Why does March have to be so darn long? With only 8 days until April 1st and the end of the TBR Dare, I threw in the towel this morning. I actually made the decision to give up last night, but it wasn’t until this morning on the Metro that I took the leap and started reading a book that was not in my official TBR pile.

You may recall that when I first accepted the dare, I had over 300 books in my TBR pile. You may also recall that I subsequently decided that that was too easy and so I further limited my choices to the 40 or so books in my nightstand TBR pile.

And for the most part the TBR Dare has been wonderful. I finally got around to reading some truly wonderful books that would have gone unread for a much longer time if not for the dare. So what went wrong? It wasn’t the lure of other books so much as it was boredom of going back to the same pile of 40 books which had been whittled down to only 23. As I read the wonderful May Sarton novel The Magnificent Spinster last week I started to worry about what would be next. I just knew that there were no books in my nightstand TBR pile that would fit my mood when I finished the Sarton book. And then I realized that my despair over lack of choice was making me slow down my reading. And I don’t need any more reason to watch TV.

So last night, not in the mood for any of the four books that I have partially finished and somewhat bored, I decided I needed to choose something that wasn’t in my nightstand. But no biggy, my nightstand restriction was self-imposed and wasn’t part of the focal TBR Dare. I could go down to my library and choose from the 300* books in that TBR pile. Or at least that could have been the case. But this morning when I went in to choose something for the morning commute I was immediately drawn to a book that is not part of my TBR pile. A few weeks ago I got about 6 books from my book club. I was going to wait until April 1st to dip into them, but there was one that leaped out at me this morning. And I just knew that it was the one to fend off my impending reading slump. I wanted fun. I wanted American. And I wanted something that I knew, without qualification, I would want to devour in one fell swoop if I could.

So the culprit in aiding my downfall in the TBR Dare is also my saviour, and made me truly happy from page one: My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme.

So do I feel bad about my failure? No.

(*I just noticed that my first post about the dare I say that I have 400 books in my TBR pile. In my second post I say 300. I wonder which it is?)

  
Since I first started buying and reading Persephone editions I have been keeping an eye out for books by Persephone authors in secondhand shops. In particular I have been looking for Dorothy Whipples. There is a reason Persephone is doing the reading world a service–the authors they publish are pretty hard to find otherwise. And since I buy too many books but don’t want to deprive myself of shopping for books, I have been focusing on finding literary needles in haystacks rather than more easily available fare. So I hunt for the hard to find. But don’t get this confused with antiquarian books. I don’t have much time for expensive books that have already been “discovered” and shined up by booksellers. I like finding the forgotten copies.

Last week when we went out to see the beautiful ocean, we stopped at Unicorn Bookshop along Route 50 in Trappe, Maryland. Lo, and behold, I found not one but three Persephone authors.

Find of finds. A Dorothy Whipple on this side of the Atlantic.

Once I found it I got greedy and wished it was a Whipple title that Persephone doesn’t publish. Still, I wasn’t going to pass it up.

I loved, loved, loved the Persephone edition of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Home-Maker so I couldn’t pass up this one either.

FHB isn’t as hard to find in the US as Whpple but this one was still a must have.

Not in perfect condition, but I can’t wait to read it.

   

When John and I were in London back in November you may remember that I went a little crazy collecting all 100 of Penguin’s Great Ideas books. Well, that was nothing compared to the other purchase we made while we were there. Since we moved into our house last May, we have been looking for library chairs that would be comfy for both reading and dozing. I am six foot two and need a fair amount of lumbar support, so finding the right chair that would be cushy but still offer support for my back is no easy task. On top of that, the door into our library is only about 25 inches. You would be surprised how few chairs fit through that kind of opening.

Anyhoo, we had checked out all the usual local sources for chairs and were coming up with nothing. We thought since we were in London we would check out George Smith. Both of us had been a fan of their classic look for years and we knew their quality was second to none. Mind you, we only went into LOOK. We had no intention of buying. That is of course until we went in the store, sat down ,and realized that we would never find a more comfortable library chair.

So many, many pounds (and even more dollars) later we had purchased two chairs and a large ottoman. And then lickty split, only four months later (!) our chairs and ottoman made their way through the narrow library door (thank god) and have become my favorite place to sit in the house.

