The Sunday Salon: Another Time

If you were to glance at my reading list for this year, you might think I was a student of history. So far this year I’ve read 23 books, and 10 of them were “historical novels.”  My trusty reading chair has become a virtual time machine, letting me explore England during the time periods of both World Wars, an artist’s atelier in late 18th century Paris, and midwifery in Appalachia during the 1950’s. Even my contemporary fiction choices have not brought me into the present day, but pushed me back into the late 20th century, with novels set in the 1960’s and 1990’s. 

This all has me thinking - why am I gravitating toward the past? 

Reading is more than my favorite pastime. Sometimes I think it’s almost like therapy...I read to learn about people, and how they conduct their lives and relationships. The characters in the novels I love most are those I can identify with, who are struggling with some of the same issues as I do as we go about our lives in general. Just this morning, I read the following paragraph in Jennifer Robson’s novel, After the War is Over that reminded me of similar sentiments which show up in my journal pages and on my blog:

“When had she ever spent an entire day having fun? She was thirty-three, and in the course of her adult life, she now realized she had never, not ever, allowed herself an entire day of fun without being overcome by guilt or anxiety or the rear that there were worthier things to do. Having fun was for other people - people who earned the right to be carefree.” 

I’ve sometimes felt as if I were born in the wrong era, as if I would have been happier growing up as my parents did in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Now that I’ve spent nearly six decades on earth, I begin to feel even more outside of time as the 21st century speeds past. I love my technology as much as the next person, but sometimes I get frightened at the way it seems to control our lives. I worry about a generation of children who depend on technology for entertainment, education, and interpersonal relationships. 

No matter what era they’re set in, the historical novels I read remind me of times when entertainment was gentler and life was slower, when communication was much more personal, when people were more mindful of the natural world and it’s cycles. 

This winter has been difficult for me. In addition to extreme cold and snow, I’ve been ill off and on all winter, and I’m still feeling fragile, as if I’m on a precipice and just one misstep from plunging over.

So I lose myself in these novels of other times and places to forget those things in modern life that seem threatening, but also to remind myself of the common ground we all share in this life in general, no matter what time period we’re living in.

These are the historical novels I’ve read since January:

Romancing Miss Bronte

Amherst

The Paying Guests

In This House of Brede

The Visitors

The Secret Life of Violet Grant

The Midwife of Hope River

Secrets of  A Charmed LIfe

Rodin’s Lover

After the War is Over

The Sunday Salon: Bookish Birthday Gifts and a Gift from Me to You

For a period of years in the mid 1960’s, my cousin Cora gave me one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's “Little House” books for my birthday every year. The gift was especially meaningful since Cora was the cousin I most admired - she was about 15 years older than I, and she had gone to college, something no one else in the family had done. I knew next to nothing about college, except that my parents regularly alluded to the fact that I would someday attend as well. Because I loved school, and college was School with a Capitol S, I looked forward to going with eager anticipation. Cora was the only one in the family who gave me books as gifts, and in my mind this conferred a special connection between us. We were both readers, and that set us apart from the rest of the family.

Of course I loved reading the Little House books, and would re-read the year’s book several times before my birthday rolled around again. There was no question of “jumping ahead” in the series and taking out the next one from the library. For that entire year I lived with whatever adventures the Ingalls' family were undertaking as I waited for the next installment to arrive in early March. 

Books were my preferred friends and companions in those days. I was a quiet only child, growing up in a suburban Catholic neighborhood, surrounded my families of five, six, seven, children. Although I enjoyed playing with other children, I was happiest curled up somewhere with a book. I felt connected to the characters in books the way I didn’t always feel connected to the living, breathing children in my neighborhood or classroom. That’s the wonderful thing about books - they connect us to people and experiences and worlds we might never otherwise consider. They invite us to question and explore, they give solace and support.

At least they always have for me.

I still have all those Little House books, the hardcover editions, on a special shelf downstairs. My son wasn’t particularly interested in them, which isn’t surprising. He loved mysteries and ghost stories and, later, satire and Star Trek. I kept his favorite books from infancy through childhood, and parcel them out to my grandson at appropriate times. I don’t have any illusions that my grandson will care about Laura and Mary Ingalls either, so I suspect those books will stay with me until someone packs up my final effects.

People rarely buy me books anymore, which I completely understand. Even though books are my favorite gift (aside from jewelry) how would anyone know what I’ve read and what I haven’t? My mother often gives me Barnes and Noble gift cards which are a fine substitute, and I judiciously hoard them to use on titles I know I want to maintain in my permanent library. 

