hogglestock

In October 2011 I re-read a childhood favorite of mine. I waxed rhapsodic about it here.

In June 2014 I blogged about how I found that book while I was picking up clothes at my local dry cleaners. This was no small deal. A book long out of print, almost impossible to find online and there it suddenly was in a pile of free books at my dry cleaners. And on top of that, it was actually the same exact copy that I had checked out in 2011 from my local library. It had been withdrawn from the collection. Probably when I returned it. It probably never made back onto the shelf. The book was just meant to be mine.

Flash forward to the spring of this year when Simon of Stuck In A Book was visiting DC. We trekked out to suburban Maryland to comb through a used bookstore or two and ended up at Second Story Books‘ warehouse store in Rockville. In that warehouse store they have something called ‘The Annex’ which is a very large space crammed full of dusty old books in no order whatsoever. And I mean no order. A 1950s anatomy book next to a Pat Buchanan political screed next to a Campbell Soup cookbook. In many places the books were on the shelves three-deep. Knowing that I didn’t have hours and hours to spend in The Annex I almost skipped it entirely. But since I wasn’t looking for anything in particular I decided I would choose just one shelf section and see what I could find. Much to my surprise I started finding some things that I thought I should take home with me.

And then.

I was haphazardly pulling out some books to get a look at what was in the third row back and something familiar-looking caught my eye.

Yes, my friends, a sequel to one of my favorite childhood books. A sequel I had no idea existed. A very hard to find sequel to a very hard to find kid’s book published in the 1950s. And for about 3 bucks. Could this really be true? Yes it could and it was. I know with little doubt that the finding of these two books will remain the great book finds of my life. Not because they are necessarily my favorite books of all time, but the way in which they found me. All the particles in the Universe conspired to bring these two objects into my possession. Just when they had probably given up hope. Each just an inch or two away from being pulped and returned to the earth. Generations of kids wanting to read about other kids milking pet goats and making pretty curtains for the old rail car they were living in, will never know they want to read about goats and curtains.

Now I need to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to pass them on to appreciative stewards. They’ve come too far to be lost again.

Recently I got an email from Sophie Smith, a writer in London, who recounted a description of the time she bumped into one of her favorite authors out on the street. It got me thinking about the likelihood that many of you have encountered authors over the years and that it would be interesting to hear your stories. So what say you? Do you have an author encounter you’d like to share? With any luck I would like to make “Authors in the natural habitats” a regular feature at Hogglestock. Shoot me an email and tell me your story, lets do a little guerrilla author bio project.  (hogglestock [at] outlook [dot] com)

In the meantime, here is Sophie’s lovely story.

 I have been spotting Anita Brookner on and off for years in the King’s Road where she lives and as I am a writer myself I have always felt a little thrill when one of these sightings has occurred. She is invariably in a skirt and jacket, very often in navy blue with court shoes to match, always chic but never showy – and that’s just for a quick dash to the shop to get some milk. One imagines her clothes may come from Jaeger in King’s Road or similar. Once, I bumped into her in Mark’s and Spencer’s which, if you are familiar with King’s Road, has a small clothes section at the front and a food section at the back, with a preponderance of upmarket ready meals-for-one perfectly suited for the many ageing Chelsea widows (and a sprinkling of spinsters) who live in the network of pretty terraced houses and flats of SW3. And there she was, rather frail on her pins, carrying a frugal-looking carrier bag of groceries and heading directly for me. Instead of observing protocol and discreetly pretending not to recognise this literary giant, thin and delicate as a sparrow with her seventy plus years at the time, I decided to risk a formidable rejection and very politely said.
   “Excuse me? Professor Brookner?”
   “Yes?”
   “I hope you don’t mind me stopping you but I’ve just finished your new novel Leaving Home and I just wanted to say how very much I enjoyed it. I think you’re the most brilliant writer.”
   Her face lit up and she looked completely surprised.
   “No, not at all. Oh, well that is nice. Thank you so much. I’m so pleased you liked it. That is nice. Not at all.”
   And we parted.

