BBAW: What blogging means to me

When I asked myself what blogging means to me, the answer came immediately: finding my voice. Reading isn't something I do, it's part of who I am. I don't remember learning to read, I don't remember a time when I couldn't read, a time when reading hasn't been (in the words of Anna Quindlen) "my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion." But I've found it frustrating to talk about reading and books, other than with a few book-minded friends. So many people just don't read, they're not interested in books, they may even find reading a bit suspect. And then I find it hard to talk about books, to verbalize how enthralling or amusing or unsettling I find the book I'm reading, let alone reading itself. And I swear, the more passionate I am about a book, the less I'm able to convey that. It's the Mr. Knightley syndrome: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." So I stumble and stutter along, as people start to back politely toward the door, and I usually end lamely with "It's just such a good book!"

But when I sit down at the computer with a blank post, I am finally able to put into words why it's such a good book. I don't write easily, but as I wrestle with words I'm able to name what I think about a book, how I feel about it, how it relates to other books I've read, or to something in my life. I can muse on my history with the author, or on reading itself. I can identify what I see as a book's strengths or its weaknesses (though I am not the most critical of readers). There is a freedom in knowing that anyone reading my post who gets bored will simply move on. And I can talk about whatever I'm reading. I do tend to be an eclectic reader; often when I finish a book, I want to read something completely different next. Whatever I'm reading, though, I'm sure to find someone else who has read it too.

Which brings me to a most amazing thing about blogging: not just that I've found a voice, but that I am heard. While I don't want to sound like Sally Field at the Oscars, I'm still sort of amazed and grateful that with all the blogs out there, all those great voices, people spend time here reading and commenting (of all the gin joints...). Again, thank you all for that. As wonderful as it is to have found my voice, conversation is much more fun than monologue!

BBAW: Appreciation

I've so been looking forward to this, to joining in Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and particularly to expressing my own appreciation of some favorite blogs and bloggers. Reading your posts, I am entertained and informed and challenged and inspired - and reminded how many books are still out there waiting to be discovered.

Like the Oscars, I'm going for categories with my own Appies:

First of all, really the first blog I discovered (via a Google alert), and the one that inspired me to start my own, and as far as I'm concerned sets the standard for book blogs: Shelf Love. I am honored to be included on Jenny & Teresa's appreciation list today.

Blogs that expand my reading horizons: Both Shelf Love and Read, Ramble remind me of the world of literature and history beyond my comfortable American and English zones.

Blogs most likely to send me straight to the library catalogue, or to add to my TBR stacks, besides the two above: Books and Chocolate, books as food, The Captive Reader, Gudrun's Tights, Lakeside Musing, Pining for the West, and She Reads Novels. Thanks to all of you, there is very little chance of changing this blog's name to "TBR Less Than 100" anytime in the foreseeable future.

Blogs that challenge me: With the Classics Challenge, Katherine at November's Autumn encourages us each month to look at a particular aspect of a classic work; this month it's music. With the TBR Double Dare, James at Ready When You Are, C.B. really made me think about the stacks of unread books I already own and those I continue to acquire. Sign me up for the Double Dog Dare! Of course the challenges are only one part of their great blogs.

And finally, blogs that I have recently discovered: Tell Me a Story, Read Around the World, and Secluded Charm (I enjoy the reviews of classic films there as well).

A last word of appreciation, to all of you who read and who comment. Sharing books with you, here and on your blogs, is the best part of my day. Thank you!

Tutankhamen and his tomb

Tutankhamen, Joyce Tyldesley

In 1978, my parents took us to see "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit in Seattle. It was overwhelming and exhilarating, pushing through the crowds of people all intent on the cases filled with artifacts more than 3000 years old. I must have learned about Egypt in school, but I think that's when ancient Egypt came alive for me, not just with the golden artifacts but also with the simpler ones, like a gameboard set with its pieces, or a chair whose back showed the king sitting with his queen. Several years later a friend introduced me to Elizabeth Peters' series featuring the Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson, who in the course of 19 books has excavated up and down the length of Egypt with her husband and extended family. I've learned a lot from these books, as well as the non-fiction the author has written under her own name, Barbara Mertz (Temples, Tombs and Heiroglyphs). I've been lucky enough to see three other exhibits of artifacts, including "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," which stopped in Houston on its recent American tour.

