A Passage To India

I've finished A Passage To India.  Otherwise known by its alternate title - In Which Everyone Is Disappointed By Everyone Else: A Story About Sex Where Absolutely No One Has Sex.

And I should warn you - I'm going to spoil the book thoroughly for you.

We open with Adela Quested arriving in India with Mrs. Moore, ostensibly to see if she really likes Mrs. Moore's son Ronny enough to marry him.  And are introduced to Dr. Aziz, a handsome young Muslim doctor in Chandrapore who is much too flighty and poetical to know his own mind.  Aziz was disappointed in his first marriage to a woman who he thought rather plain and ugly and who nevertheless gave him three healthy children and acted the part of a caring wife until she died bearing child #3, at which point Aziz seems to have changed his mind about her and decided she was much too wonderful for him and he will never find her match.  He dumps his children on some relatives and devotes himself to being a doctor, writing poetry, making beautiful statements about things, and occasionally thinking about visiting brothels.

Miss Quested was disappointed by life in England, and is subsequently disappointed by Ronny, who elicits no passion in her whatsoever.  She's referred to many times as prudish, prim, and a cold fish - but I never really saw this in her character.  To me she seemed ignorant, or maybe harshly naive is a better reading.  Intentionally blind.  She wants to see 'the real India'.  Meanwhile Mrs. Moore takes her shoes off when visiting a mosque and because of this gesture earns the undying affection of Dr. Aziz.  As a favor to her, he arranges a picnic to the nearby Marabar Caves for her, Miss Quested (who had a moment of passionate hand-holding in the back seat of a car with Ronny and has agreed to marry him after all), and various other people including his new best friend the British Dr. Fielding.

Here let's take a side step.  Dr. Fielding and Dr. Aziz have essentially nothing in common but somehow seem to spend a lot of time together.  I can't help but wonder if Forster had any male friendships that weren't sexual in nature, because he seems rather at a loss for how to write this one.  And a great many thinly veiled moments of oddness exist between them.  Dr. Aziz joins Dr. Fielding as he gets dressed, for example.  Fielding mentions later in the story that it was irrelevant that Aziz visited brothels because everyone does when they're younger.  There's a lot of...well, no actually there aren't a lot of layers.  There's one layer, and it's laid on nice and thick.

So, the picnic.

No one knows what exactly happens to the two women during the picnic.  At one point Mrs. Moore feels claustrophobic in a cave and talks about people touching her.  When she gets out of the cave she discovers it was just the normal crowd.  The weird fleshy thing she felt on her face was the hand of a babe in arms.  All was nothing.  Aziz and Miss Quested and a guide go on to see the next cave without her and have a deeply awkward conversation where Miss Q asks Aziz if he has more than one wife, being Muslim and all.  And wants to know 'what marriage is like'.  He's insulted, and dips into a cave for a moment to collect himself.  When he comes back out, Miss Quested has gone down the hill to see a friend newly pulled up in a car.  The two drive off together.

On arriving home from the picnic, Aziz is arrested.  Miss Quested has accused him of accosting her in a cave.

At this point the deeply racist but tightly controlled narrative spins out and this is where Forster, I think, really comes into his own.  The only British person on Aziz's side is Fielding, who insists that Adela must be mistaken.  The pre-trial tensions rise.  Adela is apparently 'taken ill' and cannot see anyone.  She's haunted by an 'echo', which also mimics what Mrs. Moore says had bothered her in the crush of bodies in the first cave.  We're back to her thinking she can't marry Ronny after all.  Aziz is in jail, but then released on bail, and then arrested again for driving a car into a ditch.  Things are spinning out of control and the story ceases to make any real logical sense.  Is the vigorously anti British lawyer a good idea or not?  Is the Nawar Bandahur losing his title?  Is Mrs. Turton going to utterly and completely lose her ever loving mind over this frothing indignity to English femininity?

Wait now...Adela is saying no one ever touched her.  It was all just horrible.  Horrible.  But they just propositioned her.  Except she can't remember what they said.  But they broke her binocular strap.  Or, or maybe they didn't.  Could it have been the guide, and not Aziz after all?  Could she have been wrong?  Is she sick?  

