December 2019

The last check-in of this decade.


A List: Hardy--Return of the Native...…………………………….494/507
B List: Anna Sewell--Black Beauty...………………………………84/315
C List: Scott--The Heart of Midlothian...………………………....457/508


I am slowly getting through those 19th century novels. I have read quite a lot of Hardy now, and while I usually find them worthwhile most of the later books (in the order of my reading them) I haven't read them as closely as they ultimately require, so superficially they start to resemble each other in my memory. Death always outweighs life in them, nature is a force that thwarts rather than complements civilization, the more vital the characters the more they are brought into confrontation with and crushed by these superior opposing forces to the human dream. It's not untrue, but it is not what I love best either.


The B list, as noted before, includes a good number of what are thought of as classic children's books, one or two a volume. The other ones I have had come up so far, Bambi, Andersen's fairy tales, and of course the Alice books, had a lot in them that could be of interest to adults, or at least to me. This is the first one that really is almost exclusively a book for children. It is not uncharming--I would like to read it to my daughters, aged 8 and 4, after I get through with it--and having been published in England one year prior to the publication of The Return of the Native, it certainly provides a sunny contrast with the doomed characters who inhabit that novel.


After starting on this list in the fall of 2013, I was able to finish the books from Volume I of my encyclopedia by the end of 2015, and those from Volume II by the end of 2017. My pace has dropped off a little as my life has grown increasingly busy, and I am not going to get through all of the titles from Volume III by the end of this year. There are not too many left to get through, but at least one of them is quite long, so it may take me until the spring to move on to Vol. IV. Even at the two years per volume pace I was on schedule to finish when I was 83 so I'm going to have to make up/pick up some ground somewhere down the line.


This is about the fourth month I have been working on the Scott. I do like him, which is why I haven't given up on the book, since the C-list pile-in-waiting has grown to 7 or 8 books. It is dense and requires a lot of concentration, and this is the list of books I am supposed to be able to read quickly and breezily, which my competition has not been giving me lately. I was thinking I would have enjoyed (savored?) Scott more if I had taken him up at a more leisurely period in my life, but I think he would have been too difficult for me as a teenager, and in my 20s the influence of the St John's experience, which didn't substantially begin to relax until I was past 35 at least,  would probably have prejudiced me against being able to appreciate his most admirable qualities.

December 2018

A List: Shakespeare--Richard II............................................................5/32
B List: Trollope--Barsetshire Chronicles: Barchester Towers.......597/746
C List: Bill Bryson--I'm a Stranger Here Myself..............................14/288


Richard II is the 3rd of a run of Shakespeare plays--the other 2 being Henry VI Part 1 and Troilus and Cressida--that had not managed to come up on the A list yet. I have recorded somewhere how many of the Shakespeare plays I have read at one time or another--some of the lesser known ones that I have only read once I have trouble remembering whether I have or not--but I got very busy this week, one of my cars had to go into the shop, etc, so I didn't get around to looking up how many of them I have marked down. I think around 2/3rds of the 37, or is it 38? As with most things, even great ones, I have periods in my life where the greatness of Shakespeare reveals itself more readily and is more important to my daily life and the firing of my imaginative faculties than it is at other times. I am not in one of those special times currently. I hope I have a couple more such epochs left in me.


I am probably in close to the ideal frame of mind for taking on Trollope, but I will expand on this in the big essay that I'll do when I finish the book.


Obviously I have just started the Bryson book, which was published in 1999 and seems to be a series of humorous vignettes around his return to the United States (actually Hanover, New Hampshire, which is a fine town but about as unrepresentative of the real United States as you can get) after 20 years abroad. Some of my impressions 14 pages in are as follows:


1. Though the book is less than 20 years old the world depicted in it is so dated as to be almost comical. We've already been treated to five pages on the wonders of the postal service, and a letter from England that made it to his house despite being addressed merely "New Hampshire, somewhere in America". Then there was a reminiscence about coming home from the pub in England and watching 90 minute science programs on television before going to bed. Basically this looks like it is going to be chock full of activities, jobs, cultural habits, that died within about five years of this book's publication.


2. It is unbelievable that within living memory--heck, my own early adulthood--people could apparently make upper middle class incomes writing, well, I don't know, stuff like what I've just described, and have fabulous overall careers. This guy Bryson in his heyday sold voluminous numbers of books (5.9 million in the 2000s alone!), made many TV appearances, gave lecture tours, was the chancellor of Durham University. I know people will say a person like me has no idea how difficult it is to be a professional writer who has to turn out regular work on a deadline and how serious this is and all right, fine. Even so, this guy has to get up every day and think, whew, I lucked out in the timing of my career. But maybe he doesn't.


3. I feel like this "I left America for x number of years and boy did things change a lot" theme was a popular one in the late 90s that has kind of gone away. Does anybody at the educated level of society really leave anywhere and not return for years on end anymore? Is it really possible to "get away" the way it used to be in the modern overconnected world?


...I too am on a deadline for this one monthly post and my time is up now.

This guy will not be stopped.

December Update

A List: Galsworthy, Forsyte Saga.......522/878 (In Chancery)
B List: MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville.......179/760
C List: Sun-Mi Hwang, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.......115/134

I'm still enjoying the Forsytes, even though it could be protested that not much really happens given the number of pages, characters and passing years that make up the story. There is enough good period detail and amusing dialogue, especially now that the version of England that is depicted in these novels, parts of which I feel like still lingered at least psychologically into the time of my youth, is really fading into history, to keep up interest. There was a fourteen year gap between the publication of the first volume of the trilogy (The Man of Property) and the second, In Chancery. The tone and outlook of the two volumes are quite consistent, which is surprising to me given the passage of that much time, not only with regard to the change in age of the writer, but of society as a whole, movements in literature, etc. Perhaps the later volumes were written closer upon the first than the publication dates would indicate, and were held back for some reason, though that does not seem characteristic of this writer. I suppose I must look that up. There is no longer any excuse not to.

Andersonville I am finding to be highly readable and impressive in some ways, in others showing the characteristics of its generation that are not held in high esteem today, though these dated parts for me tend to be almost interludes of comic relief along the way rather than anything that impedes my ability to get into the book. Of course I will do a long report on this when I have finished it.

For the C-list I am supposed to be reading Being Mortal by Dr Arul Gawande, however this book is so popular that all three of my public library's copies are currently checked out, and two of them have already been placed on reserve when they do come in. Since I like to have an easier and somewhat contemporary third book around, especially when I am beginning a book that is going to take me a couple of months to read on my serious list, and the dreaming hen book, which had been in the competition for this spot, was extremely short and available, I decided to break from my protocol and take it up, and do the Gawande afterward if it becomes available, as I will be on Andersonville until probably late January. It's a little too...twee? feminine? the words don't come, they never come, at least not at night...to my taste, though I suppose there is nothing objectionable about it. And look at all of the multicultural writers I am getting in this way. I am on a veritable roll.

Picture Gallery

This is from a movie about Anne Boleyn. It came up in the magic word search for the Forsyte Saga

Andersonville

Irene and Soames from the 1967 Forsyte adaptation. Pictures from the more recent one seem to indicate a lot more sexy stuff going on than I am getting from the book, unless things really begin to pick up.

Andersonville today.