I might regret this post. Not just because some of you are going to think I am nuts and incapable of appreciating a good novel if it bit me on the butt. But also because I could see myself in the not too distant future picking them up, reading them, and deciding that one or both is brilliant. But when have I shied away from hyperbolic pronouncements?

I once read Anthony Doerr’s novel About Grace and found it less than, oh I don’t know, less than interesting enough to care about or remember. So it was with trepidation that I gave into the urging of various blogs and reviews and a friend or two and bought Doerr’s latest bestseller All the Light We Cannot See.  At first I was thinking I would like the book as it begins in the coastal town of St. Malo in the final throes of WWII. Then, rather too quickly it all started to feel a little too magical for my taste. Not necessarily in the literal, supernatural, sense, but in the sense that every detail was clearly going to be some illuminating, magical metaphor that would, no doubt, be extremely profound and moving. Magic rocks and special keys and secret compartments and…ugh. And then magic orphans in Germany who would most certainly have some sort of meaningful encounter with the magical blind girl in St. Malo. And it was all going to be deep, very deep. And I was going to learn something about human nature, and loss, and most importantly about myself. I couldn’t wait.

I ended up putting the book down really, really early on. Less than 20 pages in I think. So early on that I couldn’t remember what I didn’t like about the book and picked it up again a day later thinking I was going to like this WWII novel after all. And within a page I remembered why I put it down in the first place. Blergh.

And then came The Bees by Laline Paull. This one has been praised in many circles and was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Prize. Knowing this, I tried to let myself go and forget about the anthropomorphism of Flora 717 and the rest of her kin in the hive. As I read I couldn’t stop thinking about all the leaps of logic I was going to have to take in order to get through this one. Emma Straub in her New York Times review of the book sums up my early reaction:

At first, the reader questions everything. Is this really how bees are born? Is this how they communicate? By the middle of the book, I stopped wondering which tasks Paull had imagined and which were real, because they all seemed equally plausible.

Unlike Straub, however, I was unwilling to get beyond this part. There are two things I want to read about bees at this point in my life: 1) What sorts of flora John has planted in the garden to be a haven for native bees, and 2) That scientists have figured out definitively what is killing off bee colonies and how we can fix it. Short of that I don’t care so much. Throw in the fact that The Bees seems to be about a girl bee with a strong mommy urge and I really don’t care. You want to write a book about a rebellious bee? How about one where a boy bee has a mommy urge.

If I hadn’t just forced myself to finish How to Be Both I might have given one or both of these books another chance. But as it stands, I have no patience for either of them. There is guilt attached to this because of some of the personal testimony I have gotten from friends on both of these books. But we will just have to find other things on which we can agree.

I’ve finished half of the Bailey’s Prize shortlist so far. Rather than wait until they are all completed I decided to get my thoughts down while they are still fresh in my mind. I’ve listed them below in the order I liked them. You will notice that this year’s winner is in last place so far on my list.

Outline by Rachel Cusk
Shortly before I began reading Outline, I saw somewhere online that the protagonist’s story was not told outright but rather was reflected in the stories recounted by various characters throughout the novel. Whether correct or not, I found this interpretation incredibly enlightening as I read the book. In fact I wonder what I would have thought if I hadn’t had that seed planted in my head. It is likely that I would have referred to it as a bunch of vignettes or something like that. Indeed there really isn’t one overarching plot, and the novel does appear to be a bunch of unrelated anecdotes tied together by the fact that the main character comes across each of the characters and their stories while she is in Athens to teach a seminar on writing.

We get a few bits of information about Faye along the way: she is a writer from London with kids and an ex-husband and isn’t too interested in any future romantic entanglement and a few other things here and there. More than a few reviews I have looked at focus on the notion that this is a book about story telling. How our stories outline our lives, how what we choose to put in and leave out of our personal stories is telling not just about ourselves but about the act of storytelling itself. Given that Faye is a writer teaching a writing course where we hear her students outline their own autobiographical and fictional stories, this seems like an entirely apt and satisfying way to look at Outline.