The trial begins - on one side, the Indians.  Ready for a fight, and to defend Aziz.  On the other side, the British.  Already victorious before a word has been said.

And Adela stands up and declares she was wrong, it was not Aziz, it was no one.  She had hallucinated the whole thing.

Now of course everyone is furious with everyone else and nothing at all has been resolved.  Aziz is filled with hate towards the British and Adela in particular, who he claims would have been lucky to have been accosted in a cave at all, seeing as she's so ugly it might have been her only opportunity for human affection.  Mrs. Moore has gone from the intelligent and loving elderly lady and turned to a demented, bitter harridan of a woman who is turned into a saintly figure by the people of Chandrapore despite having left before the trial even began and conveniently died at sea, saving us all from having to deal with her abrupt about-face and her from having to deal with her other two exhausting unmarried adult children back in England.  Ronny, who stuck by Adela through her role as 'besmirched maiden', is struck by the thought that this woman is now everyone's enemy and also a turncoat so informs her that the engagement is off...again.

Fielding misses a parade in Aziz's honour and this is the beginning of the end for the two of them.  Things spiral downward in every corner.  Suspicion kills all the relationships.  Aziz cannot understand how Fielding could have offered Miss Quested refuge at the medical college when the mobs were out for blood post-trial.  He can't understand why Fielding would continually insist on Aziz releasing Adela from her financial responsibilities to Aziz in the way of court fees and payment for destroying his good name.  Fielding can't see how Aziz could be so ungentlemanly.  Aziz can't see how Fielding wouldn't tell him he was having an affair with Adela (he wasn't).  Fielding can't believe Aziz would accuse him of such a thing.  And on and on the tiny misunderstandings mount.  

And eventually, the inevitable.  Miss Quested has returned to Britain, of course.  And Dr. Fielding has been called back to England temporarily.  And Aziz knows...he just knows that of course the Dr. will marry Miss Quested. That perhaps that was why he had been so adamant that Aziz release her financially, so that he himself would get her inheritance.  And yet at even at the end we're not given a clear 'winner' or 'loser'.  The holy bees never attack those pure at heart, but they attack Fielding and his brother in law.  Fielding must be evil, then.  But it comes out that he never married Miss Quested after all, and Aziz has been petty and ridiculous all this time.  Aziz must be in the wrong.  Misunderstandings....misunderstanding...

Fielding was no cad - he truly believed in Aziz, and he truly believed that Adela had been honestly sick and hallucinated and shouldn't be made destitute in recompense for her mistake.  Aziz was no cad - he behaved honorably, and meant no harm to anyone, and attempted to please all around him.  The evil in the story was the situation itself, where community was naturally pitted against community and there could be no winners.  Where the only 'cross cultural' friendships had to end in death (Aziz and Mrs. Moore) or eternal estrangement (Aziz and Fielding).  There could be nothing else.

Of course the irony of it all is that in wanting to see the real India, Miss Quested sparked the most defining Indian thing of the time - the indignity of colonial rule.  

***********************************************************************************

By rights the story should end there, since multi-generational engrained prejudices tend not to be wrapped up neatly at the end of stories.  In this case, though, Forster gives us all a break of sorts in the final chapter.  Aziz and Fielding reconcile.  Aziz writes to Adela, finally forgiving her.  Things are not the same, but they are mended with the stitches showing.  I appreciate this immensely as I'm rather a completist at heart, but at the same time I fully recognize that it doesn't make a 'better' story.  It does give us a bit of hope, though.  Maybe that's a good starting point.

January 1, 2022 - The Great Reading List Re-Cap

 Happy New Year, y'all!

As a friend of mine mentioned on F-book, "If Betty White didn't want to live in 2022, this doesn't bode well for the rest of us."

My fingers are too worn out to be crossed, but please, Lord, let it be better.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but not 2021 level.

ON TO THE BOOKS!

