Stuff to look at (or Stuff at which to look)

I have been really bad about blogging lately. And I don't really have time for a post today, so I thought I would leave you with some stuff to look at. A bit of a mixed bag, so hopefully there is something for everyone.

Lovely yellow rose next to our front door.

John just took these two photos this morning.

Back in February Lucy decided she was a cheetah and found a high point for looking for prey.

Sniffing the breeze.

Delicious devilled eggs that my friend Ron made on Easter.

Books in our old apartment.

A delicious winery stop in Sonoma in 2006.

Our friends first newborn goat was named after yours truly.

On our way over the Great Barrier Reef to Lizard Island in 2006.

Sunset from Lizard Island.

This April my parents were with us when they celebrated their 50th anniversary. Here they are opening a
picture of a street sign at an intersection in St. Paul where a street with our last name intersects with a
street with my mom's maiden name.

John set a lovely table.

He did the flowers as well.

I made the food.

Rub my tummy...please.

I'm still waiting.

I'm not sure they wanted their tummies rubbed. Somewhere south of Big Sur, California.

Doesn't get much more peaceful than a lake in the Adirondacks.

When marketers target list makers

The other day I was buying a stack of books at a charity bookshop when I spied a book with a picture of books on the cover. Always a sucker for pretty pictures of books (like the one to the right which has the added bonus of having a real phone in it), I had to find out what it was. Turns out it was a book club journal. You know, one of those pretty, but probably useless journals that stationers/publishers like to dangle in front of people who like journals (more likely people who like the thought of journaling), or people who like lists. Don't get me wrong, I love a list, but I think that a good list doesn't need special formatting or pretty pictures. Especially when the journals are produced especially for the keeping of such list. Like once I saw a little spiral bound journal that was strictly for keeping track of wine consumed, where you were when you drank it, and who helped you. That might be interesting information to keep track of, but there is something kind of cheesy about these single purpose journals. I know what it is, they seem like journals for poseurs. Anyone with a real desire to list things just needs a blank sheet of paper or a spreadsheet. Granted those blank sheets of paper could be in a bound journal, but they don't need to be adorned with helpful little hints. In the case of the book club journal, it has a headings like "Conclusions Reached".  Gimme a break.

BUT, the book club journal was only $1 and it included lists of suggestions for book club books broken down by category. I don't belong to a book club so I don't need the helpful suggestions, but I can never pass up a book list. Especially if I can cross off (or usually for me, highlight) the books I have read. It always makes me feel so smug, both about the ones I have read as well as the ones I haven't read (no doubt I have really good reasons for not following the crowd...)

What surprised me about these particular lists was not so much what was included and what wasn't included, but the fact that the list that had the most titles that I have read was a category of fiction that I really don't read much of. I know it is more coincidence than anything, it just so happened that these are the titles they included, but who'd a thunk that I would have read more SF/Horror/Future than some of these other categories?  You guys know me well enough to be surprised as well.

And for you listophiles, here you go...

Who ever would have thought that this would be my most
read list with 9 of 20 books read. The only one other one I
am certain I will read is Fahrenheit 451.

Between the page above, and the one below I have read 12 of the
titles listed in Contemporary Fiction, but that is with twice
as many to choose from, so on a percentage basis, I didn't do as well.
I will definitely read the Mitford and the Amis.

I read a chapter or two of the Barnes back in 1995, otherwise there isn't
much on this list I am drawn to.

I might feel bad about my poor showing in this category if I hadn't
read plenty of others that aren't here. I loved Colette's the Ripening Seed
but have been stand offish about her since I saw that horrible
film version of Cheri.

This is a category I should have done better in, but their
list just isn't very good.

I think this is the list I am most interested in exploring more.  I definitely don't like formulaic mysteries.
I want to like them but I just don't. I will definitely read The Moonstone, but otherwise I don't know
if this is a good list or not. What do you think? If I want to expand my reading in this category
what should I try that is, or isn't on this list?

My worst showing of all. The only one that is on my TBR radar is the Graves.

Ah, the classics. I feel like I should get credit for reading three other Lawrences so I
don't have to read this one.  I see myself getting to the Alcott, Eliot, Austen,
Hawthorne, Gaskell, and maybe the Hardy, Fielding, and Thackeray.

