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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather – It’s been a while since I read anything by Cather – in fact, the only thing I’ve read by her since I started this blog is The Song of the Lark. But I loved her as a teenager and am excited to return to her with this slim novel.
Citizens of London by Lynne Olson – Wartime London is one of my favourite topics and has been ever since I was twelve and first read The Siren Years. But I’ve never read anything focused on the Americans who were there, frustrated by their nation’s neutrality and eager to help their host country in its fight. I’ve so enjoyed the other books I’ve read by Olson (most recently, Last Hope Island – one of my favourite books of 2017) so have every expectation of loving this, too.
Clock Dance by Anne Tyler – This is Tyler’s first new release since I discovered her a year or so ago, when I had great fun reading Vinegar Girl, her retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, and was completely absorbed by A Spool of Blue Thread. So, naturally enthusiastic, I placed a hold as soon as my library order it.
What did you pick up this week?
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Posted in Library Loot | 10 Comments »
I don’t have any particularly strong memories of learning to read. I read Lucy Mangan’s wonderful Bookworm earlier this year and marvelled at how well she can recall the books that made up her childhood. For me, those memories are murkier. I remember reading my first book by myself in Grade One (it was a very informative picture book about rabbits, cementing early my love of non-fiction) but things become hazy for a few years after that. The Babysitter Club books were definitely involved and lots of fairy tales but the rest have been lost to time. I don’t mind – it makes what came next stand out all the better.
When I was eight, I picked up Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery for the first time. I had loved books before but reading hadn’t come to form part of my identity yet. But I couldn’t put this book down. I read it once, twice, three times and then went on to the sequels, which I read with equal intensity. I spent the next two years reading and rereading everything Montgomery had every written – her novels, her short stories, and her diaries. I fought with librarians in order to borrow books from the adult section of the library. Any time I needed to do a presentation for school, she was my go-to subject. I am not sure I have ever been as expert on any topic as I once was on Montgomery.
More than twenty years later, I am on my third or fourth editions of the books, having read my initial copies so often they fell apart (partially Anne of Green Gables and Anne of the Island). But it had been a few years since I last read anything by her (the only book I’ve reviewed here is The Blue Castle, notable for the fact that every single person who commented on my review loves what I consider to be one of her more mediocre outputs) so, feeling like I’d been ignoring an old friend, I recently picked up Anne of Green Gables, her first and best book.
Published in 1908 but set thirty years earlier, the story of the orphaned Anne Shirley and her enthusiastic (and mistake-prone) approach to life was an immediate bestseller. Though its heroine is an adolescent girl, the book was loved by its adult readers as much as by its youthful ones. Young readers could delight in Anne’s imaginative whims and the scraps she got herself into; adults could enjoy Montgomery’s humorous treatment of her young heroine and the bemused exasperation of the adults who surround her. And everyone could enjoy the happy story at the heart of the book.
For those not familiar with the story (who are you? What is wrong with you? Stop reading this immediately and go get a copy), the book begins with Matthew Cuthbert setting off from the home he shares with his sister, Marilla, wearing his good suit. Their busy-body neighbour, Rachel Lynde, is immediately intrigued by this unusual behaviour and, upon investigation, is shocked to learn from Marilla that Matthew is off to pick up the orphaned boy they’re adopting to help out on the farm. But Mrs Lynde is not half as surprised as Matthew and eventually Marilla when they discover a girl has been sent to them by mistake. And not even a useful sort of girl but a thin, dreamy one who can’t seem to stop talking. They have no use for a girl – especially one like Anne – but there’s something awfully winsome about her, despite her odd ways, and they find themselves keeping her.
