Miss Mapp

Miss Mapp
by E.F. Benson

Blurb:

E. F. Benson's strikingly original comic creation Miss Mapp is an arch-schemer and social climber from the British town of Tilling who spends her days using opera glasses and a notebook to chart her neighbors' affairs. Among her interests are Major Benjamin Flint, whom she has been trying to marry for years, and the underhanded Miss Susan Poppit.

My Reaction:
Well, that blurb doesn't really do the book justice.  Miss Mapp is such a frightful, fearsome person in so many ways, but somehow I love reading about her (and the rest of Tilling, of course).  If you have a certain sense of humor (love Wodehouse?), this book hits all the right notes-- a perfect symphony of amusement.

I'd read Miss Mapp once before on my own.  This time, it was a shared read with Donald, and I think I liked it even better the second time around.  (Better than Queen Lucia, even, I think.)  I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten-- and some of the snippets that I remembered best (the rose-madder worsted!) came earlier than expected.  

I've seen this labeled as the second in the Lucia series (which is why we read it in that order), but others say that it would be best read third, after Lucia in London (and I suspect that's the order in which I originally read them).  I don't see why it should matter one way or the other.  The only downside to reading this one second seems to be that you won't see the Tilling characters again until the fourth book...

Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Elizabeth and Her German Garden
by Elizabeth von Arnim

Blurb:

"Elizabeth and Her German Garden," a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, was popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century. "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" is a year's diary written by Elizabeth about her experiences learning gardening and interacting with her friends. It includes commentary on the beauty of nature and on society, but is primarily humorous due to Elizabeth's frequent mistakes and her idiosyncratic outlook on life. The story is full of sweet, endearing moments. Elizabeth was an avid reader and has interesting comments on where certain authors are best read; she tells charming stories of her children and has a sometimes sharp sense of humor in regards to the people who will come and disrupt her solitary lifestyle.

My Reaction:
I wanted to read this book because I remembered L.M. Montgomery mentioning it in her journals.  The entry I remembered (see the section below for more specifics) and the title itself led me to expect something focused on gardening.  While gardens-- flowers, specifically-- are important to "Elizabeth" (probably both the author and her character), the book has less to do with gardening than with humor.  I wouldn't say that's a bad thing.

I'd recommend this to other readers who are fond of gardens, turn-of-the-century settings, and humorous commentary on human nature.  It helps if you are also an introvert or have sympathy with the type of person who enjoys solitude. (If not, you'll probably be exasperated, at some point.)


Specifics (Mostly Quotes):
--  From The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 1: 1889-1910:  "I brought home a library book the other night-- "Elizabeth and her German Garden"-- taking it as Hobson's choice because I couldn't get anything else.  I didn't know anything about it, didn't think it was worth much, and made no haste to read it.  Finally last Thursday I began it.  Before I had read a chapter I was ready to kick myself for no having found out what it was before.  It was delightful-- the whole book.  My "twin soul" must live in Elizabeth-- at least, as far as gardening is concerned.  She has said a hundred thing that I always meant to say when I had thought them out sufficiently.  I shan't have to say them now-- Elizabeth has done it so well."

--  The book starts off a bit strangely, I think, and when Elizabeth's husband first appears-- and is called by his nickname, "the Man of Wrath"-- you begin to wonder what kind of book it will be... But despite the name and some of the things he says (at least partially in jest, one hopes), he never seems particularly wrathful.

--  "The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible."

--  The mentions of "kindred spirits" are of course interesting, given the L.M. Montgomery/"Anne" connection.  "I long more and more for a kindred spirit-- it seems so greedy to have so much loveliness to oneself-- but kindred spirits are so very, very rare; I might almost as well cry for the moon."

-- "She had found a kindred spirit, and it has been ruthlessly torn from her arms as kindred spirits so often are."

--  "I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors-- not stray callers to be got rid of after a due administration of tea and things you are sorry afterwards that you said, but people staying in the house and not to be got rid of at all."

--  "It is so sweet to be sad when one has nothing to be sad about."

-- "Humility, and the most patient perseverance, seem almost as necessary in gardening as rain and sunshine, and every failure must be used as a stepping-stone to something better."

--  "I had an awful reverence for my grandfather.  He never petted, and he often frowned, and such people are generally reverenced.  Besides, he was a just man, everybody said; a just man who might have been a great man if he had chosen, and risen to almost any pinnacle of worldly glory.  That he had not so chosen was held to be a convincing proof of his greatness; for he was plainly too great to be great in the vulgar sense, and shrouded himself in the dignity of privacy and potentialities.  This, at least, as time passed and he still did nothing, was the belief of the simple people around.  People must believe in somebody, and having pinned their faith on my grandfather in the promising years that lie around thirty, it was more convenient to let it remain there."