According to Goodreads, I read 95 books this year.  My goal had been 100.  I'm pretty impressed with myself that I accomplished what I did, actually!  As always, my definition of a 'book' for the purposes of adding it to my list is fairly broad.  I don't count picture books or young children's books that I read aloud to the children.  I don't count collections of comics (unless I read the Complete Works of something), or anything that isn't a substantial example of its genre.  I do count graphic novels, YA books, stuff I read aloud, stuff I pre-read for the kids, stuff I read myself, e-books, print books, and I'd also count audio books if I ever listened to them, which I don't.

My shortest book was A Girl Called Echo - a graphic novel exploring Indigenous time travel.  It clocked in at 48 pages.

My Longest book was Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers - 501 pages!

32 of the books were classified as 'children's' or 'young adult' books and 63 were 'adult' books.  I never really understand those arbitrary designations but there you have it.

20 were nonfiction, and 75 were fiction.

My LEAST favourites of the year were these ones:

The Dan Harris book was a long, whiny ridiculous piece of garbage, and I wrote a fairly scathing review about it.  

Olive Kitteridge was very well written but just so harsh and dark and sad that it didn't appeal to me at all.  

The NYPL book was full of neither peculiar questions nor practical answers, thereby negating its whole point of being, and I just didn't like Tony Hawks.  No good reason, just thought it was a silly book is all.

My MOST favourite (new reads) were:

I hadn't picked up a Nancy Mitford before and I thought she was hilarious, witty and cutting in the best possible way.  The Pursuit of Love is the first in a trilogy (I only read the first two) and I thought it was the best.

Piranesi was absolutely outstanding.  I loved...I loved everything about it.  It was a little creepy, which usually doesn't appeal to me, but honestly if ever a storyline required an atmospheric eeriness, this was that story.

Gaudy Night is one of four Sayers that feature the Wimsey/Vane relationship prominently, and again I managed to read three of those books and thought this was the best of the ones I read.

Ella Minnow Pea had been on my to read list for years now, and I was so taken with it and how the author managed to not handle the topics he did with a heavy hand, which would have been all to easy.

Twice this past year I challenged myself to read a book 'blind'.  The first time, I went into a store and selected a novel based only on the cover illustration, with no other knowledge.  That gave me this one: 

 A very disturbed family consisting to two parents who put on performance art pieces and their two children, Child A and Child B, unwillingly roped into the pieces and eventually betrayed utterly by themselves, their relationships, their friends and finally, their family.  Imagine if The Royal Tenenbaums had all been deeply mentally ill and psychotic.  It was...it was a different book than I usually read, that's for sure.

For the second, I actually wrote an article about choosing a book totally without knowing what it was about.  Since The Family Fang was chosen for the cover, which gave me some control, I ended up picking this one by using Libby Overdrive and writing down the first five titles that came up under 'popular'.  Then I had my husband randomly pick a title.  Which is how I read this one:

I haven't read a Moriarty before.  I find it interesting that these sorts of plots are so popular amongst women - it's all spousal abuse and cheating husbands and disagreeable children.  Not really the sort of things I find myself drawn towards, frankly.  I mean, ANOTHER high society murder of rich white people?  It's all not really my cup of tea, I guess.  But I read it.  It wasn't a bad book.

And finally, only 8 of the books were read aloud to the children this year, which is my most disappointing statistic.  It was a rough year for read-alouds.  Let's hope that changes in 2022!

Reading Notes - August 2020

 August was filled with an anniversary, two birthdays, a week long visit of friends, and the beginning of our school year.  Because of all that, I finished a grand total of ONE book!  However, I did make progress on some others.

Since the world lost Ravi Zacharias recently, it seemed only fitting that I read one of his works.  Zacharias has the enviable ability to take hold of the big questions and fearlessly articulate Biblical answers that are accessible to the everyman.  This is theology for the world - nothing overly academic, nothing particularly intimidating to grasp, filled with relevant illustrations and lots of references - but plain truth, simply served.  A man after my own heart.

Recommended by a friend, and certainly finding a permanent place on my shelves.  What does God look like in the midst of suffering, especially suffering that will not end in this life?  I made some progress on this book but didn't finish it.