One of the most meaningful bookish gifts I ever received was from my husband, many years ago. We were in our early 30’s at the time, he was working long, hard hours and I was finishing up my college (I did go, but in fits and spurts over a period of 10 years). The book was The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath; this purchase was touching evidence that despite his busyness and preoccupation with his own work, he had paid attention to my interests of the time. 

I’ve kept that book as well, even though I never read the poems anymore.

All this to say, tomorrow is my birthday, and there are a couple of books I’m coveting for myself this year. One is A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler’s latest (and she says her Last) novel. The other is Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, which many people have said moved them to tears. I am thinking of starting my own birthday book buying tradition, taking myself to the bookstore tomorrow and purchasing a gift from me to me. 

I’m also inviting you to my bookish birthday celebration and giving away one copy of my own book, Life In General. Enter to win by leaving a comment here - tell me about your favorite bookish gift, or simply say “I’m in.” A winner will be chosen by random drawing on Sunday, March 15.

And whatever you’re reading this Sunday, may it connect you with satisfying thoughts, ideas, and emotions. 

The Sunday Salon: Second Chances

I’ve never been one of those readers who will “solider on” with a book to the bitter end even if I don’t care for it. I’ve always felt the searing truth of the saying: “So many books, so little time.” Most of my books come from the library where I have a habit of dashing in, plucking a sackful of books off the new release shelf, taking a quick pass through the stacks to see if there’s anything I might have missed or if an old favorite might be calling my name, and then making off with them like a bandit. (Sometimes, I still feel like the entire concept of libraries is too good to be true - I mean, they really let me come in and just take a dozen books home with me?) 

I admit, it’s harder to set aside a book I’ve bought and paid for than one I’ve borrowed from the library, so I’ve learned to be very selective in the books I purchase because I know I’ll feel a stronger compulsion to finish them. 

On Monday,  I started reading a library novel by a new-to-me author, Sally Beauman. I had finished In This House of Brede early Monday morning, and gave myself the entire day to let it “digest” before starting something else. I found it’s necessary to do that after reading a book that was particularly entrancing, and I was definitely deeply immersed in Godden’s 1960’s novel about a contemplative monastery of nuns.

Although I gave myself the day (and a busy day it was) to release Brede from my mind, I still struggled with The Visitors during my regular evening reading time, and also well into the hour I give myself for reading each morning. The early stages of the novel were set in Egypt, circa 1920, and recounted a good bit of detail about Egyptian archeological expeditions. It’s well written and researched, but not an area of particular interest to me. I was contemplating giving up on it. With the same library haul that yielded The Visitors, I had also brought home a number of quite interesting novels, as well as a memoir I was eager to read. 

But then, I hit the second section of the book, almost 200 pages into a 450 page novel. Suddenly we were back in England, near Cambridge. Our main character was dealing with a very interesting, complex new person in her life. We were meeting her father for the first time, and learning what an absolute dolt he was. The author was filling in the back story of this young girl who had lost her beloved mother, and was on a psychological search for a family of her own, just as the English archeologists were searching for royal tombs in the Egyptian desert.

Suddenly, I was hooked. I can’t put the book down. I’ve been carrying it around the house every since, and read a few more pages whenever I have a few moments to spare.

I’ve had this experience a few times before - almost ready to set a book aside, I decide to read on a little more, when suddenly the author pulls a rabbit out the hat and lures me completely in. Naturally I have to wonder if some of the other books I’ve put aside unfinished might have fulfilled their initial promise if given a second chance. Reading teaches us so much, in so many ways.  Of course there is a life lesson to be learned here as well: second chances sometimes pay off. 

Now, back to The Visitors..I can’t wait to see what happens next.

How about you? Have you ever been tempted to give up reading a book only to find yourself completely sucked in within the next chapter?

The Sunday Salon: Old Friends

“Old friends, old friends, sat on the park bench like bookends..."

Paul Simon’s poignant tune has been running through my mind all week as I’ve been re-reading a book I first read over 40 years ago. In This House of Brede, a novel by Rumer Godden, is the story of Phillippa Talbot, 40 year old woman who leaves behind a successful career in business and enters a Benedictine monastery to become a contemplative nun. 

“Is it easier to be than to do?” she inquires of a friend, who questions her decision to eschew a life of productive activity. And though the book was written almost 50 years ago, this question is one we ask of ourselves more and more in the 21st century. For this group of nuns, the work of their lives is of spiritual being - the majority of their days are spent in prayer and worship for people in the outside world who seek supplication and intercessory prayer. As a community they perform the Divine Office. They write books and create artwork designed to uplift and sustain spiritual life. They humble themselves before God and each other.

