hogglestock

My Persephone Secret Santa
The delightful Claire over at Paperback Reader was my Persephone Secret Santa. Even before I unwrapped the package I was excited seeing that Claire was my Secret Santa because she is a voracious commenter and she and I have had some fun and informative exchanges over the past few months on both of our blogs.

My Persephone History
I am fairly new to the world of Persephone Books having only heard about them earlier this year and receiving my first order less than two months ago. My husband takes an aesthetic interest in these wonderfully beautiful books and has redubbed them Perstephones. So now it is common for both of us to add that interior “t” when referring to them.

My “Dot” System
When I first got the Persephone catalog I went through with a marker and made dots on each title according to how interested I was in each book. Five dots meant I was really interested, and those titles so marked, ended up being my first order of twelve books. Four dots meant I was pretty interested but could wait until the second round of ordering once I finished the first twelve. Three dots indicated a strong interest but it would probably be a while before I got around to buying them.

Claire’s Choice for Me
Well Claire bought me a three dot title. And having now read it, I couldn’t be happier. And it makes me hope that all my five dots are as wonderful. (Having already read Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding–a five dotter–I already know that that isn’t the case.) Being a bit of a control freak, when I signed up with Book Psmith to participate in this Persephone Secret Santa, my inclination was to give a list of titles that I wanted. But therapy seems to be working so I decided to throw caution to the wind and let my Secret Santa have an open playing field (except for the ones I already owned). I am so glad I did, because Claire’s choice was perfect.

The Home-Maker
Dorothy Canfield Fisher

First off, DON’T read too much of the catalog description of this one. Thankfully I didn’t remember anything about it so all of the plot twists were a surprise to me. I don’t think reading the catalog blurb would ruin your experience, but I do think it has unnecessary spoilers.

The Home-Maker is the story of Evangaline Knapp and her family. And let me tell you she is one uptight home-maker. Always harping on kids and husband, never happy with anything. To be honest, I identified with her quite a bit, and not in a positive way. I saw in her all of the behavioral traits that I have been trying to modify in myself (with some success I may add). Her husband Lester is a frustrated poet working in accounts at the local department store. The kids are perpetually afraid of their mother. The neighbors alternate between helpful and judgmental.

And then stuff happens. (No spoilers here.) A little bit of tragedy. A little bit of transformation. A surprise twist or two.

I loved this book because:

• It had great, interesting characters. And although some are portrayed at times as heroes or antiheroes, none of the main characters are so one dimensional as to get stuck in either rut.
• I love a good transformation story and this one had plenty to make me happy.
• There are extended scenes about Evangeline finding her niche and being uber-organized and driven to excellence. A woman after my own heart.
• It deals with some interesting gender issues that seem ahead of their time. These issues and their resolution also made me sad for the characters who had to endure 1924 gender roles that were antithetical to their happiness. It also made me a bit sad that, although things have changed greatly since 1924, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Often discussions of gender roles play out in terms of women’s roles in society, and I truly understand that women have not come close to reaching true parity with men in the workforce. But I think women today have emotional access to non-traditional gender roles in ways that men still don’t. Feel free to correct me if you think I am overstating the case, but in my experience the label “tom-boy” for a girl does not carry the same shaming sting that “sissy” carries for a boy. I have long thought that it all boils down to misogyny in any case. Traditional female roles have been so denigrated as second class or menial for so long that any male who would somehow identify with those roles or choose a “female” vocation is suspect at best and violently reviled at worst. Yes, all of this springs from this ultimately charming story written in 1924.

I hope you read it and I hope you enjoy it like I did. And thanks Claire. It might have been a long time before I got around to this one.

Christmas Holiday
W. Somerset Maugham

I couldn’t resist this opening line:

With a journey before him, Charley Mason’s mother was anxious that he should make a good breakfast, but he was too excited to eat. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to Paris.

Christmas Eve…Paris…breakfast. What could be better? If you pick this up hoping for a cozy holiday read as I did, you could be disappointed. But it is more likely that you will end up liking the book anyway. Charley heads off to Paris to see his old school friend Simon, look at some “pictures” (i.e., paintings at the Louvre) and meet some girls. Once in Paris Charley finds out Simon has turned into a bit of power-hungry, slightly disturbing, proto-dictator with socialist ideals. Pretty promptly after dinner the two head off to a brothel where Simon introduces Charley to Lydia, a Russian prostitute who later that evening accompanies Charley to midnight mass at Saint-Eustache. (How many of you plan to spend your Christmas Eve that way?) From there the narrative turns into the retelling of the circumstances surrounding the imprisonment of Lydia’s husband for murder.

Long (but interesting) story made short, Charley spends the week not falling in love or having sex but getting to know more than he probably wanted to about Lydia’s sad life and seeing a side of life he didn’t know existed. He also finds out what a freak Simon has become. Not surprisingly Charley returns to England a changed man. But even understanding that, I wasn’t quite prepared for the impact of the final phrase of the final sentence of the book:

It was a fact he had done nothing; his father thought he had had a devil of a time and was afraid he had contracted a venereal disease, and he hadn’t even had a woman; only one thing had happened to him, it was rather curious when you come to think of it, and he didn’t just then quite know what to do about it: the bottom had fallen out of his world.

I enjoyed this book, even for what turned out to be an unplanned re-read. I was about 80 pages into it when I realized that I had actually read it before. I checked out my “Read Books” spreadsheet and sure enough, there it was: January 21, 2001. I could forgive myself because this was one of the books I picked up in a secondhand store Thanksgiving weekend. Not having my list with me, how was I to know? However, this story has an ironic twist. Close readers of My Porch will know that I started keeping my “Books Read” list in 1994 when I found myself 30 pages into a novel I had previously read. And the book that prompted me to start the list? Cakes and Ale. By whom you ask? Wait for it… W. Somerset Maugham.

Two lessons:

1) Always travel with your “Books Read” list, and;

2) Maugham is always worth a re-read.

Official Book Club Selection
A memoir according to Kathy Griffin

I wasn’t going to read this book. I thought it was just going to kind of rehash Kathy Griffin’s life as it is seen on her television reality show “My Life on the D-List”. Don’t get me wrong, I love the show. I just couldn’t imagine taking away time from reading other books. But then I was in a bookstore at the airport in Phoenix, and well, despite having four books with me to read, I still picked this one up, read a line or two, chuckled, and then decided I needed to have it.

(By the way, she calls the book Official Book Club Selection hoping that the reading public will think it is part of Oprah’s book club, thus makinng Griffin millions.)

It you like Kathy’s show, you will like her book. Not only do you get more gossip in the book than you normally do on the show, but you also find out some interesting things about Kathy’s childhood and her 4-year marriage.

If you don’t like Kathy’s show you will want to skip this.

If you have never watched Kathy’s show, or have never even heard of her, you will only like this book if you are in the mood for a sacrilegious, gossipy tell-all with lots of foul language and fantastically base humor.

I thought it was great.