Book Review: Look at Me by Anita Brookner

  

I haven't read any Anita Brookner since last year's rather successful International Anita Brookner Day. Having finished all of Brookner's 24 novels, my intention is to re-read all of them in chronological order. Last year for IABD, I knocked off her first two novels The Debut (A Start in Life) and Providence. As much as I have liked all of Brookner's novels on the first go, I found last year when I re-read those first two, that I liked them even more on a second read. Now with her third novel, Look at Me, I find myself of the same disposition. In fact, I think that Brookner's novels which can seem superficially similar, have a depth that really makes them worth a second read--and frankly, I can imagine going back to them again and again for the rest of my life. This is especially comforting since, the once prolific Brookner (at one point a novel a year for about 20 years) seems to have slowed down considerably.

Frances Hinton, who hates being called Fanny, is always called Fanny. She works in a medical research library and like many other Brookner heroines, is miserably comfortable with her routine. That is until Dr. Nick Fraser and his wife Alix decide to make her a part of their social life.

If I moved in with them I would be delivered from the silence of Sundays, and all those terrible public holidays - Christmas, Easter - when I could never, ever, find an adequate means of using up all the available time.

Unlike many other Brookner heroines, Fanny comes to life as a result of this friendship and even starts seeing a doctor, James, who makes her happy.

Although I am naturally pale, I could feel the blood warm in my cheeks. I drew no conclusion from this, and my instinct was correct. I was not falling in love. Nor was there any likelihood that I might. But I was being protected, and that was something that I had not experienced for as long as I could remember. I was coming first with someone, as I had not done for some sad months past, and in my heart of hearts for longer, much longer.

Fanny's benign desire for someone to finally pay attention to her is ultimately overtaken by Alix's much less benign, somewhat pathological need to have everyone looking at her instead. Alix uses Fanny for her own amusement and doesn't seem to mind the results. Fanny reflects on her relationship with Alix:

I was an audience and an admirer; I relieved some of her frustration; I shared her esteem for her own superiority; and I was loyal and well-behaved and totally uncritical. Yet she found me dull, intrinsically dull, simply because I was loyal and well-behaved and uncritical.

And it is Alix's need to be at the center of attention that makes her more of a taker than a giver. Alix may have introduced Fanny to James, and enjoyed watching their relationship develop. But when she thinks she is being denied all the details of the results of her matchmaking, or worse, when she realizes that Fanny isn't letting the relationship with James go where Alix thinks it should go, she begins to drive a wedge between Fanny and James. In many ways there is nothing unusual about this story, I think we have all been subjected to the cruel selfishness of so-called friends, and we have all been jilted in romantic relationships. But for Fanny the situation is life changing in a way that she struggles against. She sees her life going in a direction that seems inevitable despite her efforts to alter course.

I could have been different, I think. Once I had great confidence, great cheerfulness; I did not question my purpose or the purpose of others. All that had gone, and I had done my best to replace it. I had become diligent instead of spontaneous; I had become an observer when I saw that I was not allowed to participate. I had refused to be pitiable. I had never once said, Look at me. Now, it seemed I must make one more effort, one more attempt to prove myself viable. And if I succeeded, I might be granted one more opportunity to do it all over again. I did not dare to think what would happen if I failed.

Does she fail? If you have every read Brookner, you probably know the answer to that.
  

Awwww

  
This was taken at Christmas, but I just came across it on a flash drive and couldn't resist...

Dick Cheney and Barack Obama Finally Agree on Something

      

Overplayed "songs" I wish I never had to hear again

 

Mozart trying to write something that will make everyone forget about Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
(Tom Hulce playing Mozart in the brilliant film Amadeus.)

Too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing. The following is my list of music that I think has been overplayed and/or overmarketed to the point of being painful to me. It doesn't mean they are bad, it just means I never want to hear them again.