--  "'What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies!'  'Quite so, my dear,' replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly. 'You have got to the very root of the matter.  Nature, while imposing this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition with man.  How can a person who is constantly losing a year of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never loses any time at all?  He has the brute force, and his last word on any subject could always be his fist.'"

--  "I have taken care in choosing my yellow plants to put down only those humble ones that are easily pleased and grateful for little, for my soil is by no means all that it might be, and to most plants the climate is rather trying.  I feel really grateful to any flower that is sturdy and willing enough to flourish here."

--  Elizabeth and her friend Irais can be "mean" at times.  They're not always understanding of the difficulties of others-- not quite conscious, perhaps, of the benefits they enjoy.  By the end, I've forgiven them.

--  "If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shrieks of your relations, to their gibes or their entreaties; don't let your own microscopic set prescribe your goings-out and comings-in; don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbor in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck."

--  "Women are responsible for such lies, because they believe them.  Their amazing vanity makes them swallow flattery so gross that it is an insult, and men will always be ready to tell the precise number of lies that a woman is ready to listen to.  Who indulges more recklessly in glowing exaggerations than the lover who hopes, and has not yet obtained?  He will, like the nightingale, sing with unceasing modulations, display all his talent, untiringly repeat his sweetest notes, until he has what he wants, when his song, like the nightingale's, immediately ceases, never again to be heard."

--  "...Let me warn you that, as things now are, only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the strong-minded are invariably plain.  The pretty ones would rather see men as their slaves than their equals."

--  Elizabeth considers that Minora's nose isn't bad-- might even be pretty-- "but she does not know how to carry it, and there is an art in the angle at which one's nose is held just as in everything else, and really noses were intended for something besides mere blowing."  Reminds me of Anne's vanity over the niceness of her nose...  Sadly, I'm not particularly fond of my own nose.  It's alright, but nothing to brag about, I'm afraid.  I wonder what is the right, artful angle for holding the nose?  I'd say tilted back-- but I'm afraid of looking snooty or giving too much a view up the nostrils.

--  "The nightingales in the forests about here all sing the same tune, and in the same key of E flat."  ...Is there a difference from place to place?  I know very little of nightingales.

--  Minora's eyes:  "...They are large eyes with long dark eyelashes, and far be it from me to deny that each eye taken by itself is fine, but they are put in all wrong."

--  The bit about washing laundry only four times a year was amusing-- and familiar.  I wonder where else I've heard the suggestion that doing laundry too frequently indicates that you are poor/don't own a substantial a stock of household linens...

--  Elizabeth writes that she has spent much of her pin money on "artificial manure".  "The Man of Wrath says he never met a young woman who spent her money that way before; I remarked that it must be nice to have an original wife; and he retorted that the word original hardly described me, and that the word eccentric was the one required."

-- Irais writes that she is beset by house guests:  "My husband goes off after breakfast to look at his crops, he says, and I am left at their mercy.  I wish I had crops to go and look at-- I should be grateful even for one, and would look at it from morning till night, and quite stare it out of countenance, sooner than stay at home and have the truth told me by enigmatic aunts."

--  "It makes one very humble to see oneself surrounded by such a wealth of beauty and perfection anonymously lavished, and to think of the infinite meanness of our own grudging charities, and how displeased we are if they are not promptly and properly appreciated.  I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy flowers I so much love."

Descent

Descent
by Tim Johnston

(Edited) Blurb:

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV.

Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller.

My Reaction:
(I took away a paragraph of the blurb because I felt it went too far into the story and gave away too much.)

While parts of the book were edge-of-your-seat reading, I found them few and far between.  To call this "a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion" would be going too far.  It was alright.  Parts of it were interesting, but for every powerful paragraph, you have to wade through pages of sluggishly paced dreariness.  Also, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything about this book that sets it that far apart from hundreds (thousands?) of others on the same topic.  Maybe it's more skillfully written than many of the genre (though there is plenty of room for improvement).  However, it took an effort to pick up the book and read (except for the rare sections where things were actually happening).  I didn't feel as moved as I think I was supposed to... It missed the mark, somehow.


