The other day when I was snuggled up in bed reading while the rain pattered on the roof, I came across a line that made me laugh with delight. So much so, I Tweeted the line and posted it on Facebook.

Far-off on the hill a sheep coughed.

After I posted it on Facebook and said that it was the best line ever, my friend Barry–in fact the same friend who I mentioned in my last post–wrote: “Are you being sarcastic? It sounds to me like a line written by a 10-year old who has hopes of becoming a novelist.”

When I saw this response I was a bit taken aback. Barry was right, but the author who wrote the line is one I revere and the book I was reading was one that I really liked. Although the line struck me as funny when I first read it, it didn’t strike me as bad writing. But out of context I can’t blame my friend.

In context I think the line works, and while still funny, doesn’t seem like bad writing. In fact, it reminds me of when John and stayed in a farmhouse in the Cotswolds and we enjoyed listening to the sheep bleating on the distant hillsides each evening. I don’t remember any of them coughing, but that’s not to say they didn’t. Here is the full context, the scene is a large, remote country house in Ireland in the early 1950s.

Sally came up from the dark kitchen stairs into the house, empty, still, and flooded with sunlight. Charles and Violet had gone out of course; Violet would be in the walled garden examining the ruins of the roses with Cammaert [the gardener]. With something like relief, with a tremor of fear, Sally thought, I’m all alone here. She stood on the threshold of the library as if waiting for some decision which would take her inside, to her grandfather’s desk. Far-off on the hill a sheep coughed.

What do you think? Bad writing? Okay, but not great? Middle brow? 1950s chick lit? Does it matter? The writer is my beloved May Sarton and the novel is A Shower of Summer Days. Her work pleases me so much and this novel ranks in the upper middle range of all the novels of hers that I have read.

But what about the book?

Violet and Charles, a 50-something couple returns to the wife’s ancestral home in Ireland after Charles is pushed out of his industrialist position in Burma. Soon after they return Violet’s estranged sister who lives in America sends Sally, her college-age daughter, over to stay with them in the hopes she forgets about her actor boyfriend.

I can’t say too much more without giving too much away. I will say that I think that there is a gay subtext that comes really close to pushing through in a few places that would make the novel make more sense than the more abstract issues Sarton focuses on. The subtext is independent of the quasi-Lesbianic idol worship that Sally has for Violet. Or is it? I don’t really know. But I do think if Sarton had felt more comfortable being open about the subtext the story might have made more sense. Without doing so meant that much of the book’s climax and resolution was based on some fairly opaque conclusions that I am not sure someone as literal-minded as I am can be happy with. This would seem like a fairly big flaw, but I still enjoyed the book quite a bit.

 
All of these are sane on their own, but taken together? Might be a little nuts.

1. Blog at least once a week. I really got off track last year. Granted, I did the blog about our house project (which I haven’t updated in a while), but I didn’t have a job until mid-September so that ain’t no damn excuse. (grammar police look the other way) In some ways not posting very much on My Porch last year made me feel a little disconnected from the online reading world.

2. Read 100 books. I’ve done it a few times before but last year was not such a good year. I had tons of time on my hands. Too much I guess. I only made it into the low 60s. And as of the 9th day of 2015 I’ve only got one under my belt. I better get busy.

3. Keep up with my blog reading. Oy, I’ve been bad about this recently. By the time I get around to catching up there are so many posts to look at I ended up shutting down and ignoring way too many interesting posts.

4. I’m stealing this one from Simon Savidge who noted on episode 116 of The Readers that he plans to look at no screens after 10 pm. That means no TV, no computer, no phone, no iPad, etc. I’m not sure if he plans to do it on the weekends as well, but I am going to limit my limit to Sunday through Thursday nights. So far I have managed to do this but it takes being a little conscientious for sure. When I am about to press play on something on the DVR I have to look at the time to see if it will finish by 10. So far, so good.