• "Respect", "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman", "Chain of Fools" and almost every hit by Aretha Franklin. I will keep listening to her gospel album however.
• Anything by the Beatles. Full stop.
• "At Last" by Etta James
• "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong
• Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I love Beethoven's other 8 symphonies and his opera Fidelio is one of my favorite operas, but I really have learned to loathe the 9th.
• Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
• The "Hallelujah Chorus" from Messiah by Handel.  I can listen to Messiah a lot, but the HC I can live without.
• Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Actually, when it comes to the classical music, if I can suspend my aversion, I can still appreciate them, especially if they are performed well. Except for Eine Kleine, that one I just plain hate.

What's on your list?

Clever Title

   

Regular readers of My Porch know that I haven't been able to muster the strength for an actual book review in quite some time. Today's post about The Takeover by Muriel Spark, will be no exception. So it is time for one of my famous (infamous?) bullet list reviews.

• Although I quite enjoyed the general setting and narrative style of The Takeover, and looked forward to reading it whenever I could, I can't really say that I really enjoyed the overall message. Perhaps because I am not sure what the message was.
• Spark creates an Italy in the loosey goosey 1970s with a cast of expats, Eurotrash, and shifty Italians.
• There is much in Spark's writing in which one can delight. I was particularly taken by this passage: "They talked of hedges against inflation, as if mathematics could  contain actual air and some row of hawthorn could stop an army of numbers from marching over it." I mean how poetic is that? I love the image of a lovely hawthorn hedge blocking not just inflation, but numbers themselves.
• You know how Iris Murdoch in the 1970s had everyone hopping from bed to bed and saying scandalous, cruel things to each other in a very clever ways. In some ways I feel like Spark takes that same kind of ethos to a kind of slapstick extreme.
• I don't understand why Maggie gets the brunt of the bad luck in the book. She was really the innocent party in most cases but ended up being treated quite poorly by everyone.
• I think this would be a fun book to discuss in a book club. It may not be the best book, but it is full of things that would engender great discussion.

And you know I can never resist a character who likes a list, and never more so then when index cards or typewriters are involved:

Later, in Maggie's room, they counted the coins and made a list. It was Mary's idea to make a list. She made lists of everything. A good part of her mornings was spent on list-making. She had lists for entertaining and for shopping. She listed her clothes, her expenditure and her correspondence. She kept lists of her books and music and furniture. She wrote them by hand, then typed them later in alphabetical or chronological order according as might be called for. Sometimes she made a card index when the subject was complex, such as the winter season's dinner parties, whom she had dined with and whom she had asked, what she had worn and when.

The Empress of Scotland arrives in Liverpool

   
Knowing next to nothing about Muriel Spark's life, I decided to see what I could come up with on Ancestry.com.  The service is not cheap but I think they still have free temporary memberships so you can play around if you want. I use it for work as well as personal research, so the expense makes sense for me. Anyhoo, there isn't much that comes up on Ancestry.com for Spark. I did, however, find an arrival record for March 20, 1944. Even more curious, I went to Wikipedia and came across this:

"On 3 September 1937 she married Sidney Oswald Spark, and soon followed him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Their son Robin was born in July 1938. Within months she discovered that her husband was manic depressive and prone to violent outbursts. In 1940 Muriel left Sidney and Robin. She returned to the United Kingdom in early 1944, taking residence at the Helena Club in London; years later the club would be her inspiration for the fictional May of Teck Club in The Girls of Slender Means."

So the arrival record, appears to document Spark's return to England after she left her husband and son in Rhodesia. You might want to read her entry in Wikipedia if you don't know her story. Frankly, after reading it, I think a little less of her as a human. Not knowing the whole story, it seems like she abandoned her son and then disowned him later in life and made sure none of her estate went to him upon her death.

On March 20, 1944 the Empress of Scotland of the Canadian Pacific Line
arrived in Liverpool from Durban (Cape Town), South Africa.

This is a photo of the page on which the 26 year old Muriel Spark is listed.

Three lines from the top you can see Spark's details. The c/o address in Edinburgh must be her father.

Spark vs. Spark

 
Wasn't sure what to post today for Muriel Spark reading week until I saw Simon's post about Spark book covers. It made me go to my shelves and pull down all the Sparks I own to take a look at their covers. Out of the thirteen I own (which aren't actually the same as the thirteen that I have read) most of them have really bad covers. In some instances there are covers that I don't particularly like, but they at least capture something about the book or author that makes them seem just right.

