken the waiter job in order to make ends meet but found himself working in the business for more than ten years. Writing his blog and eventually publishing this memoir helped him find his career in writing, but simultaneously he contemplated continuing the service job because he found that he is quite good at it.

“Just like at the seminary and in my previous job, I once again found myself surrounded by well-educated people who looked good, said the right things, and behaved dishonestly.”

Restaurant employees as well as customers concerned about getting an insider’s advice that will get them priority seating as well as prevent them from eating food contaminated by a disgruntled server will appreciate this book. It’s also a good laugh with some amusing tongue-in-cheek stories and a perspective on human behavior that only an eavesdropping server can share. One thing the author loves and appreciates about being a waiter is being an anonymous witness to many of life’s moments that often occur over restaurant meals such as marriage proposals and life-changing conversations.

Check the WRL catalog for Waiter Rant, also available in audiobook format.

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Paris in Love: A Memoir, by Eloisa James

Mary Bly has published a charming memoir and travelogue of her family’s one-year sabbatical in Paris under her pen name, which has been selling romance novels since the late 1990s. As herself, Mary Bly is a Harvard, Oxford and Yale educated literature professor teaching Shakespeare at Fordham University who secretly published romances (successfully enough to pay all of her graduate school loans!) until she obtained tenure. Eloisa James is now regularly on the bestseller lists.

Paris in Love is a compilation of snippets from her carefully-composed Facebook entries along with some longer essays reflecting upon her carefree year in the “city of love” without deadlines and with few obligations. This makes it a perfect book for picking up and dipping into any page for the amusement of reading just a few paragraphs whenever you’re waiting somewhere, or just keeping it on the bedside or coffee table like you would a magazine. I found that I easily kept turning the pages.

Both parents are college professors, so they found it easy to take time off from work. Mary really wanted to make this drastic change because she had just survived breast cancer and was trying to force herself to savor life a little more fervently. Paris had also been on her bucket list since she was little. Emboldened with this second lease on life, they even sold their New Jersey home and gave away many of their possessions before flying off to France. Some of their time is spent in Italy, where Mary’s Italian husband Allessandro has family. Their children, 15-year old Luca and 11-year old Anna, who did not want to leave her friends in the states, provide excellent fodder for laugh-out-loud moments throughout the book. The reader gets to know each family member’s idiosyncrasies as well as a lot of interesting detail about Paris life, people, and culture.  My favorite parts are about the daughter’s rebellious nature and her exploits at school.

Two things appealed to me about this little memoir: the extravagant idea of spending an entire year living quite whimsically from day to day in a famously romantic and decadent city like Paris, and the author’s background as an Oxford scholar and Shakespeare professor. I’d love to know what it’s like to feel so free from deadlines, and I find inspiration in Mary Bly’s success story for my teenaged daughter, who has her heart set on attending Oxford University and becoming a literature professor.

Eloisa James has an official web site where you can match her delightful descriptions with photographs of her family members, including the obese Chihuahua named Milo.

Check the WRL catalog for Paris in Love: A Memoir.

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Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope

I hate books I can’t understand,” said Bell. “I like a book to be clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once.”  —The Small House at Allington

Anthony Trollope’s fictional heroine, Bell, likes just the sort of book that Trollope himself wrote, clear as running water. After his death, Trollope’s reputation was that of a writer of light fiction lacking in plot and literary style. Now the literary tide has turned, and he is praised as a master of realism. Whereas his great contemporary, Dickens, gives us a three-ring circus of grotesque and absurd characters in every chapter, Trollope writes of ordinary people who are neither all good nor all bad. They talk and gossip as ordinary people do—about their gardens, politics, who is engaged to whom—and their characters and feelings are subtly revealed in these everyday conversations.

Which brings me to Timothy West. I love reading Trollope in print, but I can understand why some people fault his prose as boring or flat. Not until I listened to his novels performed on audiobook by Timothy West did I fully appreciate the glory of Trollopean prose. The man was born to read Trollope, and Trollope was born to write novels to be read by Timothy West.