I wasn’t going to post this picture because the rest of the room isn’t really up to snuff yet. We have put off painting the walls until the windows are finished. And the window work may require replacing the less than pretty shelves sooner rather than later. And it is clear there isn’t much insulation in the walls, and the fireplace flue needs to be replaced…did I mention that I love my chairs?

Well, John knew. He is always trying to get me to take jaunts out of the city on weekends but I almost always say no. And of course I knew that the ocean was only about 3 1/2 hours away (in good traffic), but near DC, I had only ever been to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware which is way too busy and commercial to feel very special to me. Plus they have those awful little planes with banners advertising things flying over the beach. So it was quite a surprise yesterday to discover a beach so beautiful so close to DC. The March weather meant that the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland was pretty quiet.

Assateague is famous for the wild horses that live there. They are often down by the beach, but this is the closest we got to them when they were on the bay side of the barrier island.

The road from Berlin, Maryland, the nearest town.

Berlin, MD

      
That’s right folks, 176 points for one word. My sister and her family are visiting from Arizona and this was our third game since Sunday. And the fact that the word was “cardigan” made the moment even more special. (Remember my post about the Cardigan Mafia?)

The breakdown:

14 points for the word (including one double letter score for the “D”.

I got to triple the word twice because it fell on two Triple Word Scores. (We verified this scoring with the official rules on the printed in the box.)

And then, because I used all of my seven tiles I got an additional 50 points.

Needless to say this is the highest score I have ever gotten for one word in Scrabble. Too bad the word didn’t have a “Z” or “Q” in it.

  

To quote Simon T. completely out of context: “Meh”.

I bought this memoir of Oxford because, well, c’mon, it was about Oxford and because the edition could not be cuter. Plus I have read about 3 or 4 of the other titles in this “The Writer and the City” series. I had never heard of Justin “One of the finest novelists currently at work” Cartwright. He may indeed write amazing novels but after reading this somewhat tedious memoir I am not so sure. I wonder if one could interpret that quote from the Guardian quite literally by defining the word “currently” very narrowly as the exact second the quote was written. How the Guardian writer knew that Cartwright was working at that exact moment, I don’t know.

I started off liking this memoir but then he seemed to go on about Oxford folk I had never heard of, which wouldn’t necessarily be off-putting, but he didn’t make it interesting enough for me to care. I think this might be a better read for someone who has studied at Oxford. He says next to nothing about the city of Oxford.

I have many other quibbles with this book, but I think the biggest problem happens when Cartwright goes on a bit about the Brideshead myth. I understand the reference to the wonderful Evelyn Waugh book but then Cartwright makes a fatal error. He refers to the fictional Lord Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear as “Algernon”. Algernon?! Now anyone worth their salt knows that Sebastian’s bear’s name was Aloysius. I mean come on.

Cartwright, game over.

One more thing, why the title This Secret Garden? I mean I understand why he would want to call it that, but he didn’t think it sounded too much like another book? Was he hoping someone might confuse it with The Secret Garden?

  
In Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather tells a story of Quebec in the 1690s. As I consider what to write about this book, three things immediately come to mind. The first is how well Cather evokes different places and different times in her novels and how she piques my interest in uniquely North American experiences that wouldn’t necessarily be of much interest to me. No surprise to regular readers of My Porch, but I get a little fixated on Western Europe and the genteel, urban Northeast of the U.S. But whether writing about the prairies, the Southwest, or the early days of French Canada, Cather not only holds my interest in these places, but also creates a real enthusiasm for them that makes me want to experience them first hand.

The second thing that comes to mind is what a great book this would make for kids. I don’t have kids so maybe I am off base. Maybe there is a theme or two that may not be appropriate for young eyes, but then again maybe not. The action centers around a young Cecile and her widowed father. The two lead a pretty happy life that put me in mind of the book Heidi. I think Shadows on the Rock is more complex and sophisticated than Heidi, but Cecile reminded me of Heidi’s joy and zest for life. Cecile and her father have the perfect relationship. Caring father and doting daughter, each taking good care of the other and so clearly happy with each other’s company.