[I interrupt this list to note that I just went to Google something about reading challenges for 2015 and came across a blogger who is, I’m sure a lovely person, but has a blog so cloyingly annoying (clannoying?) that I feel compelled (but will not) leave a snarky comment on her blog. Consider this editorial aside to be a sort of safety valve in that regard.]

5. Read all of Anthony Powell’s 12-book, 4-volume series The Dance to the Music of Time. Annabel is bound and determined to do it this year and I am going to try and join her. The most challenging bit is that I don’t feel compelled to read them yet. You know how you can have something on your shelves for years and then one day you just feel like it is the right time to give it a go? I feel that in my head right now, but I don’t feel it in my gut. Stay tuned.

6. I think I have have participated in James’ TBR dare ever year that he has done it, save one. And I was late in signing up, but since I haven’t broken any of the rules yet, I figure I still qualify. This one may turn out to be easier to do this year since I am now reunited with all of my books unpacked and in one place and so I have a lot of unread books to choose from. More than enough to keep me happy.

7. Go to a movie once a month. This may sound easy, but, much to John’s chagrin I don’t see many movies these days. For the 11 months we lived in our temporary apartment we lived only 3 blocks from a multi-plex and we only went once.

8. Finish sending Amanda the rest of those Penguin post cards I started sending a year ago. I thought for sure I would send all 100 over a year, but I still have about 30 or 40 yet to send. Now that we are settled back into our house, I might find that easier to achieve.

The pile of postcards last January. I really should take an updated photo with at least half the stack gone.

The box and first post arrived in Georgia last January.

9. Participate in at least one of the two Dewey’s Read-a-thon weekends. I’m not a fan of all the cheerleading and memes and such, but I still love the event and the wide range bloggers who participate.

….looking back at the list, and thinking of no other items to add I’m beginning to think I may actually accomplish all of these. The only one I am doubtful of is the Powell.

The row of grey Persephone books mark the end of the fiction. The two rows below that are various non-fiction books that have yet to be organized. I ran out of time.

There is so much that is overwhelming about moving back into a renovated house after eleven months away and with just five days to go until Christmas. Certainly much to be happy about but also much that is stressful and discombobulating. The holidays, work, impending appraisal and mortgage closing, aggravating punchlist items, frustrating utility providers, and the list goes on.

All of this makes it a little hard to get motivated to blog about the fun stuff, like organizing my new and improved library, and recapping my favorite reads for 2014. To aid my efforts, I have decided to use two handy crutches: photos and lists.

Top Five Yawns of 2014
Some of these titles had some redeeming qualities, but the overall impression they left was boredom, especially when viewed through the lens of a year-end recap.

• Fin and Lady by Cathleen Schine
• Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
• A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron
• Miss Fuller by April Bernard
• Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Same fireplace when we first moved in and were thinking about a grey paint for the library.

After over a year of living with those color swatches on the wall, I decided just go ahead and paint the library even though it would be torn up in a year. It was also a good experiment in what turned out to be a color and color direction we really didn’t want to go in the new library. The shelves to the right of the fireplace were not replaced. I gained some additional shelf space elsewhere in the library, but I will miss this odd bit. It’s where I kept most of my TBR.

Looking the same general direction showing a bit more of the shelves. We ended up going with a much warmer grey with a little more brown and green in it.

Top Five Pleasant Surprises of 2014
All of these novels were written by authors who were new to me. Three of them were recommended to me and two (Leary and Cameron) were just ones I thought I would give a go. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed all of them quite a lot.

• The Dinner by Herman Koch
• The Good House by Ann Leary
• Andorra by Peter Cameron
• The Bookseller by Mark Pryor
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

All of the books had already been put on the shelves, but they weren’t in any order. It took me most of a day to just get the fiction set right.

I haven’t read any of the stories in these Everyman collections, but their covers have been too darn pretty to pass up.

The end wall shelves are deeper and will house mainly art, gardening, and coffee table books.

Early in the process. I was still on the Bs.