I've been reading this collection of Anne Fadiman's essays (she really shines as an essayist) for a while now.  This month I finished reading about her ice cream obsession just in time to have a conversation with a friend about the very shop in California that Fadiman loves.  Small world.

Currently a perfect read before bed - I'm about halfway through Haskell's fantastic almanac-style observations of a small square of forest floor in Tennessee.  I think this one will find a permanent home beside Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I've been reading War and Peace (this Everyman 3-volume edition is lovely to read) for an online bookclub and finished Volume 1, Part 1, Chapters 1-10 in August.  If you'd like to join in, I'm participating in the club through The Center For Lit and there is a 1-hour podcast discussion for each section.

This month's biography was lingering on my Kindle for a few months since I picked in up for a pittance.  Ciszak's trials and life in Russia have been astonishing to read and remind me a little of Jan Wong's excellent book about attending university in communist China - Red China Blues.  I read about 3/4 of this one in August.

And finally I started Claiborne's book, Irresistible Revolution, which I've been thinking about reading ever since I finished A Year Of Small Things.  That author was a huuuuuge Claiborne fangirl.  I...am not so much.  I'm a quarter of the way through and meh.  

Reading Notes, July 2020

I got onto a fantasy book kick this month, as you'll see.

Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy.  I love how much Christian symbolism is in this series, and how many difficult questions can be approached using a fantastical worldview.  Arguably, fantasy is a prime opportunity for exploring topics and ideas that are difficult to place in our current reality.

Morgan is The Prince of Hed - a small, rural island of no particular importance.  He was born with three unexplained stars on his forehead, and a skill for answering riddles.  Who is he, really?  Is he just the ruler, or something more?  Why won't The High One, a semi-mythical being who controls the fates of the world, tell him why his parents died?  Or even talk to him?  What do the stars of his face mean and how had someone a thousand years ago known he would have them?  Morgan's quest for the truth has a lot of twists, but the overall themes of the fight for truth and whether our destiny is preordained for us are beautiful.

Another series!  C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle is another of those fantasy series just filled with Christian symbolism.  

I love the themes in these books - Can sin be 'worked off', the weight of sin on a soul, who, or what, is evil, and so forth.

Nhi Vanye i Chya is the bastard son of the ruler of the Nhi Clan, and he kills one half brother and disfigures another after years and years of torture at their hands, and in return he is outcast, ilin, forced to become the indentured servant to the first lord, liyo, who gives him food and a hearth.  Unfortunately for Vanye, this turns out to be Morgaine, an ancient witch doomed to travel between worlds via a series of 'gates', closing them as she goes, in order to prevent evil from seeping into the world.

Let's keep going with the symbolism, shall we?  This one is Margaret Mahy's Carnegie Medal winning YA novel.  I read this book decades ago, and could not remember the name of it.  Then a FB group of fellow bibliophiles came up with this title for me, and they were correct!  I read it in a night!  

Laura's younger brother is attacked by a demon and is slowly dying, and Laura must save him.  Wrapped up in this sacrifice are many, many little healings throughout the book.  The male protagonist, Sorensen, forgiving his birth mother for her abandonment.  Laura forgiving her father for his leaving the family and marrying again, and then forgiving her mother for seeking solace in a new romance.  Sometimes the greatest sacrifice is letting go of our right to be offended and hurt.

Diane Duane's first book in her Wizard series (I think she's up to #10 now!)  I cannot tell you how much I love this series for tweens/teens and up.  Duane's characters remind me very much of L'Engle's style of writing - in fact if the character of Meg was a wizard, she would be Nita.  Absolutely.  There's a sort of science/fantasy/growing up theme running through these deeply symbolic books.

In this much less well known book of L'engle's, we have two short fictional stories based on the author's imagining of what went on in Egypt when the Holy Family lived there waiting for Herod's death.  In one of the stories, the Christ Child befriends a camel and a thieving boy at the same time, and in the second he matches wits with the Sphinx herself, who is ancient and hungry for human flesh.  Both are wonderfully evocative of the gospels.