The novel, besides being a fascinating look inside the life of monastic nuns during the early 1960’s, is also one of those ensemble novels I always enjoy reading. The story is as much about the other nuns and postulants as it is about Phillippa (who becomes Dame Phillippa when she takes her solemn vows). Dame Catherine Ismay, who becomes the reluctant, yet clear-headed Abbess; Sister Cecily, the extraordinarily beautiful and musically gifted  young postulant a whose mother nearly disowned her because of  her vocation; Dame Agnes, old and wise, who is wary of Phillippa because sees something worldly her that is impossible to leave behind. 

When I read this book the first time I was maybe 15 or 16 and had just started attending Catholic high school. My only religious experiences to date had been sporadic attendance at a small Baptist church. The liturgy and ritual of the Catholic church quickly captured my imagination, I was eager to learn more about it. Many of my teachers were nuns (not Benedictine, of course, but Felicians), and I wasn’t quite sure how to relate to them. Becoming acquainted with Godden’s characters helped me understand them and feel more comfortable with them.

As I read this battered old library edition with it’s hard cover and rigid heavy-duty binding, it’s pages yellowed and stained after sitting on the shelf for 40 years, I wonder how long its been since someone read this book.  There are so many new books calling for our attention these days, books with beautifully designed covers, whose authors pop up in our Facebook and Twitter feeds. I picked it up at the library one day when I was wandering through the stacks and heard it beckon me from the shelf, whispering “pssst, over here” in a tremulous voice.

Just like an old, old friend.

It’s good to get reacquainted.

The Sunday Salon: Reveling in Reading

This is a great winter - for reading at least. Thanks to all that time I spent recovering from the flu, I’ve discovered a new favorite reading spot on the couch and it’s where you’ll find me for more and more significant periods of time these bitterly cold days. 

This week I finished Jane Smiley’s Some Luck, which is the first of a planned trilogy about the Langdon family of farmers, begins in 1920. Each chapter represents a year in the life of the family, with this volume ending in 1953.

So, the novel encompasses a generation and half’s worth of living, loving, working, going to school, having children. And of course, dying. There’s not a lot of major excitement or action - it’s ordinary life on a fair to middling sized farm. Drought comes, the Depression happens, war intervenes. It’s 395 pages of starkly beautiful prose about the kind of life-in-general events we all experience, whether we’re farmers, carpenters, doctors, lawyers, homemakers, musicians. It’s the story of a family, of life in American during a 30 year period. 

Why should we care about this Langdon family, then? There’s nothing special about them. Not a Pulitzer Prize winner among them, nor a researcher who cures cancer, or a philanthropist who saves the lives of refugees. 

Perhaps because they are just like us. Ordinary, imperfect, living quiet lives doing the best they can with the time and talents they’ve been given. Because Smiley elevates their simple passage through life with writing like this, in a scene near the end of the book as Rosanna, the matriarch, surveys her family over Thanksgiving dinner:

She should have sat down...but she didn’t want to sit down, or eat at all; she just wanted to stand there and look at them as they passed the two gravy boats and began to cut their food. They couldn’t have survived so many strange events. Take your pick - the birth of Henry in that room over there, with the wind howling and the dirt blowing in. Take your pick - all of them nearly dying of heat that summer of ’36. Take your pick - Joey falling out of the hayloft, Frankie driving the car to Usherton, Frankie disappearing into the Italian Campaign. Take your pick - Walter falling into the well. Take your pick - Granny Mary with her cancer, but still walking around. Take your pick - Lillian running off with a stranger who turned out to be a clown but a lovable one, and nice looking, and weren’t Timmy and Debbie just darling? Normally Rosanna took credit for everything, but now she thought, this was too much. She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of silverware, the fragrances of the food, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. She looked at Walter who was so far away at the other end of the table. As if on cue, Walter looked at Rosanna, and they agreed in that instant: something had created itself from nothing - a dumpy old house had been filled, if only for this moment, with twenty-three different worlds, each one of them rich and mysterious. Rosanna wrapped her arms around herself for a moment and sat down.

It’s what we all do. Create something - a LIFE - from nothing. And if we have some luck, we survive all the strange events of our own individual lives from generation to generation and can find a point to survey it all with wonder, amazement, and pride.

Needless to say, I’m eager to read the next volume in the trilogy.

I’ll be here on my couch, waiting.