More Specifics (with SPOILERS):
-- Caitlin wasn't very likeable at the beginning of the book.  The way she talks to her brother...For that matter, I didn't really like many of the characters, though by the end I had at least sympathy for all but one (the Monkey)... I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by their realistic, human flaws.  ...Meh, whatever. 

--  "They'd come to the Rockies thinking it was a place like any other they might have chosen: chronicled, mapped, finite.  A fully known American somewhere.  Now Grant understood that, like the desert, like the ocean, the mountains were a vast and pitiless nowhere.  Who would bring his family-- his children-- to such a place?"

--  When Caitlin first meets the Monkey and learns that he's unwilling to go for help for her brother, she has some mental dialogue in which she calls him a "white piece of shit".  That struck me as odd.  Why specify "white"?  Would the author have done that if the Monkey had been any other race?  It's even stranger when you consider that Caitlin herself is white.

--  Anytime Angela was in the book was pretty much the worst part of the novel for me.  I get that she's suffering from depression.  I just didn't feel like we needed to read quite so much about it.  Slog slog slog...

--  When Angela lies in her daughter's bed, mourning her, contemplating suicide (if I recall correctly), we are told that she puts "her hands over her stomach, over her womb", which struck me as something that was supposed to feel poignant, but instead just felt like Trying Too Hard.  Caitlin was legally an adult when she was abducted.  Eighteen.  Does a child ever truly completely grow up, in a mother's eyes?  I don't know; maybe not.  Maybe a mother can always go back to what it was like to carry her child, even after the child becomes an adult-- even after the adult child dies.  Maybe the "womb-holding" scene is true to life.  For me, it seemed a little strange.  :o/

--  This author has a real "thing" for the sense of smell.  The smells of bodies in particular are frequently referenced. 

--  Ugh, the smoking!  So much smoking!  Obviously there are still people who do smoke, but it feels odd, these days, to have so many smokers in one book.  Feels a little lazy, in fact.  And I got very tired of reading about people asking if it's ok to smoke, lighting cigarettes, knocking the ash here, there, and everywhere.  The author must be a smoker (or former smoker).

--  The RUN. ON. SENTENCES.  Oh my gosh.  Someone, somewhere, sometime, must've told the author that run-on sentences are a hallmark of Literature.  That they lend credence.  That they make you literary.  I'm not impressed by run-on sentences, sadly.  They are irritating, almost always needless, and (in cases such as this) pretentious. 

--  "...sometimes he brings a bright new shirt from the boys' department because he won't shop in ladies', nor buy tampons or liners, such things were already here, stacked and stacked on a shelf above the toilet.  The sight of them telling her everything that first day, everything."

--  I found it odd that in Grant's new "hometown", where he has only lived for a couple of years or so, he speaks of and to people as though he's known them since he was a kid-- with the same casual familiarity that usually takes decades to cultivate.  It felt like a heavy-handed attempt to show us how great Grant is-- how well he blends in, here.  Oh, he cares about people.  He's such a great guy.  He's put behind him the years of drunkenness and adultery.  Now he's a gen-u-ine stand-up guy-- but he's so tormented by his daughter's disappearance that he can't let himself settle down and start a new family with his Italian lady-friend.  Boo hoo.  (Sorry, I'm feeling bitter today, for some reason.)

--  Example of the above:  The retired veterinarian for some reason starts telling Grant about how his wife (a retired teacher) could never have children.  Good ol' Grant pipes up, "Seems to me she's had plenty of kids, Dale.  Hundreds of them."  (And Dale actually knows the exact number-- 1,312.)  I'm not sure I can articulate why, but this IRKS me.  For one thing-- If the vet has been retired for a while, how does Grant even know about him?  Another-- How does Grant know him well enough to come and wake him up in the middle of the night to ask for a favor?  Finally-- DUH, thanks for saying what everyone already knows.  That's the crux of if.  "I'll make everything all right by voicing something that I'm sure these two have already known/realized for years.  Because I'm such a Great Guy.  I (somehow, inexplicably) know them well enough to feel comfortable making comments on their private lives.  Also, being a teacher is pretty much the exact same thing as having kids of your own.  Gee, I'm great!"  (Yeah, Grant annoys me.  Why do you ask?)

--  Why did Caitlin get in the car with the Monkey???  The best I can come up with is that she's afraid that if she refuses and runs away, he'll kill her brother.  But even so, how is getting in his car a much better solution? (Because if something happens to her, the brother may not be found/get help, anyway.)  It's just so dumb-- and she's not a little girl.  An eighteen-year-old should've known better.