Five Books I Knew I Would Like
With all the upheaval in my life in 2014 it is no surprise I sought out some comforting authors to get me through it all. The Brookner was part of my re-read of all her novels while the rest are authors I have been able to rely on when I need a good, cozy read. Big surprise, all are British and all are women.

• Family and Friends by Anita Brookner
• Less than Angels by Barbara Pym
• Linden Rise by Richmal Crompton
• The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens
• Still Glides the Stream by D.E. Stevenson

Another ‘before’ picture for comparison. I’ll admit this is looking pretty cozy.

Five Favorite Spy/Thriller/Intrigue Novels of 2014
There have been many years when I wouldn’t even have a single title that could fit this category. But this year I got a bit of a bug and a good tip off on Eric Ambler. What they all have in common is they are a bit old fashion and don’t have much, if any, violence. I unequivocally loved all of these.

• Six Days of the Condor by James Grady
• A Kind of Anger by Eric Ambler
• The Human Factor by Graham Greene
• Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
• State of Siege by Eric Ambler

One of the challenges I faced as I organized the fiction was whether or not to keep certain well-loved editions of books together or integrate them in alpha order with all of the other novels. In the end I kept the Persephones together but the NYRB and Viragos were split up.

Top Five Reads of 2014
In no particular order.

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I picked this one up with a bunch of other new hardcover fiction to get a bit more current stuff into my TBR. In the end this was the only one I ended up liking and I really ended up liking it. It made me go out an buy all of her other books.
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A wonderful, if often tragic novel.
• Birds of America by Mary McCarthy. Best known for her novel The Group, McCarthy has lots of other novels that are well worth reading. I took a particular shine to this one. I loved the main character and I love the fact that I picked it up by chance at a second hand book sale.
• Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym. Not surprising a Pym makes the list. Full of Pym’s amazing character observations and witty prose but with a rather bleak outlook. Think of Brookner with a sense of humor.
• The Human Factor by Graham Greene. Easily the best of the thriller type books I read this year and a close second to The End of the Affair which I read in 2013.

This has nothing to do with the library but everything to do with cute.

 
1. My brother and his family got two new puppies recently.

2. United’s merger with Continental has done no favors for us here in the DC market.

3a. I wonder how much of Audible’s sales are attributable to erotica?

3b. Speaking of Audible, it is amazing how much a part of my “reading” life audiobooks have become. So much of my anti-audiobook bias has fallen away. I am even tempted to start counting them on my “books read” list because the feeling when one finishes one is pretty much the same.

3c. I love the way Tim West pronounces the word “club” in his Trollope narrations. The guy reading my current Nevil Shute isn’t quite as plummy when he says it.

4. I kept trying to replace a comma with a period. Then I realized it was gunk on my screen.

5. I need your banoffee pie recipes. As I asked my FB friends to discuss their favorite pies, a British ex-pat friend of mine living here in DC bemoaned the lack of good banoffee pie available here in the US. I was actually surprised it was available at all. She has challenged me to make one from “a proper British recipe” and with biscuit, not pastry crust. I’ve been looking around online and can’t decide if I have found anything acceptable. Do you have a favorite recipe for it? Mary Berry says that today’s condensed milk packaging with the pull tops make it inadvisable to do the boiled can method, so I don’t think I will try that–although I would love to.

6. I wouldn’t mind if Ted Talks disappeared.

7. Since I’ve gone back to work in September my sleeping schedule has been decidedly old mannish. I don’t seem able to sleep past 6:30, even on weekends and then I want to be in bed by 10 pm. And I’ve always been a  night person. Plus it is wreaking havoc with my reading time, much of which used to happen after 10.

8. Going to northern California for Thanksgiving next week. Always fun to choose reading for a trip. But I fear my free time while we are out there is going to be taken up with work, as my previously scheduled trip is now in the middle of an unexpected deadline.

Helmut the crocheted turkey posing at the San Francisco airport last Thanksgiving.