It's not a decent reading month without some non-fiction, and I read a few good ones this month!

Some very good points for writers in this book.  I think more established writers might already know a lot of what the authors mention, but that's to be expected since the book is subtitled "How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer".  It was a pretty quick read.

Another book by the same author, and this one is her most recent title.  Also a fairly quick read, and it resonated with me, of course, seeing as Stiller and I find ourselves in similar situations as the spouses of ministers.  Here's my Goodreads review.

Now, lest you think all I do is read books you can really sink your teeth into, let me help dispel that myth!  Kyra sent me the first three books in the Harry Dresden files, and it takes about a day to finish one of these!  

These are the first three in the Dresden Files series, which must be up to 16 at least.  Wizardly crime fighting in the gritty Chicago streets, written in that film noir detective style.  Entertaining, not thought-provoking at all, and if you are wondering if you'll be offended...you will be.  I mean, you'll laugh, but you will also probably be offended.  They aren't nearly so creepy as they look.  They're like...did you ever read the Callahan's books by Spider Robinson?

A pre-read for school, which I've decided is not what we need.  But Doyle writes so realistically about Ottawa that I feel I'm there, and this hard-working, mystery-solving, environmentalist Indigenous protagonist is busting open stereotypes left, right and centre.  I'm sure it would be perfect for someone, even it that isn't us.

Still continuing slowly and steadily in this one.  Written in email format, hilarious, nonfiction, a couple travelling to all of the national parks in the United States.  What's not to love?

My first Lord Peter Whimsy mystery, if you can believe it.  It is very much Wooster and Jeeves meets Agatha Christie.  So far, I like it!

Reading Notes - June

Still catching up on my backlog of notes.  Let's see if I actually wrote down what I read in June!  Ah, it looks like I only accomplished three adult books and the rest were read-alouds for the children.  Never mind, here they are anyway.

Four Girls At Chautauqua - Pansy (aka Isabella MacDonald Alden)

A ubiquitous Pansy book, one of a series set in or around the Chautauqua Christian Camp.  Did you know that Alden was Grace Livingston Hill's aunt?!  Apparently Hill continued some of the storylines.  I found the book in a junk shop years ago and finally picked it up last month to see what it was about.

Sometimes The Stones Are Very Lively - Jean Shaw

Terribly funny 1970s style Christian humor.  If you liked Adrian Plass, you'd like this.

Confessions Of A Common Reader - Anne Fadiman

One of two Fadiman books I bought myself as a birthday gift after having stared at them for ages online.  Her essays are little jewels and should be read by book lovers everywhere.

Reading Notes April and May

I kept picking up books to read, and then drifting off them, sometimes within a short sprint to the end.  I couldn't seem to stay on track, and I hadn't finished a book in weeks.  To counteract this decision fatigue and ennui I picked a bookcase, and a shelf, and just read from left to right.  No choices, no decisions, just books.

So, here we go!  I guess this is the April reading notes, then...and May

 I'm read the second shelf on the blue bookcase in my bedroom.  Book #1 is The Piano Shop on The Left Bank: The Hidden World of a Paris Atelier by T.E. Carhart.

Ah, I remember buying this book!  Actually I picked it up somewhere and then later bought it all over again because I couldn't remember if I'd bought it the first time.  Now I had two copies of a book I still hadn't read.  Sounds like me.  Apparently this is Carhart's first book, let me just look here and see when it was published...2000!  Has he written anything since?  Ah, yes he has - apparently a memoir and a historical novel.  There you go.

This nonfiction look into the secretive world of the atelier - the purveyors of pianos - is focused on a single dusty shop in Paris but Carhart stretches to bring us into the off passages of the instrument's history.  It's very light, a little whimsical, an excellent start to the shelf and I'm glad I finally read it and can give away my extra copy.