I decided to do a side-by-side comparison.  (After you are done looking at these, you really should go over to Simon's blog where he has some much more interesting ones. I particularly like the old Penguin covers from the 1960s.)

I think both are bad design. I like the image better in mine on the right, but the photo is a bit misleading.

I really like Simon's cover on the left, but I think it is more appropriate for something by PG Wodehouse.

I think the one on the left from Simon's blog wins hands down. Not only is it a million times better
than my lame cop, but it is interesting and evocative in its own right.

I don't like the one on the left in general because I tend not to like this kind of photo illustration. Plus this one
makes the book look like chick-lit. The one on the right captures the subversive
quality of Spark like a Blathus painting.

While this book is pretty amusing, I think it has bite as the cover on the right says.
The one on the left is just too frivolous.

These are both boring as toast. (Although I love toast, and love books and movies
that have English people buttering toast.)

I really don't like my copy on the right in person, but I kind of like it better on the screen. But overall
I would say that Simon's version is more Sparkian. Although I haven't read this particular title.

 


42 years before Downton, Maggie won an Oscar

  

Forty-two years before Dame Maggie Smith dominated Downton Abbey as the Dowager Duchess, and seventeen years before she brilliantly played "poor Aunt Charlotte" in A Room With a View, Maggie Smith won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the film adaptation of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

If you haven't seen the film, what are you waiting for?  If a young, glamorous Maggie Smith isn't your cup of tea, maybe you could be enticed by a young, virgorous Gordon Jackson (Hudson from the original Upstairs Downstairs).

Ready, Steady, Spark

  

I know I am jumping the gun a bit on Muriel Spark Reading Week which starts tomorrow, but one must use the blogging time one has when one has it. And once I finish a blog post, I have a hard time not hitting the publish button. Plus, I figure the topic of my post might provide some guidance to anyone not sure where to start with Spark.

My first encounter with Muriel Spark came back in 1999. Her most famous novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was included in the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and I had decided to read the books on that list, so it was only a matter of time. I think I may also have gotten additional encouragement from Nancy Pearl's Book Lust.

As I started to make my way through Spark's many novels and novellas, I quickly noticed that she definitely had a quirky side, and often a subversive side.  Upon analysis, it is easy to see how Spark's novels are all clearly written by the same person, but at a cursory glance her books can seem like the work of many different authors. For instance The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a pretty straight forward narrative with characters who, while a little quirky, don't seem too far outside mainstream ideas of normal. Despite making one chuckle and smile the novel ultimately ends up being more intense than those chuckles would initially indicate, but still a pretty conventional narrative structure. In contrast, with The Driver's Seat, I almost immediately sensed that the book wasn't a run of the mill tale of a woman off on a holiday. It is like a one-person psychological thriller that I found pretty intense. The Public Image on the other hand was less quirky and more amusing, but ratchets up the intensity in a different way. And then I ran into The Mandelbaum Gate which is so conventional it almost feels like Iris Murdoch could have written it. And I am not saying conventional is bad (god knows I love me some Iris Murdoch), but it is wholly serious and reads today like historical fiction about the early days of Israel and the accompanying religious and political tensions. But then I bounced back to the quirkier  side of Spark but this time with a decidedly much lighter touch in Aiding and Abetting And then there are those like the The Only Problem, and Loitering With Intent, where the quirkiness and intensity is almost entirely in service of comedy.

As I thought about the chameleon like quality of Spark's work, I thought it might be easier to show my thoughts graphically. The graph is not perfect but it comes close to approximating the variation in the thirteen Sparks I have read. Just keep in mind that intensity doesn't always mean serious.

The My Porch Quirktensity Index of the Works of Muriel Spark

among the 13 Spark novels/novellas I have read to date

(titles underlined are books that I particularly enjoyed)
[Note from the Simon Thomas Chair for I Can Read a Book But Not a Graph Studies: The higher a title is on the graph, the more intense it is. The further to the right it is the quirkier it is. But now that I have teased Simon, I realize that a 2 x 2 matrix generally does include arrows as part of the labels that help in comprehension. I will add those now.]