The book follows the next few years of Anne’s life, as she makes friends in the small village of Avonlea, adjusts to life at the Cuthberts’ farm, Green Gables, and gets carried away by her imagination time and time again. There is nothing very spectacular about the goings on; even the most dramatic moments – a deathly ill child, a sinking boat, a heart attack – are entirely plausible. Which is part of how Montgomery creates the humour that fills the book – the juxtaposition of Anne’s romantic fantasies with the work-a-day world of Avonlea is even more amusing as an adult reader than it was as a child. And what is particularly marvellous are the hysterics that Anne can (unintentionally) send adults into with her entirely earnest but extraordinarily dramatic pronouncements. Thankfully, she has Marilla to help bind her to the earth, as she does when Anne is happily prophesizing her early death in the wake of being parted from her best friend, Diana:
“Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’ ‘Thou’ and ‘thee’ seem so much more romantic than ‘you.’ Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I’m going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her Mrs Barry may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Diana come to my funeral.”
“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Anne,” said Marilla unsympathetically.
Anne is a redoubtable girl and, even when things go wrong (as they constantly do), her optimism cannot be extinguished:
“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne.”
“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice.”
“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new ones.”
“Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”
Montgomery was an extraordinarily uneven writer and, to my way of thinking, there are only a few other of her books where she gets the balance of humour and sentiment exactly right (Anne of the Island being the only other one in the series where she manages this). But here, she does. And it’s wonderful. Anne can have her flights of fancy but she is also able to be entirely practical, when needs must. She knows, from her varied life prior to Green Gables, how to save an ailing baby’s life, how to work hard, and how to go after what she wants.
And what she wants, she decides early, is to be good at school and go on to teacher’s college and eventually university. It’s a goal that finds her going up against her rival, Gilbert Blythe, over and over again in the fight for top marks but that is the only conflict. Everyone else views her intelligence and scholarly ambitions as something to be extraordinarily proud of and, looking back, I think that was probably one of the most important things I took away from the series. Education is an important and unquestioned part of Anne’s life throughout the early books. It probably would have been just as important in mine regardless but it helped to have a literary idol who shared my love of school (and of being at the top of the class).
Rereading this as an adult, it’s also interesting to notice how vivid the adult female characters are compared to the male ones. Matthew is lovely but he is quiet and retiring. He adores Anne and all her energy but has none of his own. Marilla, who is left to do the heavy lifting in raising Anne, is clearly the more dominant personality. And Rachel Lynde, their neighbour and friend-of-sorts, is hardly a meek and obedient wife. Her husband is mentioned only rarely and is generally being directed around by his very able wife, such as when Mrs Lynde decides to go to a political rally in town:
Mrs Rachel Lynde was a red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics. So she went to town and took her husband – Thomas would be useful in looking after the horse – and Marilla Cuthbert with her.
And even among Anne and her friends, the desirability of men is discussed skeptically from a young age. Anne dreams of an exotic, mysterious stranger to whisk her away one day; her friend Jane has a more realistic view of marriage:
“Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won’t pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money.”
Sounds like Jane’s mother could do with some assertiveness training from Rachel Lynde.
Anne’s own early dealing with romantic gestures aren’t particularly positive. After teasing her about her red hair, Gilbert Blythe, Avonlea’s favourite son, spends the next few years trying to get back into Anne’s good books. He eventually manages it but has to endure years of snubs, including this particularly harsh one after the initial insult:
Once, when nobody was looking, Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, “You are sweet,” and slipped it under the curve of Anne’s arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the pink heart gingery between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert.
That is stone cold, Anne Shirley. But mightily amusing.
Oh, I love it all so much. I love how Anne’s schemes fly over the head of her very tolerant but not particularly imaginative best friend, Diana; how humorously Montgomery contrasts Anne’s romanticized language with the plainspokenness of everyone else in Avonlea; and how the universe always grants Anne a suitably unglamorous end when her imagination gets the best of her. I love how Matthew and Marilla change and soften because of her, how Anne becomes calmer and more practical under their steady influence, and how everyone proves they are deserving of a second chance. Most of all, I love its humour, I love its heart, and I love that I can very clearly see parts of it in the person I became.
Posted in A Century of Books, Canadiana, Children/Young Adult, Fiction, Lucy Maud Montgomery | 18 Comments »
via House and Garden (credit Rachel Whiting)
The proper backdrop for any sort of work.