And the next unread book on this shelf is...The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A novel!  Fun!  Well, it wasn't...FUN... exactly.  I did laugh aloud several times, especially at the ridiculous traditional Oxbridge style college (so reminiscent of my own dysfunctional college education).  But, oh, there was sadness.  And a horrifying ghost story before Fitzgerald brings you back to the possibility of the closed and barred doors in our lives opening to some hopeful future.  She never gives us the 'happy ending', though.

Right next to the Fitzgerald we have the next unread title - My Invented Country: A Memoir by Isabel Allende.  Oh, this one was such a good read!  I think it was around this time I started recording little videos about my books on Facebook, actually.  Having only read one Allende title before, and that many years ago, I was surprised at how FUNNY and relevant she was and how appealing and cozy her writing style came across.  It was like a very interesting and vibrant friend and I were sitting down discussing fascinating things together and she was telling me all the stories about Chile.

Okay, now the next one is...The Voice of Matthew by Lauren Winner.

Well.  What a disappointment.  It wasn't a Bible study, it was some sort of odd artistic Bible translation that, really, didn't do very well and it looks like many of the other books were scrapped.  I bet Winner wishes she could sweep this title under the rug.

Reading Notes - March, 2020

*Edit* My friends,  I had no idea what my March was going to look like.  My reading was all over the place but I did stick with my Lenten sacrifice and did not buy any new books.  And I was tempted.

This Reading Notes is going to take an odd bent for me, because it is Lent, and for Lent this year...I am not buying any books for myself.  I'm reading only what I ALREADY HAVE.  Don't weep too much for me, this needs doing.  So I present to you the things I read in March, all of which I bought in the past intending to read and never did.  Including the books I've started and finished this month in order to clear the backlog and generally become a better and holier person all around.

(I'm kidding.   This is as holy as I'm likely to become.)

Here are the ones I've started and never finished until now!  I'm quite proud of myself:

Eames was interesting and a good balance of background fact/Christie biography and narration of his own travel.  Well done, glad I read it.

Dillard was like eating an incredibly rich, decadent black forest cake.  I loved it, but I could only take small bites at a time.  My head is still spinning and I want to read it again and again just...just to try and peel back more layers.  I have a feeling it could be a different book each time I did.  I also feel my lack of Thoreau.

Ferguson was, you know, he was fine.  It was fine.  Honestly it sort of blended into my brain and I've forgotten most of it now.  Meh.  It was okay.

Still haven't finished this one but made more headway. ..

Smith was very much a missed opportunity.  The author could have produced a fascinating look at the secrets lying under England and instead chose to essentially provide a tour-guide synopsis of locations seemingly very well-known (I didn't know of them, mind you, but he mentions lots of books about them and finds guides for them easily and some of the caves have affiliated clubs,  for heaven's sake) and generally pretty straight forward to reach.  An underground art installation?  A well-known royal tunnel?  A submerged town???  Sheesh.

And I made it through several books that had been loitering on my shelves for some time now:

In my quest to read everything by Miss Read, I managed to finish Summer At Fairacre literally moments before dropping it in the bath.  If that isn't a metaphor for our times I don't know what is.

I'm also working through everything written by L.M. Montgomery,  so managed to add a few more titles of hers to the 'read' pile as well:

I really liked The Chronicles of Avonlea, which I wasn't convinced would be the case.  I've read Mongomery's short stories before in The Doctor's Sweetheart and found them trite and uninspired and sometimes very odd, but this collection was charming!

On the other hand, Kilmeny of the Orchard is my least favorite Mongomery book to date.  It was creepy.  The characters were entirely one dimensional and very poorly thought out.  The story was weak, and relied almost entirely on coincidence to make it work at all.  Ah, how handy to have a 'foreigner' to blame things on!  Well it's convenient that we have a famous throat doctor just hanging around when we need a famous throat doctor, isn't it!  She's beautiful AND she plays the violin?   You don't say!

Started but haven't finished this one either. ..

Good gravy but this was a simplistic bit of writing.  I'm sure I've heard of this book for ages and always thought I should read it because clearly it resonated with so many people but...wow.  That being said, I'm not much for the 'see your entire world illustrated in the curve on a conch shell' style of over-romanticized writing, but there are reams of devoted fans on Amazon for it - scrolling through the reviews I wonder if we were even reading the same book.

