The Reading Life

 The Reading Life by C.S. Lewis

An audio book with less than stellar narration. I should have read a hard copy, and I seem to be saying that a lot lately. With audio books, so very much depends on the reader that I'm beginning to wonder if they're worth it. I've given up on a lot of them because the reader's tone, the attitude they gave the characters, or something in their approach to the story made me dislike the experience. The fault is mine much of the time because I'm guilty of not taking the time to listen to the samples offered, an oversight I will correct before I buy anymore of them. But certainly no more Lewis on audio. I need his books - his brilliance - on my shelf.

The Reading Life is a collection of Lewis's thoughts about reading gathered from his other books, essays, and letters. Some are brief quotes but there are longer passages, a few offering insights on Tolkien's Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books. Lewis and Tolkien are probably my two favourite writers so for me this book was pure pleasure. I appreciate how he can cut through to the heart of an idea in straightforward language, leaving me feeling I've learned something profound and usable in daily life. 

If you've read Lewis extensively, you won't find anything new here, but I have not and so found this collection interesting and worthwhile. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.”

"...in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself”

Death Comes To Pemberley & A Severed Wasp

 Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

From what I've read, I understand this to be P.D. James' tribute to her favourite author, Jane Austen. It's a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, similar in style and language and using the same characters. 

At first I was happy to be back at Pemberley and among old friends, but then I began to notice that my friends were changed. They were saying things that didn't seem to suit the personalities I remembered, and the whole tone of the book was different. Austen wrote a book light in tone with a little bite in its good-natured sarcasm. In James' book the tone is more melancholy and there is little of the witty banter between the characters that made Pride and Prejudice sparkle. That one was called a "comedy of manners"; this one is a tradegy about a murder. It's also about an unfaithful husband, an illigitimate child, and a suicide, topics Miss Austen tended to stay away from.  

The story takes place 6 years after Elizabeth and Darcy were married and they are now residing at Pemberley with their 2 young sons and Darcy's sister, Georgiana. The night before their annual ball, all is thrown into confusion when Elizabeth's sister, Lydia, arrives in a panic saying that her husband, Wickham, has been murdered. If you've read Pride and Prejudice you may think that's not altogether bad news, but murder is murder and some of the men rush out to find him. When they do, he is alive and kneeling over the body of his comrade, Denny, weeping that it's his fault and that he has killed his very good friend. The rest of the story tells about the investigation into what happened and how, who the guilty party is, and the secrets the investigation reveals.

I'm sure it's not easy to write about previously established characters and keep them true to the original author's intent, but this one goes a little too far off track. "Elizabeth knew that she was not fomed for the sad contrivances of poverty" didn't feel like something Austen's Elizabeth would think or say. And when Darcy concluded "The price he had paid in bribing Wickham to marry Lydia had been the price of Elizabeth", it sounded nothing like his Austen character. He had intervened in that situation out of his feeling of responsibility, not to purchase Elizabeth's affection. And the suggestion that Elizabeth's affection could have been bought is not at all true to her character. 

I do enjoy P.D. James writing and this one wasn't bad as a murder mystery, but it messed with the characters too much for me.

A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle

Beautifully written, as expected, but with enough secrets and tragedy to fill a season of soap operas. The main character, Katherine, a retired concert pianist, returns home in retirement to give out more wise advice to others than any one person could or possibly, should. Though I knew I should like and admire her, she was a bit too stand-offish to get close to. I loved the setting (a cathedral in New York City), and all the art and music references, but the pace was slow and the plot a little too much to be believed. All that said, it's not a bad story and the good writing alone is probably reason enough to read this one.

Flowers of Darkness

 Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana De Rosnay

Clarissa, an aging writer, has left her husband after finding out he has a double life, a second home where he lives with....I'll leave that for you to find out. Clarissa (and I) are shocked and disgusted in equal proportions and she begins a new life while I try to erase icky images from my mind. 

The more interesting storyline begins when she moves into a building designed for artists - painters, poets, writers, etc. The building's corporate owners are intent on providing a place where creative people can create without worrying about mundane daily things. Set a few years in the future, advanced tech takes care all that. Clarissa has named her apartment's AI housekeeper/overseer Mrs. Dalloway. 

"Mrs. Dalloway, turn on the kettle. Mrs Dalloway complied. Clarissa left most household matters to her. The heating, air conditioner, alarm, shutters, lighting scheme, automatic cleaning system, and all sorts of other tasks were under Mrs. Dalloway's expert supervision."

Before long she begins to suspect that not only is she being watched and recorded, but also possibly being drugged. During an inexplicable, middle of the night fire drill, a neighbour, Jim, mentions his apprehensions about the building and they agree to meet away from home to share concerns. A few days later Jim is missing, his apartment is empty, and Clarissa knows for sure that something is very wrong here.

Despite the odd secondary story line about Clarissa's husband, this was quite a riveting book that I read (too) far into the night. These days I find almost any story about the use of advanced tech for less than ethical purposes interesting, but this one had a few twists and turns that turned it into a real page-turner toward the end. 

Alas, once you get to the end it just fizzles out. I was left with so many questions that I was sure it must be followed by a sequel, but no, it's a stand alone novel. So I don't know what happened to Jim, how Clarissa gets out of her contract with the building, how or where she's going to live now, or if there will be any legal consequences to the corporation.

It's a good story, but I do wish I had more answers.