But I prefer the preconceived notion I had when I began the book. The notion that as all these other characters told their stories they were actually telling a part of Faye’s story. The stories Faye extracts from the people she encounters, regardless of the specifics, seem to be telling something about Faye’s own life and her quest for meaning as it relates to family, relationships, children, career, gender roles, etc. But the word ‘quest’ isn’t right, they are more like reflections. Each story hold’s up a mirror to Faye’s own experience. She seems like someone in a mid-life crisis who doesn’t quite know who she is or what her next step should be–or what her life has meant either to herself or to those around her.

Outline has all the introspection of an Anita Brookner novel, but rather than wandering around in the mind of the narrator, her thoughts are all provided to us through the mouths of other characters. These stories reflect a lot of loss and pain and unrealized dreams but the sum total never felt to me like a wasted or sad life. Perhaps I feel this way about Outline, because I feel this way about my own life. Not disturbed, but deeply reflective of what has brought to this point in my life and what might be next.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
I haven’t read an Anne Tyler book since I read (and enjoyed) The Accidental Tourist in about 1989. Kind of nice to know Tyler is having some serious longevity and still getting shortlisted for awards, and for her 20th novel no less. The review in The Guardian, while not necessarily representative of all my feelings about the book, reminds me why professional reviewers are still important. They can articulate things much better than I can. For instance all I could think was “readable” and “straighforward” Kate Kelleway really gets it right.

The extraordinary thing about all her writing is the extent to which she makes one believe every word, deed and breath…What is most remarkable about it is the extent to which Tyler is able to relax into an ordinary, homely minor key while keeping one as absorbed as if it were one’s own family she were describing, and as if what happened to them were necessary reading. The book is no less eventful than ordinary life – and that turns out to be more than enough.

This is exactly what I liked about this book. And, although it is a multi-generation tale, it was Abby’s story I liked most. Older married woman with grown children and grandchildren and her connections she has with them and her past and the house they live in. (In fact the old family house is such an important piece of the story, I am surprised it wasn’t somehow in the title.) We are also privy to Abby’s thoughts as she begins to exhibit what seems like might be the early stages of dementia.

There are moments and emotions that I thought Tyler captured so perfectly. The kind of stuff I wanted to underline and go back to later. Many, many, things I liked about the first, and longest section of the book. One thing I didn’t quite like was the story line of the prodigal son who in my mind takes up too much of the resources of the characters and plot without really paying off in any meaningful way. But overall I found this section of the book compelling and pleasingly gut wrenching.

Then the final two sections take us back in time to fill in some back stories of long dead characters and introduces some additional complications for the living. But after the events of the first section, I didn’t want to go back in time. I wanted to stay with the issues and feelings already introduced. I love resolution in a book, but in this case I would have preferred to leave it after the first section. Of course I had to read the rest of it to know that that was the case. I don’t think many will agree with me on this point, and it wasn’t that the second two sections were bad, not by a long shot. But I think when I go back to re-read this someday to look for those passages I didn’t underline this time, I will stop at the end of the first section.

How to Be Both by Ali Smith
Much has been written about this novel, and no doubt much more will be written now that it has been chosen winner of the Bailey’s Prize. I didn’t like it at all.

I got over my dislike of the main character George (Georgia) and her way of speaking (Smith’s writing). I got over my dislike of the san serif font. I got over the fact that the pages were left-justified. I got over the lack of quotation marks to denote dialogue which required a million instances of “she says” “George says” “he says” “etc. says”. I got over all of that to get to the point where I found the story interesting and felt emotionally involved. And then we come to part two and we find ourselves in Renaissance Italy. Okay, time to switch gears. I got over all the various quotations…got over the poem-like start of the section by not worrying about understanding it…then I got over the…no. No, I didn’t get over the rest of it. I didn’t care two figs for any of the second section. I found it painful and tedious.