Posted in Library Lust | 2 Comments »
The Pakenhams on their wedding day in 1931
I am having a simply marvelous time reading The Pebbled Shore by Elizabeth Longford this week. I’ve been looking forward to it since learning a bit about Longford while reading her daughter Antonia Fraser’s memoir My History but it’s even better than I’d hoped for.
More ponderously known as Elizabeth (Harman) Pakenham, Lady Longford, she had just the sort of life I like to read about. Born in Harley Street in 1906, her parents were both doctors (though her mother did not practice) and she grew up in a family where ambition was not limited by gender. She studied at Oxford and became involved in politics very young, standing as a Labour candidate while still in her 20s. She was a dedicated social reformer (a passion she shared with her husband), an enthusiastic mother of eight, and, eventually, a biographer. In short, she is the center of the Venn diagram that charts my interest in 20th Century Britain: she knew all the literary, social and political figures I find most interesting. Neville Chamberlain was her cousin, Nancy Mitford was a friend, Evelyn Waugh said both horrible and lovely things about her…it is all very, very wonderful. And, not surprisingly, very, very quotable.
I had to interrupt my reading to share this particularly enjoyable note Hugh Gaitskell scribbled to her while they were at Oxford and which she, deeply amused when writing about it 60 years later, described as ” a gallant effort to raise my spirits”:
Here is an incident to be recorded – On the way home on Saturday night I met [John] Betjeman drunk who having discovered where I had been asked me if I had met a beautiful girl called Elizabeth Harman. You have such a lot on your side – you ought to make more of it. Love Hugh.
P.S. This letter appears sinister. Consciously it isn’t but you never know.
Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Elizabeth Longford | 6 Comments »
I first encountered George Mikes back in 2012, when I read his delightful Switzerland for Beginners, and I knew immediately I wanted to read more. Mikes, Hungarian by birth but English by choice, had a successful career writing humourous guides to various countries, observing the ways of the English, French, Germans, etc for the edification of befuddled outsiders. And I knew even back in 2012 which of his books I wanted to read next: Über Alles, about his travels in post-war Germany, and Any Souvenirs?, in which he wanders around much of Central Europe – or, as I like to call it, the Best of Europe – spanning both sides of the Iron Curtain.
I just didn’t realise it would take me six years to track them down – five and a half years of which were spent exhausting my options through library loan systems. They are readily and cheaply available for those who wish to buy them, as I eventually did, so let me save you five and half years: if you want to read them, just buy them.
I started with Any Souvenirs?, published in 1971, because as much as I love Germany, I love it in tandem with the rest of Central Europe more. Mikes visits Bavaria, Austria, bits of Yugoslavia, and his native Hungary. Where he doesn’t visit is the one country I am most interested in: Czechoslovakia. In his defence, he did try to visit; they just wouldn’t let him in. And he doesn’t even try to make it to Poland and excludes Switzerland because he’s already written a book on. Such is his prerogative as author.
From my past experience with Mikes, I had been expecting something light but not particularly insightful. Instead, I discovered a very succinct political and social history of the region peppered with sometimes humorous but always on-the-nose observations of the people.
After taking a quick look at Bavaria, Mikes heads into Austria, a country that may look to outsiders like Germany but which he enjoys for its comparative sloppiness and imperturbable happiness (my favourite chapter title belongs to the Austrians: “How to Lose an Empire and Stay Happy”). He then journeys south to Yugoslavia. He is fascinated by Yugoslavia, understandably, as Tito’s experiment was like nothing else and succeeded in a miraculous way. However, the fear over what would happen when the great man himself was no longer there lurks over the visit:
The relative peace between nationalities – such as it is – is due mostly to [Tito’s] prestige, authority and the respect he commands. One gathers the strong impression that this is very much the calm before the storm. Would-be successors are positioning themselves for the battle and long knives are being sharpened.
