Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

BOOK/S I AM PRESENTLY READING:

BEATRIX POTTER: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius. Linda Lear. 447 pages. A fellow artist, she’s also called by her middle name and her first name is Helen. So wonderful to read this after stomping around her country on my trip with Dianne and Gail in fall 2008. It’s poignant how Potter was original, creative, and a good businesswoman in Victorian times yet also felt so bound, obedient, and strangled by her mother.

BOOKS I HAVE READ, from the most recent to when I started keeping records in July 2003: 

THE BOOK OF UNHOLY MISCHIEF. Elle W . 367 pages. A story of chef “Guardians” preserving forbidden scientific and philosophical knowledge in Middle Ages Venice.

WOMEN AND MONEY: Owning the power to control your destiny. Suze Orman. 246 pages. Besides the blah blah blah of sound financial planning and facts, Orman offers many themes that are thought-provoking such as keeping your name, taking control of your own accounts, maintaining separate personal funds, etc.

HOW WE DECIDE. Jonah Lehrer. 259 pages. A few too many male stories of decisions, but otherwise interesting discussion of how we make decisions using emotions and facts.

THE DOUBLE BIND. Chris Bo—. Schizophrenic describes delusion incorporating Great Gatsby characers.

TEN MEN DEAD: The story of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. David Beresford. 334 pages. I should have read this before going to Ireland in 2006. Details of 1981 prisoners who died after political fasts for five conditions. Brits conceded after all died and others gave up. The “comms”–tiny messages written on cigarette papers–were fascinating.

LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY. Susan Vreeland. 429 pages. Two months on Seine island with Renoir and models. Sometimes too much inner dialogue, but for an artist much lovely detail. I saw this painting at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. soon afterwards.

LEANING INTO THE WIND: Women write from the heart of the west. 337 pages. A collection of short pieces–the longest is maybe two pages–of loss, love, beauty, strangeness, living on the great plains. Writing is mixed. Poetry, personal reflection, work with animals.

THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER. George Orwell. 232 pages. Terrific descriptions of north England culture and poverty, thoughts on socialism, predictions for the future. So sad Orwell died at 46.

A BEGGAR AT THE GATE. Thalassa Ali. 333 pages. Follows stifled British woman in Raj India amid idiotic, arrogant Brits. Mystic Indians with their own tribal challenges starting to see Brits as the real problem. Compelling love story and details of the Punjab.

QUIET CORNERS OF PARIS. Jean-Christophe Napias. 166 pages. Writing can be a bit brittle. Lovely photos, arranged by arrondissement. I often don’t recognize the location descriptions, though.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. Virginia Woolf. Introductory essay a slog of its own. Each woman needs a room with a lock and 500 pounds a year of her own money to spend.

THREE CUPS OF TEA: One man’s mission to promote peace one school at a time. Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. 331 pages. Even a flawed person can work for peace and justice. On-going story of crusade for building schools in Central Asia.

THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. John Muir. 145 pages. Bought this at Muir’s birthplace in Dunbar. So attentie and admiring of all nature. Worked hard and noticed everything.

THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN: A Tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary. Simon Winchester. 242 pages. I reread this. Madness amidst scholarship. Well done.

WAR JOURNAL: My five years in Iraq. Richard Engel. 377 pages. Written about 2002 to 2007ish? Published 2008. Sometimes all over the map, but what else to expect? An obscene, fanatical, male mess. Hard to read the horror and chaos.

SHORT STORIES. Maeve Binchy. Four stories read in Scotland on my trip. Last one on alcoholic returning from rehab quite compelling. Good writing.

THE WELL-ORDERED HOME: Organizing techniques for inviting serenity into your life, Lathleen Kendall-Tackett. 119 pages. Can be infantile rambling amidst a few good ideas. Needed a strong editor.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Emily Bronte. 247 pages. Overwirtten, but the compelling characters shine through. Obsessive love.

THE DUD AVOCADO. Elaine Dundy. 255 pages. A 21-year-old girl in 1950s Paris: semi-autobiographical. First published in 1958. Drinking to excess, actors, out all night carousing. Hard to relate.

ARRANGED MARRIAGE. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. 300 pages. Eleven stories. Good writing; heartbreaking snapshots into Indian culture, expat living in California, roles, being authentic, and communicating.

THE POCKET GUIDE TO BEING AN INDIAN GIRL. B.K. Mahal. 259 pages. Smarty-pants British slang and Indian words often not translated: immersion in teenage angst and attitude. Daughter and father journey to find their true selves.

JESUS’ SON. Denis Johnson. 160 pages. Eleven stories. Really good writing. Junky hip with observations on the rest of us.