I came across Tutankhamen (the author's preferred spelling) recently at the library. I was not familiar with the author, Dr Joyce Tyldesley, but I've since learned that she is on the faculty at the JNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, and that she has written extensively on ancient Egypt. Based on this book, I'll definitely be looking for more of her work.

In Tutankhamen, Dr Tyldesley takes the reader from the death of the King around 1327 BCE and his burial in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes (Luxor) through the search for his tomb in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its eventual discovery in 1922 was a world-wide media event, creating a fascination with "King Tut" that continues today, a phenomenon Dr Tyldesley also explores. In addition, she explains how Howard Carter and his team of experts painstakingly emptied the tomb, inventorying its thousands of artifacts and doing the necessary conservation work to preserve them as they were moved for the first time in millenia. Later sections discuss the recovery of the King's body and the autopsies performed on it, as well as the contradictory conclusions that different experts have drawn from them. In the end, so many questions about this pharaoh remain unanswered, including the identity of his parents. Later kings altered the historical record, removing Tutankhamen and his predecessor/possible father Akhenaten from the list of pharaohs. Robbers and early archaeologists, intent only on treasure, stole and destroyed objects that might have provided vital information on the period.

I found this book informative, interesting, and very readable. Dr Tyldesley is clearly writing for the non-expert, taking care to explain and to give context, but she doesn't overwhelm with detail or condescend. I found the chapter on "Family," where she explores the different theories of Tutankhamen's parentage and place within the family, a little confusing, simply because of the number of individuals. I wish I had discovered the "Who Was Who in Ancient Egypt" section at the back of the book sooner. Dr Tyldesley doesn't hesitate to point out the mistakes made by earlier Egyptologists, or to mention points on which she herself disagrees with colleagues, but she is even-handed and fair, even pointing out extenuating circumstances. She has fun with the various "curses" that have been ascribed to Tutankhamen, and with popular culture's fascination with him, with ancient Egypt in general and mummies in particular, over the years. My favorite: a suggestion that "an extension to the London Underground, which passed through Tooting and Camden Town, should be named "Tootancamden." I will also take to heart her suggestion that "As a general rule of thumb, any book that refers to the king as 'Tut,' . . . and any book that includes the word 'truth' on its cover, is best avoided."

The House in Norham Gardens

The House in Norham Gardens, Penelope Lively

I saw a review of this recently that intrigued me, reminding me that Penelope Lively wrote children's and young adult novels before turning to adult fiction. I have only read one of those early books, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, which I enjoyed. It's about a boy, James Harrison, living in an old cottage in an Oxfordshire village, who discovers that it is being haunted by the ghost of the title, accidentally released from a magical confinement and wreaking havoc. I was expecting something along the same lines with this book, but it is very different, closer I think to her adult fiction.

In this book, published in 1974, Clare Mayfield, aged fourteen, lives in an old Victorian house in Norham Gardens, in Oxford. An orphan, she has been raised by her great-aunts Anne (aged 78) and Susan (aged 80), in a warm, loving home. The aunts, born in the Victorian era, rejected the traditional roles of wife and mother to make independent lives for themselves as scholars and tutors, and they have high hopes for Clare. Retired now to quiet lives in Norham Gardens, they are growing frail, particularly Aunt Anne, who is often ill. At a young age, Clare has now become their caretaker. With the daily help, Mrs Hedges, she does the shopping and the cooking, and the two conspire to eke out the family's dwindling funds. One of their solutions was to take in a lodger, Maureen, an office worker. This is no Sarah Crewe story of drudgery and poverty, though, but one of loving care and service.

The house, which has been their family home since the 1890s, is constantly in need of repairs. Too many rooms are unused, full of now-antique furniture, and the attics are crammed with generations of clothes and books and family albums. The attics also contain artifacts brought back to England by Clare's great-grandfather, an anthropologist, who was among the first Europeans to travel deep into New Guinea and study its most isolated native peoples. One day, looking for an extra blanket for Maureen, Clare finds a piece of wood, carved and painted, an abstract-looking human figure. She learns that it is a tamburan, a stylized representation of the ancestors who guard a village in New Guinea, which her great-grandfather acquired in 1905.