If you have not read Trollope before, I recommend starting with Barchester Towers, the second of Trollope’s six Barsetshire Novels, even though it alludes to events in the first book, The Warden. It is Trollope’s best-loved novel, and for good reason. The great question that touches all others in the story is, who will rule the diocese of Barchester: the vain but cowardly new bishop, Dr. Proudie, his terrifying wife, Mrs. Proudie, or his sanctimonious chaplain, Obadiah Slope? Entertaining events ensue. All of the many characters are guilty of human weakness or bad judgment—yet their failings and moral dilemmas are treated with humor and (for the most part) forgiveness.  West voices the characters perfectly. He is especially superb as the narrator, who is continually making witty asides to the reader.

Sadly, there is no real Barsetshire. Trollope is said to have taken his inspiration for the cathedral city of Barchester from the real Salisbury in Wiltshire, and his country locales from various places in England’s West Country. But though Barset exists only in the imagination, there is no more pleasant place in the world to spend a few quiet hours.

Check the WRL catalog for Barchester Towers on audiobook

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Seducing the Duchess, by Ashley March

Love is in the air…

Yes, folks, it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and this week Blogging for a Good Book features five romance-filled reviews:

Charlotte wants a divorce. Not the most promising of starts for a romance novel, admittedly, but I have always found the books that tell the story of what happens after the “I do” the most intriguing.

Charlotte, Duchess of Rutherford, will try anything—gambling, drinking, flirting—to cause a scandal big enough to force her husband, Philip, the stern, stodgy Duke of Rutherford, to divorce her and finally end their painful sham of a marriage. Three years before, a heartbreaking betrayal led to their estrangement. Philip set his wife aside in favor of his mistress, and Charlotte cannot forgive the pain and humiliation. So Charlotte leads a separate life in London, hoping to cause enough scandal to force Philip to petition for a divorce—but he kidnaps her instead.

Philip has realized the enormity of his mistake three years before, and he is desperate to convince his wife that he has changed for the better. He spirits her away to his country estate, far from the distractions of London, and puts his plan into motion. To win his wife back, Philip promises her the divorce she so desperately desires, but only if she teaches him how to be a better husband for another woman (in particular his former fiancée, Lady Joanna Grey). Quite rightly, Charlotte cannot help but be suspicious of his motives—especially since it comes with such an unusual caveat.  But as Charlotte and Philip spend time together, she begins to wonder if she really wants to lose him, even as she pretends to help him court another woman.

Seducing the Duchess is a remarkable debut novel, and what I found particularly enjoyable was the author’s decision to tell the story, as it develops, from both Charlotte’s and Philip’s perspectives. She will interrupt a scene halfway through to switch to the other’s perspective, and the results are hilarious. The “spirited debates” pit husband against wife as each struggles to gain the upper hand. Just when they think one of them is ahead, the other manages to unexpectedly turn the tables.

Seducing the Duchess is a compelling read, populated with richly nuanced characters. Philip is saved from being an antihero by his desire for forgiveness and redemption, and Charlotte’s stubbornness is tempered by an inner vulnerability. Readers will enjoy the witty banter and the ruse each is perpetuating against the other. The characters are engaging, the writing is clever and fun, and the opening chapter is one of the most entertaining I’ve read in a long time. Philip and Charlotte’s antics as they each try to outwit the other may have you laughing out loud more than a few times.

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August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts

As August: Osage County opens, Beverly Weston, a one-book wonder poet and the patriarch of a large Oklahoma family, is in the process of hiring a native American housekeeper. A little drunk, he reveals some of his family’s dysfunction. His wife Violet has mouth cancer and is addicted to prescription drugs, and Beverly admits that these are only part of her larger problems.

Tracy Letts’ pitch black comedy drama won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, along with the Tony, the Drama Desk Award, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and pretty much every other award available to plays. It’s in the tradition of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, following the disintegration of an American family, in this case people of the central Plains, after years of slow decay from inside.