THE POET AND THE MURDERER: A true story of literary crime and the art of forgery. Simon Worrall. 263 pages. And I thought I knew a bit about Mormons. Sad details of Mark Hofmann forgeries and Sotheebys’ greed and arrogance. Worrall needed a Salt Lake editor to do consistent spellings and references. Some inexcusable errors.

LE MARIAGE. Diane Johnson. 322 pages. Lots of Parisian tidbits mixed in with attitudes towards Americans and the French. But I don’t like any of these people. Some serious subjects addressed: adultery, marital respect, culture clashes, mother feelings. NOT a comic novel.

VISIONS OF GERARD. Jack Kerouac. 130 pages. So sad, more accessible, like you’re looking right into Kerouac’s beating heart as he describes his wonderful, doomed older brother’s nine years of life.

VISIONS OF CODY. Jack Kerouac. 398 pages plus notes. Dense writing, was he just taking constant notes or mining his head for these details?

SUNK WITHOUT A SOUND; The tragic Colorado honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde. Brad Dimock. 274 pages. A 1928 mystery of river runners plus the reenactment of the route with Dimock and his wife.

THE ROAD. Cormac McCarthy. 287 pages. Sparse, searing odyssey after the apocalypse. Everything burned and looted, but goodness in father and son endures.

ESCAPE. Carolyn Jessop. 413 pages. Memoir of FLDS family: control, lust, and domination protected by God’s wishes. Jessop quite brace to reveal all the abuse. Ends with Warren Jeffs’ capture.

MIDDLESEX. Jeffrey Eugenides. 529 pages. Weird but mostly engaging story of incestuous Greek immigrant grandparents’ move to Detroit. A fictional family moes through riots, etc., plus daughter’s identity change to a man.

BIG SUR. Jack Kerouac. 241 pages. More of the Dulouz Legend, once he’d become famous and drunk after On the Road. Detailed, brilliant, poetic, gossipy, yet kind, tragic.

HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT. Whitney Otto. 179 pages. Read for Book club July 2008. Ruminations on quilting, men, marriage, betrayal. Book could have used another editing go-round.

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. Thomas Hardy. 337 pages. Beautifully written moor drama of power, humility, fitting to one’s environment. Timeless conflicts. Complicated, dense descriptions. Egdon Heath is a character. Love that Diggory Venn!

KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL. Deborah Rodriguez. American woman sets up school. Incredibly consistent male hysteria and interference at every turn. Salons a necessary female haven.

THE REVOLUTIONARIES WORE PEARLS. Kaye Lowman. 134 pages. Could use some editing and fewer exclamation points, but a warm story of ordinary women who changed the tide of unhealthy infant feeding.

THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER. Luis Alberto Urrea. 495 pages. Lovely story of a northern Mexican curandera who gained respect and adoration from Indians and Mexicans. From lowly beginnings to Santa Teresa.

THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION. Michael Chabon. 411 pages. Weird, revisionist Jewish story with Jesish state in Sitka, Alaska. Strong writing in detective noir style.

THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH. Robert Hicks. 404 pages. Based on real story of Carrie McGavock who cares for 1,500 soldiers buried at her plantation cemetery after the 1864 Battle of Franklin.

HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD. Kiran Desai. 209 pages. Quirky characters acting sometimes in desperation over controlling family situations. Interwoven with searing facts of Indian culture.

THE GLASS CASTLE. Jeannette Walls. 288 pages. Tale of criminally negligent parents a tough read. Reader wants peripheral adults to intervene, remove kids. Children of alcoholics tell a sad, confused tale.

ONE OF OURS. Willa Cather. 395 pages. Such good writing. Nebraska farm boy marries wrong, is overlooked, but finds meaning and adventure in WWI France.

THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL. Uasmina Khadra (nom de plume for Mohammed Moulessehoul). 195 pages. Two doomed Afghani couples in Taliban-ruled Kabul. Shocking and frightening snapshots.

THE BROKEN CEDAR. Martin Malone. 306 pages. Lebanese family and an Irishman looking for his father who was hung but survived. Sboer, careful portrait of great pain, death, love.

THE BOOK THIEF. Markus Zusak. 550 pages. Death narrates Leisel’s life as a foster child in Nazi Germany. Lovely, stark comments by Death as Germany wins, then plummets.

THE WELSH GIRL. Peter Ho Davies. POW camp for Germans in WWII in Caernaervon, Wales. Discussion of place, ethics, war, and the real enemy. English are more the Welsh enemies than the Nazis.