Helmut wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving

9. I’m amazed I made it to #9 without mentioning our house. We move back in in 26 days. Not only am I really looking forward to filling up those shelves, but John and I have kind of given up on this apartment. Our interest in keeping the place tidy has reached a nadir.

10. I’ve noticed that the book blogging world is like a college newspaper in the way that old ideas/issues are brought up every so often as if they had never been addressed before. After I graduated from college and after I worked in London for six months, I ended up in a job at the University of Minnesota Hospital so I was back on the campus of my alma mater five days a week. I continued to read the school’s newspaper and couldn’t help notice that both news and feature articles seemed to be retreads of ideas and issues that had cycled through once or twice during the four years I was a student. I guess one can’t blame each new crop of students has to hash things out for themselves in an endless loop.

 
I have been so bad at keeping up with my blog feed. It has been about 30 days since I really looked at it and I had about 500 blog posts to look at. Actually, as I write this I still have about 390 yet to go through. I’m just now hitting all the readathon posts, and you all know how long ago that was.

I also just came across Simon’s post about the man who got locked in the Trafalgar Square Waterstone’s. This is also a topic we have chatted about on The Readers. For those of you who haven’t heard the story, a man accidentally got locked in the store and Tweeted about it and it was a big, fun, hullabaloo, especially for us bookish types.

The thing is, I actually wouldn’t find that at all interesting. Well, let me qualify that, the only way I would find it interesting is if the store was a secondhand bookshop. I would find a new book, bookshop realllllllly boring. Here’s why: I would be too keyed up to want to read anything and there are no surprises in a new bookshop. I pretty well know what I would find, so short of reading, there wouldn’t be much that would interest me. Whereas in a used bookshop, the whole night could be spent rooting around for hidden gems. I never have enough time in a used shop to really comb the shelves and dig through the many layers books stacked here and there.

And, as an added bonus, I would have the time to organize and clean the store. This is a fantasy of mine. I would love to be let loose in a messy store in need of alphabetical rigor. I once spent 20 minutes at the main public library putting all their Trollope in proper title alpha order. It was fun and in the process I found five copies of the book I was looking for. (Of course, you are probably wondering why in the world the library shelves were out of order, but alas, that is the state of the sad DC public library system.)

Once on vacation I visited a great used bookstore in Nyack, New York. It was a store I had spent some time in about five years previously. It was clear that in the intervening years the owner had given in to his obvious hoarding tendencies and couldn’t keep up with the mountains of books he was acquiring. I told John I could spend the rest of my vacation just organizing that store. If only.

But in a new bookstore. Oh look, there is Atwood. Oh look, there is Dickens.  Oh look, there is…see what I mean? No surprises, everything in order, yawn.

Places I would like to get locked in:

1. A cathedral with a giant pipe organ. I can’t actually play the thing, but I would like unlimited time to play around with the stops and see what does what with no time constraints. John once bought me an hour with the organist of the National Cathedral here in DC which was almost as good.

2. A grand old English house like Chatsworth, but also preferably one that hadn’t been kept up too well. I want to see all the rooms that the public doesn’t get to see like attics and such.

3. The Cabinet War Rooms in London. They are set up just like they were during World War II. So many files and push pins and typewriters. It would be fun to play around.

4. Buckingham Palace. For a similar reason to number two above, but also because I would love to comb through the Queen’s collections of jewels and clothes. See what’s on her bedside table, etc.

5. The V&A. Of all museums, I think this one would be the most fun. Again, lots of attic-fossicking action.

6. The library at Sissinghurst. Not only because it is a library, but because it is chock full of early 20th century fiction. No doubt I would find some gems there. Would also like access to Vita’s study up in the tower which also is lined with books.

7. The library at Blenheim. I’ve noticed when I have been to Blenheim, that not all the books in the library are ancient. Plus there is a pipe organ and really comfy furniture.