--  The hiker who tries to help Caitlin is also a bit too naive for belief.  "Oh hi, stranger out in the middle of nowhere, mysteriously popping up right next to the shed where a girl is being held prisoner!  Me, a ranger?  No, I'm just a simple-minded hiker.  In case you're wondering, I'm also an orphan and didn't tell anyone where I was going today, and if I were to go missing, not a soul in the world would know where to begin looking for me.  La de da de-dah!"

--  One of the better parts of the books was Billy's Redemption.  Starting with his meeting the Monkey at the bar, all the way until his death.  The Monkey's description of the pit was shudder-worthy:  "...and I think you're gonna like it down there, Billy.  You'll have some company with you.  Another hero down there you can swap hero stories with.  A couple of young ladies.  And you can have this one too, soon enough."  (Ok, it was a bit too convenient, maybe, him revealing his hiding place and the fact that there have been two other girls before Caitlin-- and that Caitlin herself is in immediate danger-- but still one of the better parts of the book.)

-- I didn't realize what Caitlin was planning/had done until she was running/hobbling down the mountain, holding the boot up by some sort of strap.  Noooooo.  Help was so close!  I guess that even though she knew help was on the way, she had no way of knowing that Mr. Monkey-Man was already dead and couldn't come and kill her before the Sheriff arrived.  Frustrating, though.

--  I guess the author wanted to end the novel on a positive, peaceful note, but I can't believe this family can return to perfect happiness, now-- because they never had perfect happiness to begin with!  Grant and Angela's marriage... Will they try to mend it, now?  What about Maria and Angela's... whatever he was / neighbor?  If Grant couldn't remain faithful to Angela before, I doubt he'll be any better now.  What about Sean and Carmen?  Sean was the most uniformly decent character in the whole book.  Aside from his stupidity/poor choices during the "hitchhiker incident" (and all that followed), he was a good guy from start to finish.  It would be nice to see him happy.  And then of course there's Caitlin.  I guess she'll go to college, whether or not she can still be a track champion... And... I don't know.  I don't really care what happens to these characters, anymore.  I'm glad to leave them behind and move on to greener pastures!

Jingo

Jingo
by Terry Pratchett

Blurb:

Throughout history, there's always been a perfectly good reason to start a war. Never more so if it is over a 'strategic' piece of old rock in the middle of nowhere. It is after all every citizen's right to bear arms to defend what they consider to be their own. Even if it isn't. And in such pressing circumstances, you really shouldn't let small details like the absence of an army or indeed the money to finance one get in the way of a righteous fight with all the attendant benefits of out-and-out nationalism...

My Reaction:
(This was a shared read, so I don't have detailed notes.)

The only Pratchett books I've read have been City Watch installations of the Discworld.  They've also always been "shared" reads with Donald-- and they're good for that.  I don't know how much I would enjoy Pratchett, if I were reading it silently to myself.  I think Pratchett, like P.G. Wodehouse, is better read aloud-- and best of all when shared with another person of similar humor.  (Wodehouse I could read alone, if I had to.  Pratchett... I'm not so sure.)

This particular book was amusing, but not the best of the City Watch we've read so far.  I found some of the social commentary/satire/whatever a little off-putting and heavy-handed, unfortunately.  War, politics, and racism are not my favorite subjects for light, entertaining reading to begin with-- and even worse, some of the jokes felt repetitive. 

I was disappointed that...

Um, SPOILER ALERT!!!!

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...Ok, I was disappointed that we never saw a giant sea monster of some sort.  (Super-sized squid?  Enormous octopus?  Something else of a terrifying, tentacly nature?)  It definitely felt like things were headed that way, so it was a bit of a let-down when the island just peacefully sank back without anything more than a slightly noticeable wave.

Also, I found myself feeling sorry for Nobby.  Poor guy.




(That's it for spoilers.)

...When that's what I remember most from the whole book, well, I guess you can tell it wasn't a favorite.  There were plenty of amusing moments along the way, but as a whole, this wasn't quite as good as one would have hoped.

This Rough Magic

This Rough Magic
by Mary Stewart

Blurb:

When Lucy Waring's sister Phyllida suggests that she join her for a quiet holiday on the island of Corfu, young English Lucy is overjoyed. Her work as an actress has temporarily come to a halt. She believes there is no finer place to be "at liberty" than the sun-drenched isle of Corfu, the alleged locale for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Even the suspicious actions of the handsome, arrogant son of a famous actor cannot dampen her enthusiasm for this wonderland in the Ionian Sea.