SEVEN VOICES ONE DREAM. Mary Ann Cahill. 212 pages with black-and-white photographs. Choppy patchwork of interviews with the founders of La Leche League. Interviewer’s questions can detract from the otherwise interesting responses and memories (though often repetitive) of the seven housewives who started an international organization in 1956 from humble roots in suburban Chicago. Some macro editing would help this otherwise charming group/organization memoir. Contains photos of the founders in the early days and with their families.

AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR: A NOVEL. Patrick Taylor. 337 pages. Taylor is an actual M.D. from Northern Ireland. The original title was The Apprenticeship of Dr. Laverty, but perhaps that didn’t grab American readers like anything with “Irish” in the title.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. Khalid Hosseini. Follows several Afghani women and the men, soldiers, and regimes that torment them through war, child-bearing, marriage, sacrifice, and escape. An excellent companion to Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

EINSTEIN’S DREAMS. Alan Lightman. 179 pages. Physicist-author imagines fantastical turns and twists of time and sequences of life in patent clerk Einstein’s Vienna (?) and Zurich (?).

THE CITY OF FALLING ANGELS. John Berendt. 398 pages. Nonfiction series of pieces about Venice centered around the burning down of the opera house Fenice (“feh-NEE-chay”). A detailed look at culture and the Italian and American players in the history, culture, and preservation of Venice.

THE RISING SHORE–ROANOKE. Deborah Homsher. 270 pages. Fiction based on the facts known about the Roanoke, Virginia, “Lost Colony.” Follows story of two women–Eleanor Dare and her serving girl Margaret Lawrence–as they navigate growing up and sailing to the New World. I had lunch with the author with Jane Maestro in Ithaca, New York, in March 2008.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Erich Maria Remarque. Author is from Osnabruck, Germany–where all the Grossmans are from–and served in WWI. Gentle, insightful, coming-of-age in the trenches of World War I. Also saw two movies based on book. Both quite good. The 1930 version has strengths as does the recent remake with Richard “John Boy” Thomas. Required reading for the whole world.

THE PLACES IN BETWEEN. Rory Stewart. 297 pages. Scotsman walks across Afghanistan right after the fall of the Taliban. Text is interspersed with author’s sketches.

THE GLEEMAIDEN. Sylvian Hamilton. 405 pages. Third of a novel series featuring the knight Sir Richard Straccan. Can be confusing with story lines and characters from the author’s previous THE BONE-PEDLAR. I hadn’t realized “glee” is Irish for song: now “glee club” makes a lot more sense. I picked this book up in Dubai, but I don’t usually go for historical fantasy.

IGNORANCE: A NOVEL. Milan Kundera. Translated from the French by Linda Asher. 195 pages. Twists and emotional turns of two Czech emigres who return to Prague after 20 years. Both remember yet don’t remember. Kundera interjects snatches of The Odyssesy, as Odysseus grapples with returning to Ithaca.

THE BRONTES: A FAMILY HISTORY. John Cannon. 141 pages. A small book that packs a literary wallop. The Brontes’ family history in Ireland (where the family name was originally Brunty) seems to contain many of the plots of the Bronte sisters’ books. Fascinating and a requirement for any English major’s book shelf.

THE NARROWS. Michael Connelly. 400 pages. I’m not a mystery buff, but the settings had me hooked. From Los Angeles to Catalina Island to Las Vegas to the Mojave Desert (notably the Zzyzzx exit), the details are personally compelling for this southwestern gal. The detective, Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch, is a sad, complicated yet ethical character you woudn’t mind sharing an apartment complex with.

A STEP FROM HEAVEN. An Na. 156 pages.  Heartbreaking and wonderful story of a Korean girl’s assimmilation into southern California culture along with her depressed, abusive father and her carrying-on mother.

THE DANCING GIRLS OF LAHORE: SELLING LOVE AND SAVING DREAMS IN PAKISTAN’S PLEASURE DISTRICT. Louise Brown. 290 pages. Brown is an English woman who lives for extended periods in a Lahore red-light district documenting the culture of the sex workers and their families. Brown also recommends Ruswa’s UMRAD JAN ADA, Manto’s SELECTED STORIES, and Weiss’s WALLS WITHIN WALLS plus several films about Indian and Pakistani women.

BLOODY FALLS OF THE COPPERMINE; MADNESS, MURDER, AND THE COLLISION OF CULTURES IN THE ARCTIC, 1913. McKay Jenkins. 236 pages. Two Catholic priests go up to northern Canada to convert Eskimo people who’ve seen maybe three white people in their entire lives. The priests are murdered, an enthusiastic crew from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police go up to investigate, and things, of course, fall further apart. Some RCMP members quite sensitive, though. The main Eskimo suspect tells the court he thought the two white men were trappers. Therein lies the kernel of this cultural tragedy.

