The Great Reading Room of Commerce

I had a summer job during university selling raffle tickets for my father's service club. What this entailed was sitting in one of two malls in my hometown, six days a week, selling draw tickets for the truck behind me. This job lasted nearly 3 months. A lot of sitting still, alone. But, what I wanted was to be able to sit around and read all summer, and this job was perfect for that. Of course, it would have been more perfect to sit around in the sunshine at the lake and read, but one can't have everything. I'm sure they would have sold a lot more tickets if they had been flogged by a couple of chatty extroverts rather than one dreamy introvert. In any case, sitting alone for three months resulted in my reading a lot of classics. The public library became a good friend that summer; I would rush in shortly before the library closed and grab a couple of thick classics. I knew they would be reliable reading, both as real literature and as a way to fill a lot of time. After a few books, I started keeping track of what I read, so I wouldn't be stuck without anything new to read in my rush to check things out. I read 33 books that summer, including ones like Notre-Dame de Paris, numerous Thomas Hardy (Far from the Madding Crowd stands out in memory), and various works by Henry James.
I also read a few textbooks in preparation for the fall term, including one with a lurid cover of poison green with huge orange type reading FEMINIST THOUGHT. It gave quite a scare to a poor innocent farmer who made a joke about my reading of bodice rippers, only to have it slammed shut so he could see the title. I've never seen someone fill out a ticket so fast.
I don't think I'll ever have a chance again to sit and read 33 large classics over one summer. Oh, those lost halcyon days of being a feckless university student, content to sit in the halls of commerce, reading stories of the English countryside and the past!

Reading rampage

I haven't finished a book in what feels like weeks...I have far too many on the go, and keep switching between them. I'm slowly working my way through, chapter by chapter, and pretty much using up all my bookmarks. (But not my husband's; those are not for common use!) Currently I have underway Green Darkness by Anya Seton and Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, both for the Chunkster Challenge, All Hallow's Eve by Charles Williams (more esoteric ghostly storytelling), All of Baba's Children by Myrna Kostash (essays on Ukrainians in Canada), The Grand Tour by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer, The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann, and The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie. Heavy on the novels right now!
But since most of these are fairly lengthy, I dug out a collection of short stories, so that I can at least complete something before bed each night! I'm rereading Mrs. Golightly and other stories by Ethel Wilson, an old favourite. Ethel Wilson was a Canadian writer active in the late 40's and the 50's, and has a book prize named after her in her home province of British Columbia. She is known best for her novel Swamp Angel, although it's not my favourite of her works. Her stories are unusual in form, very intelligent and full of wit; they deal with small moments in life and yet are expansive. This collection includes her very first published story, a breathless monologue entitled I Just love dogs. In it, a woman finds a dead dog on the street in Vancouver, and a crowd of self-important citizens gather round to decide what should be done with it. The personalities and the narrative voice are both perfect; I could reread this story once a week and never tire of it. I think Ethel Wilson should get more attention for her wonderful style - I heartily recommend this collection.

Happy Chinese New Year!

To celebrate the beginning of the Year of the Pig (my Chinese zodiac year), here are some suggested pig-friendly reads!

1. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White Because Wilbur is 'some pig'! And the story of Charlotte the spider and little girl Fern trying to save Wilbur from slaughter was instrumental in my life as a vegetarian :)


2. Babe by Dick King-Smith A British take on the idea of an extraordinary pig; this pig wants to be a sheepdog. See above for influence!


3. Freddy the Pig series by Walter R. Brooks This lovely old-fashioned 26 book series features Freddy, the Renaissance pig of Bean farm, and various animal friends who have endless adventures. A favourite was Freddy the Detective.


4. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander This classic fantasy series begins with Taran, Assistant pig keeper, chasing HenWen the oracular pig into the woods. What happens to him there sets him on his destined path toward the High King.


5. Interstellar Pig by William Sleator A young boy at his parents' summer cottage becomes entranced with his 3 strange neighbours, who are obsessed with a board game called Interstellar Pig. The object of the game is to travel through space to capture the Piggy; whoever has it at the end wins, everyone else and their home planets dies. But it is really just a game?

