Reading Recommendations

My reading lately has been a bit all over the place. I have started a lot of books, set aside a lot of books, and reread a lot of old favorites. As is true of many people, I am sure, the stress of life over the last year has affected my concentration and I have had trouble sticking with books. I do have a pile of books precariously balanced on the back of the couch with sticky notes dotted through the pages because I was sure I was one day going to write about them. In an effort to eliminate that pile in one fell swoop I am going to give you a few highlights and a few quotes.

Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith is one of my rereads. I have owned this since I was a teenager and read it many times. I don’t love it quite as much as I do A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but I do greatly enjoy it. It is the story of Annie and Carl, a very young couple in the 1920s who marry against parental wishes. Carl is in college in the Midwest with dreams of being a lawyer and Annie has worked since she was fourteen but dreams of being a writer. Their first year of marriage is hard, and Smith does not flinch away from showing just how hard it was, but Annie and Carl truly love each other and the joy shines through. I love this excerpt from when Annie first visits the college library.

The great vaulted rooms had the same grand smell the one-room library back there in Brooklyn had had: a mixture of ink, paste, leather, apples and wax; all dominated by a faint moss scent.

She went from room to room, floor to floor, stack to stack, reveling in books, books, books. She loved books. She loved them with her senses and her intellect. The way they smelled and looked; the way they felt in her hands; the way the pages seemed to murmur as she turned them. Everything there is in the world, she thought, is in books. Things that people said and did and the way they thought and acted even from away back. Away back! Long before Jesus was born, even. Everything that ever happened or could happen or didn’t happen is in these books. Everything since the world began.

The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr was kindly sent to me by the British Library. I picked it up one day recently when life was particularly irritating and escaping into a murder mystery was just what I needed. It was definitely better than committing crimes myself which was the other option! The story starts at the notorious Brimstone Club where a member of the club has been sent a tiny replica of a gallows and rumor has it that Jack Ketch, the hangman, is looking for victims. Shortly afterwards we have a limousine driven by a corpse, items appearing on a table in a locked room, the shadow of a gallows on a building, a death or two, a street that doesn’t exist, and an awful lot of atmosphere.

When we took a cab to the theatre, I had almost begun to look forward to this play. London that night was a wet chaos of fog, screeching with taxis and smeared on the sky with a blur of electric signs around Piccadilly. But as we turned down the Haymarket, there was a sense of intimacy crowded into these dun-coloured walls. The heavy-footed traffic rumbling past, the shine of light on wet pavements–clank, babble, shrill policeman’s whistle, and loom of big arm in water-proof–all carried a suggestion of companionship through mere virtue of the fog. It was not until we entered the theatre, until the house darkened and the curtain rose on that pale mimic world of terror which was Vautrelle’s play, that the afternoon’s devils returned…

I enjoyed this. It was clever and distracting and set in London which is always a good idea. I also enjoyed the short story that was included at the end. The detective, Henri Bencolin, also appeared in Carr’s first novel, It Walks by Night. I would like to read that too.

I have one book on the back of the couch that will stay there all year. It is The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists. I bought this a few years ago with the intention of starting it on January 1st and reading the corresponding entries every day. Well, I kept forgetting about it but this year I remembered on January 2nd which is not bad at all. I can already tell it is going to greatly add to my list of books I want to buy. I will restrain myself from inflicting quotes on you throughout the entire year but here are a couple from the first few days. This is from Sir Walter Scott on January 1, 1829. I think we can all relate to this.

Having omitted to carry on my diary for two or three days, I lost heart to make it up and left it unfilld for many a month and day. During this period nothing has happened worth particular notice. The same occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alterations of spirits, gay or depressed, the same absence of all sensible or rational cause for the one or the other– I half grieve to take up my pen, and doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of nothing. But hang it! I hate to be beat so here goes for better behaviour.

I feel that the last year has been “an infinite quantity of nothing.” Sir Walter Scott understands me. The next entry is from January 9, 1977, and is written by Christopher Matthew (Diary of a Somebody). This is one of his New Year’s resolutions.

To move freely in society. I am always reading the diaries of the famous how they dined here and lunched there; sat next to this person at table and met that one at the theatre. I see no reason why I should not do the same. My problem is that my life is too often taken up with domestic trivialities, and I allow my time to be wasted by people of little worth and influence. I shall take steps to break out of this little world in which I have become trapped in recent months and give far freer rein to my personality.

My life is also “too often taken up with domestic trivialities.” Maybe I should “give freer rein to my personality.”

I also read The Daughter of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War* by Catherine Grace Katz. I am endlessly fascinated by the World War II years and this is an episode I knew little about. The book covers the Yalta conference in 1945. All three of the leaders mentioned in the title were accompanied by their daughters. I was interested to read about the men through their daughter’s eyes, and this book did that, but it also provided a clear and informative picture of what went into this conference and what was at stake. While obviously, the politics of the time were the focus of the book, it was very interesting to read extracts from the letters and diaries of the daughters since they provided a more personal view of what went into preparing for the conference and the interactions of the people involved. I was particularly interested in Churchill’s and Harriman’s daughters and would like to read more about them.

I haven’t quite managed to eliminate the stack of books on the back of my couch in one fell swoop but it is a bit shorter. All the better for pulling more books off my shelves.

*Review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.