That night, Clare dreams of a village and its people. The dreams continue, growing increasingly vivid and urgent. The figures in the village, who initially seemed to be waiting, now seem to be demanding something. Mixed in with these dreams are others, equally disturbing, where her home has changed or been abandoned. The aunts, Clare's friends and teachers, all notice that she seems tired, stressed, not her usual self; she loses interest in her school work.

I don't know how I would have read this book at Clare's age. Even then, I think I would have loved the setting, the old family home with its history and its treasures, and even more the family itself, Clare and her wonderful aunts. I might have read the story of the tamburan simply as a magical one, of a tribe that lost its ancestor and reached across time to seek for it. Maybe that is what's happening; in the end Penelope Lively doesn't tell us one way or another, though she suggests that there is something eerie about the tamburan. But maybe Clare's dreams are less about the native peoples than about herself, maybe this is the only way that she can face the changes, the profound losses that are coming. She is only fourteen, with a tiny inheritance from her parents. Her aunts will not live forever. What will happen to her, what will happen to their home, to the family treasures that she loves? Again, we are given no answer. But Clare, who copes so capably with so much, will cope with that too when it comes.

I think this is an amazing book, with the multiple layers of stories that Penelope Lively weaves together. I want to be adopted by the Aunts, free to wander around that amazing house. But I would take care what trunks I opened.

Three clerks & three sisters

The Three Clerks, Anthony Trollope

As thrilled as I am with my recent trove of Trollope novels, I do want to read them, not just collect them. I picked The Three Clerks for my next read, after I saw a reference to it as a young man's novel, which piqued my interest. The sixth of Trollope's novels, it was published in 1857, the same year as Barchester Towers, when he was 42. It is a fast-moving story, set in London, where the three clerks of the title work in Civil Service offices. Harry Norman and Alaric Tudor are in the prestigious but staid Weights and Measures, while Alaric's scapegrace cousin Charley is in the rackety Internal Navigation (he fits right in with the rambunctious young men who have earned the nickname of "Infernal Navigation"). Trollope draws on his own career in the Post Office to show both inter- and intra-office rivalries, and the effects of the newly-instituted reforms, like examinations for candidates that were replacing a patronage system (he owed his own place to family connections).

The work of the Civil Service is tied to parliamentary politics, and it is fascinating to see here themes that Trollope would develop on a much grander scale in the later Palliser novels, and to compare them with the church politics of Barchester Towers. While there is not a single clergyman in this novel, which may make it unique in the Trollope canon, he actually wrote more about faith and practice in this book than in some of the "church" books of the Barchester series. The Civil Service and parliamentary settings also allow Trollope to bring in elements of finance and industry, such as when one of the clerks is sent to Devon to investigate a tin mine whose production might fall to the Crown. While there, he is maneuvered into secretly buying stock in the mine, the first step on a path of insider trading, which will lead to ever-greater fraud and eventually to his downfall.

But the three clerks and their work are only half of the story. There are also three sisters, Gertrude, Linda and Katie Woodward, who live with their widowed mother in a river-side cottage at Hampton. (I had never thought of "Linda" as a Victorian name.) Soon after the story opens, their mother's uncle, Captain Bartholomew Cuttwater, retires from the Royal Navy to live with them. This Uncle Bat introduces a naval element that I don't remember in any of Trollope's other books. His grumblings over the sins of the Admiralty reminded me of Patrick O'Brian.

The Woodwards are related to Harry Norman, who introduces them first to Alaric and then to Charley Tudor. "To a habitual novel reader," as Trollope says at one point, it will hardly come as a surprise to find that the three young men match up with the three young women, but it is still fun watching how it happens. The youngest daughter, Katie is only thirteen when the story opens, still a child who likes messing about with boats, with drawers longer than her skirts (I didn't know respectable Victorian novelists were allowed to talk about young ladies' drawers). She grows up into a delightful young woman, who dances her slippers to pieces one night, and I suspect that Trollope had a bit of tendre for her, as he did for Glencora Palliser.

I can see in this book some unevenness, some rough edges that I think show Trollope still perfecting his skills as a writer. His narrative voice becomes quite sentimental at times, addressing his reader as "thee" and "thou" (and at least once as "dear lady"), and admonishing, even scolding his characters. The illness of one character skirts the edges of bathos, complete with a death-bed farewell, though he has already told us that the illness isn't that serious. And the last chapter of the book, which brings some serious family news, ends in broad, almost farcial comedy, with most of the characters chasing around a garden. Then there are the names, some of the worst puns I've found in any of his books: Mr Gitemthruet, a defense lawyer; Jabesh M'Ruen, a predatory moneylender; and Victoire Jaquêtanàpe, a French fortune-hunter. I can't forget Thomas Snape, the chief clerk of Charley's office and his perpetual victim.