The Little Country

I've always been fond of books about tiny people; The Borrowers or The Littles series were favourites as a child. Charles DeLint's fantasy novel The Little Country has partly to do with such creatures - he calls them Smalls. This novel is really two parallel novels, with both stories progressing side by side until they merge at the end. It begins with Janey Little, who lives in Cornwall with her grandfather, discovering a magic book in a trunk in the attic. She proceeds to read it - that's the second story - alternating chapters until you can see how they reflect each other. This book is full of magic and legend, is heavily dependent on folk music, and is also flavoured with esoteric conspiracy. All of the chapter titles are names of traditional tunes, except for a couple of recent compositions. (Charles DeLint and his wife are both folk musicians, who I was once able to watch do a reading; he read from his newest, and then they performed for a while. Amazing.)
I enjoyed this read, and it was a quick one, lots of action to keep you moving forward. There were a couple of false notes for me; the fantastical world within the magic book has a feel of a classic children's story(witches, magic, Smalls), but in the next chapter, in Janey Little's world, there suddenly appears sex, drugs and murder. A bit startling. I got a bit muddled with circular logic near the end; the magic in the book means each reader reads a unique story, which works until Janey's "story" seems to become an alternate reality in the last few pages. Is she reading the story or is it reading her? Enter the funhouse. A small quibble though; overall it was a wonderfully creative entertainment. I've always felt I should be reading more of Charles DeLint, a talented and well respected Canadian fantasy writer who I certainly know a lot about, though I don't know enough of his work first hand. This was a good one to pick up - and, it has music notation for some of his tunes in the back! Who can resist?

Mary Barton

I started Mary Barton last week, and found I could hardly put it down. The plot is straightforward; Mary Barton is a beautiful young woman with two suitors. One, Jem Wilson, is an old family friend, an honourable working man who's been in love with her since childhood. The other, who turns her head for a while, is a rich mill owner's son, Henry Carson, whose intentions are only a bit of dalliance. Added to this story is a study of the social conditions of Manchester and its workers; some statements about the treatment and lives of the poor must have appeared shocking to her middle class readers. It really was a social novel, and I found myself comparing the ideas in it to her later North & South. She does not appear to have seen much change in the years between the two novels. I found this story very thrilling, with cliffhangers galore, until the closing chapters when Mary becomes ill. They drag a bit, until Gaskell seems to decide on a closing idea. And what a closer it was; Jem & Mary move to Toronto. I have to admit that reading "Toronto" at the end of a 19th century Manchester novel was a bit jarring for me; the images just butted up against each other strangely. When I'd finally wrapped my head around it, I gave myself a good laugh imagining them meeting all the Who's Who of 19th C. Toronto society, such as Susannah Moodie. [n.b. It was strange for me because I live near TO and so imagine it as it is now.] This was her first novel, and the authorial voice interrupts many times. I actually enjoyed it; I know many people find it irritating. She seems to have mostly gotten over that habit by her final novel, Wives & Daughters, one of my all time favourite books.

The Man who was Thursday

I hardly know what to say about this G.K. Chesterton book. It is a surreal classic; subtitled "A Nightmare". The main character, Gabriel Syme, is a young poet/policeman who befriends an anarchist poet in an attempt to infiltrate a secret anarchist organization in which the leaders go by the names of the days of the week. Syme talks his way into being elected as "Thursday" and then is whirled into a manic world of espionage and excitement. One by one the other members of the Council reveal themselves as policemen also, until they realize that everyone but the all-powerful Chairman Sunday belongs to the police and they've all been set to watching each other instead of real anarchists. The action mounts frenetically from Syme's first steps, which are quite logical, to a whirlwind of wild events - duels, car chases, mob shootouts, elephant chases, balloon escapes - until it culminates in a costumed garden party in which they are all dressed allegorically as their Day of the Week, and Sunday appears as a huge deity-like being. It is very strange, and very like a dream, in which nothing really makes sense but you feel there is something representative about it all. Unfortunately, although I can sense there is something here that I'm missing, I'm ultimately just not interested enough to puzzle out the meaning of this dream. It's a weird little book; I can't say whether I liked or disliked it. It's a book for sustained study - but I can't be bothered unravelling this allegory.

The Moonstone

I've finally finished The Moonstone; I don't know why it took me so very long. But as I read it in small bits, I was able to enjoy it longer! I thought it was great fun, and the solution to the theft suitably 'sensational' for a Victorian thriller. The best part of it was the ability of Wilkie Collins to delineate each character so well. The multiple narrative voices were quite distinctive. I must admit to a fondness for Gabriel Betteredge, an aged family retainer with a prediliction for his pipe and for Robinson Crusoe. His storytelling was wonderfully done - I enjoyed his asides, especially the one in which he says : "Nota bene: A drop of tea is to a woman's tongue what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp."
And Miss Clack was simply hilarious. He was mocking a certain kind of self-righteous Christian woman, and he had it so spot on. The image of Miss Clack throwing tracts in at cab windows made me laugh out loud. And her justification for continuing to try to force her Aunt Verinder to read improving literature (ie: "Satan among the sofa cushions", he he) is one of the best explanations of fanaticism that I have read. She says, "Once self-supported by conscience... the true Christian never yields ...We are above reason;...we feel with nobody's hearts but our own...for we are the only people who are always right." [Substitute for "Christian" in this quote any fanatic, whether religious, political or intellectual]. Wilkie Collins was so prescient.
My next Collins read is Armadale, as part of the Chunkster Challenge. Can't wait to get to that one.
Funny story:
Library patron: "What are you reading right now?"
Me: "Oh, just some Collins."
Library patron: "Jackie?"
Me: "No, Wilkie."