I can’t say that this was a gimmick in search of a story. There was plenty of depth and plenty that I might have found compelling if I hadn’t had to spend all of my time dealing with Smith’s too cool for me style.

As I close in on finishing my third of the six Bailey’s Prize shortlist I decided to take a look to see when the the winner would be announced to see if there was any way in the world I would be able to finish before the announcement. Well, it turns out the answer is no. As most of you probably know, the winner, How to Be Both by Ali Smith, was announced yesterday. If only I had been inspired by Eric’s blog post a little sooner. Then again, I doubt the duration between the announcement of the short list and the winner announcement would have been sufficiently long enough for me anyway.

The real question is how I feel knowing the prize cat is out of the bag. Since I am not even fully half way through reading the shortlist, I will reserve any judgement on the result until I have finished. I was worried that knowing the result would lessen my enthusiasm for reading the rest of the shortlist, but so far I am just as eager, perhaps even more so. I am tempted to say all kinds of things about what I have read so far, but I am going to resist.

Incidentally, Eric was part of a group that conducted their own shadow jury. They had a slightly different shortlist, but their result was the same as the official jury.

As I noted in an earlier post on my book shopping spoils, last weekend I found myself in Minnesota. I guess that makes it sound like it was an accident or a surprise when it was neither. As I do with most travel, I knew months in advance that I was going. I haven’t been back for about five years or so and thought I would take advantage of the holiday weekend and the fact that John had a work trip that encroached on the weekend.

One of the first things I did once I decided to go was to see what the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra were up to that weekend. Thankfully both of them had programs I was interested in hearing and thankfully both of them were playing both Friday and Saturday nights so I wouldn’t have to choose between the two.

Friday: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

For as long as I lived in the Twin Cities and for as often as I went to orchestra concerts there, I can probably count on my hands the number of times I have heard the SPCO play in person. It’s nothing against them, they are a phenomenally good orchestra, but I tend to prefer the repertoire of a much larger, symphony orchestra. For me a lot of chamber music is background music. Beautiful and eminently worthy, but harder for me to sit through in a concert setting. But sandwiched in between a Bach violin concerto (No. 1) and Schubert’s fifth symphony was one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). A lovely piece of music for strings based on a the poem by Richard Dehmel and written before Schoenberg moved on to his atonal phase. I’ve only ever heard the piece in concert once before. In 1994 at the Kennedy Center performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Orpheus is a great band, so it had to have been a good performance, but the experience didn’t really leave an impression on me. After my experience in St. Paul last week, I think I know why.

The SPCO plays at a variety of smaller venues around the Twin Cities; churches, temples, and until now mainly at the Ordway Music Center–a largish venue that is also the home of the Minnesota Opera. Much to my surprise, something that had completely gone under my radar, is the fact that the Ordway recently completed construction of a purpose-built concert hall especially for the SPCO. The new venue has about 1,100 seats and was designed to compliment the SPCO which numbers about 30 musicians depending on the piece of music. To be able to hear such a fine chamber orchestra play in such intimate setting with wonderful acoustics was truly a transcendent experience. Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night was shimmeringly beautiful. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, but watching the musicians make the sound at such close range really heightened my awareness of what was going on the piece. More than once I felt like I was in Europe, the experience seemed too special to be happening domestically. There aren’t many professional chamber orchestras in the world, with the SPCO being the only one in the U.S., and to have such a perfect venue on top of it…it all just seemed too good to be true. Could this really be normal? Especially with the equally fine Minnesota Orchestra performing about 10 miles away on the other side of the Mississippi?

The whole evening put me in such a good mood and had me plotting future trips to Minnesota just to hear the SPCO. Sounds crazy but I once went to Cleveland on spring break (and two more times since then) just to hear the Cleveland Orchestra.