Reading Notes - February 2020

This month's reading notes!  A mixed bag, as usual.

Finished

Finished

Finished

Three of Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce mysteries this month.  I've heard several people now mention this series as their 'fluffy' or 'light' reading, and I'd just like to know why that is.  I mean, certainly, this isn't Moby Dick or something,  but gosh mysteries seem to get the short end of the stick, don't they?  Anyway, Flavia is 12ish, she's brilliant,  the stories are generally well thought out without a lot of gratuitous violence or anything, they are a little. ..atmospheric, perhaps.   And I like them.  Although I will say the second title up there is the first de Luce mystery where I totally knew what was happening from very early on, and the third in the list was a very lackluster mystery altogether.  I hope this isn't an indication that the author is slipping.

Finished 

I am probably the last person I know to read this.  For a while, The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society was everywhere.  And I can remember a friend rapsodizing about it.  But, well, it looked hokey to me so I just didn't read it.  I was wrong.   Imagine that.  It's like Helene Hanff became a British war correspondent!  A bit of romance,  a bit of humanity,  a 'brave European ladies against the Nazis' book that doesn't venture into alllll the tropes you know so well.  Very much one for the keep shelf.

In progress 

I like travel memoirs!  I like Agatha Christie!  I like trains!  And I like this!  So often these following -in-the-footsteps -of-the-greats kind of travelogues fall too far to either side - all about the initial traveler,  or all about the current traveler,  but this one balanced well between the two.  I never felt like this was a thinly veiled treatise on the history of the Orient Express under the guise of a Christie biography,  and I never thought 'I cannot read one more paragraph about Agatha's failed marriage'.  A good balance, is what I'm saying.  Also, I love it when books intersect in interesting ways with other books, which is part of my fascination with the novels of Barbara Pym.  But I especially love oddities of marginalia and on the inside back cover of this book a previous owner had scribbled:

Minaret of Samaria
P.325
P.100
P.117
Ziggurot
Nebuchanezzar
Babylon

I mean.  I love it.  So of course I stopped and looked it up and one of the page references mentions...Paul Theroux.   Everyone knows how I feel about Whiny Theroux.   I mean Paul.  Cough.  But honestly I was just thinking that this cover looked like Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar.  It just made me happy.  Worlds colliding!

Finished

Billed as a 'coming-of-age' memoir,  which I find annoying.  Because, ugh, coming of age implies the recognition of impending adulthood, a certain embracing of the future, a series of changes in maturity,  perhaps,  but not...not drinking in Australia,  really.  It was a fluffy travel memoir of a very privileged, twenty-one year old, middle class, debt-free college graduate who has always been a people pleaser and decides to strike out on her own and explore the world.  Which she does by waitressing jobs for a few months in a few countries,  and drinking with other young, aimless backpackers.  I mean, there was a very funny bit about a friend's incredibly strange Polish boyfriend.  And there wasn't a lot of pointless sex.  So it had that going for it.  By the end, though, she's just annoying - borrowing money from her mother because she doesn't have enough to keep travelling, and then spending it on yet more tours and wine and what have you.  Dismissing all the concerns of people who love her.  Literally dismissing her parents over and over again, while still needing them for even the most basic of adult tasks, like going to a doctor!  Gah, I'm too old for this crap.

Finished 

I picked this short little novel up on a whim at a second hand shop and it was a tiny, perfect gem of fiction.  I got so engrossed in the story of Lydia, the sister of American impressionist artist Mary Cassatt, that I finished it on the way home.  My edition was slightly different from the picture, and was so well bound it really added to the luxery of the story.  Every character, every scene, every sentence, was so expertly crafted it seemed like the story sprang fully formed from the mind of a poet.

In Progress  

I'm too sick to adequately discuss my thoughts about this Ferguson book.  So far, two things come to mind.

1) He is really unhappy about being called a gaijin.
2) I think that I've finally figured out the problem with this author.   He continues talking about every topic for just a few too many paragraphs.