MARCH: A NOVEL. Geraldine Brooks.  273 pages. Brooks takes Mr. March from Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN and fleshes out his Civil War experiences: what happens to a man during war, and how can he return to his family but a grossly changed man? I watched COLD MOUNTAIN right afterwards. If CM’s Inman had lived, he might have been just as broken and emotionally knotted up as March. The Australian author Brooks is the wife of Tony Horwitz, whose CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC I also really enjoyed.

THE RED-HAIRED GIRL FROM THE BOG: THE LANDSCAPE OF CELTIC MYTH AND SPIRIT. Patricia Monaghan. 250 pages with pronunciation guide, glossary, notes, and an index. To my delight, Monaghan starts with describing the hag magic of County Clare. Makes me want to return to Ireland, this book in hand.

THE LADY AND THE UNICORN. Tracy Chevalier. 248 pages. Historical fiction based on the few facts known about the six huge luminous “The Lady and the Unicorn” tapestry series in the Cluny Museum in Paris. I would have liked more details of medieval Paris, but I’ll take Chevalier’s take on this.

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. Alexander Dumas. I unashamedly read the abridged version. Dumas wrote this during the same year as he wrote THE THREE MUSKETEERS. I have read that he had a studio of writers whom he supervised.

ETHAN FROME. 1911. Edith Wharton. 130 pages. The themes and images really pop out of this dimunutive book: being trapped and crippled, power and manipulation, sex, choices, suicide pacts, and the desolation of finances and of dreams. Zeena Pierce (pierces the heart, piercing manner) and Mattie Silver (shining) are names carefully chosen by Wharton. “Florida” seems to be a symbol of all that’s warm and what could have been for Ethan. Wharton wrote this while living in Paris on the rue de Varenne, a street with nice apartment complexes and the Biron Hotel (now the Rodin Museum). From rue Varenne, you can see the Hotel des Invalides and its dome where Napoleon is buried. In Wharton’s time, Rodin was working in the Hotel Biron with other artists. Wharton’s upper class situation seems almost cruel as she carefully chronicles Starkfield’s “inarticulate” (her word) New Englanders.

MADAME BOVARY. 1857. Gustave Flaubert. 321 pages. Careful, detailed writing. Slow going but quite wonderful. Emma Bovary is woefully unprepared for life, though sometimes I felt the truly tragic figure was her husband Charles. The short description of the aimless eight-hour ride where Emma is seduced in a carriage is masterful.

SHE CAME TO STAY. 1943. Simon de Beauvoir. 409 pages. Her first novel, based on the menage-a-troi between her, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Olga Kosakievicz (to whom the book is dedicated). Endless conversation with little action.

THE RAZOR’S EDGE. 1943. Somerset Maugham. 314 pages. I’m rereading this. The writing is measured and gorgeous. The Everyman Larry character compelling, but the narrative bogs down when Larry describes religion in India.

INTO A PARIS QUARTIER: REINE MARGOT’S CHAPEL AND OTHER HAUNTS OF ST.-GERMAIN. 2003. Diane Johnson. 194 pages. Ex-pat author describes her neighborhood and its history in great detail. Book weakens when she makes modern political comments.

A MOVEABLE FEAST. 1964 (but covers 1922-26). Ernest Heminway. 140 pages. I reread these short sketches about living in Paris before he became famous. Paris is a feast you keep with you the rest of your life, thus the moveable part. Tales of meeting, drinking, and hanging out with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Scott and Zelda were a tragedy together.

TETE-A-TETE: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR AND JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. 2007. Hazel Rowley. 351 pages. Brings these two to agonizing life. Jean-Paul was constantly falling love with new women; Simone was bi-sexual and prone to fits of sobbing over her own love affairs and shortcomings. Fascinating to learn the details of Simone’s life that she then used in her fiction. 

LONESOME TRAVELER. 1960. Jack Kerouac. Eight essays. Such brilliant, original writing with not a single cliche or wasted breath of a word. In biography, he comes off as casual and sloppy; in his own observations, he seems keen and precise.

WORDS IN A FRENCH LIFE: LESSONS IN LOVE AND LANGUAGE FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. 2006. Kristin Espinasse. 282 pages of comments and French lessons based on Espinasse’s blog <french-word-a-day.com>

KEROUAC: A BIOGRAPHY. 1974. Ann Charters. 367 pages with fascinating, detailed notes. Dizzying back-and-forth of Ti Jean’s unhappy life. Fascinating, wearying, drunken catalogue. Kerouac’s travels more complex and erratic than even On the Road reveals. 

(Continued)