Saturday: The Minnesota Orchestra

About a year ago things seemed doooooomed for the Minnesota Orchestra. The venerable group had never sounded better and its reputation and recordings were lauded around the world, but a labor dispute had the orchestra silent for over a year. Reading the stories in the New York Times as all this was going on was crushing for this hometown fan. But that was then. Now the Times is writing about the orchestra’s historic concerts in Cuba and the orchestra and conductor have contracts going to 2020 and 2019 respectively. A perfect time for me to hear them again.

 

I wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the evening’s program. Brahm’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Garrick Ohlsson and Beethoven Symphony No. 7. Both great pieces, but alas, both are also warhorses. I would have preferred something a little more adventurous. Still, I wasn’t about to miss my opportunity to hear the orchestra. (I wish I could be there for the season closer in June for Sibelius 6 and 7, and Mahler 1. That is a great program–although still not adventurous.)

The concert didn’t disappoint. It was especially heartwarming to see the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting. The man is 91 years old and can still wave his arm for two hours. And he still travels around the world to do it.

The thing that struck me most about the evening was how lively the crowd seemed. Young students, in the recently expanded lobby, horsing around on a baby grand during intermission added a rather fun twist to the normal milling around with a drink in a plastic cup. No doubt the orchestra and the SPCO the night before are trying to entice/retain audiences by letting people bring in beverages into the hall. Part of me thinks this is a stupid idea, but part of me kind of likes how it seems to be loosening the whole thing up a bit. I used to be the cranky old man who was ready to cut someone dead with the stink eye if they so much as breathed the wrong way during a concert. I am rather still prone to be that old curmudgeon, but it was kind of nice to just think, what the heck, and sit back and enjoy the show.

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Savidge Reads or The Readers knows that he doesn’t like novels that take place on ships. I don’t quite understand his aversion. Although I am prone to motion sickness and wouldn’t necessarily be drawn to a book that takes place on a little sail boat, I do love ships and have read some really good books that take place on them.

There is no part of me that thinks that I will change Simon’s mind, but I hope I can convince him to give Katherine Anne Porter and her amazing novel Ship of Fools a chance. Of course I am also aware that he has so many books on his TBR pile that convincing him to read anything is unlikely. But hey, a boy can dream.

Although I do not e-read, I do love that Open Road Media continue to focus on amazing neglected fiction by reissuing both e-books and actual printed books. (Barbara Pym!) One of their latest e-book reissues is Ship of Fools.

Pre-World War II, a German passenger vessel making its way from Veracruz to Germany. A really interesting story about the disparate lives of the first class and mostly anti-Semitic passengers, the way they mix and the way they don’t mix.  It was one of my favorite reads in 2009 and one of the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

 

Over Memorial Day weekend I was back in the Twin Cities for a whirlwind trip of seeing old friends, doing a bit of ancestry research, some great classical music, and three or four trips to Dairy Queen. My uncle and aunt live a stone’s throw from a Half Price Books. I didn’t think I was going to pop in this time but then a friend of mine who works there let me know HPB was having a 20% off sale that weekend. How could I say no to that? So, on my way to meeting some friends for lunch I had just enough time to pop in and pick up a few things.

With only 30 minutes to browse (which turned into 34) I only got through about the letter L. By that point I started to really just skim and then had to have a really adult moment and walk away from the rest of the alphabet. Probably a good thing given that I already had 14 books in my basket.

The Plato Papers – Peter Ackroyd
I think this one is the biggest gamble of the bunch. In addition to thinking that Ackroyd is not my cup of tea (don’t know why) this one takes place in the year 3700. I am quite intrigued. 

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
I’ve seen the 1990s film, but never read the book. How could I pass up this retro-vintage edition?

A Kind of Anger – Eric Ambler
I’ve read a library copy and I just finished the audiobook so why do I need a copy? I’m not sure, but it is a cool old copy that was fairly inexpensive.

The Brimming Cup – Dorothy Canfield
After reading and loving the Persephone-published novel The Home-Maker I have picked up some old copies of Canfield novels hoping I would like them half as much. I tried reading The Deepening Stream but found it tedious and did not finish it. It kind of put me off Canfield but the fact that Virago reissued this title makes me think it would be a good one for giving her another chance.