This book was originally published in the traditional three-volume format. When it was reprinted two years later, the publisher insisted on major cuts to bring it down to a single volume. The edition I read, an Oxford World's Classics, included the most substantial cuts in an appendix, keyed to their original place in the remaining text. Reading the excised material in some cases changed my understanding of a scene or a character. I learned from the introduction that Trollope fought to keep one of my favorite chapters, where one of the young clerks, who hopes to make some extra money from journalism, brings a story he has written to the Woodwards. Mrs. Woodward reads it aloud to the group, who interrupt her constantly with a hilarious running commentary. The story, whose heroine is named "Crinoline," is ridiculously funny, though its young author is very proud of it.

I really enjoyed this book. As always, Trollope made me care about his characters, and their stories, clearly grounded in his own world, and even drawing from his own life.

Invisible women

Calling Invisible Women, Jeanne Ray

I have loved Jeanne Ray's novels since I read her first, Julie and Romeo, published back in 2000. She is the mother of novelist Ann Patchett, so clearly there are some good story-telling genes in that family. Her books are rooted in family life, often in the bonds (sometimes strained) between generations, shifting between comedy and drama. They are told in the first person, in a comfortable, matter-of-fact, rather wry tone that draws me at least immediately into the story. Julie and Romeo is about the older couple of the title finding love again, in the midst of a long-standing feud between their families, whose children are appalled by their fraternizing with the enemy. In Step-Ball-Change Caroline (who runs a dance studio not quite as whimsical as the one on Bunheads) and her husband Tom cope with a daughter's impending mega-wedding and the sudden arrival of her sister, whose own marriage is collapsing around her husband's infidelity. My favorite of her books is Eat Cake, whose heroine Ruth bakes her way through the complications of life with her teen-age daughter, her elderly mother, and her suddenly unemployed husband Sam, not to mention the arrival of her estranged father, who needs a place to recuperate after an accident. When Sam is unable to find work again immediately, Ruth's therapy becomes a source of income, one that draws the family together around cake. Every time I read this book, I end up baking a cake, though I haven't yet tried the recipes included at the end.

I had no idea that Jeanne Ray had just published another book, so it was a lovely surprise to come across this in the new book bins at the library last Saturday. Here she takes the kind of domestic setting that she does so well in a completely different direction. Clover Hobart is 54 years old, married to Arthur, a pediatrician and the mother of Nick (now living at home after losing his job) and Evie, a college student. A reporter for many years, Clover has also in a sense lost her job with reductions in the local newspaper where she works; she now writes a gardening column and the occasional book review.

One day, standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth, Clover notices that she has become invisible. It isn't a trick of the light, it isn't her mind playing tricks on her, it's not a metaphor: she is invisible. Her body is still there, she is still there, she just can't be seen. She discovers very quickly that if she puts clothes on, and acts normally, most people will simply ignore her missing head and hands: they will not see. The doctor she consults not only doesn't see, he also doesn't hear what she is trying to tell him (a situation a lot of visible people face every day; I certainly have). Neither her husband or her son notice anything different, though her best friend Gilda and her mother-in-law Irene both do.

It naturally takes Clover some time to adjust to this momentous change, and to her family's cluelessness. One day she sees an ad in her local paper, "Calling Invisible Women" to a meeting at a downtown hotel. There she finds that she is far from the only invisible woman. She also learns the probable cause of her condition (let's just say it's a medication issue involving a Big Pharma company, Dexter-White). With this support group, just with the knowledge that she is not alone, Clover begins to explore the advantages of her invisibility, while also coping with its disadvantages. As she meets more and more invisible women, and learns more about Dexter-White, Clover finds herself back reporting again, covering a crusade that she is also helping to lead.

I had no trouble accepting the premise of this book, because with Clover, Jeanne Ray has again created an appealing narrator who drew me right into her story. And it's a fun story, its message presented with a light touch. The ending may feel a little rushed, but it is nevertheless a satisfying one. I'll be very interested to see what Jeanne Ray writes next.