The Guest Book

 The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

Three generations of the Milton family, at their summer place on Crockett's Island, Maine, view the world from a position of privilege with a set of particular standards and values. They believe themselves generally good people, open-minded and kind, and so they are on the surface, but a time is coming when they will have to face the darker things beneath.

The book addresses a lot of different issues: racism, antisemitism, homosexualism, elitism and probably a few other isms I'm forgetting. It also raises the issue of American-Nazi sympathizers leading up to the Second World War. It won't give you any answers but it will help you ask questions, which I think is what good fiction should do. Some reviewers have complained of the book tackling too many problems at once, but life is like that isn't it? Problems don't come one at a time no matter how much we wish they would. If it was a bit of a stretch to have it all affecting this one family at this particular time, it made for an interesting story and good reading. 

Kitty and Ogden Milton and their children are the first of three timelines; then Moss, Evelyn, and Joan, the now grown children, are the second; and the third is Evie, Joan's daughter, and Evie's son, Seth. The list of characters is long, with some from different generations having similar names, so when the narrative changed from one timeline to another within a chapter and without any warning, it left me momentarily confused, but it sorted itself out after a few lines. I found most of the characters believable, if not particularly relatable. Life in a summer mansion on a private island is not in my experience, but, again.....good reading.  

The book is long - 559 pages in my mass market paperback edition - but the story was good so the length wasn't an issue for me. The only thing that was an issue was the size of the book. Because it was small and thick, my aging hands found it hard to hold open and were relieved to come to the end of it. I should stop buying these smaller editions, but they are so much less expensive than the larger versions that I get excited about the bargain and forget about the hands. But back to the book...   

Sarah Blake is a good story-teller and a beautiful writer. Some lines I found myself reading and re-reading just for the pleasure of the words and phrasing:

"Soundless, the year wheeled round on its colors. Summer spun down green to gold to gray, then rested, rested white at the bottom of the year, rocking the dark of winter; rocking, then rolling slowly, wheeling up again through a dun brown, a mouse gray, until one day the green whisper, the lightest green. soft and growing into the next day, then the next until suddenly, impossibly, it was spring again."  

Another sentence that particularly appealed to me was "The sun burned with a bright fervor, dismissing the fog and sharpening the afternoon." I thought of how I might have written that sentence and couldn't come close to anything so lovely. "...sharpening the afternoon" changes the way I look at sunny days now. It really is wonderful how reading can help you see things in a new way.

One last quote: "...the piano threw the music into the cavernous room, the notes tossed high and shivering down between the couples, onto the hair of girls and the shoulders of the men. This was one of those nights everyone would remember, it was clear to her even from here in the dark, one of those nights that spring, glistening and electric, upward through the surface of ordinary days: We were here."  So beautifully written, all you can do is sigh and recall summer nights of your own.

 The Guest Book is a good story to get lost in for awhile, and that's always a good thing. 

The Murder at Sissingham Hall

 The Murder at Sissingham Hall by Clara Benson

A country house murder mystery, the first in the Angela Marchant series. When Charles Knox returns to England after 8 years away, he is invited to a gathering at the elegant home of his ex-fiance, the beautiful Rosamund, and her much older husband, Neville Strickland. There Charles gets re-aquainted with old friends and tries to get used to seeing Rosamund as nothing more than that. 

The occasional tension arises but the visit moves along fairly well until, two days in, he awakens to the household in an uproar. Neville has been found dead in his study, apparently from falling and hitting his head on the corner of the mantel. Of course it wasn't an accident and each character is now a suspect.

I love stories set in English manors - the beautiful rooms and grounds, the elegant, well spoken characters - who hasn't dreamed of a life like that? The trouble is, I feel like I've read this story several times before. Different manor, different character names, slightly different circumstances, but basically the same mystery. And like those other ones, once the case was solved the who, what, when, where, and how were dumped in one spot, this time going on so long that I nearly lost interest. 

Pleasant reading but too similar to others before it, and Angela Marchant, who the series is named for, seemed to be only a minor character. I suspect things might get more interesting as the series progresses.

How To Know a Person

 How to Know a Person by David Brooks

This is another audio book I wish I'd read in a paper edition. I did take notes but it's not the same as having a well-underlined book to refer back to, so this one goes on my lengthening list of hard copies to track down. They're readily available at full price of course, but where's the fun in that? I'll look for a good used copy simply because I enjoy the hunt. 

It was the subtitle that first got my attention: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Who doesn't want that? In a culture where we spend more time looking at screens than at people I wonder if anyone truly feels seen anymore. Brooks believes the greatest gift you can give someone is to make them feel seen, and with gentle wisdom and generosity of spirit he teaches us how to begin. 

He talks about Illuminators and Diminishers. Illuminators are easy to be around, people who look for the good in you, show affection, tolerate mistakes, and don't try to fit you into a category. They want to know you, to illuminate you - who you are. They see you as a unique creation, a deep well of experience and capabilities, a treasure to be discovered. Diminishers tend to keep the light on themselves, tell you their stories, their opinions, their experiences. They want to be known but show little interest in knowing you; they listen to your story, then one-up you with theirs. Instead of using the opportunity to ask about your story they redirect the conversation back to themselves and miss an opportunity to get to know you better.

He's not saying we are strictly one or the other; at times we are Illuminators and at others we are Diminishers. His goal is to help us become more illuminating and less diminishing so we can help the people we encounter feel more fully seen. 

I don't think anyone could read this book and not gain something from it. Highly recommended!