The Sea House – Esther Freud
It had the word village on the jacket flap and a cosy looking cover. Total roll of the dice.

Innocent Summer – Frances Frost
Vermont in the summer, pretty cover, lovely illustrations. This could fall into the buying it just because it’s pretty camp. Fingers crossed.

The Matchmaker – Stella Gibbons
Everyone loves Cold Comfort Farm. I don’t. I haven’t been able to finish the book and I don’t like the film. Despite the farm inspired cover of this lovely Vintage edition, I’m hoping it doesn’t include an untidy farm that needs tidying so that it is so damn untidy. (Can you see why CCF didn’t work for me?)

& Sons – David Gilbert
I remember when this one was all over the blogosphere, but I didn’t remember anything about it to the point where I picked it up, decided to get it, discussed it in a Tweet, and yet still didn’t make the connection that this was that book until I just sat down to write this blog post.

The Comedians – Graham Greene
The Lawless Roads – Graham Greene
Travels with My Aunt – Graham Greene
I’ve already read TWMA but given my recent interest in Greene I decided I need to own a copy. The other two I haven’t read and don’t really know anything about either of them.

The Diary of a Nobody – George and Weedon Grosssmith
I try to stay away from the Folio Society editions–I don’t like the slip cases for one thing–but the illustration of the lamp on the book spine got me to take it off the shelf. It appears to be a London-y tale written in diary format. I’m just hoping it isn’t too madcap.

In Our Time – Ernest Hemingway
I’ve never even heard of this one. In general I like Hemingway. Might have also been influenced by this old Scribner Library edition.

Free Air – Sinclair Lewis
I’ve read a lot of Lewis, but I had never even heard of this one. It was published the year before his breakthrough hit and seminal work Main Street.

 

This may see a little premature, but I am already starting to think about what kind of reading material I am going to take on my August vacation. Usually this means I have two weeks of reading opportunities that I need to try and fill. If we are headed somewhere via car, often up to Maine, it means that I take about 10 books for 14 days and buy 20 more along the way. But this year we are headed to Idaho to go on a whitewater rafting trip. Not only is this kind of trip probably not very conducive to reading, but we have severe luggage limitations. For six days on the river we are limited to a fairly small “wet bag” and most of that needs to be filled with things like thermal clothing and rain gear.

But they do suggest having a book to read. So what should it be? It needs to be long enough to last. It needs to be lightweight. It needs to be a copy I don’t mind ruining. My first thought was to take something long that I know I want to read but have a hard time committing to when I have dozens of other books at hand. But I could find myself getting easily distracted and then not doing any reading. Would that be a bad thing? With a group of 16 people in remote wilderness with no phones or anything else electronic, surrounded by amazing views and scenery. Constantly looking over my shoulder for bears and mountain lions. Maybe I shouldn’t have my head in a book.

My second thought was Trollope or Wilkie Collins. I kind of wish I hadn’t already read The Three Musketeers. That seems like a perfect book for this sort of thing. What do you all think? What should I take? What would you take?

I should add that the rest of trip will offer plenty of reading time. Flight to Denver. One night at an airport hotel. One night in Stanley, Idaho. Six nights on the river. Four nights in Portland, Oregon and then a flight from Portland back to DC. That is going to require reading material as well. Maybe if it is a big chunkster, it could last the whole trip. And god knows that books will be purchased at Powell’s in Portland.

I love a dilemma like this. But not one like the one below…

This isn’t the outfitter we are going with, but this video gets me really excited and makes me think I might not need a book after all.

After being away from our home for a year, it is nice to be back and watch things pop up in the garden. Granted, much of the yard, especially the back, is in shambles after the construction and won’t look good again until next year. But, the stuff that is still around looks rather pretty. John will have to fill me on the variety of iris because I think it is a beaut but don’t remember what he told me.