Cheating death

Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the 13th book in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, which I've seen referred to as "space opera." Set in the future, the books are centered on the Earth-settled world of Barrayar, where the great families of the Vor class have ruled for centuries in a medieval-style hierarchy headed by the Emperor. The Vorkosigans are the highest of high Vor, so closely related to the imperial Vorbarra family in this generation that its sons stand next in line for the throne. But the youngest member of the family, Miles, is far from a typical Vor lordling. His mother Cordelia (an immigrant from a very different world called Beta and a clear-eyed critic of Barrayar) suffered a chemical warfare attack while she was carrying him, and Miles was born with physical deformities that on Barrayar, even in this modern day, lead to infanticide. He eventually left the constrictions of his home planet for a wild career as a space mercenary, while working undercover to protect its interest through Imperial Security (the dreaded ImpSec). In the later books, Miles returned to Barrayar, to his role as heir to his father Aral, Count Vorkosigan, and to make his own place in his home world.

Lois Bujold dedicated one of the later Miles books to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy" - as in Austen, Bronte, Heyer, and Sayers - and their influence is clear in her writing. She creates indelible characters, people with emotional and psychological complexity, and embroils them in multi-layered stories, some set on space stations, others on worlds with echoes of our own. She writes marvelous dialogue that can dance like the best screwball comedies, or lay bare someone's soul. Miles, and even more his parents Cordelia and Aral, are among my absolute favorite literary characters, on a par with Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Wimsey, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Freddy Standen.

Normally, I buy Lois Bujold's books in hardback, as soon as they come out (this fall we will finally get a book about Miles' cousin Ivan Vorpatril, who like a secondary Heyer hero has played the carefree aristocratic bachelor for many years, hiding his lights under the proverbial basket for too long). But Cryoburn came out in 2010. I finally bought a copy last year, and have only now read it for the first time. I put off reading this book, I confess, because it brings the death of one character in the saga, whose end has been foreshadowed but to which I was not resigned. What finally motivated me to read it is the Dorothy Dunnett-Lois Bujold crossover listserv I belong to, which has been reading through the saga for the past several months. Now I can follow the discussions without fear of further spoilers.

Cryoburn is set on the planet Kibou-daini, whose main industry is cryonics. The technical problems of freezing and reviving people have largely been solved by the research & development departments of the large corporations, or "cryocorps," which dominate this world. Most of its population chooses to become cryocorpses themselves, hoping for revival in a future where whatever medical condition they face, even old age, will have been resolved. Miles Vorkosigan has been sent to a cryonics conference on Kibou because one of the corporations is planning an expansion on Komarr, the second planet in the Barrayaran empire. Miles is now an Imperial Auditor, one of a select group assigned by the Emperor to investigate or trouble-shoot across the Empire, acting in his name and with imperial authority - a position tailor-made for Miles, who shares with Peter Wimsey an insatiable curiosity.

When he is kidnapped from the conference, and then meets a young boy whose mother, an activist working against the corps, has been frozen against her will, Miles follows the trail into the depths of the cryocombs. What he discovers there resonates on some level with the corporations of today. And as he investigates the different cryo-corporations, and meets their future customers, Bujold explores what it means to face the end of life, with the option to cheat death. What would it be like to return to life 80 or 100 years later, physically healed but out of your own time? She has a lot of fun with the cryocorps, each striving to attract more customers than their rivals, through marketing and branding. My favorite is NewEgypt, where the frozen customers pass through gates guarded by giant statues of Anubis, to rest in pyramids.

Though this book is about death, or about a frozen state of almost-death, it is never morbid. It couldn't be, with Miles in full Auditor mode. There is also an excellent supporting cast, some old friends from previous books. It is always great fun watching people meet Miles for the first time, particularly his fellow Barrayarans. Lois Bujold has gone on to write two other series, the Chalion books, set in a medieval-Renaissance world with echoes of our own, and a remarkable theology; and the "Sharing Knife" series, set in a world that resembles North America, peopled with Lakewalkers, who have mystic powers and Farmers, who don't and who distrust those who do. I love the Chalion books, and I enjoyed the later Knife books, but I would trade them all for more Vorkosigan stories. At least I only have to wait til November for Ivan's adventures.