But the peaceful idyll does not last long. A series of incidents, seemingly unconnected - but all surrounded in mystery - throws Lucy's life into a dangerous spin, as fear, danger and death - as well as romance - supplant the former tranquility. Then a human corpse is carried ashore on the incoming tide... And without warning, she found she had stumbled into a nightmare of strange violence, stalked by shadows of terror and sudden death.

My Reaction:
This was a good, solid read in the Mary Stewart style.  Intrigue in an exotic locale.  Escapism at its finest.  Since I've never read The Tempest and am not in any case Shakespeare's greatest admirer (blasphemy though it might seem to some), that aspect of the book was probably mostly lost on me.  Also, the "action sequences" toward the end were perhaps a bit much for my tastes-- but on the whole, I enjoyed the book.  It doesn't come up to quite the level of Nine Coaches Waiting, but it's fine for light suspense with a 60's vibe.


Tidbits (with SPOILERS):
-- When I read about the "Japanese miniature oranges called koùm koyàt", I wondered if they might be the same thing as kumquats, and apparently they are.  My maternal grandfather has a small tree of kumquats, so that was an interesting tidbit.  I guess they are adaptable, because our climate isn't quite Mediterranean-- much more humid than that, with torrential summer thunderstorms. (For that matter, I doubt their native climate is very Mediterranean, either.)  Calling them "miniature oranges" seems a bit too generous, though.  "Our" kumquats, at least, are not nearly as sweet and delicious as oranges, imho.  Greatly inferior to the satsumas that we can also grow here. 

--  Lucy describes Miranda on their first meeting: "She eyed me curiously, with that unabashed stare of the Greeks which one learns to get used to, as it is virtually impossible to stare it down in return."  It doesn't sound very comfortable... I wonder if that's still (or ever was) an accurate portrayal.  I'd say that (in many places) social behaviors have changed a lot since the mid-1960s. 

--  "...hat to meet him at some polite bun fight of Phyllida's..."  Bun fight?  That's a new one! 

--  It was a bit of a shock when the pregnant Phyllida says she'll have a drink (of alcohol), adding that "Caliban" (her pet name for the unborn infant) will "have to lump it, for once".  I guess that in the mid-60s they knew it was bad for pregnant women to drink alcohol, but not how bad...?  Or do we almost take it too far, these days?  Because it seems unthinkable to me that a responsible expectant mother of today would ever have alcohol-- not even once.  Maybe I'm being naive, but it felt out of character for an educated woman who purportedly loves her children and wants the next one to come into the world as healthy as possible. 

--  The discussion of antique roses-- right after reading Barbara Michaels' Vanish with the Rose-- was interesting.

--  "Beach coat".  Is that more of a British and/or European thing?  I've never heard of people around here using a beach coat.  Maybe some sort of cover to protect you from the sun when you aren't in the water, but not specifically a "beach coat".

--  It was obvious from her first meeting with Godfrey that he was the Bad Guy, but uncertainty over what he was doing and why kept my interest up.  I'm still not sure I know why he was shooting at the dolphin, though.  To get rid of sight-seers?  Or just for the heck of it?

-- Similarly, as soon as the dolphin came into the story, I could picture him saving Lucy from drowning, and sure enough...

--  Sometimes I question the presentation of the Greek characters.  They're all good, honest people who take hospitality to an extreme.  That sounds like a nice treatment of them-- yet most of them seem to tend toward naivety and feel like uneducated peasants who somehow look up to the English people around them...  How much of that is simply putting any guest on a pedestal, I couldn't say.  They refer to Lucy as "Miss Lucy"-- even the ones that aren't necessarily servants.  (Unless I'm remembering incorrectly...)  It's just... a little awkward to me.  But it may be perfectly accurate for the time, for all I know!

--  Lucy tells Miranda about rescuing the beached dolphin.  "The strangest thing to her Greek mind was, I could see, that anyone should have gone to that amount of trouble."

--  "The Greek mind again: if a man chose to get drunk now and again, what did it matter except to himself?  His women would accept it as they accepted all else.  Life here had its shining simplicities."

--  "I looked at him meltingly through my lashes-- at least, that's what I tried to do, but I shall never believe the romantic novelists again; it's a physical impossibility."

--  It struck me as rather amusing that Godfrey named his boat after a famous satanist.  I had a laugh over that!

--  The last bit of the book is a bit too "action-heavy" for my tastes.  For goodness' sake, there's an exploding boat.  It was a little much.

--  Hectic ending aside, it was an enjoyable tale.