Books You Should Read

I have fallen out of the habit of writing about the books I have been reading unless they are books that have been sent to me for review. I don’t know about you but I think that is a pity so, in an attempt to do better, here is a little about a few books I have greatly enjoyed recently. They have been stacked next to my chair with slips of paper between the pages marking quotes for weeks now.

Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy was recently reprinted by Handheld Press. Interestingly, it was originally published in the U.S. but this is the first time it has been published in the U.K. I knew immediately that I wanted to read it since it is her British war journal covering the months of May to September 1940. I requested a copy from the library and read it as soon as it arrived. It was fascinating. It is full of observations about the politics of the day, the attitudes of the people at the time, little details of everyday life, and her own personal worries and fears. I like what she said here about the relationship between the British and the Americans.

The common language is a great help but it is also to some degree a danger. We should be continually astonished and delighted at the number of things we have in common, if we had the barrier of language to overcome, but speaking the same tongue we are often tempted to suppose that we understand one another better than we do, and it is the unsuspected differences which surprise and irritate us.

I also liked this. I read it over a few times and thought how true it is. It is a good description of perseverance.

We must just creep on from day to day, doing faithfully that day’s task, using to the utmost what strength and courage we have, and hope to get more from the Lord when our own runs out.

Janice Holt Giles was an American author mainly known for her historical fiction set in the Kentucky hills. 40 Acres and No Mule is her personal account of the first few years of her marriage when she and her husband moved back to his home and family in Kentucky. Giles struggled with the change from city life, but she also loved and valued the people and countryside surrounding her. I enjoyed this so much. Here is her description of her home.

I have just taken a quick look around the living room to see. Henry’s guns stand in one corner by the fireplace, and his fishing tackle is scattered over the mantel. Here in the middle of the winter Henry is hopeful of a warm day and he has been oiling his reels. A pair of gloves and Henry’s boots are drying on the hearth, and Honey lies there with her paws stretched to the fire. In another corner two bags of cement are stacked. The house is the only place where Henry can be sure they will stay dry. The bookshelves ranging around two walls are full to cramming, not only with books but with the few pieces of ironstone I possess, several house plants, and dozens of pictures of Libby, Nash, and the babies. On the table at the end of the couch is a stack of magazines, a dozen or so books, two reams of paper, three ash trays, a cup of coffee, and Henry’s drawing instruments. He is at present working on plans for the barn.

But that’s home. That’s what makes it home, and when you evaluate happiness in terms of comfortable living, it takes remarkably few gadgets. For us it seems to take a chestnut log crackling on the fire, the popcorn popper handy nearby. It takes the wall of books, and the piano. It takes Henry on one side of the fire and me on the other and Honey in between. We’ve got a stout roof over our heads, tin though it be, and tight walls between us and the winter winds. We’ve got forty acres of wood to burn if we need it, and food in the pantry. We talk idly of building a new house someday. We may. But I wouldn’t bet on it. We’ve lived ourselves into this little house now, and it gives us just about everything we want or need. What more could a new home do?

I first read Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow when I was a teenager. Something recently reminded me of Bristow’s books and I have been requesting them from the library. They are perfect books to sink into when you want to escape from reality. Jubilee Trail is the story of Garnet who grows up living a privileged life in New York. She is expected to make a good marriage and settle down. Instead, she falls in love with Oliver Hale, a trader who regularly travels to the Mexican territory of California. She marries him and they set off on the Jubilee Trail to California. Along the way, she meets and befriends a wide variety of people including Florinda, the burlesque actress with a heart of gold. This book is long and detailed. A lot happens, much of it relatively stereotypical and overly dramatic. And yet, Bristow makes you care about it all. The characters are appealing and the amount of history she manages to weave in is impressive. There are some views of the time period, especially towards the Indians, that the modern reader will find jarring but it is an absorbing book. Bristow excels at description. I felt like I was on that hot, dusty, exhausting trail with Garnet. Here is a description of California.

The flowers don’t just bloom here and there. They grow in solid sheets, acres and acres of wild poppies like a cloth of gold. Beyond them are acres of blue lupin, and then sheets of pink sand-verbena and purple sage–it’s like a great patchwork quilt spread over the world. Up on the slopes is the dark green chaparral, and in the chaparral there’s the yucca, like white candles twenty feet tall, and higher up you see more acres of flowers edging against the snowline. All around you there’s the scent of the sage. It’s a hard spicy fragrance that blows over you all the time. You stop your horse on a hill, you sit and look because it hurts you down in your chest and you can’t go on. The mountain peaks are white, and the sky is so blue it’s almost purple, and there’s the endless distance of mountain ranges around you and those miles of flowers below, and you want to burst into tears. You’re ashamed of yourself, and you turn your horse to go on about your business, and just then you catch sight of some horny old rascal who left the States just in time to escape being hanged, and he’s looking at it and you hear him say ‘God Almighty!’ and by the way he says it you know he’s not swearing.

I’ll try to do a better job of at least including bits and pieces of the books I read even if I don’t write full reviews. I got very out of the habit but I once again have a stack of sticky notes by my chair to mark passages I like.

What have you read that you have particularly enjoyed recently?