As the first act opens, we discover that Beverly has gone missing, and his three daughters, their spouses and fiancés, sister-in-law, and grandchildren have returned home to keep vigil. Violet is in terrible form, popping pills like candy and confronting her daughters with every ugliness in the family. Her barbs and those shot back by her daughters, especially the eldest Barbara, are hilarious, but so full of anger and pain that the laughter turns to acid in your mouth. Violet’s sister Mattie Fae bullies her 37-year-old son Little Charles, a boyish man, and bickers with her husband Charles. Barbara’s academic husband Bill seems nice, but he’s had an affair with a student and the couple are, unknown to the rest of the family, separated. Their daughter Jean is fourteen going on forty, pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, but not nearly as worldly as she’d like to believe. Beverly and Violet’s second daughter Ivy is soft compared to the other sisters, cowed by her mother’s bullying. Youngest sister Karen has had a life of unhappiness, but returns to the family with new confidence gained from her relationship with her older fiancé Steve.

Each of the family members are hiding a secret which comes out over the course of the long (for a play) and harrowing drama. It’s bitter, but epic, and like the best family sagas, the Westons are symbols of a deeper degree of societal rot. Violet is a terrifying matriarch, pushed beyond the breaking point and pulling the whole family down around her. She may be drug-addled and diseased, but she’s tough as nails and none of her family’s foibles have escaped her. The other twelve characters in this tragedy of dysfunction are all interesting too. Wait for a time when you can handle some darkness, but by all means, don’t miss one of the great American plays.

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Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell

Lincoln O’Neill is a beta hero, no ifs, ands, or buts.  He’s not going to ride into town with a travel toothbrush in his pocket to kick a little butt, make a little love, and then catch the next bus to anywhere.  He won’t sparkle in the sunlight and make you depressed when he leaves town all in the name of protecting you.  He definitely won’t rip his shirt off and go all wolfish when you’re being threatened.  Instead Lincoln will sit in a windowless room on the graveyard shift and read your e-mail.  He’s not exactly the kind of character one finds endearing but soon you can’t help but root for him.

Lincoln works for a newspaper and his job is to monitor e-mail (back when it was monitored by a person) to ensure the newfangled technology is being used appropriately.  Lincoln hates his job so much that he wants to leave.  Except he’s a little hooked on reading Beth and Jennifer’s e-mails.  So hooked that he finds himself falling for Beth and trying to figure out a way to talk to her without revealing he’s sort of a stalker, but not the freaky kind, mind you.

Beth and Jennifer are two friends sharing their life, love, and family through e-mails.  Never thinking about the person in IT that might be watching, they candidly share their thoughts on just about everything.  As you read this blend of traditional and epistolary novel you won’t be able to help yourself from laughing out loud, enjoying the glimpses of everyday life through e-mail.  Unexpectedly romantic, Lincoln will charm you as a young man that is still coming into his own.  Once you start you won’t be able to stop, after all how can two people that have never met possibly ever fall in love?

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Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, by Olivia Judson

Poor seaweed flies (and roundworms, rabbits, and rodents).  Until 2008, they had no one to turn to to explain their lusts and reproductive hangups.  Fortunately Dr. Tatiana (as created by evolutionary biologist Judson) happened on the scene, and now they can turn to the relevant portion of her self-help book and solve those problems.

For humans, it offers a funny and informative tour of the sexual habits of flowers, animals and insects from around the globe.  Want to know why female sponge lice all go to the restroom at the same time?  Or how the losing male just may wind up fathering offspring anyway?  Or the evolutionary imperatives for both promiscuity and fidelity?  Dr. Tatiana has just the book for you.

Olivia Judson has sorted through the scientific literature and translated it into easily understood descriptions of natural selection in its infinite varieties. (The text is thoroughly supplemented by double entendres.) She doesn’t sacrifice accuracy for readability, but effortlessly transforms reproductive science into compulsively readable information for the layperson (whoops, now I’m doing it!).  It isn’t surprising that the New York Times asked her to write a science column for them.   (Ahem, Dr. Judson, the yearlong sabbatical is up.  When can we look forward to your return?).

So until the seaweed flies, roundworms, rabbits, and rodents evolve opposable thumbs, why don’t you do them a favor and read Dr. Tatiana’s book aloud outdoors?  Who knows– you might be doing someone a big favor.

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