Nearest Book Meme

Here's a meme I saw on The Written Word. Rules are:

1) Find the nearest book
2) Open to page 123
3) Type lines 6-8 of said book
4) Tag three others

Nearest Book was : The Man who went up in Smoke

by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

p.123, lines 6-8
"Martin Beck leaned his head against the vibrating window and watched the clouds. After a while he tried smoking, but it tasted disgusting."

You can guess how old this book is; I did a double take...Wait, he's smoking, on the plane!
Iif you want to try this, please consider yourself tagged.

Elswyth Thane's Tryst

In the past couple of weeks, this 1939 book was mentioned on someone's blog; just whose I can't remember! So, whoever it was, thank you! It sounded so interesting that I quickly got it through interlibrary loan, and read it in two days. As promised, it is a dashingly romantic ghost story.

Quick plot summary: Sabrina, at 17, goes to live with her aunt and her professor father in a rented country house called Nuns Farthing. She falls in love with an absent son of the house through exploring his books and belongings in his room at the top of the house.The absent occupant, Hilary Shenstone, is killed overseas on government business but his ghost returns home. They meet in this way, and so their love story concludes a bit unexpectedly. And listen to the first line, giving us our first indication of Sabrina's curiosity about Hilary's room, as well as her essential bookishness:


"Sabrina had never picked a lock in her life, but it was done every day in books."

I know from my current point of view I should find annoying the idea that Hilary is twice Sabrina's age, or the idea of the One True Soulmate (Sabrina is "born to marry Hilary") or the corollary that Sabrina's purpose in life is to marry Hilary, and that's about it. BUT. But, the novel is so delightful and period that I can forgive all that and simply revel in the bittersweet love affair between innnocent, bookish Sabrina and the dead Hilary. This is a keeper, one I'm going to have to track down so I can have it on my rereads shelf.

The Literary Conversation

I've had a few books remark directly on what I'm thinking recently. When I was ruminating over handwriting, the narrator in Audrey Thomas' Graven Images weighed in with her take on handwritten vs. typed manuscripts. This was a book I'd had on my TBR shelf for some years.
Last night, I crawled into bed and picked up The Moonstone (for some reason I've been lax in my reading; I'm not even half done yet!). Then I looked over at my teetering bedside stack of reading, and thought that I'd just read ONE chapter in my newly purchased romantic suspense/historical/time travel Susanna Kearsley novel Mariana. The narrator Julia is moving into an old English village house she has felt drawn to since childhood. She is unpacking and decides to leave her study until last, since (as any bibliophile can attest), "I knew from experience how little it took to distract me.A favourite old book, joyfully discovered in the middle of a box, would mean my spending the rest of the afternoon in blissful, unproductive oblivion". So, at the end of the ...second... chapter (oops) she unpacks her study. She does indeed get distracted. She reaches into a box and pulls out "a dog-eared copy of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, and it was well past midnight when I finally dragged myself upstairs...and fell asleep." Eep! Of course at this very strong literary hint, I tucked the historical back into its pile, and opened Wilkie Collins once more. And what do you know, I didn't get to sleep til past midnight!

Read the book, don't wait for the movie

I've somehow watched three British literary adaptations in the last week or so; could explain why I haven't been posting here or even catching up on my various Challenge books! I feel as if I've been on vacation: I've watched the newest Bleak House, Enchanted April, and the latest Jane Eyre (with Toby Stephens, yum). All three are quite wonderful. I've always loved Enchanted April for the way it follows the book so closely, and captures the loveliness of the original story. The casting, costuming, locations, and production values all mesh to result in one of my favourite films, which I view frequently. However, both Bleak House and Jane Eyre take some liberties with the text; perhaps because the source novels are so very large. Although it usually bothers me when this happens, in this case it seemed to work very well. The filmmakers were following the spirit, if not the letter, of the novels. Nobody can do adaptations like the Brits. Perhaps these excellent productions should be called "Brit-erary Adaptations"!
My literary/film travels were abruptly halted when I tried to watch a North American production of The Return of the Native (a Thomas Hardy novel that I loved), but which didn't really succeed. It was really too bad; some marvellous actors - favourites like Clive Owen, Steven Mackintosh and Joan Plowright - but a sadly unhinged result. Once again, let the BBC do these kinds of things!
I haven't read Bleak House yet, but I'm very familiar with the others as novels. When a book is made into a movie, do you prefer to watch the film or read the book first? I've read books as a result of watching good films -- for example, Our Mutual Friend (in which Steven Mackintosh appears again, in a wonderful role) or North & South. Anyone else have a favourite adaptation or two?

Update: Check out some other opinions on the subject of adaptations - by Superfast Reader or by Jill.