Peace held longer than Mikes might have thought – Tito died in 1980 and the Yugoslav Wars did not start until 1991 – but I doubt he would have been surprised by what happened.
Finally, he reaches Hungary. Mikes emigrated before the Second World War when he was still a young man so the country he returns to is more a place of memories than current connections. It is a good section and by the far the funniest, the best bit of which was his startling realisation that the friends of his youth have now been immortalized by city planners:
Walking along a street in Buda, you remember Hungary’s great humorist, Frederick Karinthy. Here on the corner used to stand the café he visited every day and where, at frequent intervals, he got into debt with the head-waiter, being unable to pay his bill. Then you discover, with a start, that the street itself is now called Frederick Karinthy Street. And somewhere else you see another street named after another friend who used to be unable to pay his bill in another café. Yet another one reminds you that a third friend still owes you five pengoes, but as he, too, has now been turned into a street, you’ve haven’t much chance of seeing your money. With a largish square you once had a drunken fight at three a.m. in the City Park and that statue there – so majestic on his pedestal – used to go to bed with one of your girl-friends. It hurt very much at the time – it was certainly not the behaviour you expect from a statue.
img class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-12205″ src=”https://thecaptivereader.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/uber-alles.jpg” alt=”” width=”175″ height=”288″ />Travelling back in time, I then picked up Über Alles from 1953. The rebuilding of Germany in the post-war period was miraculous and Mikes was amazed to see what had already been accomplished. And what was being accomplished daily:
In Bavaria, Berlin and Hesse I saw people work till midnight. Not only waiters but also bricklayers and decorators. I saw others working as early as four in the morning. Yet all these people jibe at the Swabians and make contemptuous remarks about them. ‘Oh, these Swabians,’ they keep saying. ‘They work too hard.’ I visited Stuttgart but failed to detect anything to distinguish the way the Swabians work from the way the rest of Germany works. Perhaps they work twenty-eight hours a day – I could not find out.
In the midst of this rebuilding, Germany was still figuring out how to deal with its recent past and that makes for some interesting conversations – or struggles to have conversations, as Mikes searches for people who are willing to discuss the Nazis. And making sense of the present is no easier as he wanders through divided but pre-wall Berlin.
It’s a well-done book and far more humorous than Any Souvenirs? Most importantly, it gives me exactly what I want from Mikes: an extended essay on How to Become a German. Here are the highlights:
You do not need to be a Teutonic god. You do not need to be six feet tall, broad-shouldered, fair, blue-eyed and divine in any particular way. If your laugh chimes melodiously like church-bells sunk in the Rhine, that is all right; but if it happens to be an uproarious belly-laugh, do not worry. If you are brave and vengeful like Siegfried, good for you; but if you are meek and humble that will do as well. If you are lean and muscular like the warriors of the Nibelungenlied that must be good for your health; but if your girth borders on the miraculous and you have a treble chin as well as a treble neck, you are still eligible.
Go and have a haircut. Most people have an ordinary European haircut but a large minority – I always felt that only they were the true Germans – have their hair shorn off completely, except for a fetching little mane just above the forehead. Then dress up. Dress like a hunter but never go hunting. OR as a golfer but never play golf…
Whatever you do, be stiff and formal like a foreign ambassador performing his official duty. I have always believed that ‘charm’ often conceals a streak of weakness. The majority of Germans are completely free from this weakness…
Be decent, well-meaning and clean. And believe that cleanliness is one of the greatest of human virtues. Look down upon the French because some – in fact many – of their lavatories are dirty…
Be highly cultured, quote Greek authors in the original, be interested in everything and amass a huge volume of factual information. If you have a chance – and you will often find one if you are on your guard – air your vast knowledge just to show that you possess it. Be paternal to everybody and teach everybody his own business. Do this benevolently, full of the noblest intentions and with the tact of a baby elephant…
Ah yes, that is what I had been looking forward to.
Posted in A Century of Books, George Mikes, Non-fiction, Travel | Leave a Comment »
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