Audiobook. This is the most recent in a series of murder mysteries set in Paris with lots of emphasis on the setting. The protagonist is Aimée Leduc whose detective agency consists of herself and a dwarf, René, who apparently came from a wealthy family. The pace is exhausting and I kept thinking Aimée should take Rene's advice and get some rest. It was delightful...
Michael Dirda in the Post mentions two books republished by the New York Review of Books: J.R. Ackerley's (who wrote My Dog Tulip) Hindoo Holiday and G.B. Edwards's The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. The latter is about the author's life on the island of Guernsey and is described by Michael Dirda as deeply moving.
Audiobook. The beautiful language of Edith Wharton is ideal for an audiobook; along with the other qualities of her books, they just sound lovely. I wanted to read Edith Wharton after reading The Master (see previous post) which is based on the life of Henry James. Although she corresponded with Henry James, she did not appear in Toibin’s book. Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland...
This play was first produced in 1929 and set on the waterfront in Marseille. It was slow going for me because it is in French, but was well worth the effort. The characters are wonderful — Cesar, father of Marius, owns the bar and alternately screams offensively at his friends and his son, and is affectionate and loving in the next instant. Fanny is the beautiful young...
A perfect audiobook — the characters are very appealing and the plot flows along brightly through letters. It's set just after World War II when people did communicate by mail. And sometimes several letters a day were exchanged, so they could be very like dialogue. Has there been an epistolary novel using email yet? During the war, the Channel Islands were occupied...
This is a fictionalized biography of Henry James written with the restraint and the pace of his quiet writer’s life. The copy I read is now bristling with sticky notes to mark passages of interest — so many it’s quite daunting. Before I began the book, I read a short biographical sketch, and continued as I went along to check sources to read about his friends and their...
Audiobook. Mary Susan recommended this one and I downloaded it without reading about it in advance. I’m not sure that had I known it was the story of Hamlet set on the upper midwestern farm of several generations of dog breeders and trainers, centered on a mute boy, I would have been very enthusiastic. But she was right. The precise and loving descriptions of the farm, the family, and...
Paul Tough, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, has taken on a large topic in his book about Geoffrey Canada and his “Quest to Change Harlem and America,” as the subtitle has it. Geoffrey Canada is an educator who has worked in Harlem for many years. His own life story enabled him to observe the differences in parenting styles that are key to having the skills to move out of...
Audiobook. This is an uncommonly appealing book. Once again Jhumpa Lahiri tells stories of characters she clearly loves. She tells us about their shortcomings without making us dislike them and we are not left with a discouraging view of humankind. The title Unaccustomed Earth comes from a quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Custom House, to the effect that human nature...
Sarah Vowell turns her attention to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; she distinguishes them from the pilgrims of the Mayflower who arrived in 1620, while the former arrived in 1630 on the Arbella. She says, The theological differences between the Puritans on the Mayflower and Puritans on the Arbella are small; try negligible to the point of nit-picky. I will also say that readers...