8. The food halls at Harrods.

The new job appears to be having an impact on my reading habits. I just don’t seem to have the energy to do as much reading. I can’t really complain about not having the time, I just choose to waste it in front of the TV these days. Hopefully that won’t last forever, but that is where I am.

Some of this stack, like Out of Africa, The Foryste Saga, and The Vicar of Wakefield, I started what seems like eons ago. I didn’t put them down for any reason other than I picked up something else(probably more frivolous) to read.

Others like Chef and Levels of Life have proved to be a little more tedious than anticipated. I will finish the Barnes because it is so short and I have so few pages left to read, but I am not so sure about Chef. I haven’t found it very compelling and I would have to probably start over to reacquaint myself with the characters and plot.

I’m almost done with the Kerry Hudson, which I have been enjoying, but as I started my job, I found myself needing something a little less gritty and a little more comforting.

I am enjoying both the Murodoch and Artic Summer by Damon Galgut, I just let other things like The Sparrow get in the way. The Galgut incidentally is a fictionalized account of E.M. Forster’s travels in India. I’ve been wanting to read it since Eric first wrote about it at Lonesome Reader.

And finally, Eric Ambler’s The Care of Time is the page turner that is keeping me from getting back to everything else in the stack. During the readathon I was going to devote 12 hours to finishing up more than a few of these, but that weekend, I had to bring home work.

Even as I sit looking at the stack, I don’t feel all that compelled to pick any but the Ambler up. On the other hand I could knock out the Barnes and the Hudson in short order. And I could jettison Chef and not feel badly at all. That would still leave six in the stack. Hmm.

As we slide into the final two months of our renovations and have to pay for moving expenses, floor coverings (probably sea grass in most places), and transition from construction to permanent financing, the last thing we needed was another expense. And I haven’t even mentioned the deferred maintenance on the car finally, and unavoidably, caught up with us. So what do we do? We buy a painting.

When I met John he was a huge fan of the abstract expressionist artist Jon Schueler (1916-1992), a member or the New York School of painters who swirled with the likes of Rothko. Through his cousin in New York, John was friends with the artist’s wife Magda (she is too lively to be thought of as a widow). Our first Thanksgiving together was spent in Greenwich Village where I not only met Magda, but got to see three or four really amazing Schuelers that belonged to his cousins. On a subsequent trip to New York, John got a chance to pick out his very own Schueler painting, albeit a small one. About 10″ x 12″. It was painted in 1979 and is called “Galeforce: Waiting”. It’s a subtly beautiful study of the sky and ocean off the coast of Mallaig, Scotland, presumably while there was some weather happening. It has had pride of place in the four different bedrooms we have occupied in the past decade. In all cases it has been interesting to see the various moods it takes on in the changing, indirect light, that filters into our mostly north-facing rooms. No doubt, almost like the changing moods of the skies over Mallaig.

When we moved into our house in 2010, we realized that our small, art collection was really a small-art collection. With one exception, we really didn’t have anything of a big enough size to hold it’s own on even a modestly, big wall. Most of what we had was picked up here there, often while traveling, and, while enjoyable, didn’t really give us much to work with. We needed something bigger.

Then, a few weeks ago, John came across a Schueler up for auction and we decided it was too good to pass up. It was from the late 70s/early 80s which is the period of Schueler’s work John likes most. At 24″ x 36″ it was a size that could comfortably fill a real wall, and it was buried in an auction catalog with a bunch of frou-frou antiques and fussy figurative painting so we thought we could actually have a chance of winning it. Which we did. Similar to our existing Schueler, it is called “Waiting” and it is beautiful. The title seems particularly apt given that we have been waiting so long to start and now complete our house project, not to mention that we will still need to do a bit more waiting before we can go back to New York to pick out another one.

Our mish-mash of enjoyable, but small art.

(Cross posted at Lucy’s Forever Home)

This is my favorite Sesame Street song of all time. I could not get enough of it when I was a kid. Susan gives a lot soul to the thought that kids will one day live in space. Somewhat apropos for this review.