The fact that the father and daughter rely so much on each other brings me to the third thing that jumps out at me when thinking about Shadows on the Rock. They have to rely on each other because of the long, often harsh winters, but also because of the frontier isolation of  Quebec in 1697. The book begins in October just as the last ship of the season leaves for France, cutting off the city from the rest of the world until things warm up again in the spring. Quebec’s only link to the rest of the world during the winter was via the rarely used overland connection to the English colonial port in New York which stays open throughout the year. I don’t tend to read much historical fiction so I am always a little in awe when an author manages to immerse me in another world. And, as a North American, I am also in awe of the fact that there is a North American story that is as old as the 1690s. I know intellectually that Europeans were active in North America much earlier than that, but I don’t think I ever really took onboard what that would mean in real terms. I am probably also stunted by my upbringing in the Midwest which has a history that doesn’t really get going until the 19th century. And when it comes to the East Coast, my mind doesn’t really check-in until the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. So I guess Cather manages to chip away at my decidedly limited conception of North American history.

I am not sure if Shadows on the Rock is a good candidate to represent who Willa Cather is as a novelist, but it is a darn good read and is rather uplifting, and to a certain degree lighthearted. I think it would a be great try for someone who isn’t quite sure if Cather is their cup of tea.

   

1. My review of the Booker Prize winning Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald.

2. My Sunday Painting.

3. My post on neglected literary classics. I want to hear what you think. And I did a random draw and Claire from Paperback Reader won my extra copy of As for Me and My House by Sinclair Ross. Maybe I should send it with delivery confirmation since she only has three months from reciept of the book to read it and write a review…that was the deal Claire, no backing down. (Oh, and can you email me your address?)

4. My latest intallment of Seen on the Subway.

      

Pot with Chives, 1887 Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

   

I think these may be the wrong kind of boats, but the picture conveys the feel of the setting better than the pretty edition I own

Penelope Fitzgerald fills the 141 pages of Offshore with an odd assortment of Londoners living on boats moored on the Battersea Reach of the Thames during the swingin’ sixties. It is not so much that each of the boat dwellers is odd, but taken as a whole they make for an odd assortment. And in a way, even the most conventional among them seem a little eccentric based solely on the fact that they have chosen to live on the Thames despite the practical and emotional complications imposed by doing so. For some, living offshore makes them quirky, for others being quirky makes them want to live offshore.

Richard kind of steals the show for me. In some ways he is the archetype former military character that pops up so frequently in British popular culture. Doesn’t there always seem to be a fussy colonel or major tucked away somewhere in so many books?  And it is no surprise that the control freak in the book is the one that appeals to me. Sure I was touched by single(ish) mom Nenna and amused by her lively, resourceful daughters Martha and Tilda. And yes, Maurice the rent boy was as amusing as he was tragic (although I unfortunately kept picturing John Inman from “Are You Being Served”). Compared to the others, Richard’s demons and desires seem much less dramatic, but set against his own reality they are no less consequential. Here Fitzgerald introduces us to Richard:

All the meetings of the boat-owners, by a movement as natural as the tides themselves, took place on Richard’s converted Ton class minesweeper. Lord Jim, a felt reproof to amateurs, in speckless, always-renewed gray paint, overshadowed the other craft and was nearly twice their tonnage, Just as Richard, in his decent dark blue blazer, dominated the meeting itself. And yet he by no means wanted this responsibility. Living on Battersea Reach, overlooked by some very good houses, and under the surveillance of the Port of London Authority, entailed, surely, a certain standard of conduct. Richard would be one of the last men on earth or water to want to impose it. Yet someone must. Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment. Fortunately he did not have to define duty. War service in the RNVR, and his whole temperament before and since, had done that for him.

And from time to time Richard’s inability to cope with anything but the most straightforward and linear makes him seem a little vulnerable. There are repeated, rather humorous references to his need to block out anything extraneous to his line of thought at any given moment.

On the whole, he disliked comparisons, because they made you think about more than one thing at a time.

Offshore is by no means Richard’s story. Nenna is really the focus of the book. And the other characters are more than just bit players. Fitzgerald packs a lot into a short book. Compared to other Fitzgeralds I have read, I think Offshore is less introspective and more accessible than The Bookshop but defintely more emotionally sophisticated than Human Voices. Not surprising that this is the one that won her the Booker Prize.