While the rest of the world loses interest in the alien radio signals and/or takes years debating what to do with the knowledge, the Jesuits use their vast financial and intellectual resources to to mount a secret trip of their own.  But wait how is that possible? Well, the novel, which was published in 1996 posits that in the year 2019 there will be a whole lot of technology that makes such a trip possible. The main thing being that asteroids which had been mined for various natural resources could be used like a spaceship to fly the couple of light years it takes to get to the source of the signal.

Like all good expedition stories, and I guess all good expeditions, this one has a cast of characters who have a complementary set of skills and make a fairly well-rounded team. They have a linguist, a medical doctor, scientists, a musicologist, and they are all smart as whips and can do just about anything. About 4 or 5 of them are priests with two women and additional two men.

On many levels I liked this book a lot. As someone who mainly reads things based in facts as we know them today, I enjoyed letting myself into other times and other worlds. I enjoyed the optimism of a future that may have included the reintroduction of indentured servitude but didn’t seem to have anything to say about the doom and gloom of global warming (the number one angst-inducing, underlying current in my psyche). I also enjoyed reading about likable characters who use their abilities to get something done. I love it when people use their talents to achieve things, whether it is baking a pie, organizing a drawer, or travelling through space.

It was also fun to read about the world they encountered when they make it to Rakhat. Ah yes, Rakhat–thankfully the book is relatively low on made up words and language. Didn’t make my eyes cross.

And that is where I will end the recap. Enough to give you a flavor without giving away too much or taxing my limited abilities to describe plots.  But, I do have plenty more to say about the book. There was so much to stimulate thought and conversation. Here are some of my hot button topics:

• It is amazing that in 1996 an author thought that indentured servitude would make a comeback so that it would be old hat by 2019. Ditto for asteroid mining. I wonder what I would think 23 years into the future could be like?
• It was nice to see the part of the Catholic church that is interested in expanding, rather than closing, minds. On the other hand, I found all of the ‘God’s will’ stuff to be a little tedious at times. It’s not entirely heavy handed in that regard, but it does seem to be wanting to work out theological issues about belief about which I am pretty apathetic.
• Not that I have read much sci-fi, but it would be nice for someone to come up with a future or alien world that doesn’t cleave so much to our understanding of gender roles. The aliens in this book kind of challenge it but the human characters don’t so much, and the way the author explains the alien gender issues seems so rooted in the past–as in our present. Why do the child-bearing aliens have to be considered the females? It is interesting how our imaginations can turn asteroids into spaceships but can’t comprehend a future that is more fundamentally different.
• Kudos to Russell for understanding the importance and prevalence of electronic tablets. I know other science fictions, like Star Trek, have also predicted this as well. It was also kind of interesting to see how she wrote about the Web from her 1996-vantage point. She definitely sees it as a useful tool, but one doesn’t get the feeling she entirely understood how important the web would become. And I think it is accurate to say that she didn’t realize that all those tablets would use the Web as their content server.
• I had a few quibbles with the plausibility of certain situations, but nothing that I can even remember and nothing that detracted from the overall enjoyment of the book.

I really liked the characters, but I would have liked to have seen them encounter more things and do more things on Rakhat, and maybe see a bit more about how the rest of humanity responded to their expedition. But it didn’t seem incomplete, just kind of left me wishing for more.

The next, and final statement is kind of spoilery, so caveat lector…

As much as I wanted them to explore more, I liked the fact that the author wasn’t afraid to kill most of the human explorers off. Just think of all the explorers throughout history who have died mid-exploration. Their discoveries, and those of explorers after them, eventually fill in the blanks for us looking back at the past–or indeed form part of our overall frame of reference and how we understand the world, but if we break down those discoveries into their component parts, we come to individual humans who die in the middle of what they were doing. Their stories interrupted.  You see what I mean about this book being a good conversation starter?

, but was also gratified that the author wasn’t afraid to, well this really is going to be spoiler-y, kill so many of them off.